I don’t own very many new gTLD domain names. A couple of weeks ago, I bought two more. I now own Elliot.Link and ElliotSilver.Link. I didn’t buy them for investment purposes, as I am currently using them to forward people to my LinkedIn profile.
At NamesCon, Frank Schilling gave a keynote speech, and he discussed some synergy between .Link domain names and LinkedIn. I thought that made sense, as it seems much easier to remember a url such as Elliot.Link or ElliotSilver.Link rather than the longer LinkedIn.com/in/elliotsilver url that is the default url for my LinkedIn profile. This is especially the case for people whose names are used by others for their shortened LinkedIn profile link.
I primarily use LinkedIn as a means to learn about prospective domain name buyers and to share articles I publish on this blog. I don’t think I will ever need my LinkedIn profile for a job search (hopefully!), but I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to own these domain names in the event another Elliot or Elliot Silver makes the same observation about using a .Link domain name for a LinkedIn profile. I’d probably kick myself for missing the chance to grab them.
From a domain investor point of view, I don’t know if .Link domain names will make good investments. I do think there is value in making it very easy for people to find a LinkedIn profile, and hand registering a name like Elliot.Link for under $10 was pretty much a no brainer for me when I thought about the LinkedIn use case.
There are nearly 60,000 registered .Link domain names right now, and I was surprised to have been able to hand register Elliot.Link. I wouldn’t have paid a premium to register it, but for the registration fee, it was well worth the price.
Just for fun ElliotLink.com, and ElliotSilverLink.com are still available, not like they have any value, just personal value to yourself.
Aside from this post, I am not going to actively promote either of these domain names. If I was going to build or promote the urls, I would be inclined to buy them, at least for the short term.
Most firstname.link domains aren’t available for the $10 reg fee. They’re held for resale by the registry.
I noticed that, and I was surprised mine was available.
The Elliott.link and Eliot.Link domain names, which are also commonly used, are available for reg fee, too.
You got lucky with your name. Now that you mention it, I tried a few “older” names that aren’t as common (or trendy) and they were available.
I didn’t hear Frank speak, but previously thought the same thing: that the TLD implies or visualizes a resume, a portfolio, a list, a directory, a link to something personal.
I bought only one .link domain – “Moskva.link” and I don’t have a reason why I bought it.
P.S. linkedin is dead. IMO
if .linkedin redirects are the best sales use for .link
i fear for this extension
This is just how I am using mine.
There are 60,000 .Link domain names already, so I don’t think you need to “fear” for this extension.
Elliot you do realize that one party owns 3/4 of the registered domains in .link, unless you have been totally asleep at the wheel?
How do you find out who owns what % of names in a particular extension?
BTW, only 46.17% of .Link domain names are registered at Uniregistry according to nTLDStats (including mine): https://ntldstats.com/tld/link
Buying a good domain name is always a great investment. By the way are .link domains well ranked in Google?
Yes .link domains well ranked in Google.
In a world where .club may rule the roost regarding the best of the latest “g'” in gTLD, and where for an American .nyc and in some cases .vegas may be the most desirable of the regional geo’s, in my humble opinion “.link” is actually quite a nice one and the next best of the whole bunch. But that’s how I feel about it personally, as the jury is still out on adoptions and commercial viability. No surprise that a guy like F.S. would come up with one that’s not the least bit bad and has potential, however, unlike some of the other ones I wouldn’t even want for free, even permanently free.
I like .link gTLD very much and I am using same for my portfolio.
The last paragraph of your article says: “There are nearly 60,000 registered .Link domain names right now.”
Interestingly, most of these domain names are registered by Frank Schilling himself. What a great marketing strategy! Hats off to Daniel Negari of XYZ.
I don’t know if that number is accurate. As I mentioned in a comment above, only 46.17% of .Link domains are registered at Uniregistry.
As I asked in the comment, where can you find ownership % by TLD? I would find that interesting for a variety of reasons.
Good question. My comment was based on my findings from several months ago. But it seems nTLDStats no longer shows the top registrants on this page:
https://ntldstats.com/registrant
Fortunately, Andrew had written an article about this here:
http://domainnamewire.com/2014/06/05/frank-schilling-is-the-biggest-registrant-of-new-tlds/
Andrew wrote, “According to nTLDStats, North Sound Names has registered 43,177. I believe close to half of those are in .link alone.”
If half of those are/were .Link, that would be about 21,500 .Link domain names, give or take. Going by what Andrew posted, 21,500 domains out of 60,000 registered .Link domain names would amount to about 1/3, which isn’t “most”. I don’t know the current percentage, but nTLDStats says that less than 50% are registered at Uniregistry.
The only point I was trying to make in the article is that I was surprised my name was available to hand register given so many first name .Link domains were previously registered.
Great Idea Elliot!
I have followed your lead and registered 2 similar domains for myself.
We released a video of Frank’s keynote talking about .link and LinkedIn if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6h833IcDuA
Thanks for sharing that.
I think that such domains are fine. Currently I’ve got a couple of .review domains and they are doing great as well.