The new gTLD domain name program continues to be one of the most polarizing topics in the domain space. It seems that there are passionate people who feel strongly for or against the new gTLD domain names.
There are now over 11 million registered new gTLD domain names. I would imagine that many of these domain names are owned by domain speculators / investors. As we close out the year, I thought I would ask if you bought and still own any new gTLD domain names.
I believe my companies own fewer than 10 new gTLD domain names. I own n.ventures, n.holdings, Silver.Ventures, Elliot.Link, ElliotSilver.Link, TeamSilver.Rocks, and maybe a couple of others I can’t think of off the top of my head.
I understand why some companies would want to own and use new gTLD domain names. I have seen many advertised in various media, including a viral video featuring a .Vegas domain name last week. There is generally an ample supply, and the prices are usually much more affordable for a smaller business than an exact match .com domain name.
I also understand why some domain investors would want to take a chance on new gTLD domain names. Some people that missed the first .com “rush” may not want to miss the boat again. Others see big sales in the aftermarket and hope to close their own deals. Companies like Alphabet (Google) using a new gTLD domain name likely also gives a confidence boost to domain investors who believe this type of nod is affirmation of value (both in terms of usage and worth).
For my company, however, I still don’t see a path to profit enough to deviate funding from .com domain name investments. The names I would value are either reserved (and expensive) or already owned with significant price tags. The metrics don’t make sense to me at this point.
That said, my business model is different than most in the domain investment space, as I own fewer than 500 domain names. I try to buy great .com domain names at reasonable prices and sell them profitably, monetize them via parking, or develop them. You can always have a look at my company’s current holdings if you want to see what I am buying since that list changes regularly.
As 2015 comes to an end today, I am curious if you bought and still own any new gTLD domain names. You are invited to share below.
Quote ” I would imagine that many of these domain names are owned by domain speculators / investors. ”
Quite an imagination, we both know, that if domainers/investors didnt “buy” these names there would be a few hundred total for all extensions. I use the word “buy” as we know they were gifted to people. One person thinks that .Top will topple .com
If you are looking for 1 word .xyz go to namepros.com, there are 1000’s of them. In 2-3 years we will see what the numbers say.
Yes, I own two .xyz,
I asked Santa to bring me a buyer for christmas, but no .luck
I do thank you for sharing your thoughts and knowledge, I enjoy your articles.
Hi Elliot –
I have bought a few new gTLD’s – and sold a few 🙂
My top 10;
Live.Casino
Mobile.Casino
Travel.Money
Compare.Loans
Instalment.Loans (and Installment)
Customer.Services
Recruitment.Agency
Merchant.Services
Rose.Gold
Park.Domains
Hope you have a great new year and looking forward to reading your posts in 2016.
My companies esp BullS is not interested in gtlds.
It goes against the company policies and mantra.
I think the one that has some potential is .Club. Reg’d over 20.
Overall .com will remain the king. Nothing will displace that anytime soon.
Most gTLD’s will never see the light of day active on the Internet. They’re total high risk speculation and with a handful of exceptions will be zero return investments.
Hi Elliot,
Happy New Year. I own quite a few New GTLDs. Here are a few:
Blonde.rocks
Brunette.rocks
Digital.photography
Easy.company
Glamour.photography
Jewish.rocks
Kiwi.rocks
Manhattan.xyz
Milan.xyz
TelAviv.click
I was skeptical about new tld’s years ago, but have opened myself to the likelihood that they will become an important part of the internet moving forward. For me, I invested in .business (NewYork.business), .energy (gas.energy), .miami (business.miami), and a handful of others that pose good risk/reward ratio over time. I am definitely seeing signs of life with new tld’s beginning to be adopted.
In 2008, the internet and economic climate were quite different than they are today. I believe we have room for further economic recovery if certain political factors align. If they do, I think we will see a resurgence in domain investing and heightened relevance in the role of the internet in the global economy. This would greatly support the new tld paradigm.
In order for the new G’s to do well this ‘recovery’ talk nonsense has to end.
New G’s will only do will in a real economic ‘expansion’.
That said, I wouldn’t bet on it as there is too much debt and malinvestment in the system that need to be purged.
Happy 2016 all !1111111
@Menius.
You say that the current climate is different than 2008, which is true, but what happens if we have another serious downturn? Who in their right mind will want to hold on to new TLDs for 5+ more years until the economy stabilizes again?
