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

 

[clasione]

The industry is already ready for its second round of new gTLD registrations at the registrar level; it's been 10 years and they are still not really off the ground in my opinion. They will remain an unwanted alternative for at least another 40 years. I said 50 years 10 years ago when the first round was done.

 

[Dodoma_com]

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/

Registering 10,000 names was obviously a mistake. There are not that many large and medium-sized cities in the U.S. Roanoke has a metro population of 315,251 and it's 163rd on the list.

My other ".city," Kigali, is a national capital city (capital of Rwanda), one of only about 200 national capitals in the world.

To get to 10,000, you have to register every little town in Iowa, Kansas, and South America.

This seems to be your argument: "Early optimistic predictions were not true. Therefore none of these domains have any value whatsoever."

Obviously, absolutes rarely reflect reality. Sure, early predictions were wrong. But it's also incorrect to conclude that these names thus utterly lack any worth.

 

[bmugford]

This seems to be your argument: "Early optimistic predictions were not true. Therefore none of these domains have any value whatsoever."

Obviously, absolutes rarely reflect reality. Sure, early predictions were wrong. But it's also incorrect to conclude that these names thus utterly lack any worth.

Not really. My argument is the lack of reported sales reflects the reality that a lack of demand exists.

In the last (3) years .CITY has 18 reported sales for $12,600 total dollars. Also, none of those sales really appear to be GEOs.

Brad

 

[Lox]

In my business network, an important question that comes up frequently is, “How much does it cost to create a trust with .whatever?”

Unfortunately, the exotic registries didn't invest in mainstream media ads ... to raise awareness.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

My average result from 16 nTLD sales is high $xxx per domain.
Almost all were sold within 1st year, regged for standard/promo fee, inbound only.

 

[Domainment]

The industry is already ready for its second round of new gTLD registrations at the registrar level; it's been 10 years and they are still not really off the ground in my opinion. They will remain an unwanted alternative for at least another 40 years. I said 50 years 10 years ago when the first round was done.

In my opinion, they simply launched far too many of them with no quality control. There are some useful and sensible nTLDs out there, like .online, .cloud and others that can serve a purpose and be of value to end users, and by extension domain investors. However, at the same time there are so many that are just junk and are of no use to anyone except spammers. Unfortunately, the good ones get tarred with the same brush.

Of course, this is before we even get to the issue of those within the domain industry with a vested interest in the outcome trying to convince people that everything except .com should be considered worthless.

 

[richardhope]

In my opinion, the ngTLD's are (for the most part) simply additional opportunities to create "domain hacks"... No doubt, the TLD choices now, along with the sheer number being offered, create some fantastic opportunities for new domain hacks... For me, however, there will always be uncertainty around ngTLD's, as your registration relationship is with a company, who can, essentially, do whatever it likes:

Change the registration terms overnight?.. Why not.
Hike registration fees from $20 one year to $1000 the next?.. It's possible.

With ccTLD's, however, your registration relationship is with a country* and not a company. This is an almighty difference, and so for me (for domain hacks) I would go with a ccTLD every time.

(*Of course, you may still be registering through a for-profit company, i.e. a registrar, but the ultimate authority here is a country's gov't).

 

[jmcc]

Not really. My argument is the lack of reported sales reflects the reality that a lack of demand exists.

That's the killer for a TLD, Brad,
The demand for many of the new gTLDs had collapsed with the end of large-scale Domain Tasting in 2008. The whole new gTLD train was already trundling down the tracks and couldn't be stopped.

No demand = No development = No sales.

In the last (3) years .CITY has 18 reported sales for $12,600 total dollars. Also, none of those sales really appear to be GEOs.

The Geos are a strange bunch. The Digital Town thing almost killed .BOSTON and damaged .LONDON. Some of the Geos are finding a niche but they are directly competing with their local ccTLDs. In some respects, it is a kind of frenemy relationship and it has helped with brand protection registations in the Geos. Many of these are small businesses without trademarks protecting their brands.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Most nTLD sales are generated by Afternic, which doesn't report anything.

p.s. Try to live without NameBio...

