This post won’t exactly help me make new friends in the new gTLD world, nor will it enable me to attract new advertisers. In fact, it will probably upset several people I consider friends and who are involved with new gTLDs in one way or another. As sorry as I am, it has to be written because this is why I blog in the first place: to share my 2 cents with readers, to share my perception of reality with them.
DomainingTips turned 7 back in February. Seven years, it’s ridiculous how time flies.
As one of the oldest and most respected domaining blogs out there, I owe it to you guys to post my honest opinion about new gTLDs. Some readers have been asking me to do this right from the very beginning. I refused. Why? Simply because it was too early to draw conclusions. There wasn’t enough data, debates were way too heated and not rational enough, not a good climate to draw conclusions.
Here we are, one year later.
At this point, I can safely say I have a conclusion. I’ve tried investing in new gTLDs myself, I’ve kept in touch with other domainers, I’ve analyzed publicly available data as well. This puts me in a reasonably good position to write this post. So let’s get started.
My Personal Experience
Some of you have followed the case study I published last year. I invested in several new gTLDs and all in all, pretty much broke even or ok, maybe I’m a wee bit profitable. But nothing noteworthy by any means. I’ve been investing in domains for several years. I am a very calculated buyer. I have various venues (including this blog) at my disposal whenever I want to sell… in other words, I’m better-positioned than most domainers to do well.
I gave it my best and after drawing the line, can safely conclude it wasn’t worth it. After factoring in the time I invested as well, what can I say except “thanks but I’ll pass” and this brings us to my first argument (1): if someone like me barely managed to make a few pennies, the average domainer is anything but well-positioned.
Am I saying it’s impossible to do well? Certainly not, I’m sure some investors have done ok. However, the odds are stacked against you and in my opinion, if you’re talented enough to do well with new gTLDs, you’d make exponentially more by investing your time/energy elsewhere.
Further Anecdotal Evidence
I keep in touch with a lot of domainers and quite frankly, I’ve yet to come across someone who told me he did very well with new gTLDs. And by very well, I mean being more than just reasonably profitable after drawing the line, not merely having a solid sale or two under your belt. There are several decent documented new gTLD sales but this doesn’t mean the domainers in question actually have a good business model. Until you know what their expenses are (how many domains they own, how much was spent on acquisitions, how much will be spent on renewals and so on), you cannot draw any conclusions.
Over a year has passed and at this point, we don’t really have much to show for it in terms of documented sales. According to nTLDStats.com, there are almost 6,000,000 new gTLDS at the moment of writing, spread across over 600 TLDs. Yet if you head on over to DNJournal.com and analyze a few weekly sales charts, you’ll notice the documented sales are only a drop in the bucket, percentage-wise.
Yes, yes, I know: not all sales are disclosed, NDA, etc.
The exact same thing was said about Dot Mobi domains for example and it’s a very weak argument. Dot Com sales can just as easily be subjected to NDAs, so my second argument (2) would be this: if a year down the line, there are so few documented sales, it can be considered a clear warning signal.
Renewal Rates
Yep, it’s time to move on from anecdotal evidence to a more fact-based analysis. The most recent data I have is from the official Donuts blog, where they shared the renewal percentage for their first 25 extensions, which ranges from 54.7% for Dot Directory to 71.7% for Dot Technology.
Very poor numbers.
And let’s keep one thing in mind: if you’ve been involved in the industry for at least a few years and have some experience with let’s say Dot Mobi or Dot TV, you’ve undoubtedly noticed how domainers are willing to hang on to poorly performing portfolios for a few years. Therefore, if the year #1 numbers are this poor… draw your own conclusions. This would be my third argument (3).
Another peculiar aspect is this: Donuts posted their Day 10 stats on their blog, the numbers weren’t awful. Then the Day 26 numbers came, they weren’t good. After that, they stopped sharing stats on their blog. Once again, draw your own conclusions. Consider the lack of recent updates argument number four (4).
Renewal Prices
For the most part, despite hundreds of extensions being live, most renewal prices far exceed those of Dot Coms, for example. You’d think that with all of this competition, prices would go down but the thing is, registries also know domainers are willing to lose money for a few years. Therefore, don’t expect significant renewal price drops to come just yet. Once again, remember what happened in the past, with premium priced dot TVs for example. Verisign kept prices high for several years until finally (back in March 2010) implementing changes and making formerly premium domains available at the regular registration fee (or at the very least at a lower price than before).
