Ducking Out Or In For The Long Haul?

[manyagem]

So, early this year many of the new gTLDs will come up for renewal. Has it been a bad experience for domainers? Will you be dropping many that looked promising early on? Which ones should be held?

My instinct tells me that the longest extensions (.ventures .solutions etc) are a waste of space, but I feel like hanging on to the shorter more pithy ones like .tips .link and especially .club.

 

[SamirPC]

I agree completely. Being new to the domain game I'm lucky to not have gone through this stage (My first domain which will hit renewal decision period is not till around September of this year. I got myself 5 free .webcam domains on AlpNames. I had a lot of potential considering they were offered to me for the first year free, with no contract to renew, but my choices were either taken, reserved or too long. In the end I picked up some adult .webcams and stuff like nycity and djs .webcam but most of them I'll drop. gTLDs are so confusing that even when people are being confronted with them at the registrar websites, people just back off from that section of the registrar websites just to get to their well known country tlds // .com or occasionally .net

 

[katherine]

I don't understand why people invest in those extensions in the first place. There is so much choice, that end users have plenty of alternatives to bypass secondary market purchases, should they even be willing to try a new extension...
Maybe a few TLDs like .club will fare 'better' than others, but 'better' is relative. Read: less worse.
The outlook is grim when the rare sales are almost always made by the same seller: the registry.

 

[NameYourself]

Katherine has it spot on.

If they don't want the traditional, .com or respective .cctld, anyone willing to buy an alternate extension has endless choices. It's a losing game folks, the registry already owns the domains and prices them accordingly. I don't know why this concept is so hard to realize. What are .mobis selling for nowadays? I'm not saying there is zero value, but most of it has already been sucked dry by premium renewal pricing or withheld altogether by the registry. What's left are scraps in a sea of endless extensions that will see a flood of drops, and mass price reductions.

 

[EM @MAJ.com]

I have a manageable renewal of $2000 for my domains. So I'm good.

 

[BostonDomainer]

I'm in it for the long haul particularly in the .Network arena and 2 others. I didn't skimp on the toppings there. The way I see it if you are going to invest in any of the gtld's money is best spent on the guaranteed top .05- 1% best fitted names per gtld.... also, it doesn't hurt to own the .com or the .com is buyable. Also, I stayed solely in the areas where I consider myself an expert in and have had great success in. Despite the temptation, I didn't dabble in anything that didn't fit into my core business model. And like KING above, I budgeted for the renewals.

That said... in it for the long haul baby!

 

[manyagem]

I'm dropping at least 90% of those I registered last year, even one or two that ought to be highly prized. If nobody picks them up, that will confirm the overwhelming view here. However, I still think the 10% I hang on to could eventually pay back on the investment. The question is: will I live that long?