Morning Folks!!
With hundreds of new extensions coming out the noise will be very loud. Too loud for me to even respond as we soon will be overwhelmed with hype, ads, press releases and a host of things that will make your head spin. Some will be very good and creative, many will be pretty lame as evidenced HERE!
And this is the stuff I am talking about as one gTLD stumble can hurt more than just that particular extension. This video is so lame it has the POWER to hurt more than just them. The message I got, if you want to be a faker or a wannabee then .CEO will make you a make-believe big shot. Sorry, that hurt the extension. It marginalized the seriousness and effectiveness. It was a disaster. But I am sure they are all high-fiving each other over there while the rest of us shake our heads.
So I guess I just inadvertently reviewed .CEO. Won't make friends there. But I am never going to sellout what I believe from what folks want to hear. They all get to prove me wrong. That is what selling is about. 100 people come into a room and think just like me. THEIR JOB IS To PERSUADE! The problem is many will get angry instead of using the art of persuasion and they automatically LOSE!
The 100 are not their enemy. They need to be convinced. But you must convince with FACT. The minute you use BULLSHIT or make things up to convince, game over. Better load another 100 in the room and try again because that room has been tainted. So if you do the same thing, you get the same result. Do you think that makes it harder or easier for the next guy? Want to be the last guy to pitch the audience? They may have your head on a stake by then.
This illustrates how each new extension OWNS the bullshit and the lies of the others gtld folks. Sorry, may not be fair, but it is what it is. If you have not factored that into your equation. OH WELL!!
700-1000 extensions each must sell. But it is not our job to buy what each sells. Even if they are our friends. This is not Girl Scout Cookie buying. This is deciding where to put our investment dollars to be safe and to grow. My job is to focus on the winners. But even winners are runner-ups. Not to .com but to a category called "Other". They will ALL reside in "Other" and will share it with HUNDREDS of "Others" for what could be decades before the FIRST one breaks out other than .web which will probably be the FIRST to break out and our job s to pick winners.
I don't have any .web interest. I have no reservations on .web domains. I have never spoken to anyone at .web. I have no plans to register any .web domains. I am simply handicapping the race. And if folks get pissed at my handicapping, so be it. I only want to focus on the winners. The top 3. The top 10. The top DOG!
Of course I could become a 6 or 7 figure whore for one of them. lol. But at least I would come here and say so. I would not hide it.
My job/your job as an investor is to figure out the 1, 2 or 3 that MIGHT break through and break out of "Other".
It IS about picking the winners. The THREE extensions out of 1000 that will lead the pack. Why would anyone GAMBLE with the other 997? The return keeps getting exponentially SMALLER, not larger. The top 3 might already be gambles. Why would anyone want to make the odds of success smaller and smaller and smaller? Value is proportionate to size of audience among several other factors. No audience, no value, no nothing.
I look at the price disparity between a .com domain and .whatever domain as it is today and with the exact same keyword. It's a 100-1 ratio in case after case. Same work. Sometimes the same level of investment when you learn to focus on FIRST.
Sometimes I really don't think folks understand numbers because they have to lie about them so often. They have to inflate them to have credibility. Make them up as they go along. That's blowing smoke up people's ass. Everyone reading this should get their bullshit meter inspected before the noise makes it impossible to calibrate.
So hundreds hawking these extensions will be of no interest. They can hawk. Some will buy. All will learn.
I ONLY want to focus on the top 3. Then we can debate if they will ever be meaningful. But the 997 that don't finish, first, second or third, may or may not have registry level success and that does not translate to investor success. Far from it.
It translates into great risk. Who wants to buy my .xxx today at 50% of what I paid? I already dropped most of them. Each year I have more information and I drop more. That is on EVERY extension.
So, clearly as a domain handicapper at this point .web has the best chance to win the race. There is not even a close second. I see this as the ONLY viable extension that MAY breakout of "Other".
There may be room for a .club in the eco-system. But that may not qualify it for investment level. So .club may enjoy a "Registry success" but that does not automatically translate to an investor success. There will be some. But limited. VERY limited.
.App has a place and since .App is commercial and social I see that as possibly a better investment than .web. But it is still early in the race. And the chance of it getting out of "other" is remote.
.Blog again may have a place in the eco-system. Investment wise, not as good as .App the way I see the world. But of wider interest than .app.
If I see another extension come out of the gates I will come and state it. But as they are each announced, I don't have the time to focus on anything else other than perhaps the top 3 or the top 10. So far, I am just at 3.
First they all need to catch up to .mobi.
Second, I think they have some obstacles in the form of .Me, .Co, .TV, .Info and even .US because each will get a second look. I see these competing for those top 10 slots besides the other top 7 new gTLD's.
