Last week Andrew from DomainNameWire asked in a blog post “Whats The Market Size For A Top Level Domain”. The post basically asked where are the new gTLD’s going to get their registrants from, so I thought I would join the conversation.
Here is where I see registrations for new gTLD’s coming from:
Domainers
Yes I know existing domainers think all new gTLD’s are crap and will all wind up like .mobi domains from an investment standpoint and that .com is king and always will be.
Having said that being a domainer since 1997 and having daily interactions with domains on TheDomains.com for soon to be 7 years, I can say when domainers see new opportunities, they are going to jump in.
Obviously not in every extension and not with the dollars that were in the market a few years ago, but when extensions like .NYC or .Web and a few hundred more come around and they see a really good name sitting their for a $20 registration fee they are going to grab it.
Despite the noise, domainers are going to play in the new gTLD space.
New Domainers
The new gTLD’s with the unprecedented marketing that’s going to hit the online and offline media is going to create another wave of domain investors.
Of course there are tens of million of people that “missed” the huge play in domains from the mid 90′s and after the .com bubble to 2005.
Tens of millions of people either didn’t get the value of domains and passed on domaining the 1st time, were too young and missed it, were in developing countries which didn’t have internet access at the time.
There are plenty of people that will look as new gTLD’s as the next gold rush rightly or wrongly and will be playing
Civic Pride
For the first time cities are going to get their own TLD’s. Cities like NYC, Miami, Boston, London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels to name a few, live and work in their city and as they root for their sports team and otherwise “represent” their city, people will be registering domain names so they can feel like the have a stake in the community and will take advantage of having an online presence associated with their home town.
Defensive Registrations
There is no doubt there will be a LOT of defensive registrations. The amount and percentage of total registration is going to vary greatly by the extension.…
