The Las Vegas Sun published an interesting article about the .Vegas new gTLD extension this morning. I would like your thoughts on why there are only about 15,000 .Vegas domain names registered. Compared to other city new gTLD extensions like .NYC, .Berlin, and .London, .Vegas is “lagging” as the article title mentions.
The Las Vegas Sun article cited two local business owners with different perspectives on .Vegas domain names. Anthony Carlitto, a local business consultant, mentioned one major issue people in the domain industry continue to point out: there isn’t much consumer awareness of the new extensions. Michael Kruse, a local real estate agent who switched to a .Vegas domain name, cited an increase in traffic to his website. To be honest, I don’t know if I would agree that his .com domain name is “clunkier” than his new one: LVRealEstate.vegas vs. LasVegasHomesByMike.com.
Although I am not really an investor in domain names with the new extensions, I would have thought city new gTLD extensions would be amongst the most popular new domain name extensions. It seems more easy to create a brand around a local extension because there is a more contained and local audience for them compared to other extensions. Las Vegas isn’t a huge city, but “Vegas” is a major brand known throughout the world.
I wouldn’t speculate about whether I would want to use a .Vegas domain name if I owned a local business in Las Vegas (or had a business with ties to Las Vegas), but I would probably not hesitate to spend the annual registration fee, even if it was only for defensive purposes. With only 15k domain names registered, I would guess the majority of local businesses could register their own .Vegas domain name right now.
I am curious why you think .Vegas hasn’t taken off yet.
The problem is that they reserved all of the good ones, which I understand and was expected, but the biggest problem is that they wont return phone calls or emails to sell them. I have inquired about a number of high profile terms and have yet to get a response.
James: This is the first I have about this. Let me know who you talked to, when and I will follow up. Generally we are very good at follow through.
Jim T
Why .Vegas hasn’t taken off yet.
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas…
got it??
you got the joke!!
The population of Vegas is only a small fraction of NYC, London and Berlin. As a percentage of population, how many people really need or want a domain name for something local, and of them how many people are willing to pay a price that’s much higher than .com or .net if all they want to do is register a new one? Even though the city has grown, as far as global interest goes people may want to visit Las Vegas, but that doesn’t mean they want to live there or care about any of the “normal” local businesses beyond what are already well known and easily findable tourist destinations.
I’d say it’s really not much of a surprise. And while some may not want to hear it, pricing is an issue. People don’t want to pay registration fees that are much higher than legacy TLDs, but if they were to price them lower I very strongly suspect that sales and public awareness would take off and new gTLD operators could see far more profits and success than they do or would otherwise.
Small problem… The Big White Elephant in the New gTLD room:
“one major issue people in the domain industry continue to point out: there isn’t much consumer awareness of the new extensions.”
Amazingly people are still regging under the Pink Lemonade aka “The londoner” spell
@ F.S.: on one thing you were right: “greed will trump fear”
look at the last dnjournal report and tell me how many New gTLD sales do you see?
The most obvious reason for the difference between .Vegas and .Berlin is that the .Vegas registration number probably haven’t been skewed with mostly free registrations.
““I don’t see any way for it to be valuable,” Carlitto said.”
Amen.
I invested heavily, in Las Vegas domain names in the year 2000. 16 years and holding my domain names and very rarely, I get an inquiry. When, the .Vegas came out, I knew it would flop. I plan to build the sites out, and put my casino chip collection and my swizzle stick collection and all my Vegas memorabilia on the sites. Las Vegas and domain names are my passion.
“James Trevino, CEO and president of Dot Vegas Inc., estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 Web addresses would be registered in the first year the .vegas suffix is approved, which would provide the city with $150,000 to $250,000 under the revenue sharing agreement.”
They are currently at 15,000, just a bit short of their projections 🙂
The good news is Las Vegas makes $0.50 per registration. That $7,500 should really help the city out. #FAIL
Brad
I see local .Vegas being used in print ads and radio locally. its slow going and i think it is unreasonable to expect new gtlds to have high registrations overnight.
If a mere half the city of Vegas registered one of these names they could easily make those projected numbers.
I blame the registry operators. Clearly a .vegas domain is something everyone in Vegas should own.
According to this article : http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200412/vegas.html (a little dated) there are over 70k businesses in Las Vegas too. Every single one of them should have a .vegas. They’d be easily making some dough then.
How many Not-so New gTLD Sales can you find at SEDO latest weekly report? and how many the previous week?