Many insiders the domain industry are confused about the roll out of the new gTLD’s
So what about the consumer?
One thing is for certain the registrars are not helping.
Here is an email I got yesterday from EuroDns.com:
Hi Michael,
So you think you’re an expert? It’s not too late to place a pre-order for the new .EXPERT domain extension, priced at €40 each. It’s first come, first served and we only accept one pre-order per domain name; but hurry there’re only 2 days left to pre-order. Once the domain opens to everyone (estimated for May 14th), we will immediately register your domain. If we can’t secure your domain name, we’ll give you a full refund.
Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the .EXPERT domain; a crackerjack extension for all you wizards, hotshots, and aficionados. As a new domain there’s still huge availability, but don’t wait too long because there are a lot of experts out there getting downright excited about it.
We put our heads together and came up with some suggestions for you, check these beauties out…
Webdesign.expert, nailart.expert, coding.expert, domain.expert, duckherding.expert, fashion.expert, goalscoring.expert, riskandfraud.expert, electrical.expert, languages.expert.
It’s new so there are still hundreds and thousands of names up for grabs – but everyone’s an .EXPERT, so get registering now!
Happy hunting
The EuroDNS Team
www.eurodns.com
[email protected]
So for one the registrar is telling people to pre-order them at €40, first come first served, yet they don’t mention anywhere in the ad, even at the fine print at the bottom that many of the domains are priced as premium domains with premium prices and therefore are not going to be €40 but much, much higher. (€40 lets just call it $50 although its more)
The second problem is the examples of domains the registrars are using in the ad.
Here are the domain names that appear in the EuroDns Ad
“We put our heads together and came up with some suggestions for you, check these beauties out…”
So out of the 10 “beauties” they picked out 2 are reserved by the registry and not available now at any price:
fashion.expert Reserved
Domain.Expert Reserved
Two of the 10 are Premium domains and are not available for €40
Nailart.expert is a premium priced at $129.99 to register and renew (Godaddy price)
coding.expert is a premium priced at $199.99 a year (Godaddy Price)
Two of the domains are already registered:
Webdesign.expert Taken
Electrical.expert Taken
These 4 “beauties” are available but I think we all will agree are simply horrible domains:
Goalscoring.Expert
Duckherding.expert
Languages.expert
Riskandfraud.expert
Ok maybe Languages.expert is not horrible but I have never heard the term duck herding in my life and if that is the one of the best 10 you can get after putting your heads together well you need more heads.
You might ask why did I use Godaddy.com prices in reference to a EuroDNS.com ad?
Good question
The answer is I could begin to understand what EuroDNS.com is charging or why they are charging the amount the are.
So when I tried to pre-register one of the two premium domains listed in the email coding.expert which Godaddy is charging $199.99 to register and which carries an annual renewal fee of $199.99 at Euro DNS this is what I got
If you click on the image it will get bigger and you will see EuroDNS.com is not charging €40 but a “one time set up fee of $165.06 AND one year of registration for $160.93 for a grand total of $325.99
So for a domain advertised in an email we received we have gone from about $50 to $325.99.
I have no idea what the justification for a “one time set up” fee is much less one of $165, so that is why I used the Godaddy price.
Moving on to NetworkSolutions.com and Register.com, who sent out the same email, here is their email:
So out of the three examples they gave in the email, Money.Expert is reserved by the registry and not available to be registered.
The other two were already taken before general availability but were available at the time of the mailing
Bottom line if your a registrar and going to email everyone in your database its a good idea to make sure that the domains your promoting are actually not reserved by the registry.
Don’t tell your customers to go and register something that is not available.
It will probably piss them off.
Don’t your customers they can pre-register a domain for $50 if its really going to cost them $360.
I think that is business101.expert
and yes that domain is available as of publication.
