5 Positive New gTLD Charts

There hasn’t been a lot of good news in the new gTLD space in the last couple of weeks. The most recent piece of news was reported by Domain Name Wire  yesterday in its article about new gTLD registries asking ICANN for a “75% cost reduction” in their annual fees. In the letter DNW cited, Registries Stakeholder Group chairman Paul Diaz wrote that “[a] number of gTLD operators are struggling.”  It would appear that demand for the new domain names has not materialized as greatly as registry operators had expected.

I was looking at nTLDStats.com today, and I want to share five  charts that could offer a glimmer  of hope for registry operators. In particular, I wanted to look at the registration trends at some of the largest corporate and SMB domain name registrars to see what was happening. I looked at the number of registrations  of new gTLD domain names  at MarkMonitor, GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Name.com, and Tucows since the introduction of the new extensions.

Although I was somewhat expecting to see negative growth charts, I was surprised that wasn’t the case (besides what looks like the large drop of .XYZ domain names at Network Solutions I think). I imagine  many new domain name registries expected to see hockey stick growth – or at least much greater growth than we are seeing, but at least there is growth at registrars that cater towards businesses of all sizes.

Obviously, the entirety of the news about the new domain name extension is not great (to put it lightly), but at least it seems like there is some growth at these registrars.

Courtesy of nTLDStats.com, here are the charts I saw:

MarkMonitor:

MarkMonitor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GoDaddy:

GoDaddy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Network Solutions:

NSI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Name.com:

Name.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tucows:

Tucows

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

15 COMMENTS

  1. These charts have zero value. Without a history of a “money flow index” for lack of a better term these charts tell us nothing. We don’t know if these names are at a top or about to crash.

  2. The force of history and momentum is decidedly in favor to dotcoms. Chasing anything else is a fool’s game.

    The people and companies behind these “new” TLD’s can do as they please. But the lesson has already been taught and smart domainers will do well for themselves and their future by separating what is of real value and that which is shiny and bright but eventually turn out to be FOOL’S GOLD.

    Plus it doesn’t help that these new TLD’s are being championed by characters that you and I wouldn’t entrust with walking our dogs.

    If there is any industry ripe of shenanigans and shysters and con men and downright crimimals, it would have to be the domain industry.

    The key to happiness and health is to stay away from these people. Don’t bite their bait people!

    Stay good. Stay positive!

  3. If you examine a variety of the charts, you’ll see a pretty wide variance among different tld’s in whether they suffered huge annual drops, or not. Some of the niche and industry extensions had practically no dropped registrations, and their trajectory continued an upward climb following their drop period.

    It’s a mistake I believe for domain investors to lump all new tld’s in one pool. They are not all the same. Some of the better performing tld’s have been pricier than most, but are experiencing adoption and use by real companies. That’s where the real story is. Over a 5 year span, investors will see that the spread on new tld’s was pretty broad with A/B+ performers, a few C’s, and a moderately large group of tld’s that could not sustain.

    • Not sure what you mean by “A/B+” performers, new tlds have always been a bust for domainers and I would say 1000/1000 will be the same this time. So far looking at the forums I have seen a total of 2 people who have claimed they have made a profit on ntlds, betting on horse’s is a more productive excercise than that.

  4. There is some growth there and the registrars you have pulled up accounts for most of the “genuine” market as opposed to the 1c-99c stuff that is skewing many other registrars. Still it is a far smaller market than registries would like us to believe, I think around 4 million registrations in total, the other 24million being garbage.

    One thing is though even with those registrars some of the charts look to be topping out and given some registries wouldn’t have gone through a drop cycle yet some of charts could well turn negative quite soon, in particular Name.com and Mark Monitor.

    The godaddy numbers are probably the best barometer for underlying demand, even there though there is some doubtful numbers such as all the 99 cent .club registrations.

  5. One other thing worth noting Godaddy’s ntlds have been growing at about 10% per quarter so far this year, much the same rate as last year where it grew around 40% for the year. That is probably a good guide to what the growth really is for ntlds right now, once you take out the nonsense. That isn’t fast growth at all for something new, real growth is plodding along, at least it isn’t negative though.

    Of course 80% of the numbers are nonsense and that comes at a huge costs, especially when you dodgy up last year stats by selling domains for 1c-99cents (or even free) then see a 80%+ registration decline the follow year like many tlds now seem to be seeing. Many tlds have done this even the ones like .club who profess to being clean.

    The amount of damage registries have inflicted to the space is immense. Dot com domainers should thank those registries and Icann for managing to screw it up so badly, then again I think many people knew it would be a complete mess, it was a cash extraction excercize that awry.

  6. The lunacy of some domainers is beyond comprehension.

    It’s like debating what is the better lipstick to put on a pig.

    And the end of the day, it’s not the lipstick. It’s the PIG!

  7. GTLD’s are to risky, essentially they can raise the price by thosuands of %, and cleanse the entire registry of all names, and remarket the names, and collect a higher EAP fee.

    Can you imagine all those end users who paid 5 figures for these GTLD gems

    The sucker who paid $52,500 for Web.Hosting at Namescon, now has a $500 renewal bill, it is just the premise.

    The contracts carry to much risk, these charts are bogus filled with penny registrations.

    I liken GTLD’s to penny stocks, with the same kind of shameless promotoers.

  8. Too late for the gtlds, social media was the first to arrive.
    The ngtlds will be just like the baseball cards, only trades between domainers and registrars.

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