Look, if we define the success of a new gTLD from a “Will it surpass dot com?” perspective, all of them will fail. No exceptions. But if we define it from a “Will it be profitable?” perspective, I think a lot of them will do very well.

Being profitable won’t be as hard as a lot of people expect.

For each extension, there will be terms for which there will be quite a bit of demand.

Hundreds of thousands of them? Unlikely.

Thousands of them? Definitely.

Tens of thousands of them? That will depend on how well the registry in question will market the extension.

If only a few thousand domains will be registered, the profit just won’t be there unless of course we’re talking about high 2 fig or even low 3 fig renewal costs.

But with tens of thousands of domains… totally different story.

Therein lies the key.

If the registry will do a mediocre job marketing the extension, people will only register the best of the best terms (so for example, loans.extension) and that won’t be enough to make it profitable.

In my opinion, such terms will be registered even if the registry in question does nothing whatsoever promotion-wise but again, it’s not enough to turn the business into a profitable venture.

If they do a good job, on the other hand, the pool of domains that are attractive increases. So if loans.extension is taken, people will also want let’s say borrow.extension if the gTLD is appealing enough.

… you get the point.

The bottom line is this: a gTLD doesn’t have to surpass dot com to be profitable, not by a long shot. Even with a 5 figure number of domains, the company in question can generate decent returns but for that to happen, a registry needs to take its marketing campaign very seriously.