analysis Why Ntlds will never work

[Revisiting]

Easy to discuss the almost hidden 'dot' and the market and users lack of awareness. So lets move on to the public mind-set that will ultimately reject Ntlds (except for maybe a very few)
I've mentioned in another post - how it actually took our introduction to the internet and it's many want to be users many years to be become comfortable with the 'No space between' two/three word presentation of a domain. Anybody under about 30 years of age won't connect with that these days .
So lets move on.

The internet awareness and value system is built on returns. The connection is built on a basic reward system and IT-WORKS. The reason .biz .info and the REST didn't find their mark is because there was nothing new or to be gained. Sure key word searchers would visit, but unless it was a very niche site or a business card website - there was no gain for a visit.

So lets get to the crutch - There is nothing to be offered in the Ntld space outside of the recognised TLD parameters - Sure, and I do appreciate Inventiveness, Creativity and WordArt which will take us all by surprise from time to time. But What you cant do - is reinvent the connectivity of what is already there

Ntlds will be seen as an opportunistic field by domain speculators - An unrecognised - So yet to be trusted 'Input/address field' by users . And finally totally oblivious for Marketing purposes (You can't make a miniscule dot stand out for connectivity/readability - unless it's intuitive)

Happy (and want to read the counters) I'm always eager to learn

 

[DuDD]

People's awareness of NewTLD is not high enough
. Com is still the best choice that people think.
However, it is also the case

 

[Revisiting]

I'm hoping to hear from the ntld investors. There is a valuable discussion to be had

I do think there is a market to be had, but it will be far more a . . 'promotional event' concept

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Use searchbox...
Tons of such holywars... they appear regularly...

 

[Dodoma_com]

My hometown is Roanoke City and my wife's hometown is Kigali City. I was able to get both "Roanoke" and "Kigali" in the ".city" domain, at reg fee, both around $25 or $30 annually.

It was apparently some freakish coincidence that they were available (recently expired?), as all the other cities in those regions are taken, including smaller towns.

I wouldn't trust Donuts on future pricing, but if I seriously launched a project involving either of those cities, I would register 10 years in advance and use multiple domains in my marketing, including .com's. In fact, the main site would probably be a ".com," but the exact-match .city domains would be helpful redirection tools to gain "instant credibility."

In general I wouldn't register any of the nTLD's unless it's one of these situations: where it's an existing, well-known two-word combination, and the top level domain corresponds to the second word, and the second level corresponds to the first word.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

I never heard about these cities, sorry.

 

[HotKey]

Use searchbox...
Tons of such holywars... they appear regularly...

Yeah, surprisingly it's been a while though. I don't think the OP ever really participated in the previous ones and rehashing gets tiresome.

What's kinda neat though is since the last anti-non-comm ting ting we've had, there's been plenty of nG adoption and sales to boot. The growth rate is good enough for me, nice and slow, and couldn't give a hoot whether or not it's big enough or fast enough for the nay nayers.

 

[Dodoma_com]

Yeah, surprisingly it's been a while though. I don't think the OP ever really participated in the previous ones and rehashing gets tiresome.

What's kinda neat though is since the last anti-non-comm ting ting we've had, there's been plenty of nG adoption and sales to boot. The growth rate is good enough for me, nice and slow, and couldn't give a hoot whether or not it's big enough or fast enough for the nay nayers.

Agreed. Again, in general I try hard to get the exact-match .com, but in the case of some cities, the local newspaper (or whatever) already owns the "CityName.com," so it's not realistic without spending millions. "Name.city" for those cities would seem to be a strong alternative, in terms of being intuitive and an exact-match. (Arguably, even more exact than ".com" itself.)

In the case of Roanoke City, because there is also a Roanoke River and a Roanoke County, people do tend to say the entire phrase, "Roanoke City," to denote the city specifically. Metro population is over 300,000. In one or two years I may use the address for professional-quality videos and local civic activism, if I end up moving back.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Geos are not easy to sell regardless of TLD.
Very often it takes 10+ years to meet the right enduser.

 

[Dodoma_com]

Geos are not easy to sell regardless of TLD.
Very often it takes 10+ years to meet the right enduser.

