debate Will .xyz flourish in 2019?

[Laguna]

What are your thoughts on .xyz in the coming year or two ?

 

[Fancy.domains]

- I sold a few ones in 2014 and 2015.
- I sold many in 2016 and 2017.
- I sold only one in 2018.

I will only keep my very best one-words...

 

[Henry Y]

.xyz does not have a general meaning, but has different meanings to different people.

To Chinese, .xyz has the following meanings that are originated from Chinese Pinyin acronyms:
1. Little Universe
2. New Asia
3. Believer
4. The Next Chapter
(Source: https://gen.xyz/blog/whatisxyz)

To other people including me, .xyz can refer to 3D (i.e. x, y, z coordinates). Some 3D related businesses are using .xyz as their websites. For examples, vrtracker/xyz (3D position tracking for virtual reality), atlas3d/xyz (3D software), 3dtek/xyz (3D printer), techart/xyz (3D prototyping and visualisation), umake/xyz (3D CAD modeling) and dimension4/xyz (3D printing). .xyz is the only extension that can represent 3D. I own model/xyz and would like to sell it to 3D models related businesses.

If a keyword can fit one of the above meanings, I believe the domain should be sold well.

 

[Yusupbabay]

I'm sure the .xyz extension in the future can grow because of many end users.
I am currently developing the www.cargo.xyz website

best regards

 

[hawkeye]

Ok, I confess, I have a 3 worder - I Love You .xyz

 

[Henry Y]

All nonsense, you are buying .xyz because of all this made up stuff?

I just wanted to say that if a person doesn't find a meaning of one thing, it doesn't mean that it has no meaning in others' views. I shared some real use cases of .xyz in 3D businesses because someone here may not be aware of this potential use or meaning of .xyz in the 3D field. You are free to think all the real cases are nonsense, disagree with me and ignore the real cases. But for me, the real cases make sense and I believe 3D technologies will increasingly be used thanks to the developments of Virtual Reality, 3D printing in manufacturing, embodied Artificial Intelligence and so on. So I choose to make a small investment in .xyz (i.e. model/xyz).

 

[Kate]

As a newbie, what is the point of me buying expensive domains if I am still in the learning process ? Lose a lot of money or use good old common sense and buy cheap until I know what I'm doing ?

That's an interesting question that has a surprisingly simple answer.
You know what they say, "Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others". There is no need to make all the same rookie mistakes that others have gone through.
So, rather than waste a lot of money on experiments until you get it right, what you should be doing is research, analyze reported sales, and learn what kinds of names do sell. Until then, do not buy any more domains. Just watch, read, do research. Do not buy anything until your are confident enough.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The knowledge is available (for free) but you have to process it.

Don't put the cart before the horse.
When you have done your homework, you will realize that many of the questions you've asked you could have answered yourself. And you would have built a different kind of portfolio.

There is absolutely no one on here that can say there is NOTHING of any value in my portfolio. Yes there is mostly rubbish but a few with value. And that's coming from some pro's by DM.

Many domainers are in love with their domains and are not objective. I think you are one of them.

Many newcomers think that they should buy many domains, treating them like lottery tickets, and that they just need to sell one domain to break even and make a profit. Yet the majority of domainers are losing money. If you have 200 domains then you need to sell for at least about $2000 just to recoup your investment, and it still does not pay for the renewals. Everybody can make one sale out of luck or by accident, but the real challenge is to repeat the feat over and over, and make a consistent profit.
Easier said than done, really.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I agree that promotion by registry, and in particular showing that real businesses are using it in significant ways, is critical to how successful .xyz is going forward.

On the positive side

• while still tiny compared to legacy, .xyz is doing better than almost all other new gTLDs real use wise
• having Alphabet on an .xyz is a big plus
• they have managed to keep abuse really respectable for a long time (see Spamhaus). This is quite the achievement considering that they have continued deep discounting
• the renewal cost is not unreasonable
• due to registration numbers, it has more recognition than many of the new gTLDs
  
• the fact that it is not an English word helps it be a more universal TLD

On the negative side

• after years 1-2 not many high value resales
• a number of good words are premium reserved
• even compared to registration base, not an impressive number of aftermarket sales in recent years an little indication of strong trend
• some new extension proponents dislike that the TLD is not a word

How I see it (my opinion)

