I listed 9 .XYZ domains at 95 bucks each over at CAX yesterday: Surveys.xyz (sold), Parenting.xyz, Skateboards.xyz, Programming.xyz, Stress.xyz, Reputation.xyz, Publishing.xyz, Instruments.xyz and Productivity.xyz.
One of them (Surveys.xyz) was sold and I’m drawing the following conclusion: yes, there seems to be reseller market demand for new gTLDs but nothing spectacular and if you’re serious about selling to another domainer, the terms have to be amazing (preferably strong one word terms) and the price very low.
Most domainers don’t seem to understand this.
Click here to take a look at all of the dot xyz domains listed at cax and I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
Think about it: if I’m offering domains with extremely strong terms on the left of the dot (which would be worth a fortune in dot com) at 95 bucks a pop and only sell 1 out of 9 (sure, a sale is better than no sales but still, hardly spectacular), what’s the likelihood of obtaining 4 figures or 5 figures from another domainer?
Zero.
That’s why I don’t understand most of the CAX listings.
Even when selling an amazing dot com on a reseller market, the price has to be low enough to leave upside on the table for the other party, so for you to be able to sell a new gTLD to a domainer, it should be downright outrageously low.
That’s just the way things stand at this point.
My preliminary conclusion with respect to the reseller market demand for new gTLDs is therefore simple: yes, there is reseller market demand but only for domains with amazing terms on the left of the dot which are priced aggressively.
It’s just a preliminary conclusion, of course.
Why?
For two reasons:
1) I only listed the 9 dot xyz domains yesterday, so there might be more sales later on (I plan on leaving the nine domains there at 95 bucks each until the end of this week)
2) 9 domains just aren’t enough for me to consider these results extremely relevant, the data will be more relevant as time passes and my new gTLD portfolio increases in size
June 20th, 2014 at 1:49 pm
Actually not a bad result – you covered your cost (excluding your time – research, registration, listing and transfer) in a matter of weeks. Question – if none of the others sell by renewal time, what will you do? Increase the investment by renewing them all, only renew a few of the better ones, or say adios to XYZ and look for a better TLD?
June 20th, 2014 at 2:13 pm
@Leonard Britt: the only new gTLDs I plan to drop if there are no sales within the first year are the 100 Dot Berlin ones I got for free, because the domains I registered weren’t “the best of the best” (by the time I got in, the best ones were long gone) on the one hand and because the renewal fee will most likely be on the high side on the other (prior to this promo, Dot Berlin registration costs were fairly high).
Other than that, I will not be dropping any of the new gTLDs. I got all of them (or almost all of them, not 100% sure) on the very first day of General Availability (the dot xyz domain I want to develop is the only exception, as it’s a landrush name), so unlike with Dot Berlin, I was able to get some of the best ones.
June 20th, 2014 at 4:12 pm
Gtld are a waste of cyberspace and time. They are total duds.
June 20th, 2014 at 4:41 pm
I’ll give you an analogy to consider using stock investments as an example. Anyone can go to the business / investing section of a bookstore and find books on value investing. So an individual investor after perusing a book on value investing might say let me look for low p/e stocks. Well, p/e (price to earnings ratio) is a metric but it is not necessarily a good indicator of a good stock investment. Why not? Well, a company trading at forty times trailing earnings could actually be a good investment if it has very favorable growth prospects and manages to grow its earnings from $1/share ($40 stock) to $20/share over the next several years. On the other hand, a company trading at ten times trailing earnings with that same $1/share in EPS could be in a declining industry with increasing competition, incompetent management, government regulation which curtails business, etc and perhaps earnings will actually decline in the next few years such that the perceived value stock ends up with no earnings several years later. So the cheap value stock turns out to be a poor investment while the expensive growth stock turns out to be a winner.
Likewise, until one can see real companies developing, branding and buying aftermarket domains in new TLDs at prices that justify investing in them, what is an investor in these TLDs really buying?
June 20th, 2014 at 8:17 pm
I will buy the remaining 8 for 500 today send me an email .
June 20th, 2014 at 8:26 pm
Pretty good return on investment 90 turns into 600 in two weeks not bad in my opinion
June 21st, 2014 at 5:10 am
wow good to hear you sold one at least!
I have yet to sell a new gTLD
Good luck with the rest!
June 21st, 2014 at 9:52 am
I suspect many of the individuals buying new TLDs today were in high school during the .COM bubble of the late 90s. I would suggest they study what happened so that they don’t make similar mistakes…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
June 21st, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Hmmm…. Why would you make that assumption Lennard? I’m just curious? I am a big believer in the new Tlds and I graduated high school in 1988 … Several other domain investors I’ve talked with that are in investing in the new tads are in my same demographic as far as age goes as I am.
June 22nd, 2014 at 1:48 am
I remember the bubble in 2000 quite well. I see no parallel here. In 2000 every idea with a .com at the end had millions of dollars thrown at it. With the new g’s, the domain “investing” community is mostly shunning them. If this were a bubble people would register today and sell tomorrow for 500k. There would be fear of not being able to buy a name at all if you didn’t pay up now. We have the opposite situation.
June 22nd, 2014 at 10:10 am
If 1% of your portfolio is new TLDs, OK but if 50% of your portfolio is new TLDs, I believe you are making a mistake. In the end it is your decision how you invest but as someone who owns some pretty decent keyword domains in more established extensions (.Net, .Info, .TV), I can state from experience that selling nice keyword domains in anything other than .COM is not that easy.
Note a few days ago I sold a domain for low $xxxx which I had hand regged only a few months prior. Guess which TLD it was? .COM Note it was a real estate related domain and the comparable .Condos domain was registered the prior week…