A lot of people talk about long-term strategies and what not. That’s great and everything but if your portfolio isn’t profitable now, expenses can and will add up. If you own 1,000 dot coms, you’ll need $9,000 per year to cover renewal fees. With new gTLDs, you can easily end up paying 2-3 times more. No matter how much potential you think new gTLDs might have, remember this: the market can remain “irrational” longer than you can remain solvent. The renewal price issue represents my fifth argument (5).
The Numbers Are Misleading
Guess what: I own 100 Dot Berlin domains.
Why? Because I got them for free. Will drop all of them this year. Now don’t get me wrong, the Dot Berlin registry can do whatever it pleases. If it wants to give domains for free, so be it. But let me ask you: in light of this marketing strategy, what do you think about their total number of registrations? How many of their ~150,000 registrations are actually domains *bought* by people and how many are freebies?
This is just one example. As mentioned previously, there are currently about 6,000,000 new gTLDs. But the Dot Berlin example tends to put things into perspective and all of a sudden, we can now safely conclude the registration numbers are misleadingly high. This is argument number six (6).
Would You Like a Dot Lawyer? Or Perhaps a Dot Attorney? A Dot Law, Maybe?
This ridiculousness represents argument number seven (7). If there’s a Dot Lawyer, a Dot Lawyers, a Dot Attorney, a Dot Attorneys, a Dot Law, a Dot Legal and so on, this puts you in an awful position as an investor. With so many alternatives out there, it becomes excruciatingly difficult to convince end users to pay a premium for your domains.
People wanted to expand the namespace, fine. Good for them, go for it. But they should have been more smart about it because things would have been confusing anyway. Having so many similar extensions adds yet another layer of confusion… yay!
Opportunity Costs 101
Look at how LLL dot coms have been doing lately, LLLLs as well. Let’s not even talk about NNNs, NNNNs and so on. A lot of domain types have performed extremely well, so my 8th argument (8) is this: there are a lot of more exciting opportunities than new gTLDs out there. By investing in new gTLD domains, you’re not just investing $x, you’re also saying no to the opportunity to make considerably more by investing those $x elsewhere.
Again, opportunity costs 101.
But Aren’t Registries Profitable?
I don’t know, didn’t do any research on this because quite frankly, I don’t care. DomainingTips is a blog for domain investors, not for registry operators. Sure, maybe the registries are making money. Maybe not. I’m not here to “rule” on that. If they’re making money, good for them. If not, c’est la vie. What I care about is this: are domainers in a good position to make money?
My 9th argument (9) is this: the interests of registries and domainers aren’t necessarily aligned. Dot Co is an eloquent example. The registry obviously did amazingly well, yet how many domainers do you know who earn a living buying/selling dot co domains? I rest my case.
Reseller Market Demand = Pretty Much 0
This is my 10th and final argument (10). Trying to sell a new gTLD domain to another investor is an amazing test of patience. And humility. There’s almost no reseller market volume. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much supply, severely limited demand. Economics 101.
IMO, Investing in New gTLDs Is Not Worth It
It had to be said. And I said it.
If you’re involved with new gTLDs in one way or another, please don’t take it personally. But for over seven years, DomainingTips.com has been a blog written by a domain investor, for domain investors. After so many years, I owe it to my readers to articulate the truth as I see it, even if it hurts. The writing is on the wall. We have more than enough data at our disposal to be pretty much certain new gTLDs just aren’t worth it. Unlike a lot of other people, I didn’t rush to conclusions. I waited, gathered and processed information before writing this post. Don’t think I took this responsibility lightly. I did what had to be done and basically through this post, said goodbye to thousands of dollars in advertising revenue.
Oh well 🙂
June 2nd, 2015 at 9:42 am
just ask yourself… would you rather own boston.apartments or bostonapartments.com? i know my answer and it applies across all new extensions. newextentsions.suck.
June 2nd, 2015 at 10:00 am
That’s for the well laid out insight. I recall the hype with .mobi and remember a few that spent big money on those key words. How well has that panned out? These other extensions only really push traffic to the .dom at the top of that food chain. Let’s say you have a great site at whatever.biz, logically speaking, some of their traffic has got to be going to whatever.com. These registries may make money on the promise of the coming day, but I think time will prove it’s .mobi all over again. And, when the market figures it out, along with a change in this administration, the prices on .com will skyrocket.
