Adrian Kinderis, CEO of AusRegistry International, published a post on domainnews.com today entitled: $5 billion Reasons You Should Know About New TLD’s
Its one of the best articles on the subject I have read and here are some of the highlights:
1. Don’t try to be the next .com
“Rather than trying to become the next .com, entrepreneurs should look to create boutique name spaces, turning over lower registration volumes, but at higher margins – the online equivalent of running an exclusive VIP country club.
Take .music, which would be created as a targeted name space specifically for the music industry. Such a name space is probably never going be a competitor to .com, however it will hold significant value to the music industry given it will be directly tied to the subject matter and the global music community. Imagine if you could capture even 20 per cent of the roughly 8 million music artists around the world and charge them each $US5 to promote their music under an official .music name space. That’s $US8 million in annual revenue before you consider other potential revenue sources from targeting users with content businesses like concerts.music and reviews.music.”
“So, rather than trying to be all things to all people, think very carefully about your audience before making the move.”
2. Offer more than just a domain name
“You are securing a domain name space. You can do so much more that just sell domains. We call it “left of the dot” thinking. What more can you offer that will build value to your namespace? How else can domain names be used? Should you retain premium names rather than sell them and look to monetise those sites by building out content? You are starting with a clean slate here. You set the rules. Be creative and create something that will bring value to your market and provide something different!”
3. Commercialise your .brand TLD
For brand holders, the benefits of securing a .brand Top-Level Domain are immediately obvious: Trust, leadership, customer engagement and improved message recall.
Think creditcards.hsbc, cars.ebay or justdoit.nike and you’re well on the way to capturing the opportunity presented by this unique change.
However, a .brand Top-Level Domain can deliver more than this. For instance, imagine eBay securing .eBay and selling a slice of that space to its audience of 94 million registered users at $US2 per vanity domain name fee. Also, with more than 600 million registered users, a username.facebook strategy of a similar nature should be an absolute no-brainer.
From a customer engagement perspective, imagine if BMW were to provide all customers with a john.smith.bmw domain name with the purchase of a new vehicle to allow access to critical information such as service scheduling and technical information. Not only would it deliver value to the customer, it would also play a role in the introduction of the customer to the BMW brand experience and lifestyle (car clubs, forums, social networking etc).
There will also be huge improvements in online security and trust. Take the bank Chase for example, it would bring clarity and security to customers with the simple message, ‘If it’s not .chase, it’s not us’. Not to mention making it easier for customers to find content online without using Google, because all they will need to remember is investments.chase, for instance.
4. Remove the language barrier
For the first time in history, new Top-Level Domains are available in non-Latin scripts and with 60% of the world’s population residing in countries where the native language is based on a script other than Latin, you could be one of the first to capitalise on this latest shift in domain name technology. Imagine what a relevant Chinese script Top-Level Domain could be worth to the thriving Chinese community?
5. Act now
The clock is ticking on this limited opportunity.
The application window for new Top-Level Domains will open on 12 January 2012 and we’ll start to see new ‘.anything’ domains in operation from late 2012.
If companies and entrepreneurs miss the application window (12 January 2012 to 12 April 2012), it may be a long time before they have the same opportunity again.
6. Seek advice
The new Top-Level Domain program is not for the novice – there are few people who can run a slice of the Internet alone – so start with the idea and seek advice from an industry expert
“Yawn….”
I’ll pass.
The ‘original’: http://www.ausregistry.com/blog/?p=831
Good Pyramid sales pitch, probably also available in Chinese script.
Good points.
I see the logic in the ARTIST.Music idea but as far as the subdomains, I don’t
see why it would kill Facebook to offer USERNAME.Facebook.com – NOW – as opposed to
USERNAME.Facebook
To me, if a company doesn’t have the idea to give it’s users subdomains NOW (like the BMW idea listed above) — owning their own extention probably won’t change their minds.
I don’t see why eBay would sell a username.eBay in the future as opposed to offering a username.ebay.com right now.
Can anyone clarify why this is more appealing as opposed to regular subdomains?
Adding the .com on the end won’t be a deal breaker for users — likewise, removing the .com at the end won’t be a deal MAKER.
To me, it just starts confusion.
Username.Facebook — I bet 99% of the people will accidentally type Username.facebook.com…which is fine – facebook can redirect them — but it’s just confusing for newbies.
Just my opinion – maybe I’m missing something.
Aron
Thanks!
