.Berlin had over 31,000 domain names expire yesterday adding to the previous day where over 36,000 domain names expired.
.Berlin about a year ago allowed free domain registrations for 2 days, which totaled somewhere between 70,000-75,000 domain names with two registrants picking up almost 70,000 domain names just between the two.
Now that these free domain names have come up for renewal it seems very few have been renewed.
Basically we are seeing 67,000 of the free domain names have expired
At the moment .Berlin is now down to 82,481 domain names and is heading towards a 50% renewal rate unless registrants start renewing a boat load of these expired domains before they delete.
According to ntldstats.com, which still counts expired domains since they have not been removed from the zone file, .Berlin still has almost 153,000 domain names registered and is the 7th most registered new gTLD extension.
This is a really important case study for many new gTLD registries as more and more are giving away free domain or nearly free registrations certainly betting on retaining a reasonable percentage of these when the domain names come up for renewal next year.
Minds + Machines, Famous Four and .XYZ have or are currently giving away free domain names effecting several new gTLD extensions or strings.
I assume that most registries would be happy with a 10% renewal rate of free domain names but in the case of .Berlin they may not hit that percentage of renewals
It took less time than the fall of Berlin Wall
Crazy. A gTLD registry is such a bad investment. I don’t see how most of them are ever going to be profitable.
Because a free domain is such an investment. Giving them away free may have been the wrong approach, but without these artificial registrations, .BERLIN still looks strong.
Comparing this to fall of the Berlin wall is a bit too alegorical. First all all, the pieces of stones, quite few of them were resold on the secondary market.
Then, the registry made few nice loops on “free” PR too. First by giving the names for free, then by today’s news.
We cannot deny it, we all heard about .Berlin by now and this is what batters.
The real users are to be found in the city and eventually the TLD will be good.
Any reason why would not Berlin want to have its own Internet zone?
Likely fate of all new gTLD’s.
What an epic fail…
During the early days of .com, a limited number of free domain names were also giving out. But there was really no competition then. Fast forward decades later, with the launch of new gTLDs, some new Registries think same strategy with early days of .com would be effective for their extensions too.
How can a company pay $185k for a string, then give it away for free? And the funny thing is to hear that majority of the free .Berlin expired domain names, were registered by two people.
Registered, parked, dropped. The ultimate in domain tasting.
The interesting aspect of this won’t be the deregistratiin of the freebies, rather any follow on affect as those who paid full price get the news the extension appears to be collapsing.
With .Berlin being a relatively expensive extension compared to .com people may have second thoughts on renewing which may well cause a stampede of sorts.
On the other hand, while .xyz has far more freebies to loose, it’s price is closer to .com…the issue will be what sort of bad press may be generated if those freebies happen to be on auto renewal OR reminder notice implies the original registration was a choice, encouraging renewal (which smacks a little bit of fraud)
The bad PR may in turn affect other GTLDs.
The .science and .party extensions will be other interesting samples to review.
Especially when compared to the likes of .club or any GTLD that has been consistent with their launch in regards to their future model.
.Berlin, any .city name, has real viability. But giving away freebies is a lame effort at kickstart marketing. Inflated registration numbers misrepresent true adoption and don’t really accomplish anything other than to falsely hype a new release.
Even if a new GTLD registry fails to sell anything, zero sale, they are in good position and must be happy. Why? They got the best domain for a relatively cheap price (low six figure) and their renewal and other costs are nothing to them. If they wanted to buy the same keyword in .com, they would have to pay a seven figure. IMO, sale of secondary names on their extensions may not be a big matter of concern at least for some of them.
$185,000 is the least amount it would cost to own a new string. Managing and maintaining the registry would cost much more IMO. Here is a good stating point for acquiring a gTLD.. Its worth a read.
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/customer-service/faqs/faqs-en
Thanks a lot.
Yes, I underestimated the high price that operators have to pay for keywords that command fierce competition.
GTLD = Good To Lose Dollars
The problem is that most people seem to be looking at this as if it is just another gTLD. It is not. It is a regional TLD and as such it will have dynamics that are closer to ccTLDs than gTLDs.
To suggest that because it’s a regional tld dot berlin will have dynamics more akin to a cctld than a gtld seems to ring hollow for me
Cctlds tend to enjoy steady and relatively continuous growth
Berlin just lost half of its names in two days only a year in
Well most people don’t really understand how ccTLDs develop as their primary knowledge is derived from a limited experience of .COM TLD. The development rate in ccTLDs is not as simple as that of a globally marketed generic TLD like .COM. The extension acts as a limiting factor and pricing, especially in the early phase, can dampen the development and volume of registrations. It can take years before a ccTLD gathers momentum and it is always competing with .COM TLD. It is only when the ccTLD becomes an alternative to .COM in its market that there is a switch from .COM to the ccTLD by registrants in that market. That can take years. Some ccTLDs do not experience steady and relatively continuous growth. Others do. But they are not in the same class as .COM TLD. Growth in some ccTLDs can be anything from tens to hundreds of new registrations a day. Some days can see less than ten or no new registrations at all. The .BERLIN gTLD is a regional TLD and is developing almost exactly like an early phase ccTLD.
That free registration period was a bad mistake for .BERLIN. It was ruthlessly exploited. The last thing that an early phase regional TLD needs is the kind of industrialised cyberwarehousing that occurred. The same kind of thing effectively destroyed .EU “ccTLD” as a regional TLD. It was intended to be an alternative to .COM for registrants in that area. In terms of registration volume and usage, .EU is at or below .BIZ levels within the EU. It never recovered from the incompetence of the European Comission and Eurid in letting the ccTLD be exploited to the disadvantage of EU registrants. At a country level, the .EU only has between 1% and 5% of the national domain footprints of each EU country. Development is critical for a new TLD and having more than the usual level of PPC parking in a new TLD gives a bad impression. If people see too many PPCed domains when they are looking for something in a new TLD, then the new TLD rapidly acquires a bad reputation. Having most of these freebie registrations drop is actually a good thing for .BERLIN. It will take five or more years for that gTLD to start developing but it not only has .COM as a competitor but also the largest genuine ccTLD in the world, .DE ccTLD. It is, like all the city gTLDs, a regional TLD and these city gTLDs are regional TLDs that are closely following ccTLD development patterns, especially the ones with nexus requirements.
@John McCormac,
Now there’s a cogent response.
A TLD brand can’t be build up overnight, and I expect that other nTLD registries will not copy this experiment, if they are in for the long term