I think many valid points have been made. At 31 sales $43.2k total 2018YTD .xyz does not seem on track to do more than 2017 (60 sales, $49.4k) which was a poor year. There is no doubt that .top with about $2.0 million in sales 2018 YTD is having a far better year, at least if NameBio stats represent the true situation.
One possibility, that we should take into account is that .xyz is predominantly registered (and supposedly resold) in areas of the world that almost certainly are seriously underreported on NameBio (49.9% China, 13.7% US, then Turkey, Vietnam, India, Japan, Indonesia and Russia). Now it is true that .top has an even more skewed geographical base, but the top registry took it upon themselves to report both their own sales and sales through a number of other companies (like Alibaba) while the .xyz people have not. Therefore NameBio may underrepresent .xyz to a greater degree than say .us or .biz or .info.
If we look at 5 year figures (GA started in June 2014) they are much better for .xyz with $1.7 million in sales over 495 domain names (that number still low). For comparison the 5 yr total for US is more sales (846) but only about half sales volume ($915k). Info has a similar volume ($1.6 million) but far more (1945) sales. Biz for the 5 yrs is $709k and 957 sales.
So why has .xyz dropped so much? If you look at the large sales, many of them were premium sales of one and two character names, and simply they are now sold (and were mainly registry sales in any case). The premium renewal issue that
@lolwarrior explains is obviously a factor pushing down interest and prices, ironically.
.xyz seems an enigma in that as a domain extension it seems healthy (registration wise, relative use in websites, lack of abuse, stable and reasonable renewal rates for standards). For example, with 2401 in Alexa 1M it leads the ngTLDs, and when you look at 1 Alexa 1M per 781 registrations (NameStat data as of today) it is within a factor of about 2 of .com and better than the majority of the new extensions. But a weak resale market. It may still suffer from the deep promotions in the early year. Will it recover? Not sure. I suspect there will over time be more sales, but most will be in $$$ range.
Of course .xyz is not alone in seeming more an extension success than a resale success. To some degree same could be said of .site and .space and many others that have decent website use on a proportional basis, good lack of abuse, and some stability, but few resales.
There have been a few significant sales in .xyz in the last year or so ($15k by MO for token in August, $7k just under a year ago for jungle, and earlier this year $4k for host are probably the more notable ones I remember) but not many. I would agree with
@bmugford that .us has been more promising of late with 2018 major sales for $26k, $12k, $8.4k, $7.5k (by the way congrats on your major sale!).
I would not say .xyz is dead, but then I try to be moderate in all my wording!
Napping maybe? Would I personally recommend investing in .xyz? If you can find a strong word without a premium renewal, and are happy to sell in $$$ range, probably. I actually never invested in them until very recently when I picked one up for a future development project, then I did pick up two others for possible resale. You might say why for development, it is an information site and I liked the sense of xyz (I may even structure it alphabetically). I liked that I could get a good word, cheaply, and reasonable renewal rates.
Thanks to
@Igor Mironyuk for original question, and to all who have contributed, on both sides. I think a lot of good information has been exchanged.
Bob