Anyone remember how everyone was dumping non-performers in 2008, meaning domains that did not make money parking or were not getting sales leads? It was a bloodbath. Some people left the industry and never came back. Now we have all this new blood that doesn’t remember that….LOL. New TLDs are like a roach motel where roaches keep going in but they never go out. 🙂
Which would you rather own in a serious downturn great .coms or great new TLDs?
To answer Elliott’s question, hell no, I own absolutely none.
Data.agency
Credit.agency
Trade.domains
Security.center
Digital.center
Image.center
Fuel.center
Message.money
Visual.marketing
Label.marketing
Cannabis.land
Rejuvenation.institute
Fly.school
Happy New Year “2016” !!!
Please don’t share your domain names!
“Please don’t share your domain names!’
REMOVE THEM!!
Driving through a one road one bridge UK town, noted a 6 sheet ad for !!!!!!.Wedding, made me stop & think this works and I do not like GTLD’s Checked London which had gone as with all the cities globally, naturally broke London into its constituent areas and reg Knightsbridge, Kensington, Mayfair & a few more, one year only but what a one off opportunity.
Remove the name please as you have requested “Please don’t share your domain names!”
I own some and have had a couple four digit sales this year in the space. Working on an other right now. If you got the right names, there are buyers out there!
Happy New Year Elliot! See you in Vegas!
Nice!
Yes – see you soon. Safe travels.
Do you have any new G’s AND the matching .COM? Those opportunities in 2015 were rare, but on three occasions I was able to doubleback and reg the com splicing a one-word .ZONE, .XYZ, and .PARTY
The list of countries visiting .Zone domains is longer than the next ten extensions that come to mind. Look at the AWSTATs for each month of 2015, then try to think of a country doesn’t know about .Zone
Not that it’s going to change the world, but the whole world connected with it almost instantly.
I’m curious how many of the 11 million new gTLDs are chips / numerics.
Bought about 100 single word .pics domain just to give a try, and a few 3L .website domains.
we only own newyork.mba and we are planning to establish a mba program reviews site on it.
btw we created this infographic about new gtlds, hope you like it – https://domainpromo.com/1757/top-gtld-sales-2015
have a fab year elliot!
EMPHATIC “HECK NOOOOO”!!!!!
THEY SUCK!!!!!
Also, .NEWS is finding pretty early support and interest overall. This is one in my view that’s a logical, well-defined new tld. Stands a good chance of long-term viability because it has relevance, has no equal or substitute, and has broad business/media appeal.
I have bought 1,200 G’s and i dropped about 200.
I’m happy i bought about 400 .club names of which 53 NNN.club and 100 NNNN.club
I bought:
.audio
.click
.club
.media
.online
.parts
.sexy
.solutions
.tips
.today
NO .xyz
Happy New Year Elliot !
Thanks for all your posts in 2015
Hi,
happy new year to all 🙂
I own only 3 good new gtld :
recognize.online
recognition.online
evenings.club
have bought
.news
.club
.healthcare
.lawyer
where they were related to .com i already own or where i couldnt affordably buy the .com but the sector has large growth due to megatrends, ie boomers aging, etc
GTLD = Good To Lose Dinero
Strictly .CLUB
Naw, they all suck big time.
A very few most .coms here.
I started buying new gTLDs as soon as this concept was live and have many domains with extensions:
.CLOTHING
.SOLUTIONS
.INTERNATIONAL
.EDUCATION
.MANAGEMENT
.CLUB
.GALLERY
.KIM
.ONL
.PICTURES
.DELIVERY
.SUPPLY
.LINK
.PINK
.UNO
.SYSTEMS
.HOUSE
.AGENCY
.COMPANY
.FUTBOL
.WORK
.SERVICES
and more.
I bought them all within last one year or so. I reserved by keeping in mind the end user most of which are Companies having worth in millions of dollars.
I did not touch the brands and trademarks and reserved only general terms which are either almost similar to the name of a Company or makes it exactly similar after adding the extension.
Though so far I have not gained a lot from my investments but I believe that future belongs to new gTLDS as gradually short and precise names with new extensions will be popular. For example why a Company engaged in the business of valuation management would not be interested in acquiring a short and precise VALUATION.MANAGEMENT
So good luck and Happy New Year to everyone.