June 2nd, 2015 at 10:02 am
RaTHeaD – I am a big .com fan, but keep an open mind that 5-10 years from now boston.apartments might be just as appealing to the general public as bostonapartments.com. Many years ago, 1-800-laptops would have been a clear winner over 1-877-laptops, probably 100 times more valuable, but now I bet most younger people would not even notice the difference.
June 2nd, 2015 at 10:09 am
I agree with Eric, I’m sure the general public will gradually grow accustomed to new gTLDs (it might end up being a painfully slow process though). However, this doesn’t mean there’s money to be made by investing in them, hence my decision to write this post.
June 2nd, 2015 at 11:37 am
While it is early to proclaim the new TLDs a failure, the way they have generally been structured (premium acquisition prices for thousands of keywords, many keywords not available at any price, premium renewals which are unsustainable for investors, and hundreds of new options in a mere two years), they are clearly risky for investors. However, that doesn’t mean slow adoption cannot occur by those seeking cheap meaningful alternatives for a website they want to develop rather than buying an aftermarket .COM. Again I go back to what I have seen with .TV where my renewals are often $28-$30 annually and sales prices when I have one are often low $XXX – for an extension which has been around some fifteen years. I see too much supply and an unwillingness on the part of even end users to pay enough money for even great domains to justify portfolio carrying costs. Thus I hold zero new TLDs and believe the argument that keyword.newTLD is better than Keyword1Keyword2.com is ridiculous (just my view).
June 2nd, 2015 at 3:01 pm
Completely in agreement with your conclusion and I must say, it was obvious from day zero :). Thank you for sharing your insight. Interesting and to the point as always. Be blessed!
June 2nd, 2015 at 3:28 pm
Eric makes a cogent argument.
Here are my other views:
(1) The average domainer doesn’t make any money anyways. They lose money. Only the top 20% of domain investors make money investing. Same is true for other investments. I believe 1% of Wall Street investors make money consistently.
(2) It’s one year into the new gTLDs. Not many sales? How many sales were public the first 10 years of .com? How many .com sales do the average domain investor make per year? This will change over time.
(3) You say you’re going to drop all your .Berlins. But I get they received a 30% renewal rate on their domains that were given away for free. That seems like a pretty good marketing campaign give their low cost of customer acquisition. Where else can you acquire customers for so little?
(4) You’re a blog. Go ask Donuts for data, rather than making assumptions. You know what they say when you make an assumption?
(5) Agreed.
(6) Nobody said numbers didn’t lie.
(7) Winners will win. Losers will lose. .Com won. .Mobi lost. There will be winners and losers going forward. Your job as an investor is to pick the winners. Good luck.
(8) 12 months ago NNNNN.com had no value. None. Today they’re selling in the hundreds. Look at the rapid growth of LLL.com, NNN.com, NNNN.com. We’re also seeing NN.cc and others growing rapidly. Pick winners and they will grow because there are more investors daily, and more companies are coming online daily.
(9) That’s your view. Costco wants to sell you more stuff, and they want you to be happy. The .CO registry wants the same.
(10) You remember Costco? I just bought a waffle iron for $50. I want to sell it for $20. Will you buy it? Likely not. Is there someone that might want to buy it someday at some price? Yes. But there is a growing need for TLDs, not waffle irons. So we can likely say that “better domains” — regardless of TLD — will go up in value. No one argues that .com will go up. Some may argue that .com won’t grow as fast as other TLDs or vice versa, but that’s just semantics.
Good insights. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
Just wanted to provide another view of the same data you provide.
June 2nd, 2015 at 4:03 pm
mate, do better new gtld instead of writing this :), it’s easy to write some lines … do good marketing and explain that com is a nonsense, old thing , it is over…
June 2nd, 2015 at 4:06 pm
The good: These new gtld just strengthen the .com and with it, my investment. Long live to new gtld’s, so I can increase my investment in .com
June 2nd, 2015 at 8:13 pm
Andrei, I think you summed it up well.
The comments regarding advertising money is interesting also. I wonder how many bloggers will not say what they think about new tlds because of advertising money?
June 2nd, 2015 at 9:55 pm
Tom,
Excellent post! Very logical thinking and smart comments!
