We have been talking about the new gTLD program for well over 6 years and over the weekend we noted that the number of new gTLD domain name registrations passed the 2 Million mark.
So we thought this would be a good time to give some thoughts about where the program is at and where it is going.
Since we have been writing about the new G’s we have pretty much been saying the same thing; we don’t know how they will do or what the effect on the aftermarket .Com domains.
After the launch of over almost 200 new gTLD’s into general availability and 2 Million registrations we still feel the same way.
While we certainly have some good data now that we can draw some conclusions on in large the jury is still out.
In my opinion the jury is going to remain out until third quarter of 2015 after the first renewal period for the early new gTLD extension has come and gone especially when considering the amount of domain names that carry premium renewal fees.
I have also said its going to take 5 years at a minimum for heavy user adoption and an active aftermarket.
If your going to be registering new G’s for the purpose of resale, unless your happy making a very small profit on a domain registration by in large you are going to have to be prepared to hold the domain for at least 5 years.
My thoughts on that have not changed.
As we sit today the new G’s have been dominated by Donuts who has launched 119 of the 194 new gTLD’s in general availability with its “partner” in some strings Rightside having launched 14 and Uniregistry having launched 9 new gTLD extension.
So out of the 194 new gTLD’s that are in general availability, three registries have launched 132 of them.
There has not been a non-IDN launch of a new gTLD by the three largest other applicants for new gTLD’s, Minds + Machines, Google and Amazon.
So as we sit today there are still plenty of arguments for both the proponents and opponents of on both side of how the new G’s are doing and how all of this will play out.
We have known for a while that the trademark holders are not playing in the new G’s.
We can see outside of the registrar channel very few registries are spending money visibly marketing, .Club and Uniregistry and Radix are the rare exceptions.
I still haven’t seen a television commercial or other advertising in any major media for the the new G’s from registries or registrars, other than 1and1.com’s campaign last year before the new G’s even launched.
Arguments for proponents of the New G’s:
The big Geo’s are yet to come, .London, .NYC should add significant numbers of registrations and publicity for the new G’s.
To date no big Brand applicant has “launched” its new gTLD and none have begun advertising campaigns around a new gTLD domain whether they own the extension or not.
The “better” new gTLD extensions haven’t launched.
Almost all launched new gTLD’s to date were applications placed only by one company. In the case of the few extensions that were the settled by private auctions and already launched, .club and .photography are ranked 3 and 6 respectively, in terms of domain name registrations.
The new gTLD’s with the most applications not only haven’t launched but haven’t even been settled, including .web, .music, .books, .app to name a few.
Neither Google or Amazon which applied for 101 and 74 new gTLD respectively have launched an extension (Google launched an IDN)
Although the number of reported new gTLD aftermarket sales has been very small, Godaddy/Afternic is in their quiet period for Godaddy’s IPO and they haven’t released sales figures of any domain sales in over 2 months.
According to the a study by Sedo, which we chat more about below, only 40% of people are even aware of the new G’s and over time that number will grow substantially, as other registries launch and maybe will spend some marketing dollars.
Once again the new gTLD’s launched so far has been dominated by Donuts and Rightside which have a premium registration and renewal priced model, and we don’t know what a lot of the other registries have in store, nor do we know the pricing if they do go the way of the premium domain route.
For the opponents the new G’s, there are plenty of arguments for them as well.
Out of the 2 million new gTLD domain registrations 500K or more of the registrations have been giving way for free.
Registries have registered over 100,000 of their own domain names and reserved them for future sale or development so the “real” number of paid new gTLD’s is probably under 1.4 Million.
.TK which has been offering free domain registrations for several years is now the second most registered TLD in the world with only .Com having more registrations, but I have never seen a .TK domain name sell on the aftermarket, nor have I seen any big marketing campaigns around a .TK. We wrote a cover piece on the .TK registry back in March 2012 when they “only had” 8 million domain registrations according to the latest Verisign report .TK now has around 25 million domains at the end of the 1st quarter of 2014.
Giving away free domains is not a problem.
There are plenty of takers.
Other than luxury.estate and few .club domain names, there have been no notable sales of new gTLD domain names and the number of reported aftermarket sales has been very small in relationship to registrations.
The number of new gTLD registrations of 2 Million is still less than the number of .Biz domain name registrations (2.6M), less than half the number of .info (5.6 M) registrations and just slightly higher than the number of .US registrations (1.8M) none of which have had much of an aftermarket over the years. Personally after holding internet.biz since the day the extension launched, I sold the domain for $20K this year.
The number of new gTLD registrations is also 1/10th of the aforementioned .TK ccTLD.
While many point to the brands as the game changer for new gTLD’s, the fact that not one of the .Brands that applied for their own new gTLD’s have launched. So while the supporters of the new G’s are looking for .Brands to lead the way, those .Brand applicants don’t seem to be in any rush to launch or use their new gTLD’s.
Bottom line there are no major advertising campaigns that are currently running in mainstream media, using a new gTLD.
Premium pricing and renewals are pretty aggressive and in many cases have pricing domainers out of the market.
Its pretty tough as our .TV early investors found out to pay $1,000 a year renewal fee and/or sell a domain name for significant dollars that carries such as fee and many domain names carry registration and renewal fees in the four figures and we wrote about today, now well into the five figures.
The Sedo International new gTLD Awareness Report for 2014 did not contain a lot of great news for new gTLD’s:
“”Among marketers in the U.S. 75 percent said that new gTLDs would make the Internet more confusing”
“This is a much higher number than a year ago, when only 62 percent of U.S. marketers said new gTLDs would make the Internet more confusing.”
“The underlying theme throughout all the results is that awareness and acceptance of new gTLDs is still the biggest hurdle for them to ultimately be successful”
Today, the europeandomaincentre.com published views by others in the industry, including Frank Schilling and Rick Schwartz. I was asked to participate but declined as I have my own vehicle to share my thoughts and I’m sure you have heard enough from me. You should check out that post to see what others are thinking about the 2 million mark.
