.CLUB expecting one million registrations in first year

[bonusmedia]

Ha! That's nothing. How about *finger in mouth* one BILLION registrations!

If this happens I will eat my balaclava.

 

[Edwin]

Also worth considering that most (not all, but the overwhelming majority) new GTLD are English based - and virtually all the future growth of the web (in terms of raw users) is predicted to be in non-English speaking countries.

 

[WalkinDude]

Edwin. The new domains are part of a mission to convince everyone to own a domain. Just like its inconcievable to most not to have a telephone number. To argue from a purely startup or domaineer angle is kinda missing the stated aim. Some of these new tlds are mission specific. You got 10k a year reg security domains coming out. Who knows what some clever b_÷&#&'s out there are cooking up for some of these tlds.

Now IF people start going for this and thats going to be 200 million existing domains starts looking like peanuts. 1million dictionary words and most of them useless to monetize and 1400 new chances to reg the new one worders vs having increasing ludicrous and speculative 3 word or even 2 word dotcomes cc's.

Golf.com gone. Forget it you will never own it. You got same chance of Queen selling Buckingham palace All next 100 decent permutations of the same message gone. So now you got choice of you really sub par 2 or even 3 worder.com or you can have Golf.club/.app/.fan etc etc. Its any easy choice imho.

If you accepted 14% viability in regged domains i.e 86% utter trash. That 86% a good portion of it about to get dumped in favour of this new lot.

 

[Edwin]

Declaring something a "mission" goes exactly 0.00% towards actually achieving it. It's the other 100.00% that has me scratching my head.

A parallel might be this recipe for getting rich:
1) invent time travel
2) bet on horses with total certainty of winning

Yes, 2) WILL make you rich - but only if you first achieve 1) which just happens to be the awkwardly impossible bit.

BTW if anyone does actually end up following my recipe and makes a fortune, please remember that I said it first (before the time anomalies started showing up, that is)

 

[jasman]

The reason golf.com got drawn into comparison is because figures in the $millions were being bandied about for golf.club, which is ludicrous. As you point out there will be many golf.tlds to choose from soon so valuations like that are crazy. If we expect golf.club to be worth something more in the region of £xxxx then the comparison comes down to: Do I want golf.club or golfclub(.co).uk as both will have a similar value? Or in the US golf.club or golfclub.net. Although getting a one-word generic in a seemingly appropriate extension at first appears attractive, the trouble with these new tlds is that most of them will struggle to gain traction, so Joe Public isn't going to have heard of many of them and if you invest in one, you're back to the problem of:

A:Our website is golf.club.
B:What's that? golfdotclub.com? golfclub.com? golf-club.com? golf.club.com? golfclub.co.uk?
A:No just golf.club!!! Will you people ever get it!!!

 

[WalkinDude]

So are people now suggesting not a single one of these tlds will achieve 7 figures when you top end dotcoms out there worth 8 or 9 figures?

 

[WalkinDude]

Edwin the domain market going to change. To what extent its hard to say. But your this is a non event mantra is a story thats a hard sell.

 

[Edwin]

Edwin the domain market going to change. To what extent its hard to say. But your this is a non event mantra is a story thats a hard sell.

It's a much much harder sell to see these new GTLD succeeding.

Of course, there are 700 of the things, so a handful will do relatively better than others. But it will only be a handful, success will be relative (and still a joke compared to .com) and it's impossible to predict now which ones they'll be. Therefore

A) I don't think .com is threatened
B) I also don't think that .co.uk is particularly affected. .uk launching will have 100x the impact (in terms of affecting OUR market) that the new GTLD will.
C) If anyone is hoping to "get lucky" with a few well-chosen new GTLD, you might as well buy lottery tickets as it is pure guesswork right now which of the 700 will catch anyone's eye
D) I have yet to see a compelling reason based on actual logic why any particular new GTLD will succeed, though I've read hundreds of articles on the subject with contributions from new GTLD operators. It's all wishy washy wishful thinking based on the law of big numbers "Well, if there are 100,000,000 people who X and if 1% wanted .x" without even a hint of a real plan to make it happen

 

[Edwin]

So are people now suggesting not a single one of these tlds will achieve 7 figures when you top end dotcoms out there worth 8 or 9 figures?

Do you mean 7 figures for the whole namespace? As in .club (the registry) manage to get 7 figures worth of registrations?

 

[websaway]

I just read the article. I agree with Diablo it's a good read and eye-opener, however I still agree with Edwin on the competition between new gTLDs and how they'll nullify each other.

Practically any group that can be considered a club will also have their own industry domain anyway.

