If You Can Make This Kind Of Money, Why Not Sponsor a Registry?

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Without a doubt the .me launch, from a purely economic point of view,  has been a huge success.

I added all the winning bid prices from the closed auctions and add all the current high bids on the active auctions and came up to a total of around $2 million.

$2 Million dollars for the registry, not including its profit on the 50,000 or so .me domains that were registered in the first days (the last report on the number of registrations I have seen).

At $19.95 per year, retail, this extension obviously has a much greater profit margin than selling .com’s do.

The $2 Million number also does not include any of the thousands of “premium”, .Me domains that the registry held back and will auction off at a later date.

I expect to see some of the first of these reserved domains be auctioned off at TRAFFIC New York by Moniker.com

So when ICANN talks about a $200K application fee for the new Tld’s, it seems like chump change that can be made back by the auctioning off of just a few domains.

With huge upside potential and limited downside risk, I expect to see hundreds of application for these new Tld’s and would not be shocked to see some of the most desirable of these new extension to be auctioned off for well into the 7 figures and possibly 8 figures.

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Sahar Sarid says

    Michael,

    You have to take into consideration the cost for GoDaddy to buy the rights to .me rights. Word on the street about a year ago put the price at around 17 mills, USD. The bottom line there’s a whole lot more to this than what they are able to recoup here, from marketing costs, partners, rights, etc.

    Cheers

    Sahar

  2. MHB says

    Sahar

    I don’t think it will cost anywhere that much to launch a new extension because you won’t have that large payment to the sponsoring country.

    As far as .me they will make all there money back and more, when they auction off the thousands of reserved names.

  4. Rob Sequin says

    Frank Shilling can now have his .web extension.

    It would appear that the “success” of the .me roll out would be seen as a favorable development for anyone looking to speculate by rolling out their own extension.

    The registry can make tons of money, doesn’t even matter if any of their customers actually develop any of the domains in the extension or even if they loose money on their speculation.

    So, I think you’re right. Expect to see more .whatever rollouts.

  5. Damir says

    The .me ext stands for Montenegro which is in fact a country code ext. so for sure the ext. was a great success.

    When it comes to other domain name ext. being released next year they could be also a BIG hit.

    Let’s see

  6. Vivek Baliga says

    Theres no guarantee they will approve you. And its a $50k non-refundable upfront fee. That needs to be taken into account as well.

  8. Domain Name News says

    Rob. I think Chris Ambler might want that .web extension first 🙂 http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/17/0334209

    I think the law of supply and demand will play out here . The first few registries that get approved should push hard and fast before that sun stops shining and there’s no more hay to make. As the supply of more and more new GTLDs increase the demand will deflate like a lead balloon. . . .