Stockbrokers.com or .Stockbrokers?

Peter Dengate Thrush posted the tweet below in reference to a Namepros interview with the owners of Stockbrokers.com. I presume because Stockbrokers.com was acquired for $185,000 and the application fee for the first round of new gTLD domain extensions was also $185,000, Peter mentioned the following:

I would have chosen Stockbrokers.com over .Stockbrokers for 4  reasons:

1) Stockbrokers.com is a great brand name, as I believe all strong keyword .com domain names are. The owners have capitalized on this branding and have increased the brand awareness of Stockbrokers.com by successfully building a business on the domain name.

2) The cost to renew Stockbrokers.com is around $8 a year. Maybe they are paying a bit more or less depending on the registrar, but the annual renewal fee is small. There is also not much of a cost to keep the domain name resolving to the proper website. The annual cost for a new gTLD extension like .Stockbrokers is much, much higher. They would also likely have to pay a company to manage and operate the TLD on their behalf.

3) As Rubens Kuhl pointed out in the abvoe Twitter thread, the owners of Stockbrokers.com were able to get a 3 year head start. Depending on the application approval and draw, they might not even have a live website running on .Stockbrokers yet.

4) There would be less confusion operating  the .com domain name than the new extension. Instead of branding Stockbrokers.com, they would likely have to teach people what .Stockbrokers is, and it would possibly even necessitate the subsequent purchase of Stockbrokers.com, perhaps at a higher price. Further, what would they choose as their domain name – www.stockbrokers, home.stockbrokers, weare.stockbrokers…etc?

To expound on  Peter’s analogy, sometimes it’s better to be a tenant in a prominent building (.com) than to own a building, especially when the building hasn’t been built yet and the location of the proposed building is in a part of town that isn’t visited or known by prospective visitors  (.stockbrokers).

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

26 COMMENTS

    • What a difference a “com” or its non-existence can make and the place of the dot.

      But don’t forget that Stockbrokers will not resolve. Having http://www.stockbrokers will puzzle lots of consumers, at least in the coming few years. So… would try to secure both if I could.

  1. Stockbrokers.com is by far the better name-as an investment or a site to build out. Go try and auction-after a year or two- the .stockbrokers name vs Stockbrokers.com and see what happens. I think we all know the outcome.

  2. Your fourth point hits the nail on the head. If you want to have a site, owning .stockbrokers doesn’t do you any good. You need to pick a second level domain, and suddenly what you’re comparing is something like home.stockbrokers to stockbrokers.com. I’d take the latter any day.

    (By the way, you’re examples of second level domains actually include .com at the end).

    Owning .stockbrokers puts a lot of additional burdens on a company that just wants to run a website. Now it’s a registry. It has registrant customers. It has legal bills and ongoing $25k ICANN fees. Nevermind that the application fee for a new TLD is only a smart part of the total upfront cost.

  3. I’ve conducted a few of these “Inside Interviews” now, and the one consistent fact among all interviewees is that .COM is king. In fact, on my Nuts.com interview, Jeff Braverman told me:

    “Can’t predict the future, but right now when I see something that is not a .com, I questioned the validity and credibility of the business”

    There was a similar theme with StockBrokers.com. Their annual report was far better received when using the stockbrokers.com domain name, versus tradewise.com that they previously used. I doubt they’d have the same success with .stockbrokers instead.

  4. Can you even use these new, looong extensions for email??? Will the system work with that many characters after the dot??

    • No, not all systems recognize it yet. I “invested” in a .email gtld for my own personal use and 50% of all of my online services are currently rejecting the extension as a properly formatted domain. It will probably be a while.

  5. As a person who supports and appreciates the new gTLD phenomenon in principle, I say “.stockbrokers” is about as embarrassing and imo poorly conceived embarrassment of a TLD as “.xyz,” much more so even. I would also contend that if you own StockBrokers.com, you do own the building and are not a tenant. Each of the best .com’s is a building unto itself as far as I’m concerned, just as is each of the best of the new gTLDs. “.stockbrokers” is no building; it’s an cardboard box hastily set up on the side of the road, waiting to be knocked down as people pass right by it, sometimes looking at it unfavorably.

    Don’t let an embarrassing TLD like that be used to denigrate the best of the rest.

  6. Hands down Stockbrokers.com is better than *.stockbrokers.

    .stockbrokers is such a long word for something right of the dot that it’s sure to cause confusion.

    Stockbrokers.com is short, works as a brand, and is memorable. And that’s really the important thing for domain name.

  7. Nonsense argument. So would you rather own a building in South Central or rent a property in Beverly Hills?

    StockBrokers.com is way better than .StockBrokers

    .StockBrokers is just a domain extension. And then you have to add some keyword to it. What would it be? Good.StockBrokers, Best.StockBrokers, Whatever.StockBrokers

  8. Does anyone know anyone who even uses a “stock broker” anymore rather than a self-service discount brokerage like TD A. or Scottrade?

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