.Webcam has lost around 60% of its registrations in the since mid July months according to registrarStats.com and mTLDstats.com
.Webcam which is another Famous Four Media owned new gTLD domain extension, which was offered at very low pricing at Alpnames.com, had over 97,000 registration on July 15th, before its anniversary date, now has just over 34,000 registrations after losing 5,288 domain registrations yesterday.
That means .Webcam has lost 60,000 registrations in just over a month and the bleeding is still ongoing.
A couple of months ago we wrote about .Party which at the time we noted had went from a high of 250,000 domain registrations to just over 107,000.
However as we sit today .party has just over 57,000 domain registrations meaning it lost some 200,000 registrations during its anniversary or some 80% of its registrations.
Like .Party the new gTLD .Webcam was offered for free and then prices as low as $.49 at launch.
At the moment the cost of a new .webcam registration at Alpnames.com is $.85
Shocker!
When will we see the first sunsets of nTLDs?
The big Problem is, that the New GTLD Registries are investing very little in Marketing !
Marketing has nothing to do with it, these domains have a max customer attention price of 1 cent, anything more nobody is interested.
Free is great, but if you can’t even get 85 cents for a renewal, this is just sad.
Everything that was said about GTLD’s is continuing to come true in 2016.
To many different operators with their own set of rules, no governance, just to many greedy hoarders.
@Ryan – “Free is great, but if you can’t even get 85 cents for a renewal, this is just sad.”
Actually, the $0.85 or $0.99 are nothing but discounted pricing for new registrations only, does not apply to renewals which ranges from $16 to $40 across various registrars. The cheap new registration pricing is just a bait.
We use to own some potential domains under Famous Four Media TLDs (.trade .bid), but due to their high pricing across registrars and zero marketing efforts, we dropped all the domains.
Donuts probably would’ve done better with FFM’s TLDs. They should buy them out, instead of going after Rightside TLDs.
It’s to be expected.
The gTLD market is flooded with companies that didn’t plan for nor budget for a robust marketing and advertising plan to brand their extension in a highly competitive environment. Everyone thought it would be an easy weasy “build it” and “they will come” deal.
Then you had a shift of newbs and other speculators who would have been investing in lower tier dot coms instead gamble their dollars on the gTLD’s thinking if they got a bunch of one and two word gTLD domains they could get rich overnight.
Lots of investors in the domain space now have no idea at all how to invest intelligently in domains.
There will inevitably be a huge shakeout in the gTLD space. A handful of registry operators are well capitalized and recognize this is a long term deal where you have to invest in advertising, marketing, sales teams, and have a solidly useful, brandable, interesting and logical extension to build a user base that grows real users, not tons of domainer speculators who will all abandon ship when the renewal notices arrive.
@Kevin: well said.
@Dietmar: you are right, that’s what everybody is saying: not enough marketing.
But I don’t think marketing can achieve miracles. Too many strings are deeply flawed, there is simply no demand and no use for them.
They will either be retired or live on as zombie TLDs like .mobi or .tel today.
Even at ultra-low prices, people can’t be bothered to renew them.
@ Kate: Demand will not be there if there is no brand awareness so Dietmar has stated a valid point but to your point as well, Kate, marketing cannot achieve miracles. There has to be a go-to-market strategy behind it. The folks at .co did an awesome job in create awareness when they first launched, they had key companies use the TLD, they had a plan and it came through well – not every Registrar was accredited for .co.
Big mistake is to EXPECT the registrar to create the demand. They are like any store selling a product – you have to incentivize them to promote your TLD (not via pricing alone) with content that engages the end user. Not all TLD’s are created with the same meaning – many have a purpose behind their meaning. Registrars have customers who could be great targets for a nTLD v. a legacy TLD – how may Registries make the effort to explore the data around this and incentivize registrars to target these customers? Easy way out is to reduce price to make numbers – short term vision because it may not attract the target customer the TLD was created for.
Look at what PIR is doing to create awareness of .NGO through social media content – great content. They show some good thought leadership through the content created too.
That will be the destiny of all useless new Gtlds … extinction …
Unless they have end users (particularly corporate) and/or a specific niche, they are doomed to fail, en masse … 🙂
The only end users in the GTLD space are brand protectors, to the point of extortion really.
If it wasn’t for that single fact, that companies are being forced to pay to avoid having their customers scammed is really sad.
Low pricing is a short term gain in registration numbers and not a long term strategy. for renewals. Getting brands/businesses to actually utilize these TLD’s are key to promote awareness.
TLD Registry operators (not all) tend focus on 1st year registrations and not renewals as much – which is, IMHO, short-sightedness on their part.
There should be an exploration of new channels, in addition, to the Registrar channel – diversify your partners, segment them and create strategies that help each group grow. It is NOT a one-size-fits-all strategy for every channel partner.
Registries need to view their channel as a partnership. Stop looking at it from a “sales” perspective. Your partners are the closest to the end-user. You (Registry) need to leverage learnings from their partners to come up with a plan for your different group of partners, is wise.
Do not discredit your smaller/niche channel partners because collectively, they move the needle for you on registrations/renewals. They are hungry to grow. Explore some A/B marketing strategies with them.
