Chris Sheridan shared a great Q&A video interview with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Europe 2016. At around the 20 minute mark of the video, Matt discusses the .Blog new gTLD domain extension that was acquired by WordPress earlier this year.
The discussion focused around the revenue sources for Auttomatic, the parent company of WordPress. Previously, there were three revenue “buckets” for the company, but the .Blog extension is poised to become the fourth bucket. In fact, Matt has big plans for .Blog domain names, and he predicted selling .Blog domain names “could be a multi $100 million business.”
VentureBeat reported that the .Blog extension was acquired for $19 million, although Matt is a bit coy in this interview due to what I presume are legal reasons.
.Blog is definitely an extension that I will be watching, especially when it comes to the marketing of these domain names. WordPress has a massive audience and .Blog is an extension that should see considerable traction.
Have a look at the video interview below:
As long as they are priced within reason so that they are practical for the majority of the blogger market types, this extension could certainly be an ace in the hole. From stay at home mom’s, to first time website ventures, to news reporters, to personal travel diary’s, there is an unlimited source of potential registers for .Blog (Personal, Hobby, And Commercial).
This is one of the few good ones of the new generation of gTLDs, but it’s only good for end users. You can’t expect that you are going to be able to sell many of them for the kind of big $$ domain investors are looking for to make it worth their time. Moreover, the vast majority of the really great keywords are likely to be premium priced to begin with.
So honestly Elliot, you can watch this one all you want, but I suspect it will never be worth your time and effort to try to do anything with it except for possibly only a minute # of possible domains, and most likely only for a small return on those.
P.S. And by end users I mean mostly those who can’t afford much for a domain to begin with. This domain is a win with big $ potential for the registry, not for domain investors.
And I think you should be covering the Internet “transition” too rather than just letting the other big bloggers do it. π
I’d rather spend the extra time that would take with my family or relaxing π
You can sacrifice other less important posts you will make. Nothing less than life, liberty and the world as you know it are at stake with this, no less and long term perhaps even more so than with Net neutrality.
But I think you like to play it safe about controversial issues like that, on the remote chance it could negatively impact your personal goals to any degree. That would even be more so for this than for Net neutrality since you can see that a large portion of society, those who are even familiar with the “transition” issue, have either been brainwashed into supporting it, or corporate giants like Google have some self-interest in supporting it and do. If you can just make it to your goal of being able to retire first with no concern about such things that would be good enough for you, though perhaps then you might be more willing to ruffle some feathers over something the fat cats support.
While not preferable for people who feel strongly about the issue like me to see a venue like yours not addressing it, it’s certainly not something that is not understandable from that perspective. Sound about right? π
It will be successful.
All the bloggers I know rather use free names from sites like tumblr. That is not a market that likes to spend any money.
I agree with nick. New writers need a platform rather than a stand alone to start.
I spoke with Peter @ Porkbun at the 2nd namescon. He mentioned they were going for it and I suggested not for this reason and they already had better alternatives as the phrase blog is trending out. They have .ink,.press,.wiki. .News, .Reviews, .Site, .Link, .Guide and .Media are also available. IMHO These others are better options. Especially .Media,.News for investment.
Although the history behind the word blog is a fun read, there’s lots of competition ahead!
Which would you rather have ? If I were a writer it wouldn’t be .blog
Brought to you by my.blog
my.ink
my.press
my.wiki
my.news
my.reviews
my.site
my.link
my.guide
my.media