Rick Schwartz
Scott Alliy
The first wave will be selling HOPE. Hope for a big ROI, hope for a way out of their corp job, hope that they will be able to create and live on a web business based on dreams. etc., etc.
Once the Hope fades the next wave are left to sell proof. The proof of course will be the results achieved or NOT from the first wave buyers investors etc.
Hope sells quicker and better than Proof. Just ask any Casino what happens to business activity when word gets out that their slots are currently hot or cold.
The commercials and marketing activity will be the trailers. The actual results is hidden in the movie that is yet to be released buy will soon be in a computer or tablet or mobile device near you.
UFO
My take is that everything revolves around 2 criteria; recollective attributes and commercial awareness/application.
.com has both because .com is embedded into people’s recollection and .com is a known commercial extension and works when connected to commercial keywords.
My guess is that .com will get watered down overtime, but all the new extensions will only at best get to .net in terms of value relative to .com.
Tony
Is there an ICANN fee annually for running a gTLD? Add that to the expense of carrying a staff also and there is a minimum number of registrations/renewals these registries need to carry to break even each year. I can easily see 80+% will not be able to tread water. It might get really ugly for some these next 5 years and that’s the registries not even mentioning the poor speculators.
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick,
All gTLD Derivatives are based on a starting point, to reach the end point of a .COM Status. The many gTLD Derivatives will be a huge spawning ground for future .COM Franchise Address purchases. We .COM holders are looking at a huge Cash infusion which will spurr competitive demand. Happy holidays are ahead.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider
Leonard Britt
It would seem that before investing in a new GTLD, one would have to ask the question, are there better opportunities acquiring aftermarket or expiring .COMs at Namejet or Godaddy auctions? If the competition for those .COMs is too intense, why is .Web better than .Net or .Org? I don’t think it is. Is the best place to invest for the next 3-5 years .Web? I seriously doubt it. Most investors don’t have a twenty year time horizon.
This week I sold a Spanish .Com for four figures which I hand-regged at Godaddy five years ago. I don’t recall any inquiries or offers on that name over the last several years. But it took five years before someone came along willing to pay a decent price for that Spanish .COM.
My view is it will be at least five years before any of these new TLDs develop any meaningful aftermarket – and for most of them there will never be an aftermarket – just random end users not willing to pay more than registration and renewal fees.
Shammy
@Jeff, Is there something wrong with my computer?!!! I don’t see “Metal Tiger” (contact group) OMG!! My head is spininng. Lol..
Hello Rick, You are spot on as usual.
UFO
Must admit I do laugh at all this ‘pre registration’ which simply provides the registries with a database of names that have commercial value and hence you can be sure that most of them won’t be leased/sold on the cheap.
After this initial rush we’ll through a period what I’d term as ‘the dark ages’ where good names will be dropped and registries will start trying to flip their better names at progressively cheaper prices. There is far too much supply. In 3-5 years might be in a better place to assess the progression of any extension.
Tip for registries, might want to PAY start ups to use your gTLD or GIVE them one of your better names. Its all about critical mass.
Steve
I think there are huge opportunities in .com names in the drops and aftermarket as well as cctld’s.
Country code names will always be in demand because it gives you a relevant presence in that country via their cctld.
I have many keyword .mx names and I have been getting requests from Mexican business owners that want to use the names because they see huge value in a name that represents the country they are doing business in.
Same goes for .ca, many more requests this year from business owners looking to improve their presence in the country they are focused no doing business in.
.com and cctlds’. no brainer imho.
Cheers from “The Great White North”. :)
Dan
Lots of salient points made by everyone here. UFO makes a good point about paying startups/seeding the domain. The only reason .co has had legs is that they’ve done a good job marketing it to startups. .io and .me etc jumping on that same bandwagon though has been a bit laughable.
I look at this from an open minded perspective, as an entrepreneur developing apps myself, but still come to the key conclusions about the gTld’s:
Anything other than .com is too restrictive, niche and untested.
.web will only ever by as good as .net at best
.app as Rick knows is my favourite, but it has limitations.
Everyone buying a name.keyword will also need to have a fallback position on a namekeyword.com
I also consider that nearly every established business in the world has either a .com or ccTLD they are perfectly happy with. Less than 1% will probably move house!
Are there really enough startups to even sustain the rest?! When I say startups, I mean viable, businesses, having a go at changing the world. Not just parked Idea’s!
Kassey
I don’t see any opportunity in new gTLDs for now. Many pre-registrations are asking a lot of money while selling hope. If ever panic comes and .whatever drops like flies, then there may be opportunities — very limited opportunities and only when prices are dirt cheap.
Barry
Well there’s .com, maybe .org and country extensions, and then there is the rest – only more so now which just causes confusion amongst the
dot.whatevers.
Barry
Hmmm that’s thought, does anyone know if .whatever is available ?