In my opinion as someone who is primarily an end user and only secondarily someone who likes to occasionally sell, the only truly great ones are these two:
.Gold
.Club
They are the figurative “diamonds and gold” of the new gTLDs.
These are also good ones:
.shop (not here yet of course)
.web (not here yet of course)
.online
.site
.link
.loans
.loan
.news
.money
.poker (in a more limited sense)
.game (same note as for .poker)
.casino (same note as .poker)
.business is a bit long, but is nonetheless what I would describe as “pretty good” for a number of end user uses.
Possibly passable for a few uses while undesirable for most:
.xyz
The geo’s like .Vegas and .NYC I would also generally rank among the best, but I consider them to be in a different category, the regional category like ccTLDs.
Regarding .Gold:
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in the blogs recently I follow the gold market regularly in addition to the domain industry, but I would venture to guess that few in domain investing do. In a nutshell, aside from .gold’s killer intrinsic appeal for a wide variety of both literal and figurative uses, with “gold” being one of the most commonly and cheerfully used metaphors and figures of speech applied to many areas of life every day – and with all that alone sufficient to make it truly great and desirable with such positive connotations already, the following is also extremely notable: China is both the world’s largest consumer and producer of gold; China’s demand for gold is high and expected to likely expand and increase, regardless of their interest in other assets and investments like domain names; the Shanghai Gold Exchange is the largest physical bullion marketplace in the world; China recently made the historic move of joining the World Gold Council for the first time; gold has steadily been flowing from west to east; despite calls for auditing the US gold reserves such as at Fort Knox, this type of public accountability, openness and transparency regarding these national resources has so notably and steadfastly been refused, and for good reasons many are inclined to believe the potentially scandalous reality is that “there is something rotten in Denmark” and that the official US figures are no longer true (without accountability and transparency, who can say); while China recently announced a remarkably large increase in their official gold reserves after a very long period of silence, for good reasons practically nobody believes the real figure is not actually far greater than the official figure they have announced, which one can read about; China may dominate the entire global gold market before long; although gold is currently down from its 2011 high, which many including some illustrious people with very illustrious backgrounds believe is largely due to agenda-based manipulation unfortunately, even some who view the matter only through mathematics and technical analysis and who are not “gold bugs” by any means expect an upward shift in sentiment and long term transition upwards (that includes some who not only have spoken about upward shift before but have even called for downward shift before as well, with a track record of being right even to a remarkable degree, (by definition also precluding one from being considered a “gold bug”); the fake “paper” market currently vulnerable to undue manipulation can sometimes be extremely out of sync with the reality of true physical demand, with true demand for actual gold tending to be high in such cases despite actions in the “paper” arena, and it seems that kind of phenomenon may not be able to last forever as more people call attention to the problem and implications of the anomaly.
The issue for .gold and obvious reason why it never gets talked about and has such a paltry # of registrations, however, is certainly obvious – the extremely high pricing. As I’ve also indicated elsewhere, if it were a $10 domain or so, however, then instead of the paltry 2000+ regs it now has would probably be in at least the 50,000 to 100,000+ range, and people seeking to register domain names who see it in search results would normally tend to immediately think along the lines of “I like that, I want that, and I’m going to get it now,” etc. because of it’s super strong intrinsic appeal.
So some of the new gTLDs are certainly among the diamonds, gold, silver, marble and precious stones, while most are simply wood, hay, straw, rubble and mud.
P.S. Also notably I would add, by the way, I noticed a while ago that “industry luminary” 🙂 Michael Berkens snapped up at least one .gold during EAP that would normally have cost around $3,000. Was particularly interesting at the time and certainly a nice one. 🙂
Regarding .gold, I only bought one:
3D.Gold
Gtlds are all worthless. You are wasting your time.
Very nice one, Raymond.
LOL. Well thanks for letting me know, Anonymous…
I own only one .center domain. A great keyword that makes sense attached to this extension looks really good. 2 words are okay, more than 2 words not good IMO for this extension. I’ve had a handful of offers for my center domain. I’ve turned down 5 figure offers for it. I’m not budging. If you own a .center domain with a premium keyword that you feel is worth a lot more than you’ve been offered, you may be right. These domain names are unique. There can only be one *keyword.center* domain.
I own only one .center domain. A great keyword that makes sense attached to this extension looks really good. 2 words are okay, more than 2 words not good IMO for this extension. I’ve had a handful of offers for my center domain. I’ve turned down 5 figure offers for it. I’m not budging. If you own a .center domain with a premium keyword and you think it’s worth more than what you’ve been offered,you may be right. Domains with this extension are unique and there can only be one *keyword.center* domain name.