That is true. I've had some of my geo domains for 20 years.

Usually if you want to sell, you have to accept what is actually offered (usually four figures) and not what theoretically makes sense.

 

[bmugford]

The first of these extensions launched almost 8 years ago now. I don't think they can really be considered "new" anymore.

Many of the biggest proponents seem to have dropped off the face of the Earth.

While some still sell here and there, there is no way 8 years later the proponents would have predicted this little overall traction.

The registries themselves share much of the blame. While I don't think they were really ever going to take over, the greedy and shady behavior of many registries didn't help anything. Neither did the grandiose, delusional predictions from the ".COM is dead" or ".COM is AM radio" crowd.

Brad

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

Respectfully,

you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that’s alright, learning the ropes in the domain industry is not an easy task.

That’s coming from someone who has represented some of the most rare .com domains in the world including VR.com, 77.com SW.com HH.com and 123.com ... all of this before becoming an investor in new GTLDs ^ in fact I have to be thankful and hopeful that both sides of the industry will continue to appreciate and in my experience, when we work together, the industry grows ^

~

So here’s the math ... according to ICANN, in 2019, we had approximately 360M domains in circulation, we had 2B sites online, there are over 100K new businesses’ on average created every single day (not taking into account the Pandemic situation) ... And in order for a new business to survive in the current world we live in,

you need to be online !

Now with that said ^ it is impossible for every single business in the world to own a .com name, hence single keywords have hit six and seven figure price tags ... that said, unfortunately most of those sales fall through, financed arrangements don’t go according to plan or the buyer is not serious ... don’t take my word for it ... just go look at the news, ebanking.com just fell through, fish.com fell through, bird.com fell through ... I was just offered $300K for the name https://e.credit and the buyer is being hesitant ...

that’s just how the industry works, it’s very complicated and highly unpredictable, anyone w/ experience will tell you the same

Let’s look at some facts, do you know what Twitch is ? I’d be hard pressed to think you didn’t, well go type in Twitch.com and tell me what you see ... it will forward to .tv

Moving on, Shopify developed out https://shop.app - they bought the name for $200,000 USD ... what do you think has happened to the value of shopapp.com - that’s right ^ it’s gone up ^

Next we have Google, their Corporate Landing page is https://abc.xyz

Funny enough, Google has a secret domain acquisition group for new extensions alone,

https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/13/how-tech-giants-are-playing-the-icann-domain-game/amp/

so now think about this ^ this is the largest search engine in the world, the year is 2012 ... wow they were ahead of us and look at where the value of certain GTLDs has gone and will continue to go ^ exact match keywords in valuable industries are very valuable, from an SEO perspective and a brandability perspective

Next we have Apple ... Apple is quiet, but go look up https://apple.watch and even though it forwards to their .com for apple watches - it still shows that Apple actually took the time to adopt a new idea, invest the time and money into it, and then utilize the name effectively ^ now if we could just get them to market the name in Timesquare

Next we have Amazon ? Type in https://amazon.shop or https://amazon.store and see where they go ^ in fact go look at how many domain extensions .whatever Amazon owns ^ they are not burning money, this is arguably one of the most powerful companies in the world besides say Blackrock and voila ^ you have Fortune 100 companies whom have been secretly investing, either to control market share, make money, or because they think it’s a good idea ... And it is

Does it surprise you, that Verisign whom owns .com owns .tv and .web ... They paid $100M USD in 2000 for a 20 year contract just to own and sell .tv domains ? Despite telling all of their investors to solely invest in .com domains ... actually if you think about it, it’s kind of brilliant, they don’t want you as an investor knowing what’s to come, nor do they “Personally” send you a notice when they decide to Raise the renewals ... this goes for all domains ^ they love keeping secrets until it’s time to show you the bill

And the domain registrars and registries need to work on this as a whole ^ we cannot have greedy hedge-funds controlling our market ^ nor can we successfully keep this market alive by trading amongst each other

And so that leaves us w/ an industry that is successfully marketing and utilizing new .extensions

~

What gets people drooling ?