• we are unrealistic to expect a sudden increase in sales rate or prices
• I think we may see a gradual pickup of sales especially in $$$ range
• correct pricing and reaching the right markets are essential here - I suspect this will be more successful outside the US
• at low acquisition prices the probabilities may make sense if you can find good words that the registry missed as premium and that have dropped

Bob

Disclosure: I personally have a handful of .xyz, but it is not more than 2% of my entire portfolio. I have one that I may develop. I continue to look at opportunities, and now and then pick up one. I have never sold an .xyz.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

While the aftermarket sales have been weak the last two years, I have good feelings re .xyz. It has more real world use than most new extensions. I like it as a general purpose extension that is not based on English. I dont think we will see many large sales in 2019 but I predict the sales volume will be up compared to this year.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Personally I have only once ever got spam from xyz, only a handful of times over the past two years from one or two other ngTLDs. Daily I get a dozen or more from .com.

But I don't think my anecdotal experience is relevant. The Spamhaus people protect billions of email accounts, have a staff of I think about 20 and have been in business for almost two decades. When I want abuse information I trust their numbers.

I don't doubt that the penny give away almost 5 years ago was stupid and spiked spam. But for literally years xyz has had very respectable abuse numbers. I think that is what is relevant information.

BTW I am not a significant investor in .xyz with less than one Christmas donation invested in total across a handful of names. It just bothers me when outdated and inaccurate information is repeated so I do my part to try to correct it.

Bob

 

[domains21]

You say to much.
Another keyboard warrior

There's a reason that account is Restricted. Trolls, don't feed them.

 

[BestDomains2828]

The only extension I can not invest money on, I hate this extension with passion, very worthless I don't even understand the meaning of this extension.

 

[Internet.Domains]

Historically, New Gtld's top sales are when the keyword and the extension create a meaningful string. It's very hard to come up with a meaningful string with the .xyz extension. Perhaps Google took the only possible one with abc.xyz. Concluding, I will remind that New Gtld investing should be focused on meaningful strings and not on the extensions.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

About half of the .xyz sales in NameBio are 4 characters or less. Agree with those who say single words or short acronyms or numbers most likely sales.

 

[Brands.International]

VRcasino is a decent keyword

Well, one can think so, but only unless we go to uniregistry.com, and insert string "vrcasino" into search field, and find 224 available alternatives in new gTLD space (some very good, for $1,99)...

this can tell us what are the chances of selling such name...I think not much in 2018.

I really would go only for pure keywords like
vr
casino
poker
style
design
etc..just 1 worders.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Spammers killed it. Having it's email blacklisted didn't help.

You do realize the Spamhaus abuse score for xyz and com are essentially identical at 0.92 and 0.95 and for most of 2018 and late 2017 .xyz was better than .com? (today very slightly worse at 0.95). Maybe there is still time to edit your post.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Go out into the street and find some real life business using this extension, come back and post when you do

This is an interesting challenge to apply to any extension outside the big ones. I like your idea because it does force us to actually go beyond simply how many Alexa 1M there are, to ask "Are there meaningful companies in our local area using an extension." We all know that many sites in the second half of the Alexa 1M are aggregator "news" and video "sharing" sites that we don't necessarily view in a positive way.

I don't know .xyz as well as extensions I invest in regularly (and only 0.8% of .xyz registrations are in Canada so this is not a major market for it), but here goes for my answer to the bit broader question: Do you see locally or personally use any organization/business that employs .xyz?

• In my small city, I could not think of a local business that I recall using .xyz. I'm not saying there are not any, but I can't list any.
• However, if I go to the nearest sizeable city in my province (Vancouver) it is easy to find examples. Probably the most prominent is rise.xyz which is still redirecting to their earlier RisePeople.com site but they do use xyz and simpler rise in promotion. Rise (formerly RisePeople) are a people oriented HR resources company founded in 2011, listed in Bloomberg, could not find the exact number of employees but I think at least 100. So within 55 km is a major company using an .xyz.
• What about companies whose services I have considered or used? The best example is the domain registrar west.xyz. It is the English language site of one of the big Chinese registrars, but serve in English a global community and have good prices on many extensions and an easy to use website similar to the western registrar. I probably visit their site at least every few days.
• I no longer review stock information as often as I did a few years ago, but I do consult the investor letters for Google at abc.xyz, so it is another site that I use at least a few times a year.