The “problem” with ones like .center and a whole host of others is that there are only a few keywords that could go well with them, while jamming most other words before the dot would simply be undesirable awkward rubbish. So, unlike for great and good TLDs like .gold, .club, .online, .site, and .link, they are EXTREMELY limited and practically worthless as TLDs in that sense. Even .game is much more versatile in that way, since there are many nice “outside the box” ways of using .game. Ones like .loans, .loan, and the poker and casino ones are also limited in scope for good keyword combinations, though they are still good.
How can you compare .gold and .game to a .center and even call a .center worthless? Not bashing these other extensions but dot center is an extension suited for serious business purposes. You can’t build a company around a domain name that you want to be taken seriously with a dot Game and a dot Gold. .gold is for Gold and .game is for a Game. .center is a place for business and services.
Based on your statement, not even .com would be wise to use for business and services, since it is by no means apparent what it could possibly mean, and one needs to be given extra information in the form of a history lesson to discover that it had anything to do with “commerce” or “commercial” use as originally intended. If one had to guess now without being given extra information, one might even guess it could just be an abbreviation for “communication.” To this day I still have never seen any authoritative statement on that, either, but only people claiming that was the original intent behind .com.
Based on your statement the term “Web” is also the height of supremely stupid and inappropriate, not to mention “World Wide Web.” In case you or anyone else hasn’t noticed or has forgotten, “Web” itself is the most quintessential of metaphors used to name this most serious of global ventures that has so changed the world, with a term that is both meaningful and appealing.
So are you being serious or just trolling? It’s hard to say for sure, especially with a screen name like “Gabriel Toby lol.”
I already touched upon what makes both .Gold and .Game so excellent and versatile beyond the immediately literal and obvious, especially the former. And upon being reminded of even the little I wrote about that, especially for the term “gold,” anyone who is native to the US and I would daresay most or all other primarily English speaking countries, and probably many non-primarily English speaking countries as well, would immediately recognize not only what I was talking about, but even realize that they themselves apply those terms metaphorically themselves to very many kinds of things in life both frequently and happily. So did you not see my other posts? Are you unmindful of such things? Are you among a small minority of people who ignore the great common and well loved metaphors of life, or are you a “hyper-literal” person who ignores them perhaps?
Also, I would wonder if English is your primary native language or not. Are you not familiar with the phrase “think outside the box”? I’m giving you my honest opinion as an end user, too: to me .center is close to worthless except for a small number of the best possible keywords one could put with it. It may be useful in dead, dry, literal, “clinically” accurate, and mostly unappealing and uncaptivating sense if one has nothing else to use on the “Web,” but it certainly does not capture and ignite the soul and the positive connotations of life, does not put a smile on one’s face and attract – the way terms like Gold and Game do both when they are applied figuratively and literally. And very serious people most certainly do happily and readily embrace and employ those terms like Gold and Game both figuratively and literally all the time as a way of life. Scarcely a day or a week goes by in which one does not read or hear someone refer to something figuratively as actually being “gold” in life, for example, something which of course is not literally the metal itself, or making reference to the topic they are addressing followed by the world “gold” to refer to the best of the particular word they have placed before it – and everyone knows immediately what they mean and happily relate to it; and scarcely a day or a week or a month goes by in which one does not also do that oneself and not merely hear or read someone else doing it. Do I even need to say any of this as if anyone does not know all this or has known and done it all their lives?
So not sure what to make of you, whether you could even really mean what you wrote or not.
One serious, sober and also cheerful thing I do know, however: both .Gold and .Game are nothing less than…pure gold. Perfect for the online publishing and commerce game. Pure Web gold.
P.S. In addition to all of the above, “.center” is also rather long, “trying-too-hard,” boring and unappealing except for a few best keywords. Not so good for the online publishing and commerce game. And that’s pure business advice gold I’m giving you here.
I own about a dozen – mainly .club, a few .directory, and a few random others.
I have names in
.xyz
.club
.shoes
.soccer
.business
.ninja
.click
If I show you those names, you may have a rethink of the potentials of new TLDs.
.com commands because it was the defacto for so long. If all extensions were to start a fresh race today, I doubt we will have the same sentiments as we currently have for .coms
My answer is .top