Crypto

Fintech, NFTS, and DeFi, the majority of these new start ups that became unicorns overnight are using .network, .finance, .credit .link -

https://chain.link

https://polkadot.network

https://uniswap.io

https://bitcoin.org

https://ethereum.org

The list goes on ^

These are the companies that needed something that they could build a brand upon, not spend countless money competing w/ the banks whom own already own the direct keywords and some have even been intelligent enough to buy into new age marketing -

Citi Bank “https://mortgage.biz”

That all said, the past 10 years have been interesting, I myself have generated an ROI of 3000% w/ just a few names, I have to thank ROTD for that as well,

I believe I’m on the cusp of the next big GTLD sale which hopefully will bring further added value to the domain industry that we so desperately need

Two halves make a whole

 

[bmugford]

Respectfully,

you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that’s alright, learning the ropes in the domain industry is not an easy task.

That’s coming from someone who has represented some of the most rare .com domains in the world including VR.com, 77.com SW.com HH.com and 123.com ... all of this before becoming an investor in new GTLDs ^ in fact I have to be thankful and hopeful that both sides of the industry will continue to appreciate and in my experience, when we work together, the industry grows ^

~

So here’s the math ... according to ICANN, in 2019, we had approximately 360M domains in circulation, we had 2B sites online, there are over 100K new businesses’ on average created every single day (not taking into account the Pandemic situation) ... And in order for a new business to survive in the current world we live in,

you need to be online !

Now with that said ^ it is impossible for every single business in the world to own a .com name, hence single keywords have hit six and seven figure price tags ... that said, unfortunately most of those sales fall through, financed arrangements don’t go according to plan or the buyer is not serious ... don’t take my word for it ... just go look at the news, ebanking.com just fell through, fish.com fell through, bird.com fell through ... I was just offered $300K for the name https://e.credit and the buyer is being hesitant ...

that’s just how the industry works, it’s very complicated and highly unpredictable, anyone w/ experience will tell you the same

Let’s look at some facts, do you know what Twitch is ? I’d be hard pressed to think you didn’t, well go type in Twitch.com and tell me what you see ... it will forward to .tv

Moving on, Shopify developed out https://shop.app - they bought the name for $200,000 USD ... what do you think has happened to the value of shopapp.com - that’s right ^ it’s gone up ^

Next we have Google, their Corporate Landing page is https://abc.xyz

Funny enough, Google has a secret domain acquisition group for new extensions alone,

https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/13/how-tech-giants-are-playing-the-icann-domain-game/amp/

so now think about this ^ this is the largest search engine in the world, the year is 2012 ... wow they were ahead of us and look at where the value of certain GTLDs has gone and will continue to go ^ exact match keywords in valuable industries are very valuable, from an SEO perspective and a brandability perspective

Next we have Apple ... Apple is quiet, but go look up https://apple.watch and even though it forwards to their .com for apple watches - it still shows that Apple actually took the time to adopt a new idea, invest the time and money into it, and then utilize the name effectively ^ now if we could just get them to market the name in Timesquare

Next we have Amazon ? Type in https://amazon.shop or https://amazon.store and see where they go ^ in fact go look at how many domain extensions .whatever Amazon owns ^ they are not burning money, this is arguably one of the most powerful companies in the world besides say Blackrock and voila ^ you have Fortune 100 companies whom have been secretly investing, either to control market share, make money, or because they think it’s a good idea ... And it is

Does it surprise you, that Verisign whom owns .com owns .tv and .web ... They paid $100M USD in 2000 for a 20 year contract just to own and sell .tv domains ? Despite telling all of their investors to solely invest in .com domains ... actually if you think about it, it’s kind of brilliant, they don’t want you as an investor knowing what’s to come, nor do they “Personally” send you a notice when they decide to Raise the renewals ... this goes for all domains ^ they love keeping secrets until it’s time to show you the bill

And the domain registrars and registries need to work on this as a whole ^ we cannot have greedy hedge-funds controlling our market ^ nor can we successfully keep this market alive by trading amongst each other

And so that leaves us w/ an industry that is successfully marketing and utilizing new .extensions

~

What gets people drooling ?

