Drew Macpherson who says he is the head of the Premium Team at Rightside (NAME) explains Rightside definition of a Premium mew gTLD domain and the various levels they have.
In the post Rightside says they have sold over 675 domains at an annual renewal of $1,000 or more per year.
Here is the highlights of the blog post
“I’ll be one of the first to admit that new TLD registries didn’t do themselves any favours* with the variety of premium pricing models that were introduced to the market. To date, there have been at least three very distinct models, none of which exactly match the traditional aftermarket flow when it comes to buying and acquiring a premium domain. You have registries that price premiums with a high registration cost and a standard renewal. Other registries have premiums where the registration cost is higher than standard, and the renewal is as well. And some registries have self-registered domains they identify as premium in order to sell them more traditionally, via auction or a listing service like Sedo, Afternic, or Yumi.
It’s pretty confusing.
Now, don’t get me wrong, we made the right decision to pursue a strategy of selling premiums at the registry level. We know this inventory is incredibly valuable long-term, and it’s really easy to undervalue it in the short-term as general awareness of new TLDs is low. So we’re doing our best to balance that dynamic and try new things (e.g., our upcoming premium promo).
So what is Rightside’s model and what do we think of it today, nearly two years after launching and selling our first gTLD with Premium domains?
At Rightside, we have two basic types of Premium domains:
Premiums – Known internally at Rightside as Buy It Now (BIN) Premiums. Basically, premium means any domain that is higher than the standard cost. We have premiums with a wholesale price as low as $30, and others priced as high as $15,000. Out of our nearly one million premiums, 345,798 (or so) have a $30 or $60 price tag. Our BIN Premiums DO have Premium renewals. Some of our TLDs (.REVIEWS, .CONSULTING, and .ROCKS) have “‘tiered”’ premium renewals which means the renewal cost is higher than the standard cost, but lower than the registration cost. So a .REVIEWS premium that costs $1,000 wholesale will renew at $100. But other Rightside TLDs use a “flat” premium renewal—the renewal cost is the same as the registration cost. This has become a common model used by other gTLD registries as well as Rightside.
Platinums – Domains that are best of the best, and typically short, category killer keywords, domains like movie.reviews, watch.live or world.news. Our platinums have caused some confusion in the marketplace. A more accurate description for our platinums would be Make an Offer Premiums, since Rightside has always intended to negotiate the price for these valuable domains. We’ve sold platinums for over six figures, and others for less than $10,000, depending on the buyer’s intended use for the domain. Savvy customers may have noticed these domains being shown with a $50,000 (or higher) price tag, or even being shown as unavailable depending on the registrar. For technical reasons, we had to apply a price to our platinums so that registrar partners could sell these domains. We continue to work with our partners to fully implement the Make an Offer experience like the one on Name.com, which you can see when searching for a platinum like seattle.attorney.
In writing this post, we’re hoping to clarify some of the misunderstandings and confusion we’ve noticed in blog comments and domain name forums about our premiums. Here are some common ones:
“All of Rightside’s premiums have an annual renewal of $50,000.”
“Not quite. While our platinum domains technically have a price of $50,000 per year, 97.6% of our premiums are Buy It Now, and have a renewal that is equal to or less than the registration cost.
“Nobody will pay $1,000+ a year for a domain.”
“We have sold more than 675 domains where the wholesale price and renewal was over $1,000.”
“End-users aren’t interested in paying premium prices and/or premium renewals.”
Based on a recent analysis of our premium registrations, we’ve concluded that more than 60% of our premium domains have been registered by end-users.
“All new TLD Premiums are garbage”
“We’ve sold over $5,000,000 in premium domains, and April was our biggest month for premium sales. It’s simplistic to dismiss everything in our premium inventory as garbage when there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary … and all of these sales have occurred despite an overall lack of awareness that new TLDs even exist.
Thank you for a very informative briefing. Now take that the other registries follow other pricing models it makes quite of an effort to track the premium moves. Also would love to hear on the renewal/drop rates in premium niches.
@Drew Macpherson,
Thanks for clarifying some of the Rightside pricing. Unfortunately, for the typical consumer, articles like this will make little difference. They’ll continue to be confused because registry integration with registrars and market places remains inconsistent.
Ideally, a buyer would see the purchase price and the ongoing renewal price whenever they’re considering buying a domain.
It is the framework of those GTLD contracts, in terms of future pricing you can’t trust.
.com you know what you are getting, each domain is treated the same, it is upto the market to decide the value of the domain, and the registry has the same cost associated with monitoring each domain.
With GTLD’s you have 100 companies moving 100 different ways, with 100 different plays, forget it.
Pay up for the .com, pay the $100 and renew your quality domain for 10 years, and forget about it.
The people who played the GTLD crapshoot, are underwater with their renewals right now, and every year they are getting hit with $xxx-$xxxx renewals, not simply $8, it adds up.
There are guys like Berkens who have $40M to play with, for the life of me I don’t get why he still spends his time drop catching but more power to him if he wants to spend his days bidding away.
Ask yourself in regards to natural, or man made demand, same thing when it comes to diamonds
The very same registry also runs .TV and used to have completely different pricing model. Imagine what sort of scandal would Verisign put itself into by changing the rules of the game. Their current priority is the stability of the zone and securing the contract. They do have competitors, so have to work hard.
You are a little off, Verisign runs dot TV and have changed the rules several times.
Indeed.
In the end where did it end up for the most part getting rid of premiums by forcing grandfathers holders to drop them for reg fee so will gtlds do the same?
In the Internet age, people want simplicty and stability. .com offers both.
Registries setting premium prices – and showing those prices to potential registrants – is having far-reaching educational effects. It quantifies the quality of names and provides examples that will guide expectations of the general public and occasional registrants when considering the value of a name string.
Occasional registrants and the general public will have a better appreciation of the value of a name string. Like a painting by a famous artist that makes the news after it sells for a premium price, viewing the prices of premium domains can help us better appreciate good names, wherever we may encounter them. So when we find a name somewhere that suits us, we will be in a better position to evaluate the price and value proposition offered by the name. We can do this because we will have seen numerous examples of how registries set premium prices for non-dot-COMs.
The rising tide (of premium prices for fresh registrations) will lift all boats. All the quality boats, at least. A particular price may be too high for you, but it sets a benchmark that will raise price-and-value expectations across the industry, especially on the demand side.
Compared to .COMs, the compelling communication aspects of the new TLDs are under appreciated right now. After enough Fortune 500 companies show off their shiny new gTLD domains, new TLDs will become the new normal. The old .com heavy hitters will appear stale and old fashioned in comparison.
Majority of fortune 500 companies already own the .com, why would they use GTLD’s, they are already extorted into paying protection money, no love for GTLD’s.
GTLD’s are a cash grab… plain, and simple.
If they weren’t around today, no love would be lost.
@A Mitchell,
Man, you were so persuasive until that last paragraph! Then it was like watching a gymnast on the dismount slip and fall backwards.