June 2nd, 2015 at 10:29 pm
You lost me after point 3, paragraph 14, but I did hear you say that you don’t invest in any gTLD’s. Too bad, if you were on the ball you may have registered http://www.Domaining.Tips
June 3rd, 2015 at 12:04 am
As I look at Dynadot’s pricing for Find.Lawyer ….. I gotta wonder who set these prices?
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Interesting timing on this article which comes not long after the latest DomainSherpa podcast which to me had some “clouded” views
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I think it will be have to be another facebook style site to reach the critical mass and change the Joe Public’s awareness
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I own 5-6 New Gtlds and do plan to keep them, although I think my 100 or so .com’s are much better positioned at this moment and for a while to come
June 3rd, 2015 at 12:38 am
“Too bad, if you were on the ball you may have registered http://www.Domaining.Tips”
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What for? People will confuse domainingtips.com and instead type domaining.tips? Are you hoping he buys it from you?
June 3rd, 2015 at 1:43 am
One year isn’t enough time for conclusions JMO. Now three years from now do an update and maybe you’re correct. I remember when people first started talking about the Internet and computers and I thought who has time for that I have work to do.
Oh things do change…
June 3rd, 2015 at 2:07 am
Spot on post and good research. Says it all.
It is hard enough trying to sell .com domains to end users without having to explain why they would want to set their business up on a .nothing gTLD platform, where they will be surrounded by millions of other businesses all bearing the .com hallmark.
These things – and there are millions of them – are going nowhere at the speed of light. I thought the best new gTLD I had ever seen (apart from the ccTLD .TV) was .TRAVEL, which was introduced in 2005. Now, folks, .TRAVEL has been around 10 years and where is it now? It’s a dead duck. Nothing has happened with it. Somebody name me a memorable .TRAVEL domain name. So, if something as brilliant as .TRAVEL can’t make it in the domain stakes over a 10-year span, how the heck are these .multitudes of .nobodies going to do so?
here’s something will really upset the gTLD believers. There are many, many guys (myself included) sitting on a portfolio of wonderful one-word premium .TV names still waiting for a payoff after 14 years and two launches. Now, if we can’t get a payoff after 15 years, how the hell is Solution and his mates going to get a return on rubbish that doesn’t hold a candle to .TV. Solution is going to be coming onto this site in 10 years time and still boasting about how great .deadinthewater is going to be once it pays off. Sorry, Solution, if you knew what domaining is all about you’d be tracking down every meaningful .com domain name you can get your hands on and locking it into your portfolio. Pronto.
I’m thankful I have some good .com domains in my folio. I’d be sad and sorry if I was sitting around solely waiting for my .TV domains to hatch.
June 3rd, 2015 at 2:43 am
While i was in Las Vegas last week, i noticed they advertised Downtown.vegas everywhere.
sometimes they advertised it with (www) in front of domain … http://www.downtown.vegas to make it look like a website
total failure!!!
June 3rd, 2015 at 6:58 am
Hello!
Good article and an interesting position on new TLDs.
Maybe in the near future, registration and renewal prices will go down and the demand will increase… So If you have good names you may want to hold on to them.
June 3rd, 2015 at 8:48 am
Normally I would pass over such an article as being one sides, non purposeful attention getting journalism, but in this case I did witness Andrei attempting to sell his GTLD domains which were very generic one word, first names, across many extensions, and he couldn’t even give them away to some of the biggest cheerleaders in the new extension space.
This was most likely the smoking gun, the same people spending thousands at EAP on a hoop dream, are the same people dropping high renewal domains they bought last year, the same people who are not buying domains from sellers as they give them
Away going into $25-$5000 renewals.
I can say he actually did market research in buying, and attempting to sell his domains, and when he says he might have broken even those are the names he was able to sell into the initial hype.
Yes, there are industry people who are telling you gtlds are the future, but you need to see who there sponsors are, and who pay their salaries.
I really think the guys like P Harris whose portfolio was featured on domain sherpa without the premium Renewals being exposed which was amateur hour at best. They did not show anything, as you cannot base the return on any investment without the annual expenses incurred against it, and some others are going to lose their shirt, as they continue to buy high renewal domains in the $500-$1000 range.
You laid it out there for all
June 3rd, 2015 at 9:39 am
The whole value in the gTLD is the specificity of the exact match, intuitive extension.
