Would gTLDs Survive and Thrive Without Domain Investor Support?

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?

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

15 COMMENTS

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

    Nope.

    Of course, we won’t hear a single negative peep out of the buyers /registrees of these junk tlds … instead, we’ll just get to watch as these tlds quietly change hands (some over and over again) every couple of years … each time the money runs out.

  2. Elliot,
    There were reasons why so many domains got sold, .co could be interpreted as company,internationally,and thats #1factor.I just wish i would have more money to buy more “junk tlds”.I dont see a new tld to come in the future to have the success that .co had.To answer your question,the investors are there because there is pottential in this particular tld,as apose to some of the new tlds that come out.

  3. If your going to build a new website and can’t afford the .com get the .net that will make since to people but if you try to tell someone about your .co website their probably just going to think your stupid and forgot the “m” 🙂

    Anyway with parked .com domains not making money who wants to park a bunch of worthless .co’s

    Their is a lot of good .com’s selling right now for a few thousand or hundred dollars that will be worth a lot more then those dumb .co’s or any new gTLD! haha

    What is next .hot?

  4. Yes I agree about the international factor. It is easy just think about local domain names in the US.

    So many solid generic domain names in the .co area

    We just bought a generic .co last month that will probably be a top 10 site in the electronics field for .co names inside 18 months.

    The .co is probably going to be the last successful launch for quite a while. No need for any other extensions at this point.

  5. @ Michael,

    I think you should learn basic spelling and sentence structure before you start making recommendations to people.

    There are a large number of people that live outside of the US who are quite comfortable typing in alternative extensions. Thank god the broader community appears smarter than the average, panic ridden, whinging, closed minded domainer!

  6. Blah Blah Blah 🙂 I think much faster then I write its always been a problem! hehe

    USA is #1 because we have more money! Because we print it to buy foreign goods and then to get out of debt we just print some more!

  7. The story on .co is yet to be written but, just as some people can always seem to predict who the murderer is ten minutes into a mystery movie, there are those amongst us who have a pretty good idea about how that story ends.

  8. The so-called success of .MOBI and .CO was largely down to investment by domain speculators who got sucked in by the hype. In the case of .CO, a lot of buyers hoped for type-in traffic (don’t you think the .CO guys already checked out the traffic before they decided to flog them off?)

    If a hundred or so new gTLDs are released onto the market in a short space of time, that cashflow from speculators has to be shared amonst all the new extensions. That can only mean one thing; epic failure for all of them.

  9. I doubt gtld’s would survive, the registrars have become the domainers and the domainers have become the end users (for the most part)

    These new extensions are aimed at domainers, just look at the higher reg fees and how they hold all the “premium” ones back and auction them off.

    If there are going to be dozens of new gTLDs released onto the market it will get harder for domainers to re-sell them, not easier.

    Come to think of it I doubt GoDaddy would survive if it was’nt for domain investors “support”.

    I bought one .co, 3.TV’s, no .mobis, no .asia’s, no .me’s and I doubt I will be buying any .whatevers in the future unless its for development….maybe 😉

    I do wish everyone Good Luck though.

  10. Nah, no way. Too much too fast. If we get one tld launch every 6 months it’s easy to find investor suckers. But when there is a registry every way you look saying my my extension it kind of starts to look stupid.

    Reminds me of walking down the street here in Bali. There are shops everywhere (south east Asia style) all selling essentially the same thing only different. As I walk downthe street each shop has a promoter outside that says “Yes, Looking, Yes Shopping, come look my shop, special price, etc…”. As I pass his shop the next one does the same thing. I just keep walking. There is really no longer a special reason to shop at one place over anothr aside from convenience and habit. There are really only a very few that are actually popular on their own right. It is at least if nothing else a purely democrating shopping system.

  11. Look, .MOBI, .CO, .asia and the rest of these junk extensions only have support because of domainers. Some ccTLDs have high profiles in thier own countries, and .TV has a chance of commercial success, perhaps. But everything else, including the new junk extensions currently being proposed are only worth buying to sell to the next sucker. Dot com is king.

  12. My original feeling was that .co wasn’t worth the investment of time and energy to even get into the landrush. However, when a heard of 600,000 registrants happens within such a short time frame..it makes me think I was wrong. Will it support the values people are paying for them? My fear is that they don’t hold their value and the extension grew to quick on speculation. Hope thats not the smell of a pricing crash as many were bought at premiums.

    I’ve personally been drawn to alternate extensions such as .me and .pro as a developer as its been affordable to get premium keywords that have seo potential and that I think are have some form of brandability and commercial viability. Unless its going to be .google or .bing I think it will become increasingly difficult to maintain new registries.

  13. Resonation Xpress…

    This is how the chess game is played in regards to .Co and beyond.

    It all begins when you enter the area 51 (percent)…

    area 51 is your spot, it’s just you and the truth, the truth is nothing but an equational concept, it is reasonation vs reasonation that goes beyond not just infinity but beyond void, beyond infinity there is void, beyond void there is sumer kolcak, everything is seen, everything is well understood, everything is observed.

    just like once upon a time the subtitle of motiono read “everything in motion” this time the subtitle reads “beyond void”.

    some may say there is nothing beyond void, trust me there is, infact the only requirement here is some nice reading glasses that are to be used only 2 hours a day, this is where the truth lays, this is where the fun is at, but “fun” is defined in a fashion that it does not take your breath away, it does however take away the sensation of that there is such thing as passage of time.

    this zone is not called area 51, it is called area 75, area 75 is designated for only 2 people, one is named Sumero or sumer, the other name is yet to be mentioned altho it is a very obvious one.

    modification x you asked? what modification x, this is not your ordinary everyday science, this is not your ordinary everyday divinity stuff.

    the term “divine” here is laughed at. at area 75. area 75 does not contain ufo’s it contains only japanese language. and another language too perhaps.

    that language is also an obvious one minus 1.

    here at area 75 2 plus 2 is always 5 no matter what anybody tells you.

    here at area 75. there is no such thing as “true love”.. there is only you and silennce. but there is one song playing in the background once in a while. the song is called “millenium dance” by ‘mehdi’..

    this song will one day play out loud globally. the whole universe will hear this song one day.

    one can go from kurdish to c++ and japanese in 0.7 seconds and skip the english language completely.

    york york, i used to never skip a step before, oh york york..

    wait wait, who says i skip steps?

    this is the way love was meant to be….

    i just see no reason not to skip steps anymore.

    i just see no reason to not skip the english language anymore.

    we’re going for japanese from now on. mixed with full throttle kurdish from the very core of existence.

    .Co’s peak will be at 2013 trust me, it is a solid tld.. godaddy is doing all the right moves, if they do not sell godaddy, it should be worth more than just 7billion dollars in 3 years. they will be glad they did not sell it for 568mil or 1bil. they will be glad i played the game i played.

    everyone else, please be good, and don’t worry, i am in very good shape, i let them make the moves they make so i can decide later on in life where to go and how to do business in our lovely universe. the area that lacks the area 75.

    – Sumer Kolcak

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