Tip 7:
Gazing at the billion (trillion?) dollar income “estimates” & “guesstimates” from the growing number of Salesmen of ICANN’s new gTLD “investments” (they won’t be buying any themselves?), is this really a commercial venture or simply a loss making exercise in vanity?
Still…..look on the bright side. With non-refundable application deposits of $185,000 per extension, $500,000 for integration plus potentially unlimited yearly costs/expenses etc, at least ICANN and their associated Salesmen will make money from your efforts.
Methinks the ones who will make money from all this won’t be the ones running the new TLDs.
The most money will be made by those who succeed in getting .sucks extensions.
they will force every single brand to get brand.sucks for a nice lump of change lol
so xxx sucks, .sucks is where the real money is
and of course, sucks.com will be worth a king’s ransom
Good, realistic points, but #5 showed his agenda.
The bottom line is that all of the new TLDs will be extremely hard pressed to get the public to care enough. Everyone who is “excited” now is because they believe they will hit the lottery (and this includes the NYC councilwoman who was gushing about dotNYC). The truth is that the general public doesn’t buy domain names for that reason.
Perhaps there’s hope for our nation after all?
Mike is he not off stating late 2012 for use ? I thought they said nothing til late 2013, early 2014 for an extension to be live ?
Follow the money.
If I am paid $250K/yr, and if you want me to say black is white, I will say it.
This is equivalent to…
“if you build (or manufacturer) a big enough lake – you have an ocean – and therefore you have beachfront property – and then you can sell “beachfront” property to the desparate, utterly naive and impressionable.
These are not my people – buy .com’s and you will be rewarded
Brian
Where our summer home is in the NC Mountains the lakefront property sells for plenty, if its a nice lake and a nice area
Its still not worth as much as beachfront, but still very valuable
There is a premise in business strategy, what you think will happen will not occur.
(paraphrasing)
“Where our summer home is in the NC Mountains the lakefront property sells for plenty, if its a nice lake and a nice area
Its still not worth as much as beachfront, but still very valuable”
Your argument works with .com’s, but not with domains in general.
For example:
What if you were able to sign a few contracts, push a few buttons, and suddenly create an infinite amount of lakefront property?
How long do you think lakefront property would retain its value Mike when there was an infinite amount of it well located?
That is the difference between real estate and domains. They aren’t making any more real estate. They are soon going to have an infinite number of domains.
@Troy
“What if you were able to sign a few contracts, push a few buttons, and suddenly create an infinite amount of lakefront property?”
Yes – my comparing “manufactured” beachfront property to non.coms is inaccurate without your qualification above – unfortunately most will have nothing to do with your qualification as countless poor souls will be desparate to be sold a bill of goods on the next non.com “land rush” nonsense or whatever.
At the end of the day – if someone is desparate to pay “tuition” to be educated abount the .com Internet Space by buying non-brandable non.coms, then what is wrong with those non.com educational institutions (registries) collecting that tuition ?
Funny – in a very sad way IMO
The only .anything tld I’d be interested in would be .WEB or .SITE, because it’s like .NET or .COM, .INFO, recognizable.
.BET or .CASINO would be good for that market.
Who would get .GOD?
I agree that item #5 shows the author’s agenda to which I totally and respectfully disagree. To the contrary, I feel that the new extensions will be a dismal failure and will only help the .com owners who will get buckets of erroneous hits.
Bill
I don’t have an agenda.
I’m reporting on actual stats reported by Alexa and Google Analytics.
Personally I find it amazing that a 10 day old domain in a new extension can achieve the same traffic level as a domain that someone paid $13M for and the conversion rate shows its not crap traffic.
And get traffic from the search engines.
The buckets of hits going to casting.xxx doesn’t seem too big at this point according to Alexa.
Tom
There will be mulitple applicants for .web. .shop and probably .site
.god will probably not be approved
@Tom
Even though I believe all non.coms are non brandable (execpt with millions in promotion) – a .web, .site might be nice to have on the fireplace mantel.
And yes .God would not fly just as .Politician would not fly.
BarackObama.god, SarahPalin.god are far too revealing for any .Politician.
@Michael – I really enjoy your blog and have long considered it an authoritative source of information.
However, I have to pull you up when you say that you have no “agenda” when it comes to new gTLDs. I would describe being the MD of a new gTLD consultancy as showing a direct interest in promoting the success of new gTLDs – http://rightofthedot.com
“.god will probably not be approved”
Ohmy.god
Who gets to play .God and decide what, why, when and if an extension gets approved ?
Sounds like its going to pull up a whole range of legal issues (fights) playing that role.