Jacob Demmitt wrote a post on the Upstart section of BizJournals.com. The article led with the launch of the .news extension and how Rightside plans to cash in. Taryn Naidu the CEO of Rightside is interviewed and gives some commentary. In the article which I quoted below, Naidu says we are seeing five and six figure sales. I would imagine he is talking about the Coffee.club and Wine.Club sales, I have not heard of a Rightside string selling for six figures.
From the article:
The company wouldn’t say just how much it spent on .news, but it couldn’t have come cheap.
According to SEC filings, the company has spent a combined $25.1 million on securing its top-level domains, or TLDs, since 2012. But that’s what it takes to gobble up space on what is being called the internet’s next frontier.
“It’s no different from real estate,” Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu said.
In total, the company has sold 205,000 TLDs, and that’s before it launched some of its favorite ones like .news.
But already, the TLD industry has hit a couple of roadblocks.
Many of the domains are being bought by spammers, who try to glean some legitimacy off an email address that ends in something like .lawyer. Those buyers end up undermining the credibility of the entire domain.
“It’s pretty cool to watch this market mature,” Naidu said. “ It’s only been a year since extensions have come out. We’re seeing a market develop where we’re seeing five- and six-figure sales, and people are happy with them. They’re happy to own that chunk of real estate.”
Read the full article on Upstart
