Today: Short hacks versus .com – Questions and Answers / Forent.com sold for $7,108 / New New .BEST Domains for $2.75 / And more!

Here are the new discussions that caught my eye in the domain community today!

Web design wanted – Budget: Up to $1,500.00 – Are you a website developer with the skill sets to build out an interactive domain industry related website within this buyers budget? Check out their guideline to find out more.

.baby now available for registrations – Yet another new gTLD to add to the mix. Are you going to register a .baby domain name asset? Which one would you choose?

Calling all .com owners, do you dabble? – Is your domain portfolio 99% .com and 1% new gTLD’s? Which new GTLD’s did you go for to break the .com cycle and why? Check out what some domain investors are saying.

Forent.com sold for $7,108 – That’s not a bad domain name sales report for a six-letter, brandable, .com domain for a high-four-figures. Do you think it should have sold for more or less than what it sold for?

New .BEST Domains for $2.75 – If you have been on the fence and thing about registering a .best new gTLD, this promotion might come in handy.

Short hacks versus .com – Questions and Answers – Are you investing into short hack domain names instead of the .come version due to the length of the domain? How do you determine the value difference?

“Go Big Or Stay In Bed” …..Coach Speak Investing – Are you investing in popular coach speak phrases? Do you think this is a niche that has some potential? Check out what some domain investors think about it.

… or why we can’t even use new gTLDs for April Fools’ Day purposes 🙂

Seriously, with new gTLD domainer to domainer sales being so darn rare, this headline is so hard to believe that not even the most gullible newbie domainers would take it seriously.

In other words, here we are, in the FIFTH year of ICANN’s glorious new gTLD experiment and we can’t even use most of them to get a good laugh out of people… if nothing else, I believe this makes it clear on just how many levels this entire new gTLD thing has failed.

Could things have been different?

I don’t know, maybe.

At the very least, they could have been a little bit less ridiculous. Perhaps they could have:

A) released a LOT less new gTLDs, as in less than 10% of the current number

B) decided not to release confusingly similar strings… if you want a good joke, forget about this post’s title, just think about the fact that some people thought it would be a great idea for .Law, .Lawyer, .Lawyers, .Attorney, .Attorneys, .Legal, .Esq and maybe even others that I forgot about to co-exist… what could possibly go wrong, right?

C) try to avoid extreme pricing confusion: is this a premium registration fee *and* premium renewal fee domain? Or just a one-time premium registration fee name? Perhaps domain promo which involves a low registration fee but is followed by premium renewal fees? What do you mean I have to give you a kidney to renew the name?

… so, yeah.

Honestly, this entire train wreck left a very bitter taste in my mouth, just felt like a huge money grab from start to finish. Again, I have nothing against the idea of releasing new strings, knock yourself out. Am I going to invest in them? Probably not. But still, nothing against this idea.

But the execution… it still makes me cringe, several years after the launch. I can’t even think of a word that does it justice, “epic fail” is nowhere near representative enough. Maybe one of you is an astrophysicist and can come up with a metaphor as to the multi-dimensional failure this entire thing ended up being.

For investors, of course.

I’m sure some developers are happy with their new gTLDs, nothing wrong with that. Hey, I even kinda-sorta thought about starting a personal blog on “Andrei.Horse” with the slogan “That’s What She Said” but my wife didn’t find the concept amusing 🙂

So, just in case non-domainers land on DomainingTips after performing a Google search and end up reading this post, I just want to clarify that it refers exclusively to new gTLDs as investment options for people who want to invest in domains.

But even if you’re a developer, I’m sure there are several aspects that pertain to new gTLDs that make you cringe. If you just want to rely on search traffic and don’t care about branding, great… but if you’re in it for the long haul and care about creating a solid brand on let’s say “Best.Lawyer”, I don’t think you’ll be happy that many people who maybe hear about you on the radio will land on Best.Lawyers, Best.Attorney, Best.Attorneys… or, of course, BestLawyer.com.

In the end, whether you’re a domainer, end user, developer or something else, I guess the common denominator here is that this entire thing could have and should have been run in a much, much, MUCH, M-U-C-H more coherent and professional manner.

C’est la vie…