Bloomberg economics editor Peter Coy, wrote a piece on domain names and some of the commentary was interesting.
Joseph Cohen, founder of Universe a startup that makes an app for building mobile websites, said “It’s not a true market,” “There’s sort of a market, but it’s not very efficient or liquid.”
Coy seems to be focused on the fact that there is little uptake for the new extensions.
Quotes like:
“Most of the 1,200 have virtually no takers. By the time you get to #308, which is .poker, you’re down to a 0.01 percent market share. That’s frustrating if you’re the investor who gambled on .poker.”
“a $185,000 application fee, a sum that looms large if you have one of the new domain names with virtually no customers. Which is most of them.”
You can read the whole story here
“The Domain King” was right almost 4 years ago in his debate with Frank on the future of new gtld’s!
Seemingly gone are the days of the $3-$4 million dollar domain acquisitions. The $0.99 cent dot whatever’s have diluted, the once lucrative domain industry. I recently received a newsletter with some really good names being offered for under $600.00? Four years ago that broker would have never let those names be listed for such an amount. I have a friend who has owned one of the best-trademarked domain names on the net, that I believe is worth $20 million… he can’t get an offer over $10k? IMHO, the future of Net domaining will revolve around creating unique market niches, new dynamic ideas and possibly multi-domainer partnerships.
In my opinion we’re in something of a holding pattern right now, where companies are looking to see if the new GTLDs will make it unimportant to have a dotcom (or other well-established extension) domain, before they spend substantial money on one. As Rick Schwartz and others have been posting, it’s looking like that simply isn’t going to happen, at least not for a very long time, so I think we will see a “dotcom revival” soon where the prices of good and great dotcoms will shoot up. Considering the prices that people pay for collectible items of many kinds, we could see the highest sales ever. That’s wishful thinking, perhaps, but I don’t think so.
@Jon…..I feel you, I totally think we are in a holding pattern but the tide has started to turn and you can slowly see the water starting to move back out to sea. It’s happening right this second.
.com sales are taking off, imho. 2016 was my best .com year ever, and I got in before Rick Schwartz so I have been around some time. I’m from the same school of thought as Rick. I think Rick as always shot everyone straight on advice and if you are a noob you can’t go wrong with his advice.
It’s over. It really is for new TLDs. Will there be money made in them? Of course there will be, but 90% or higher of people who invested in them will crash and burn. I feel as strongly about that as Rick Schwartz seems to. He can sense it, see it, and so can I. It’s over.
It’s really akin to renting vs buying. If you buy a new gtld you are in essence just renting a domain. Your rent (renewal) can go up at any time by any amount registry desires.
.com is like buying. You owe a small property tax per year (renewal) and have no fear of unreasonable price increases destabilizing your long term business model.
“Brooklyn-based startup, Universe, that makes a phone app for building simple mobile phone websites”
Being referred to as “Universe” (and referring to themselves as Universe on their website) you would hope they would be at Universe.com, but they’re actually at OnUniverse.com.
Big branding mistake, imo. They should either refer to themselves as “OnUniverse” or else be at Universe.___ and refer to themselves as Universe.___. Better still would be to have chosen a better .com than OnUniverse, which just doesn’t sound good to me. I think they could have gotten a lot better without having to spend a whole lot, and maybe pay over time as well.
@Jon , what’s hilarious is that they chose a builder instead of a land expert to talk about domains. Domainers are you need to be talking to — not some fool who makes apps. What a joke of an article he wrote, he even gets a lot of the lingo wrong.
.whatever is dead. #NoFakes
Article failed to mention most critical element, or fault, of building on new gtlds. Renewal prices can change on a whim and there is no price cap.
That is because not many people are aware of this, who reads the fine print.
Tip: The GTLDs weren’t even a “Nice to Have”, and certainly not a “Must Have”.
Did anyone make any money on the Gs? Registries, brokers, anyone?
Did the market glut of the Gs contribute to lower .com valuations,? Not sure about that.
I listened to Rick and registered just a handful of Gs —-
The Domains.com should have a poll on which of the GTLDS will still be around by 2020.
“not very efficient or liquid.”
Not very…? kind of wishy-washy
I say: the market is completely illiquid
as a matter of fact “what market?” in what Planet exists?