Crypto

Fintech, NFTS, and DeFi, the majority of these new start ups that became unicorns overnight are using .network, .finance, .credit .link -

https://chain.link

https://polkadot.network

https://uniswap.io

https://bitcoin.org

https://ethereum.org

The list goes on ^

These are the companies that needed something that they could build a brand upon, not spend countless money competing w/ the banks whom own already own the direct keywords and some have even been intelligent enough to buy into new age marketing -

Citi Bank “https://mortgage.biz”

That all said, the past 10 years have been interesting, I myself have generated an ROI of 3000% w/ just a few names, I have to thank ROTD for that as well,

I believe I’m on the cusp of the next big GTLD sale which hopefully bring further added value to the domain industry that we so desperately need

Two halves make a whole

Back on Earth 1....

Reported sales (from NameBio) in the last year -

All nGTLD -

1,627 Total Sales
$2.7m Dollar Volume

.COM only -

126,700 Total Sales
138.5M Dollar Volume

1000+ new extensions have yielded 1.9% of the dollar volume of just .COM in the last year.

Math. Empirical data. Not impressive.

The rhetoric does not match the reality.

Brad

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

Back on Earth 1....

Reported sales (from NameBio) in the last year -

All nGTLD -

1,627 Total Sales
$2.7m Dollar Volume

.COM only -

126,700 Total Sales
138.5M Dollar Volume

1000+ new extensions have yielded 1.9% of the dollar volume of just .COM in the last year.

Math. Empirical data. Not impressive.

Brad

Come on Brad, lol, no need to quote me

And should your numbers really be that surprising ?

How long have .com domains been around ? It’s the product child of the industry, you know this and I know this, it’s been marketed on everything from pens to coffee mugs to billboards in Timesquare ... shit a standard computer class course will teach you about .com domains ^ everyone knows .com - might as well be the first thing a baby says .com

.com .com .com

Give it enough time, and I promise you, in about 15 years if you’re still in the industry you will be investing in both GTLDs and TLDs ^

maybe you already do

 

[bmugford]

Come on Brad, lol, no need to quote me

And should your numbers really be that surprising ?

How long have .com domains been around ? It’s the product child of the industry, you know this and I know this, it’s been marketed on everything from pens to coffee mugs to billboards in Timesquare

Give it enough time, and I promise you, in about 15 years if you’re still in the industry you will be investing in both GTLDs and TLDs ^

maybe you already do

Hey, I wasn't the one hyping these when they came out. Go back to the launch and see all the proclamations and predictions made by the proponents, registries, etc.

.COM is dead!
.COM is AM radio!
We are going to have 10M registrations in the first year!

Pretty much none of them came close to coming true. They have been a massive disappointment when you judge them against their own comments.

Brad

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

Hey, I wasn't the one hyping these when they came out. Go back to the launch and see all the proclamations and predictions made by the proponents, registries, etc.

.COM is dead!
.COM is AM radio!
We are going to have 10M registrations in the first year!

Pretty much none of them came close to coming true. They have been a massive disappointment when you judge them against their own comments.

Brad

People are always going to hype up a new industry ^ they always have and will continue to do so, it’s just human instinct, you want it to be successful, you have to be aiming for bullseye on the dart board

But when you have wealthy and powerful outside parties whom feel threatened, they will do anything to maintain their power

Verisign has done just that ^ and now they are telling their own shareholders - it was their words that they said, they don’t have enough quality .com domains to fulfill market demand and thus they are investing in new extensions ... this was their words,

20 years, Verisign has proclaimed .com is the only one ...

 

[bmugford]

Give it enough time, and I promise you, in about 15 years if you’re still in the industry you will be investing in both GTLDs and TLDs ^

maybe you already do

I would be willing to invest in them now if they had more traction and resale potential. I am not fundamentally against great two word combos, but the vast majority of these are not available.

Many have been reserved from day one by the registries who are demanding large registration and/or renewal fees for them. They really shot themselves in the foot, as getting traction would have been far more effective.

Brad

 

[The Durfer]

My hometown is Roanoke City and my wife's hometown is Kigali City. I was able to get both "Roanoke" and "Kigali" in the ".city" domain, at reg fee, both around $25 or $30 annually.

