Morning Folks!!
I could probably add to this list for quite a while. But these are the false myths that .whatever is trying to build their foundation on and if they continue, it won't help their case, it will hurt their case. Remember, I am in sales. This is not the road to selling. It's the road to losing credibility. At least inside the industry. Outside, I guess they might swallow anything because they know so little as the video on Las Olas proved. Each of these I have addressed on previous blog posts and the video.
Myth #1 We are running out of .com names. (Not in our lifetime.)
Myth #2 All these millions of people will embrace .whatever. (Anytime you try to speak for millions, you find yourself speaking for yourself.)
Myth #3 .com is like AM Radio (Sorry, that dog won't hunt. FM offered Stereo. .whatever offers nothing new other than confusion and a way for some to make money and others to lose money.)
What will success look like? It won't look like the above. It will be an extension by extension debate and vote and some are going to get very few votes. Votes in the form of registrations. But even that does not guarantee investor quality domains. Some will find success with .whatever. But I look at all this through many lenses. That of a domain investor and that of a shop owner on Main St. I look at thru the eyes of startups and the eyes of the Fortune 500. I have the ability to go around a 360 degree circle and see it through their eyes. And when I do that, most eyes have little or no interest. Biggest are the startups, but startups make a calamity of wrong decisions and this is just an example of one they will need to fix with any degree of success and most of course will just fail all together. Could be the perfect marriage.
Selling is about overcoming objections. As long as somebody is objecting, like myself, they are buying. So while I have all these objections as an investor, it is their job to make the case using logic and facts sprinkled with some dreams. If they successfully do that, they can make the sale. But if they use arguments that can be easily shown to be myths, that sale gets further away. This is what I call "Negative selling" because it is less focused on the benefits of what is being offered and more focused on what they see as the impediment to where they want to go.
Rick Schwartz
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick, Good Morning !
.Whatsthis?, Just Trust Me ?
Good question who and what are your objectives and agendas and who are you really linked up with?
These are questions that all consumers will be confronted with. An unfamiliar face added to the e-commerce crowd, demanding their attention. How would you react ?
This is and will be a huge barrier to overcome.
The most likely reaction will be to pass for now and check out the .COM version.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Max
People seem to think that .web is the best of the new tlds, can someone explain to me what .web has that .net doesn’t (apart from a whole new dictionary of words to register) ?
John Poole
Rick you are a successful domain investor, who is thinking like a competent investor and businessman. These new gTLDs are not for you or people like you. Very little money will be made in this ICANN program (excepting ICANN which will make a lot of money) and millions to billions will be lost. Defensive registrations in each new gTLD is a non-starter for most businesses due to cost (there are too many extensions). The brand is in the name. The dot com is the premier extension for your brand name. All other extensions will ALWAYS bleed traffic to the dot com (at least in the US). Most businesses cannot, or prefer not to, spend thousands to millions of dollars annually defending brand names and trademarks. Most businesses will take a defensive position and capture and hold the “high ground”– they will register and defend their “dot com.” There will be lots of “noise” about the new gTLDs over the next couple of years. Thank you for continuing to separate the “signal” from the “noise.”
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick,
Wishfull Thinking = The Healthcare.gov site is crashing because the .gov extension is not able to handle the massive traffic levels?
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
AlanR
When you take the track record of all the hyped up extensions in the last 12 years or so that were suppose to be the next so called dotcom, that record shows a 100% failure rate when you consider that none of them ever came close to their billed expectations! That record is totally dismal so why would anyone want to invest in something that is a sure bet to lose? How many times does history need to repeat itself before folks finally get it?
patrick
Hey rick found this report by afilias, shows an uphill battle for the new gTLDs interesting report, we really need the general public’s opinion on the new right of the dot to gauge were there going and by the tone of this poll it shows a uphill battle, even for the branded gTLDs.
patrick
Sorry forgot the link.
http://afilias.info/webfm_send/361
DN Select
Nothing. It’s just ICANN’s way of generating more revenue. All these new TLDs are stupid, IMO.
Do you think this was done for the users out there? Heck no! It’ll just confuse them even more.
DN Select
Here’s another unecessaryTLD: .business
Last time I checked, business is the same as biz.