For example, Blossom, you said a good clientele for .club would be football clubs. But what about .football then? As well as .tennis for tennis clubs, .active and .fit for gym clubs, .academy for sports academies, .college for college clubs, .film for film clubs, .music for music clubs, .golf for golf clubs, the list goes on and on (.football, .rubgy, .nyc, .uk, .com, .fr, .com.au .la, .berlin...)

As Edwin said, 700 new gTLDs all competing against each other is a relatively small demand in comparison to the supply. Not to mention it adds confusion to branding.

I just think people need to realise the full list of domains ahead: http://www.newgtldsite.com/new-gtld-list/

Thanks for this post it's certainly helped in my thinking of the situation.

 

[websaway]

So are people now suggesting not a single one of these tlds will achieve 7 figures when you top end dotcoms out there worth 8 or 9 figures?

I think some of us are talking at cross purposes.
I think some may reach six figure registrations over a period of time.
Biz has 2.2 million over 10 years, but that doesn't mean it's a threat to the recognition and popularity of .com and country extensions.

Biz and info were supposed to signal the end of .com it didn't happen, it strengthened the .com

Some extensions will be financial goldmines for the owners because thousands of people will punt ( that really is the initial target market ) and if they can get golf.club at reg fee they will make money.
If .club can do as well as .biz over 10 years ( which I doubt ) then for the owners, that, with associated services, would be a good return on investment.

 

[martin-s]

.club is at least a "proper" word - I've always thought .biz looked a bit fly-by-night?

 

[websaway]

.club is at least a "proper" word - I've always thought .biz looked a bit fly-by-night?

What about .com ?

I think the more like a word it is ( notwithstanding how search engines may come to view them ) the more it gets confused with the domain name.

northeastgolfclub is like

was the extension .golfclub or .club or .golf
or was it golfclubnorth.east

oh f**k it Northeastgolfclub.com that'll do nicely.

 

[sdsinc]

Most TLDs will fail, for the same reason that past experiments have failed: there is not enough shelf space for all of them.
Majority of people don't even know about all the TLDs that currently exist. Result: no demand, no sales.

Second reason: limited demand from consumers, and too many TLDs claiming a share of the small pie. Result: negligible market share. Without critical mass, a TLD is just that: another TLD.

Third reason: Edwin pointed out most TLD are are English based. But everybody understands .com.

Fourth reason: many TLDs have a narrow purpose. .tattoo is not an all purpose extension. The pool of truly relevant keywords is limited. The prospects of growth are already capped from the beginning.

Fifth reason: pricing. Wanna pay an expensive regfee for unproven stuff ?

The established extensions are not under threat, because they have had a head start and are ingrained in the minds of consumers. I can't see any TLD attaining the volume of .com (100+ million registrations currently), or even .uk. But the end of .com is near ? Hmmmm.

I don't know if 7-figure sales are going to take place often, but a couple .co/.xxx domains sold for 6 figures. And most of the time the seller happens to be the registry. But of course those TLDs will be presented to you like a life-time opportunity, but you can hardly beat the casino at its own game. I'm talking about the opportunities for domainers (I mean the lack thereof), from a developer POV it's different but I don't see a lot of upside either.

Don't fall for the hype people.

 

[aZooZa]

Most TLDs will fail, for the same reason that past experiments have failed: there is not enough shelf space for all of them.
Majority of people don't even know about all the TLDs that currently exist. Result: no demand, no sales.

Second reason: limited demand from consumers, and too many TLDs claiming a share of the small pie. Result: negligible market share. Without critical mass, a TLD is just that: another TLD.

Third reason: Edwin pointed out most TLD are are English based. But everybody understands .com.

Fourth reason: many TLDs have a narrow purpose. .tattoo is not an all purpose extension. The pool of truly relevant keywords is limited. The prospects of growth are already capped from the beginning.

Fifth reason: pricing. Wanna pay an expensive regfee for unproven stuff ?

The established extensions are not under threat, because they have had a head start and are ingrained in the minds of consumers. I can't see any TLD attaining the volume of .com (100+ million registrations currently), or even .uk. But the end of .com is near ? Hmmmm.

I don't know if 7-figure sales are going to take place often, but a couple .co/.xxx domains sold for 6 figures. And most of the time the seller happens to be the registry. But of course those TLDs will be presented to you like a life-time opportunity, but you can hardly beat the casino at its own game. I'm talking about the opportunities for domainers (I mean the lack thereof), from a developer POV it's different but I don't see a lot of upside either.

Don't fall for the hype people.

+1 verbatim.