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PassTheBill.GOP Promoted by President Trump

Elliot Silver
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13

United States President Donald Trump, famous for his Twitter usage, tweeted a link to a website that uses a new gTLD extension:

You can see that President Trump’s tweet references and links to  PassTheBill.GOP, a domain name that uses the .GOP new domain name extension. The .GOP extension is operated by the Republican State Leadership Committee.

The PassTheBill.GOP domain name is registered

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5 Positive New gTLD Charts

Elliot Silver
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15

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:

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Rob Grant: “Dot Titanic”

Elliot Silver
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29

Rob Grant is one of the “original” domain name investors, having built a great portfolio many years ago. He has also sold a number of high profile domain names, including TorontoRealEstate.com ($140k), and JacksonHoleRealEstate.com ($80k) among others. These days, Rob is probably more well known outside of the domain name business for being the father of Lana del Rey, but that is another story!

Without much of a doubt, Rob is a fan of .com domain names. Today on LinkedIn, Rob posted a poem (I think) called Dot Titanic. As you might imagine, the poem is about new gTLD domain names, and Rob has a pretty dim view of them and their prospects:

“New Gtlds are going down as fast as the Titanic – and taking most of their shocked passengers with them.

The hidden iceberg (and what nobody saw below the surface) happened to be a fatal loophole governing unregulated price increases for all new Gtlds.”

Rob has gone on the record to

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Uncertainty Could Doom the New Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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47

Based on what I have read and heard, it seems like operators of the new domain name extensions can basically charge whatever they want for their domain names. I think most people assumed that the market would help dictate the price, but as one can see by observing the Uniregistry pricing changes, a registry can seemingly charge whatever it wants for its domain names.

I think this is problematic and could doom the new gTLD program. There is a risk that a company could build a website on a new domain name extension and in a matter of years, the registry could theoretically charge whatever it wants for a renewal. A small business, who likely chose a new domain extension in lieu of spending extra money on a previously registered .com domain name, would then have to deal with the same issue of an expensive domain name.

Several operators of the new domain names tried to assuage the concerns of customers by stating various forms of “we have no plans to increase pricing.” You can see comments from representatives of  Rightside, Donuts, Radix, and .Club. I know many of these people, and I believe they are all well intentioned and truly do not have plans to increase prices. Likewise, I don’t think Frank Schilling from Uniregistry thought the prices would increase by so much just a few years ago.

Unfortunately, the price increase from Uniregistry

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Price Increase is Bad for Registrars

Elliot Silver
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8

Like most others in the domain investment business, I read the news about the Uniregistry price increases on Domain Incite and Domain Name Wire  yesterday afternoon. As the owner of fewer than 10 domain names that are new extensions, the price increase will not directly impact my business. The businesses most impacted by this will be domain name registrars who will have to pass along the price increase to customers.

I would imagine that domain name registrars are going to be tasked with informing customers of the large price increase. From my perspective, it would not be fair for these registrars to simply send out a renewal reminder email to registrants and sort of bury the fact that prices for some new domain names are going way, way up. I think they are going to have to make sure domain registrants know that the prices of some domain names will be rising (dramatically).

Unfortunately, the domain name business is not exactly transparent. Even if GoDaddy and other domain registrars explain that the upstream registry raised its prices, domain registrants are still going to have to pay GoDaddy, and they will likely be upset with GoDaddy if they care about their domain names. Once domain registrars begin sending these notification emails, recipients may worry about other new extensions as well, even those not currently impacted by the price increases. This is not good for the new gTLD business, particularly the domain registrars whose customers will face these dramatic price changes.

Another area that could cause some reputational damage

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Getting Your TLD Legal in China: the MIIT Process Unboxed

Simon Cousins
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5

Emblem_of_Ministry_of_Industry_and_Information_TechnologyFor some registries, it has been a more than four-year process to get their TLDs approved by China’s regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (the enigmatic “MIIT”). However, with slow but steady MIIT approvals now coming out of China, what started with the MIIT’s policy revision some years ago, to the appointment of the equally abstruse “review committee” last year, has now resulted in “approved” foreign registries now legally selling their domains in China. While this is certainly good news, the process leading to MIIT approval is still a formidable one.

As the China-specialist agency which was hired to support the successful applications of .club, .ink, .shop, .site and .vip, the ‘coming soon’ applications of .art, Famous Four, Neustar (.biz & .co), Rightside, and the original China market entry of the Chinese IDNs .在线 and .中文网, Allegravita is unambiguously the most experienced China domain registry consultant in the world. Elliot Silver of DomainInvesting.com asked us to write an update on the complicated process of applying for and receiving MIIT approval, so we hope this overview is of interest to the domain name industry.

Selling domains in China to Chinese registrants and investors not only represents clear opportunities for registries in “DUMs and Dollars”, but equally requires the registry to commit substantial time, capital and other resources. The decision to commit to China is all the more daunting because of vast cultural, linguistic, and regulatory unknowns.

Admittedly, China’s is a difficult system for an outsider to navigate for all these factors, and also because China operates in a complex “Chinese knot” woven tightly with red tape. However, as the recent TLD approvals show, the process is not an insurmountable one if you select your China partners carefully, and navigate the process according to a clear roadmap.

Read on to understand the main checkpoints on that roadmap.

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“Chinese Knot” by Flickr user Qiaomeng. Creative Commons license.

I want a woofie? What the what is a woofie?

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