A bunch of single word, but meaningless .TV extensions has little value, as do most of the .ME extensions. But when the “make sense” they can really make money.
For example, http://www.join.me. That is a multi-million dollar a year website because the owners executed on the perfectly intuitive nature of the complete web address.
join.me is infinitely more value than joinme.com. In that same vain a site like wedding.directory is far superior to wedddingdirectory.com
June 3rd, 2015 at 10:46 am
Just keep in mind that most folks outside the industry to whom domain investors ultimately must sell to generally don’t care to pay big bucks for ANY domain. They don’t see why a domain name should cost more than $50 no matter how good it is. So paying premium renewals puts one on the fast track to burning a lot of cash.
June 3rd, 2015 at 10:57 am
I agree with your findings. I’d even agree that this space is NOT for most domainers to participate in. It’s for hungrier newcomers who don’t have the same choices and options in the legacy space. It is “challenging” to go out and buy new GTLD names then turn around and try flipping them in the same day/week/month/year
The key is having the strength to buy some names and hold to be able to make the sales pitch to buyers “chin high” .. The history of .com taught us that adoption is slow (glacier like) and then suddenly while nobody is looking demand ramps, the good names are gone by then and you’re stuck filtering drops, only in this new era drops are going to change and be combed over more closely by registries hungry for profits and marketing revenue.
These names will be proven to have bigger fans than their .com equivalent over time. I said the same thing about .com before this and it turned out to be true. Half of all new generic GTLDs are in General availability today.. the best are yet to come.
All of them together will inexorably change the market for .com over the next 5 years. The good names in new gold’s will be gone in 5 years, but between here and there, everything you are seeing is true.
June 3rd, 2015 at 11:58 am
owners of registry’s like yourself Frank will make a killing, while us registrants will have broken dreams!!!
June 3rd, 2015 at 12:33 pm
@Frank
You have made some bad predictions as of late, including 3L.com, they are sky high, and more in demand then ever.
Your own company is spending tens of thousands at drops such as namejet bidding your own clients out of .com .net domains, if you already own 350,000 .com why not purchase these new GTLD gems that are lying on the side of the road looking for a 5 year ride. Why spend thousands on .com which we have seen can take up to a decade to sell if the GTLDs will be better received according to yourself going forward.
Have a ton of respect for what you have done, and many people look at you as a visionary in this space, but your comments, and actions seem to have many different paths.
June 3rd, 2015 at 1:01 pm
I clearly hope to do well, but the truth is, it’s unlikely any registry will make a killing while registrants do poorly. If you’re right and we (the registries) are going to be successful, then what’s more likely to happen is newcomers, (those who don’t have pre-conceived notions from the past, or lofty expectations), will take registrations and evangelize the names they register to buyers of the future. Not today but in the next few years ahead. We do that every day here. As more strings come out a new market will emerge and that market will change the market we know today.
@alton, which company?.. Last time I checked Uniregistry (one of my companies) spent tens of millions in new g’s. I am still buying the names on the side of the road as they come out. .lol is next (i’ll take 20k).. .mom (30k) .game, (maybe 30k). Those names belong to the registry and are for the benefit of the namespaces in promoting and pushing them forward, but judging by my ICANN bill this month, I paid for them. At the same time Name Administration Inc. (another of my companies) will spend a few million bucks this year at namejet replenishing our sold .com inventory. When Uniregistry customers compete fairly, head to head with Name Administration that’s just business. The fact that I own some of each company is moot.
June 3rd, 2015 at 1:14 pm
well thought out and presented post. Nice to see someone go more than 144 characters.
One o fthe things that a couple people hinted at is the BOOM in new tlds, will probably happen if THERE IS REAL DEMAND FORM END USERS, and after some seasonings happen to the rollout rigged pricing.
So im ready to re-up when i hear the domainers saying new tlds dead, yet real companies are buying them. And even then the top 50-100 will be taken everyhwere by sturdy long term holders.
thanks again for the post.
page howe
June 3rd, 2015 at 2:19 pm
Frank was smart enough to invest in .com but he has been wrong many times. He was cheerleading three word domains on his blog. Before having his own new gtlds, he was dissing new gtlds. He thought people would buy domains at kiosks in malls. He could have been a real billionaire if he had invested in startups mid 2000s. All is ok, because we are human and none of us have a crystal ball.
