Comments

1. Ryan says

   April 27, 2016 at 2:12 pm

   GTLD’s are dead check the weekly reports, all the poor suckers who did buy, are now selling their solid .com to cover premium renewals, it is really quite sad.

2. Joseph Peterson says

   April 27, 2016 at 4:05 pm

   Glad to see companies tackling this! More nTLD action in the expired domain market was 1 of my predictions for 2016. Interested to see how it pans out.

   Backordering nTLDs is a complicated operation, given all the variable pricing among TLDs and across different strings within a given TLD. Not to mention behind-the-scenes financial obligations imposed by registries.

   This is a good way for Hexonet to attract new customers – people like me who’ve been aware of the company for years but have never done any business with them.

3. Roger says

   April 27, 2016 at 4:31 pm

   Completely agree with Ryan’s great comment above. I see no redeeming value to the new gtlds and think that they are a fool’s paradise with no upside. I suspect that the logic behind buying them is that when .coms run out, the gtlds will become standard and all thats available, but I don’t ever see that day arriving. People only want .com .com .com.

   • Joseph Peterson says

     April 27, 2016 at 6:49 pm

     @Roger,

     .COM is still dominant, for sure. And the nTLD program has its problems, which I and many others have pointed out pretty regularly since before any nTLDs launched.

     But I’ve visited sites built on nTLDs. And I’ll be building sites on nTLDs alongside .COM / .NET / .ORG. Why not?

     As far as domain investment goes, I agree things are slow. But nTLD sales do happen. I’ve sold some.

     The nTLDs are minor characters, but they many of them do have a speaking role in this movie.

     • Ryan says

       April 27, 2016 at 8:32 pm

       Joseph,

       Domains are about playing the odds, so if it is keywords, extensions, and trends the better your criteria matches the marketplace the better your chances of selling your domain.

       If someone is going with a GTLD, they have already taken an off approach to brand outside the .com, with so many extensions, and variables why would they pay you a premium, as opposed to selecting another extension since their criteria is broad, and not set to any standard.

       This lessens the likely hood of making a sale, as you have carried many .net/.org in the past you know the sell thru is not as high as .com, and the carrying costs are the same. Even the best domains sometimes do not sell, so it is really a numbers game, and you have to focus on quality, and what buyers want, and if you can execute those big returns in order to pay all those expenses, and try to eek a profit out at the end of the day.

       The honest GTLD guys will tell you themselves, GTLD’s are not meant for domainers, sure you will sell a few here, and there, but the overall costs of carrying a portfolio will eat up all your profits.

       Every month you wait more extensions are released, further diluting your investments including that of more generic extensions like .online, .web, .link which have more broad informal uses.

       This is not a game you can win, if you have money to splash around like some of the guys who have made millions in sales, and are just bored, and want to play the roulette wheel, by all means, but if you want to make money be ready to pay those renewals for many years without any promise of a payback.

       • Joseph Peterson says

         April 27, 2016 at 8:52 pm

         @Ryan,

         It all depends on which strings a domainer registers in which extensions. And what he does to market the domains.

         Yes, .COM outperforms .NET and .ORG … if we’re talking about the absolute sale price and comparing the same string in all 3 extensions. But the purchase prices differ too. And in practice we own different strings in different extensions.

         So if we’re talking about net profit from the miscellaneous domains we actually own, then the conclusion isn’t so simple. As a matter of fact, during some years my .NETs and .ORGs outperform my .COMs in terms of profitability.

4. steve brady says

   April 28, 2016 at 10:51 am

   Ever heard the expression “What’s been seen can’t be unseen”. Same with Gtlds, they are merely an intuitive expansion of the natural vocabulary in digital naming. Once a word is added to The Dictionary, it’s pretty much there for good, and impossible to erase from memory. In order to get rid of Gtlds, you’ll have to get rid of the dot. A much greater chance exists of “complete vernacular on both the right and left sides of the dot” being here to stay than of you ever eliminating the dot.