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Would gTLDs Survive and Thrive Without Domain Investor Support?

Elliot Silver
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15

It’s widely believed that one of the reasons that the .CO Registry launch was so successful was due to the financial “support” of domain investors who purchased a great deal of .CO domain names.

Some investors bought domain names for development, and others bought them for speculative reasons. I’ve discussed at length the reasons I think .CO makes sense, so I will spare you those details, but I think the money that domain investors spent was a big reason for the very successful launch of .CO.

That brings me to ask this question: Would new gTLD registries survive and thrive without the support of domain investors?

I am sure companies that want to run registries will look at the .CO launch and maybe even .MOBI launch results to model out the potential for their own registry. Should domain investors not heavily invest in every new gTLD, one can assume these modeled numbers will be way off. If that’s the case, the ability to survive on much less cash flow could be compromised.

My gut says that with the considerable costs of applying for a gTLD, cost of legal defense related to trademark holders, and the expense of marketing the gTLD to a non-domain proficient audience (businesses in the local markets of geographic gTLDs), it will be difficult for new gTLDs to thrive without significant investment from domain investors.

Do you think a new gTLD would survive and thrive without investment from domain investors?

Recent Purchases… How About You?

Elliot Silver
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375

I haven’t hand registered many new domain names lately, but I’ve been bidding on quite a few at NameJet as well as buying in private. I want to share some of my recent acquisitions and would be interested in hearing about yours.

Some of the names have been sold already, some have been purchased to flip, and at least one is going to be developed by me.

  • DogGroomers.com (almost launched)
  • SlipperyElm.com (Google it)
  • BootWarmer.com
  • AlpacaFurs.com
  • AntiqueCollections.com (1996 registration date, predates Antiques.com)
  • VegetableGarden.com
  • DogWasteDisposal.com
  • NashuaJobs.com
  • LimestoneTile.com
  • OffshoreWebHosting.com
  • VineyardEquipment.com
  • SchoolPsychologist.com
  • VisitSaoPaulo.com
  • HorseCorrals.com

I don’t really have a specific interest as you can see, but looking more for aged, exact match product or service domain names in .com only.

What have you bought recently?

Smart Marketing for Stowe Vacation Home

Elliot Silver
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2

Every year, I try to plan an annual meeting. It’s smallish because I have a small company with only one employee, but I like to hold it to get away and take a few friends to brainstorm some new ideas for the upcoming year.

I decided to hold the February meeting for an extra long weekend at Stowe Mountain’s Stonybrook Resort in Stowe, Vermont. I searched for a vacation home to rent on HomeAway.com and VRBO.com, two vacation rental websites I hadn’t used before.

I also searched Google for vacation homes in Stowe. As it turns out, the owners of the home that I chose have a website specifically to market the home:  StoweVacationHome.com. The home was also listed on VRBO.com, which I used to facilitate the agreement.

I can’t say that the only reason I chose this home was because of the domain name, but there were three I was considering, and the generic domain name was the deciding factor for me.

It also spurred me to hand register KillingtonVacationHome.com, SquawValleyVacationHome, SnowmassVacationHome.com, and WhistlerVacationHome.com. Not sure if I will get into that business, but I do know that HomeAway owns names like VailVacationHome.com and DestinVacationHome.com.

Maybe some day, I will trade each of those domain names for a week’s vacation!

Photo: Flickr

Props to Berkens

Elliot Silver
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0

Although he probably won’t read this as he’s en route to Colombia for the ICANN conference, I want to give props to Mike Berkens and his blog on this third anniversary of its existence.

Mike really has no need to spend his time blogging. His company has one of the top private domain portfolios in existence. Dan Warner published a report that revealed the domains in Most Wanted Domains’ portfolio had the most (or top 5) Whois lookups of any privately held company. Mike’s company’s nameservers were also named one of the “cleanest” in terms of trademarks out of the nameservers with the most domain names.

In other words, not only does Mike own a lot of domain names that are coveted by others, but his portfolio is unarguably made up of generic/descriptive domain names. He also sells domain names from time to time, and when he does, he gets top dollar for them.

Clearly, Mike isn’t blogging to make money.

Mike writes one of the most thoughtful and insightful blogs (if not the most insightful) I read, and I really appreciate his thoughts and ideas. Not only does he have the domain experience, but he also has legal experience as well, which allows him to analyze issues and write them with clarity I wouldn’t get elsewhere. I can’t tell you how many times there was something I didn’t understand until reading about it on his blog.

In addition to this, Mike is one of the most approachable people in the domain space. If you’re at a domain conference, you’ll see him surrounded by friends and colleagues, and he’s always willing to give his time to chat. If Mike isn’t attending a domain conference, it probably isn’t worth going.

When Mike revealed that he had 2,400 posts in 3 years, my jaw dropped. I think I started my blog about 4 months before he did, and he has over 500 more posts than me. Knowing how much time it takes to blog, one really needs to give kudos to Mike’s wife, Judi. I am sure there have been plenty of dinners and events put on hold briefly while writing posts.

I want to say “thanks” to Mike in a blog post for all of his contributions. There aren’t a lot of people who would be willing to share as much as he does (time and insight), and it’s genuinely appreciated.

Sedo Gets Memory.com and Wood.com Exclusivity

Elliot Silver
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0

SedoI’ve noticed that quite a bit of the higher value sales reported in DNJournal of late have been made by Sedo. Earlier this week, I wrote about Sedo getting exclusivity on a great gambling domain name, Gambling.com. It seems like the company is on quite a roll.

Today, I’ve learned that Sedo has gotten the domain names Memory.com and Wood.com under exclusive contract to sell.

I think Memory.com is a great domain name because computer memory is very easy to sell online. I don’t know what the margins are like, but I know a company like Crucial.com makes it simple for people to order memory upgrades. The physical product is small, so inventory expenses are probably light compared to other products.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a company like Micron (owners of Crucial) make an offer to buy Memory.com. Not only would an acquisition like Memory.com make its brand more intuitive, but it would also prevent a startup or competitor from making a big impact on its offering.

Ryan Colby is the broker for both of these domain names and you can be in touch with him by emailing Ryan.Colby at Sedo. Another domain name of interest may be Karate.com, which I understand has seen a price drop since the DomainFest auction where the reserve was $500k-750k.

Update: WikiLeaks.org Not Online, Neither is WikiLeaks.com

Elliot Silver
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8

First it appeared that Godaddy (or Wikia, Inc.) was monetizing WikiLeaks.com traffic that was intended for WikiLeaks.org website by placing sponsored links on the standard coming soon landing page.

Next, it appeared that Godaddy had taken down all of the sponsored links on the WikiLeaks.com landing page, perhaps in response to complaints about it monetizing the traffic. Some people still felt this wasn’t the right thing to do and thought that Godaddy should not have WikiLeaks.com resolve at all.

Now, the day after the DNS was removed from WikiLeaks.org, effectively taking it offline (until it moved offshore to WikiLeaks.ch), it appears that WikiLeaks.com has nothing on its website. The current WikiLeaks.com website says “Sorry this site is not currently available.”

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