 

[ryan29]

from NameBio

Is that site a good indicator of end user sales or is it for domain investors only? I went to it and after about 3 searches it gave me a modal (blocking) dialog box with a 45 second forced wait and a prompt to become a premium user. Lol. No thanks. I'm not paying to see what they have to sell. That's hilariously dumb if they're trying to sell aftermarket domains. If they're catering to domain investors, the numbers are going to favor .com more than reality.

I'm not a domain investor, but I think the nTLDs are slowly catching on. I think they'd be doing much better if the registries weren't so awful, but, subjectively, I see them getting used more and more all the time. The two specific things that make me think the tide is turning for them is that I see a lot more nTLD links on the Hacker News front page and I've started seeing more traditional advertising from businesses using nTLDs.

There's a dentist in my city that uses a .dental domain and they advertise it on the radio. That's a regular small business that decided a nTLD was their best option for branding. The .com variant (ex: exampledental.com) is $4k USD in the aftermarket.

I don't think nTLD adoption is something that will be obvious though. One day it'll just be normal / accepted unless the registries come up with more money grab(s) that keep damaging adoption. For example, I can think of several businesses that do a lot of radio advertising in my city that could benefit from nTLDs because they'd be easier to communicate via radio, but when I look up domains that would be awesome for them they registries have all of those domains flagged as premium with ridiculous prices.

I would love to see a breakdown of premium vs non-premium registrations in the nTLD market. I'd also love to see the financials for a nTLD registrar to see how they do the accounting on domains that have been reclassified as premium (after a reg / drop cycle), but I doubt that'll ever happen.

 

[HotKey]

There is no hope guys.

There is no hope for these new-fangled things called new gTLDs. They just don't make any sense.. they are EXOTIC.. they are HACKS.. they simply can't be TRUSTED! I mean why would anyone buy them? Why would anyone brand on something that is a shorter, more exact domain name? They even work exactly the same as, well, a domain name should. Absolutely ridiculous. These people must be nuts:

Gift • Horse
Universe • XYZ
Infra • Market
Alpaca • Markets
Suspicious • Link
Robot • One
Xito • One (and they didn't even register the dot-com, OMG!!)
Mosquito • Buzz
Mast • One
Blackhole • Dev
GiddyUp • Horse
LisaFranklin • London
Life • Church
Unique • One
Drawing • Garden
Wonder • One
Awake • One
Cognitive • Business
Feet • City
Pik • One
Timely • Town
Spotted • Horse
Synchroni • City
Riddles • FYI
Made • Men
Goodbye • Domains
Fox • One
Block • One (forwarded to a CC.com, pretty cool)
Animal • Farm
All • Storage

I mean, how will these businesses possibly survive?? On a domain name that works?? With an exact match to their brand?? Insane.

Yeah I know. Hardly an indicator. I'm no researcher, and why would I hold a quality domain to just its merit? It's just a few new gTLDs as examples, and really no indication of anything happening. Except for the fact they are live and in use. Not to mention as investors, why would we invest in anything that's not immediately apparent as a forthcoming mass appeal? It's not like we hold things for years on end, maybe even up to 20 years for it to realize its right buyer.

And what about this talk about demand and sales? Like seriously, with over a thousand new gTLDs for end users to choose from, we REALLY should be using the same yardstick as we have been for the .com extension (which has only been around since 1985, sheesh. Yesterday really.).

Look, we really should ignore all the gTLD sales and write them off as outliers. I mean, that's all they'll ever be, right? Particularly since they only add up to a few mil. We need tens or hundreds of millions for it to really be concrete, don't we?

There is no hope. Stick with what we know. While we're at it, let's ride that horse and buggy over to the automobile convention.