.info, .biz, .travel, .pro, .jobs have been around for years. None of them took off. None of them have so called “fans”. Would you prefer china.travel or chinatravel.com?
More importantly, big companies don’t give a damn about new gtlds. They are still buying .coms. They have no reason to change their url address. Frank might be wealthy but compared to marketing budget of big companies, his wealth is nothing.
June 3rd, 2015 at 4:54 pm
Domain investors are only one part of the equation with respect to the new GTLD’s. It’s only been a little more than a year and there are still more coming. Most organizations are just starting to learn whats available and their potential. Perhaps we should wait and see what the Internet Marketplace decides. After all they are the one’s who will or will not use/accept them. Network Solution’s was once the dominant .com provider as Yahoo was once the dominant search provider. Cities have had to accept Uber as a choice to traditional cab companies because the Marketplace is demanding it. Things evolve and change. The Domain community will also have to evolve and change with the new reality of hundred’s of choices for the end user. Yes there will be losers but there will also be many winner’s as well. Place your investments accordingly.
June 3rd, 2015 at 6:08 pm
Hello Frank Schilling,
Frank you always talked about the distinct superior Marketing advantages of the .COM Asset Class Extensions. Then you took an abrupt 360 degree synopsis,turn of opinion of the .COM Asset Class Extensions, as somehow NOW, not being up to snuff when compared to the New Quasi-Derivative gTLDs You and GOOGLE are now promoting. Originally Frank you were was ALL .COM Hyping, then all of a sudden you turned into a Politicians flip flop syndrome type of guy, Hyping your self best interests DECEPTIVE promotions. How are we or anyone else expected to take you seriously??
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist)
June 3rd, 2015 at 9:15 pm
I find that those that are complaining about not making any money with the ntlds are those that are not making much money in the .com space either. Not all but many.
People keep saying it’s been over a year now but that’s only true for certain extensions. Many I am invested in are months old.
It can take over a decade for the right buyer to come along for my .com names. Many “good” coms of mine have never even received any serious offers, yet.
It’s about building a portfolio of names that can create a revenue stream. If you are strictly into reselling domains then you need to have a large enough portfolio of the kind of names that can sell so you can make frequent enough sells to not only keep things going but to make a profit.
If you are a newer player, or even an older player but not making it yet, stick with what is hot. Com, net, org, and even io. Mainly .com of course.
I have seen many ntld investors complain because they aren’t selling. Most should know that these were not meant for “quick flips” but for a long term hold. This should be understood.
The surplus outweighs the demand in a big way right now. Get what you think people will want in the near future. If you don’t know, you need to learn or quite possibly this just isn’t for you.
I’m willing to take the gamble just as I do on .coms which were themselves gambles when I grabbed many of them and many still are gambles today.
I have let tens of thousands of .coms drop. Why? Because .com sucks? No, because they didn’t make me any money.
Building a profitable portfolio of domains takes time and experience and even some luck.
Find your groove and stick with it. Don’t risk what you can’t afford to lose, no matter what extension that may be in.
June 3rd, 2015 at 9:26 pm
“I find that those that are complaining about not making any money with the ntlds are those that are not making much money in the .com space either. Not all but many.”
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That is a given, but the issue as I see it is lack of profitability. I’ve never seen anyone come out and say, my reg fees were $XXXX, my sales were $XXXX, I made an overall profit of $XXXX in year 1. Not a single person.
The talk about ngtld sales gets attention, (for example I thought Konstantinos must be doing pretty well with two quite good sales reported) but down the line it often becomes clear the person is actually losing money.
June 3rd, 2015 at 10:21 pm
Frank abd Chad are right.
gTLDs are not for flippers they are for long time investors.
It’s like you bought apple stock in 1997 and in 1998 you wanna cash out.
June 4th, 2015 at 12:00 am
I totally agree with Chad and that is why I have all my TOP domain names renewed for 10 years as i don’t expect to get a good return in just a year or two.
June 4th, 2015 at 1:08 am
@Rich: the thing is though, it’s hard to hold on to a portfolio for something like let’s say 10 years in the absence of at least some revenue or preferably profits. People like Rick Schwartz didn’t just register domains and hope for the best for several years. Rick for example made a lot of money via parking, selling traffic directly to advertisers and so on.
There was money flowing in while he was holding his portfolio and waiting for high offers, therein lies the fundamental difference between what dot com early adopters did and the new gTLD situation.
