Afternoon Folks!!
I like the .me extension. I own 1/3 interest in some of the best .me's (Date.me, marry.me, and love.me) and was 1/3 partner in the sale of Meet.me.
But the problem with .me is that you can not just stick any word in front of it and expect value. It is SCREAMING for a VERB but at least a NOUN! But verbs are action and that is what .me needs. Action! Or a personal nam that has limited value in many cases. Once you get out of that realm, there are few naturals and naturals are what any .whatever is going to be about.
Right now Cax.com is running an auction of over 800 .me domains. probably the largest auction of .me's I have ever seen. But after a week or more, only 3 have bids. They are all VERBS! And only one of the three has commercial value in my book and that could be limited.
So here is a real world example of the headwinds to come with .whatever and a little look inside of the elements that are missing in many of the gtld's. And if those things are missing that means fewer people use them. Fewer people advertise them and fewer people know of them. Some gtld's are so limited that their hopes of selling enough to support themselves is also limited and may be a complete challenge. They throw around these big numbers and I sit here and wonder how they made that leap. They ain't sold shit yet and they are in the millions and hundreds of thousands. The first 1000 may be more challenging than they ever expected. And some will smother their own extensions by hoarding the best keywords. Sex.mobi is still owned by .mobi. It probably could have garnered $500k if they sold it when the iron was hot. How much is sex.mobi worth today?
I use actual past events to support my position. Those events hold the answers to those events yet to unfold because those that walk the same path are likely to end up in the same place. Or same ditch.
Rick Schwartz
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Rahul
Spot On. What should we do with the .me domains. Is this the right time to cash out.
UFO
Lets see how legit DNX is, I just bought that transceivers.com for 368 bucks.
kerry
I have to think its going to be near impossible to get the commercially viable combinations anyway unless your willing to spend big money. I’ve got to think the operating registry will have tight control on the good ones. Tell me if I’m wrong.
UFO
Only when .com purchases have a payback longer than the horizon for these .whatevers to be in parity, will these .whatevers have any value.
The equation isn’t about the cost to acquire and the timeframe to gain traffic. Its really about that .com’s are relatively underpriced to in use by companies and .whatevers have limited in use until they gain traction.
So, if we look at .com’s as having a payback of say 7 years, then really its a case of waiting till the .whatevers begin traction and then getting on during that 7 year run in. In the meantime all the risk and outflows stays with whoever holds them.
As they say, a .com in the hand is worth a couple of .whatever’s in the bush.
I made 1 bad investment today.
michael berkens
Well interestingly .mobile is one of the top 20 most pre-reserved new gTLD extensions at 1and1.com
Of course that makes no sense with the shorter and more established .mobi sitting out there.
You might be surprised to know that of the June ICANN reports there are 1,117,565 .mobi domain name registrations at say $7 wholesale that $8 million a year for the registry
donbellamy
I looked into that domain as well, but it’s misspelled, hope you realized that. The correct spelling is Transceivers.com. Good luck!
Ze
The internet won’t be a better place because of it, the end user won’t benefit from it, the search engines will need to re-write algorithms for it and only a few will be banking from it.
Bul
Michael put in mind that these are non biding pre-reservations. Once people get to their senses, and know what we techs know….that one does not need .app to have an app or .mobi to get ones website to render on mobile…one just needs to know how RWD and if they don’t, they have no business building a mobile web site or app.