I was going through statistics over at nTLDStats.com and noticed that Dot Theatre only had 149 registrations. My first instinct was “wow, it has over 18 times less regs than Dot Horse!” (I’d say that in the world of new gTLDs, you know you’ve hit rock bottom if you have less registrations than Dot Horse) but I then went to 101Domain to see how much a .theatre domain costs and noticed it’s $699.99.
All of a sudden the TLD no longer seems like such a financial failure.
Multiply 149 by $699.99 and you get $104,298.51.
But what if not all 149 domains are real registrations, for which the registry actually received money?
Maybe some belong to the registry and/or companies affiliated with the registry and therefore don’t “count” and so on.
You see, this is the biggest problem with new gTLDs: it’s very, very hard to draw conclusions.
Not just when it comes to Dot Theatre but gTLDs in general.
Some new g’s had promotions through which they practically gave away domains and as such, their numbers are inflated and don’t reflect real demand.
With others, a lot of the domains are owned by the registry and/or affiliated companies and as such, those numbers are also inflated.
In cases like Dot Theatre, the exact opposite is true and a registry could be financially viable even with very small numbers.
… you get the point.
The bottom line is this: you should never draw quick conclusions about new gTLDs based on some stats that are thrown around.
Always dig deeper, always think about scenarios such as the ones above.
Numbers are meaningless if they don’t paint an accurate picture of reality, never lose sight of that!
March 5th, 2017 at 10:25 am
That still means .XYZ is losing money. It costs a minimum of $200,000 a year to run a new domain extension in fees. All before you make any profit.
March 5th, 2017 at 11:37 am
149 .theatre registrations. How many of these are real?
Where is it possible to see a list of all of these 149 .theatre registrations, in order to see how many are actually being used?
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There are many of these registries bumping along on the bottom of the seabed and you wonder how many of these will survive.
Separately, could you do a financial analysis of the viability of running the .wed registry. Registrations cost $70.00 per annum.
Launched April 2014, three years later .wed has an abysmally low 100 registrations with 2 pending deletes. http://www.ntldstats.com
So few registrations, maybe their problem is that they are competing for registrations with the .wedding registry.
Weirdest new gTLD launch yet? .wed launches with a single registrar.
http://domainincite.com/16144-weirdest-new-gtld-launch-yet-wed-launches-with-a-single-registrar
.WED — Adrienne McAdory, President/CEO, Atgron, Inc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D25tXJdr5Bg
March 5th, 2017 at 3:23 pm
I think it’s pretty common for most investors to pass over the high registration fee’s of some of the new gTLDs. For prices like those, you really need a solid development plan to help the domain pay it’s own renewals each year until it sells. That’s a higher risk to get stuck with if you don’t, which is a big deterrent for tight-budgeted investors.
March 6th, 2017 at 10:06 am
Haave a look at the .LUXURY new gTLD and look for the retail price 🙂