Donuts posted a blog post yesterday about looking to the future and that .com is that old stodgy utility that is staid but it is unremarkable. Yet Microsoft had plenty of options for example to register Hololens.newgtld but they still paid to buy the .com and handregister the .us. The article is worth a read, especially for those all in with the new gtlds. The leave a comment link does nothing and there is no possibility to leave a comment on the post. I believe that .com will lead the future as it led in the past, will truly awful names get dropped ? Sure, they should have never been regged. but the short liquid.coms. the numeric.coms, the single word and two word generic will outshine the new gtlds in resale opportunity for investors. Again IMO.
Here is one takeaway from the article:
It’s important to compare apples to apples—and 2014 is where you find fruit of the same orchard:
- Choices in new gTLDs are fresh, semantically meaningful and, in comparison, widely available. New gTLDs aren’t comprised of “reused” names that others have thrown away.
- As a result of this there is far less content on the new .COM names, and the names generate far less product upsell from registrars.
- The yardstick for quality measurement will be renewals; new 2014 .COM renewals will be below 50 percent, while renewals in new gTLDs are estimated to be 80 percent or higher.
- New registrations in .NET are taking a beating from new gTLDs, losing thousands of names per day from the zone and driving the domains under management total under 15 million for the first time since reaching that peak.
- New gTLDs, even with minimal consumer awareness, represent a healthy slice of the new registration market—they made up more than 10 percent of all newly added gTLD names in 2014.
A decade ago, .COM and legacy gTLDs were hot property, but there’s little denying that new gTLDs have not only expanded the market (its not zero-sum), but are competitively eating into their market share.
Read the full article here
BrianWick says
and there are democrats that still think they have the majority in congress….what do you say ?
Mike Jones says
I wasted about $5K last year registering GTLDS, $0 return, I feel less confident about that investment today than a year ago, that $5k into 10-15 solid .coms would likely have yielded break even or profit on a single or two names. Instead I am faced with another high GTLD renewal set this year, those .com would be about $100 renewal total.
A single GTLD us running $25-$109 which is a joke considering 75% of the registries provide no marketing to grow their extensions, and end users want nothing to do with premium renewals, lesson learned. The names I went for were all solid Word1.Word2, and I can admit I threw good money away.
GTLDs can not cover every possible extension, take MSFT’s purchase of HoloLens.com, there will most likely never be a GTLD for .lens, so GTLD’s can never be the absolute.
Just a cheesy option, that is not gaining traction, but lazy registrations, and mostly non renewals after non development, and high renewals. I see some new GTLDs being offered for $1, what happens when renewals come due at $10-$20.
Sorry, I think you guys are wasting your money on a hoop dream, 1% make money, registries hype, and look for exits, to many lies, and fudging of reg rates.
Joseph Peterson says
Hey, registries! Time to try some new spin.
Can’t re-use the same bumper sticker on a different car every year. Eventually it just flops and drops off.