The domain name registrar, Name.com is offering 50% of of premium registrations (first year only) for the following new gTLD extensions today only for 2 hours:
.CONSULTING
.SOFTWARE
.MARKET
.REVIEWS.
The Domain Happy Hour is from 3–5 p.m. MST today.
“That includes some pretty great available premiums, like Colorado.market, StockMarket.consulting, Action.software, and Gaming.reviews.”
The promo code will be revealed on the Happy Hour page at 3 p.m. Thursday.
“The Promotion does not apply to premium renewals or platinum premium registrations.”
Awesome deal!!!
These lightning-quick promos are frustrating.
2 hours are enough time for me to generate a list of 4,500 available domains (which I’m currently looking at) … but not enough time to examine that list, research domain options, or actually buy.
In this case, I managed to squeeze out 1 domain purchase in the final 60 seconds. But I was anticipating a bigger transaction, which now won’t happen.
Those of us with work to do during the day can barely free up any time to go through the motions. (And for serious investors, there are a lot of motions to go through.)
Even with the 1-day sales, there isn’t enough advance notice to plan. In several cases, my purchasing has been cut off not by idea depletion but by the sale timing out. At that point, I’m lucky to make it half way through whatever list I’ve assembled.
I guess it’s worth halving your losses if possible.
Colorado.market
StockMarket.consulting
Action.software
Gaming.reviews
Are all still available, lucky you ,that thought these great names were gone!
Joe Peterson. Think of the megamoney you saved that would have othwise been wasted on such really stupid gtlds.
Newsflash – the reason these things are being discounted so steep is because noone wants them, neither domainer nor endusers. Not even squatters care about them. You have been warned.
nTLD domains are certainly risky. And riskiest when they cost most. Some people may be naïve on that score, but I’ve been cautioning domainer investors about the new extensions for years. However, I don’t trust black-and-white absolutes.
“No one wants them” is hyperbole. Demonstrably, plenty of people do want them because they’re using them. I plan on using a few myself, even if I do prefer older TLDs. The real question is whether the limited buyer appetite for nTLD domains so far will justify purchasing them as investments. And the jury’s still out.
I work with end users regularly, and it’s true that most are not especially eager to embrace nTLDs. I’d chalk that up to 4 reasons:
(1) Lack of awareness about nTLDs.
(2) Chicken-or-the-egg reluctance. Until end users see their peers with nTLD websites, they don’t want to embarrass themselves by leading a charge with nobody to back them up.
(3) nTLD options are (in some cases) intrinsically unappealing. People’s taste may veer habitually to established extensions like .COM.
(4) Price.
It isn’t my job to force nTLDs down people’s throats. But it is my job to cater a diverse menu for a diverse group of diners. That means experimenting with new dishes … even if they’re sometimes not a hit. It’s also my job to measure the broad domain market so that my advice is based on first-hand experience rather than hearsay. For me, that means registering domains in obscure nooks and crannies (ccTLDs, nTLDs, languages) and setting those up as remote thermometers and pressure detectors to measure real-world buyer demand. Scouting for oil where there turns out to be no oil in the ground may be unprofitable; but it’s important to know what’s what, and “failed” expeditions must be evaluated as part of a bigger project.
Is it waste if a domain doesn’t sell? The truth is, more domains don’t sell than do. Any store owner works with probabilities; and much of the food we see on the shelf today will be in the waste bin tomorrow. Non-selling inventory isn’t necessarily waste; it’s an essential cost bound up with a larger strategy. Frequently strategies are losing strategies. Yet even so, it isn’t waste to learn that certain kinds of inventory shouldn’t be restocked. Prudent domainers will anticipate this cost of experimentation when they buy; those that enter into the business with unrealistically rosy expectations will be disappointed by “waste”.
As a domain investor, you can stick to asset types that are guaranteed to sell at some level, exclusively buying LL.com’s and LLL.com’s for instance. There entry prices tend to be high, profit margins somewhat thin, and even a downturn of 50% in value can be devastating. We might consider these “value investors”. Less conservative “growth” investors tend to experiment with borderline domains that mostly don’t sell. There entry prices might be low, profit ratios can be enormous, and sell-through rates are expected to be minimal. Personally, I think it makes sense to do a bit of both.
There IS a huge amount of genuine waste among domainers who rush into risky investments without doing their research. There’s nothing romantic about blazing trails to nowhere. Every effort ought to be made to minimize risks and criticize shaky strategies.
But it’s not true that “noone wants them, neither domainer nor endusers”. People have registered quite a few nTLD domains by now. So far, domainers seem more interested in them than end users. Does that mean we’re looking at fool’s gold? Well, some nTLD domains have sold for respectable amounts. Not many, but some. That’s evidence that end users – some end users anyway – value this stuff. Most end-user purchases have been at the initial registration cost. So it’s crystal clear that some end-user market demand exists, even if it’s arguably small compared to the market for established TLDs. Can the existence of those nTLD buyers justify domain resellers jumping into the middle? I’m not sure, but I’ll give it a shot and see.
I strongly believe that two hours is too short for a promo.