It was apparently some freakish coincidence that they were available (recently expired?), as all the other cities in those regions are taken, including smaller towns.

I wouldn't trust Donuts on future pricing, but if I seriously launched a project involving either of those cities, I would register 10 years in advance and use multiple domains in my marketing, including .com's. In fact, the main site would probably be a ".com," but the exact-match .city domains would be helpful redirection tools to gain "instant credibility."

In general I wouldn't register any of the nTLD's unless it's one of these situations: where it's an existing, well-known two-word combination, and the top level domain corresponds to the second word, and the second level corresponds to the first word.

i dont know with dot city unless its like discount.city, the geo names are more library oriented than business oriented. It seems business names with city in them would make more since for a website.

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

I would be willing to invest in them now if they had more traction and resale potential. I am not fundamentally against great two word combos, but the vast majority of these are not available.

Many have been reserved from day one by the registries who are demanding large registration and/or renewal fees for them. They really shot themselves in the foot, as getting traction would have been far more effective.

Brad

I agree, rare combinations are rare, I’m lucky to co own https://easy.credit - been in negotiations w/ TeamBank for a solid 3 years

I believe you have a solid point w/ registries reserving premium domains for themselves, .com got successful because it let the small guy win ^ that’s true ^ but today that’s not the case, you’re happy to disagree, because you earn that nice paycheck or bankwire transfer ^

I believe what we need is time, but not a considerable amount of time, new age tech valuations are already through the roof, shoot just look at NFTs, if we could produce the same results w/ domains we could potentially open up a new window to bring in a force much more great then you or I

 

[bmugford]

i dont know with dot city unless its like discount.city, the geo names are more library oriented than business oriented. It seems business names with city in them would make more since for a website.

Rob Monster and DigitalTown had a spectacular failure with the .city extension when it came to GEOs.

The company owned 10K+ .city domains.

DigitalTown “clean up efforts” to avoid bankruptcy

https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/06/digitaltown-clean-up-efforts-to-avoid-bankruptcy/

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

Rob Monster and DigitalTown had a spectacular failure with the .city extension when it came to GEOs.

The company owned 10K+ .city domains.

DigitalTown “clean up efforts” to avoid bankruptcy

https://domainnamewire.com/2019/06/06/digitaltown-clean-up-efforts-to-avoid-bankruptcy/

I already know about this, I wanted to tell Monster he shouldn’t invest so much, at the end of the day it’s about quality over quantity

And not every extension is gonna be successful, it would be ridiculous to think this is the case

Two keyword combos or single characters though that make sense, I believe are very valuable

 

[bmugford]

I agree, rare combinations are rare, I’m lucky to co own https://easy.credit - been in negotiations w/ TeamBank for a solid 3 years

I believe you have a solid point w/ registries reserving premium domains for themselves, .com got successful because it let the small guy win ^ that’s true ^ but today that’s not the case, you’re happy to disagree, because you earn that nice paycheck or bankwire transfer ^

I believe what we need is time, but not a considerable amount of time, new age tech valuations are already through the roof, shoot just look at NFTs, if we could produce the same results w/ domains we could potentially open up a new window to bring in a force much more great then you or I

Yeah, combos like easy.credit sure. Real.Estate, Wedding.Photography, Home.Loans, Carpet.Cleaning...those type are good.

What is not good IMO is like CarpetCleaning.(some random new extension). It basically means many extensions only have a handful of great combos.

Brad

 

[Alessandro Couteau]

Yeah, combos like easy.credit sure. Real.Estate, Wedding.Photography, Home.Loans, Carpet.Cleaning...those type are good.

What is not good IMO is like CarpetCleaning.(some random new extension). It basically means many extensions only have a handful of great combos.

Brad

To some degree, I’d agree, but the market as a whole is limited for premium names, the same can be said for .com domains - not every .com domain is great,

just don’t tell Mike Mann that, lol

w/ his numbers you’d think it was the case, still amazed at how he sold TruckCrashLaw.com for $9000 lol

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Last ~2 years are really weak...
During this period I sold just 3 nTLDs, 13 were sold prior corona times.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Even lack of attacks from lawyers during COVID...
Looks like no budget on such activity.