TLD Registry’s ultimate customer is the end-user, so, how much intelligence-gathering is there to understand usage beyond registration numbers (yes, I keep repeating myself here but old habits need to be reviewed if there is an intent to disrupt the market with nTLD’s. Registries, look internally and review how differently you have done things to adapt to new markets).
offering these domains for pennies was probably the worst thing they could of done. go for a slow build on something substantial rather than inevitable throw aways.
Both .XYZ and .TOP will experience HUGE drops in 2017.
At least if NOT the renewal prices are dumped as well.
…I see a 2017 gTLD bubble coming. Stay tuned…
Regarding the new gtlds, I see it too (Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSNyiSetZ8Y
Face it, the entire new-gtld idea was a dumb one. That should have been obvious by consumer’s lack of enthusiasm from the beginning.
Pity the fools who dumped their .coms thinking they were obsoletelike the AM radio.
What this drop-off really shows is how dependent many nTLDs are on domainer speculation.
Typically, an end user will register just a few domains; and that person is more likely to renew both because the bill is relatively small and because the domain is directly relevant to their project. Meanwhile, domainers register domains in bulk; we’re less attached to the names, having no way to use them ourselves; and we’re the ones confronted by big renewal bills.
The dropping domains will – I’m sure – belong overwhelmingly to domainers. So it’s not a stretch to conclude that, if 60% have vanished, at least 60% were registered for speculative purposes.
For years now, nTLD registries have been reliant on domainers as a shortcut to success. Marketing to end users is always an uphill battle. So why not ignore them and sell to domainers instead? After all, domainers buy in large quantities … eagerly. It’s much easier to move the needle by slashing 1st-year costs and telling domainers to buy. And this is what registry operators are most comfortable doing. After all, they’re domainers themselves; so addressing a domainer audience comes naturally, whereas chasing end users is – as any domainer knows – an often frustrating, labor-intensive challenge.
There’s a problem, though. Registries have sold massive numbers of nTLD domains to domainers – i.e. wholesale resellers. But registries haven’t done enough to establish retail market demand among end users. Consequently, there’s nowhere for these domainers to go – no market appetite or awareness for resellers to sell into. Domainers are forced to educate potential buyers from scratch, each and every time. Sometimes we’re successful, but overall the odds of success are much lower.
Basically, registries have abdicated responsibility when it comes to marketing. They’ve left the task of educating the public almost entirely to domainers – often the least experienced domainers, as a matter of fact, who’ve bought vast numbers of cheap nTLD domains. Is it any wonder that drop rates are high?
Marketing ought to be aimed at both end users and domainers. But these companies got the balance wrong. A sustainable approach would have been 80% aimed at end users and 20% aimed at domainers. That way, market demand could build up slowly in proportion to the amount of reseller speculation. Instead, registry operators have focused 80% on domainers and only 20% at end users. Sure, it’s a short cut to big registration numbers. But who’s going to renew what they don’t use and can’t sell – especially given the above-average renewal cost?
Domainers are the infantry. And registries have asked domainers to charge straight ahead into Consumer Apathy armed with sticks!
But what Tennyson said doesn’t apply. “Theirs not to reason why”? Nope. Domainers have reasoned why. More and more domainers who’ve invested in nTLD domains are feeling cheated. Even though many domainers – myself included – are optimistic and enthusiastic where nTLDs are concerned, ultimately we have no loyalty to these registries. “”Ours but to do or die”? Nope. We’re mercenaries. So those generals at Donuts, Minds + Machines, Famous Four, Uniregistry, and the rest had better come up with a strategy for the troops to get paid; otherwise, 60% of their army will walk away.
Great post Joseph, Thank you
Two words about the gltd’s
Pigeon sh*t.
Right on
PERERSON
Peterson LOL
Been called worse.
Owch. The new gtlds hurt so much it is painful to me and my friends. They are the poopoo of the domains.
Wouldn’t take “.webcam” domains for free, except maybe the one or two that might be valuable to someone.
Such a horrible TLD. Who in the world would have spent $185k plus expenses for that one?
.WebScam
Oh wow lol, too funny; literally rolling on the floor!
Anyway, there are still great webcam related domains available in dot-com for adult entertainment companies, like WetWebcam.com recently added to our marketplace.
Why would oNE buy a gtld anyways? Serve them right.
Forget new gTLDs, back in 2013-14 I registered 2-3 .CO domains falling prey to their (registry’s) marketing strategy on various domaining blogs. It was really really good marketing done! I even inspired 7-8 tech bloggers to go for a .CO instead of .com or .net, and our websites were launched on .CO tld which Google treated just like a TLD rather than ccTLD. But this sites never showed in top SERPs on Google and Bing, and mostly the repeat visitors used to type .COM as prefix rather than .CO, they just forgot that websites / domains can have anything other than .COM. I’m not a fanboy of .COM but its seems, in 2016 .COM is the DEFAULT extension. Just yesterday I read a news about WHMCS plaform, which caters to the needs of hosting industry. The article didn’t provided the link to WHMCS site. What I did, I typed whmcs.com in my browser, and not whmcs.host or whmcs.site or any other thing! Simple as that and I landed a the right place. Few months ago, I registered .club name for my client who runs a local club, and he used to type hisdomain.club.com in browser to visit his site. New TLDs, as pointed out by others here, lack marketing, and un till then, people will develop sites on them for the 1st year and may migrate to traditional, well known .com .net .org at the time of renewal.