 

[richardhope]

I don't particularly like ngTLD's, but they do allow for a huge expansion on the "domain hack" premise, and of course they are much more attractive and compelling than .com!

 

[Grego85]

Its pretty simple.

The less one understands about NGTLDs, the less cartilage that person probably has left in their knees. It seems to be directly relational.

 

[HotKey]

Grego, your Fire • Horse DN is badass! Love it.

 

[Grego85]

^ Thanks Hotkey! I love it too! I wanted to use a .horse that was better than a majority of the .com domain portfolio names out there.

 

[Henry Y]

Not really. My argument is the lack of reported sales reflects the reality that a lack of demand exists.

Brad

I disagree.

Reported sales only account for a very small proportion of all sales, are mainly domainer-domainer sales, and ignore domain registrations. They cannot reflect end user side and cannot show domain usages, and hence cannot reflect demand.

You should use the statistics about domain usages to show the demand.

 

[Henry Y]

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

It is a typical wrong application of math and statistics. Have you ever seen any investment analysts comparing revenue of a big company to that of a new startup? Never as it is meaningless and cannot conclude if the new startup performs well or not. They use ratios, such as asset turnover ratio, to do fair comparisons instead. Similarly, you should use ratios, such as the ratio of reported sales to total domain registrations, to do the comparison.

Also, you better do a trend analysis to see the performances of .com and ngTLDs over the past few years in order to have a bigger picture of the reality.

 

[bmugford]

There are endless unreported .Com sales as well.

There is no reason there would be a higher % of ntlds unreported.

Low reported sales = low overall sales.

Brad

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Aftermarket sales can't happen - if it is available for registration (because domainers ignore it).

I work with WHOIS daily for years and I see TONS of endusers there...
From individuals and up to fintech companies like SunFinance.group

 

[jmcc]

Also, you better do a trend analysis to see the performances of .com and ngTLDs over the past few years in order to have a bigger picture of the reality.

Building a model of NGT and .COM performance is actually a lot more complex than building a model for a startup. The .COM is a much older gTLD than any of the NGTs. The renewal rate and registration years are also quite different as are the renewal rates. Some of the heavily discounted NGTs have low renewal rates. That's simple enough to understand. What isn't widely understood is that the .COM gTLD is actually a composite of a lot of country level markets with a much smaller global market. Renewal rates and sales prices vary according to the economics of these markets. Some of the NGTs are incredibly geographically focused to the extent that they are pseudo-ccTLDs. (The geo NGTs are good examples of this.) NGT sales are typically high-value keywords or large companies taking a gamble. There are smaller sales but the problem most of the NGTs face is that there is not much of a primary market let alone a secondary market.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Henry Y]

Building a model of NGT and .COM performance is actually a lot more complex than building a model for a startup. The .COM is a much older gTLD than any of the NGTs. The renewal rate and registration years are also quite different as are the renewal rates. Some of the heavily discounted NGTs have low renewal rates. That's simple enough to understand. What isn't widely understood is that the .COM gTLD is actually a composite of a lot of country level markets with a much smaller global market. Renewal rates and sales prices vary according to the economics of these markets. Some of the NGTs are incredibly geographically focused to the extent that they are pseudo-ccTLDs. (The geo NGTs are good examples of this.) NGT sales are typically high-value keywords or large companies taking a gamble. There are smaller sales but the problem most of the NGTs face is that there is not much of a primary market let alone a secondary market.

Regards...jmcc

It is already incorrect to group ngTLDs for analysis because each ngTLD has distinct niche markets and pricing models.

 

[jmcc]

It is already incorrect to group ngTLDs for analysis because each ngTLD has distinct niche markets and pricing models.

Most people doing any serious analysis of the NGTs do not group them as a single gTLD.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

People buy what they see...
When they see .xyz banners almost everywhere - they buy it regularly and even in 5F range...

 

[jim h]

Some of the companies that manage them don't have good credibility, but some are slowly gaining people's trust.