… at least up until this point. The numbers are impressive: 31,486 .berlin registrations in just one day according to RegistrarStats.com. In other words, dot berlin is the #2 new gTLD (dot guru is the #1 new gTLD at the moment of writing, with 44,519 registrations) after just one day.
This might seem surprising to some but it was somewhat expected given the fact that dot berlin was among the new gTLDs with the most preorders. Still, it was pretty fascinating to see how things unfolded. I tried to register some as an experiment (my German is not as good as my English but still, it’s decent, so I checked several important German keywords as well) but the best ones were obviously taken and as far as the “next best thing” domains are concerned, I considered the registration fee too high to make registering them worthwhile.
The dot berlin standard registration fee is quite high, not sure about the renewal fee but I assume it will be high as well, so buying “next best thing” domains is quite dangerous given the fact that the carrying costs of such a portfolio would be on the high side.
Maybe you guys will be able to find some gems but I ended up saying no because the best domains (at least those I searched for) were taken and because the fees are too high to justify settling for less valuable terms. Either way, dot Berlin can be considered a success story in my opinion and the likelihood of it turning into a registry with a six figure number of domains is high.
March 19th, 2014 at 7:12 am
When writing an article important info like fees which you tend to have an issue with would be good content to add.
March 19th, 2014 at 7:53 am
@Tim: the lowest price I found was $49.99 at 101domain.com
March 19th, 2014 at 7:59 am
Also, most of the registrars which offer dot the berlin new gTLD are EU-based and for those, the price tends to be 49.99 EUR rather than 49.99 USD. This actually reinforces the point I tried to get across through yesterday’s article about the EUR/USD exchange rate, 49.99 EUR is about 69.55 USD at the current exchange rate.
But again, the lowest price I found was $49.99 at 101domain.com.
As far as the other registrars I took a look at are concerned, most of them were EU-based and the price tended to be 49.99 EUR rather than 49.99 USD, or in other words approximately $69.55 at the current exchange rate as mentioned previously.
March 19th, 2014 at 8:01 am
Does not majority of that number just represent a list of reserved/blocked/protected domain names, so they try to make it big…?
March 19th, 2014 at 9:16 am
@Mike: I don’t think those are taken into consideration, I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure only domains that are actually registered count.