@Malik: while renewing a handful of domains (the best of the best) for 10 years isn’t that much of a financial burden, I wouldn’t recommend this approach for a lot of domains. Mainly for two reasons.
First of all, if we’re talking about hundreds or even thousands of domains, the renewal fees definitely add up. Even if all of your new gTLDs are standard renewal domains, let’s not even talk about premium renewals.
Secondly, just like with Dot TV for example, renewal prices will probably end up going down. If you renew for 10 years now, you’ll pay the current renewal fee and might end up discovering that let’s say 3 years down the road, renewals will be 3-4-5 times cheaper.
June 4th, 2015 at 4:54 am
Many are still waiting for the second coming of .mobi.
June 4th, 2015 at 6:19 am
I could have told you this last year… oh wait, I did… read the link from my name above.
Think the worst thing for investors and ngtlds is the premium renewals, I remember a time the .commers used to laugh at people who invested in .tv ($35/yr) because of high renewals, now the very same people are paying >$500/yr on each renewal!!
It’s been a year down the line, but I still don’t own any ngtlds and that primarily because stuff I’d sell for $5k costs more than that to acquire from the registry!
June 4th, 2015 at 7:22 pm
Andrei@
Yes it’s hard to have a gTLD portfolio and not produce any income.
Most of us who are reading/writing about domains do have income coming in via sales or parking.
I was referring to those people that could afford the new G’s.
I do think that in the years to come new generation will not care about the .com and they will take a different path.
June 4th, 2015 at 8:44 pm
I think the biggest problem with the 10 year renewal is your potentially going to get to year 3-4 and realise you just wasted a whole heap of money more than you could have.
Picking up names for reg feee is hard, most of the time the names are not good regardless of extension. That realisation can come after months or years. So renewing for a decade will make it far harder to ever change your course and make a profit.
June 4th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
I think Malik will be OK since renewals are like $23 a year ($230 for 10 yrs) and they are high quality names. Names I put a potential value of in the low – mid 5 figures.
I’ve renewed some of my better ones out for a few years, like trade.school which was $23.
Cheap enough for such a strong term and if prices go up I’ll save a bit there.
June 5th, 2015 at 2:01 pm
GOOGLES Monopoly Model desperately needs Traffic Saturation dilution, that the new Quasi-derivative gTLDs provide in order to extend their monopolies shelf life.
It is no secret to savvy Marketing Strategists why the new Quasi_derivative gTLDs are being pushed on unsuspecting domain investors. The many Google based backers of the New Quasi-Derivative gTLDs include : SEM Admen, Registries+ Registrars, Ad Media Companies, Parking companies, Domain Brokers, Web Site developers, Domain Blogs, SEM Digital Code Manipulators, Advertising reps. , and on and on.
ALL These Ancillary new Quasi-Derivative gTLD Promoters will make the real money, leaving the Domain Investors HOLDING THE BOOBY PRIZES. JAS 6/5/15
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Ananalyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist)
June 6th, 2015 at 8:19 pm
Add me to the growing camp of people that feel that the gtlds are a waste of time and that instead, people will be better served by the .Com extension. Not only for the reasons outlined above, but also because they will all leak traffic and email to the corresponding .Com destination.
June 6th, 2015 at 8:46 pm
Rick Schwartz was right several years ago. The ntlds suck and are a deathwish to any website that would be foolish enough to try to use one as their primary url. Frank.Schilling had all sorts of (erroneous) reasons to object at the time, but it is now apparent that the Domain King was bang on.
June 6th, 2015 at 8:49 pm
nTLD= .dumb, .dumber and .dumbest
June 6th, 2015 at 11:55 pm
I believe that the whole new gTLD “thang” was mis-conceived, mis-achieved, and mis-managed.
Who but a fool would screw up the Virtual Real Estate market so badly by saturating it with so many extensions? At first, they tricked us.
How? By making us think a new tld would only increase the supply by one name, e.g. a dentist, RobertSmith.com, RobertSmith.dentist.
Ok, I’m in, but the whole dot lawyer-lawyers-attorney-attorneys-law-law-legal etc. “thang” puts an unlimited saturation potential on the market.
A few per year would’ve been smart, and kind to the market.
Most techies should remain techies, not marketers.
The market is like a cow, milk it, don’t slaughter it. Use some common sense and balance!