Thank you for the challenge @MasterOfMyDomains ! I think it is an excellent test to use for any thinly traded extension when trying to assess its impact and potential. I may even develop the idea into a longer piece sometime.

Bob

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I largely agree @Lagunaboy that a sale is a sale. When I buy most consumer products the seller could care less what I do with it (exceptions like vehicles). However, I think ultimately the health of an extension does depend on legitimate respected end use, so I think it matters, somewhat. As a seller, I like when I see a domain name actually goes into meaningful use. Maybe that is just me.

By the way, I agree @atinc that quite probably the buyer plans/hopes to resell token at the right price rather than develop it, and that the site itself is confusing and probably misleading (as well as sloppy translation). At $10 per year renewal he can sit and wait for the right offer. There seems some confusion between the announced buyer and the linkedin profile of the person at masked redirect.

@MS-Domains thank you for your reflections. I agree that it is challenging finding investment worthy ngTLDs at standard renewal fees. I am super impressed with the skills @DNGear has had in finding such names in .xyz that sell at high $$$ and low to mid $$$$ prices. Hats off to him (with a bit of envy ). I think he, @lolwarrior , @Fancy.domains and a handful of others have shown that a savvy domain investor can make money in ngTLDs, but I think none of them would say it is easy or without risk.

At the same time, to me it seems challenging to find .com domains that are good enough for the sales risk at reasonable prices too - I take it for those who have been longer in this than me it was not as difficult a decade ago (and parking was way more lucrative then too). So I see risk and hard work whether you choose ngTLDs or legacy (and as I have said multiple times, the numbers favour legacy and a few cc's as investing strategy).

I think it is totally fine and in fact good that different domain investors do different things. I am certainly not trying to convert legacy investors into ngTLD investors (or vice versa). I just try to take as balanced and evidence based view to questions as possible.

So I guess I am saying I find something to agree with almost everyone. Of course I am Canadian...

Have a nice day.

Bob

 

[atinc]

@Bob Hawkes
You are missing the point, the point is, when the word is truly premium, & the combo makes sense, you will be paying premium renewal.

Take Diet.xyz, nice domain, kinda makes sense. You can renew it at $650 yr, or you can renew 70 solid .coms.

I just told you store.xyz renews at 13k.

Vehicle.xyz renews at $1,300

Doctor.xyz renews at $,3,250 etc ..........

I'll definitely go for the .coms.

Again, in most cases the extension is not domaining/domainer friendly.

Sure, you'll find a few at standard regfee, good luck building your domaining career on that strategy.

just my opinion anyway.

apparently this is only for .xyz and not goes for all the new gTLD extensions.

There are many truly premium keywords that makes sense with the combination and doesn't have "real" premium renewal.

A fellow friend posted a great thread where people share their domain names and their renewals. You can take a look at that here.

But I think we should define what is premium renewal first. I guess that depends from people to people.

 

[Kate]

You do realize the Spamhaus abuse score for xyz and com are essentially identical at 0.92 and 0.95 and for most of 2018 and late 2017 .xyz was better than .com? (today very slightly worse at 0.95). Maybe there is still time to edit your post.

.biz and .info were killed by spam in the early days too and they never recovered. They had other issues, but the poor reputation clearly had an impact.
I got some volume of spam from .xyz domains, but never got one single legitimate E-mail from .xyz. At some point they were basically giving them away to inflate the registration numbers but it's all hype. Only the naive will be fooled by Negari.
For me .xyz will always be remembered as a spammy and lousy TLD.

 

[toughdomains]

www.uae.xyz has been developed

looks like a mask for http://ubiz.ae/

 

[Oblivious Fella]

This extension has been a close friend of .info and .biz, still I feel in 2019 this extension will see rise in sales volume. Not significant enough, but something better for sure. In the last quarter of 2018 .xyz names have done comparatively better with many sales happening at Undeveloped (inbound, most probably). Check it out here: https://namebio.com/?s==MzM0QDM5kTM

 

[DNGear]

Some new xyz endusers

Adaptive.xyz
Fullstack.xyz
Minimal.xyz

 

[Yusupbabay]

That is an excellent professional site. Is that ur business? Do u need an experienced truck driver?

my business is cargo services

 

[ecalc]

Will .xyz flourish in 2019? Secondary market sales data (source: namebio):

Year	Unit Volume	USD Volume
2017	60	49k
2018	50	70k
2019 YTD	4	4k

It's never too late but it may be time for Miracle-Gro.