free .info 's and stupid marketing

[seeker]

all this free .info thing and lowering the price is very sad.
.info is one of my favorite (well, after .com, it is my favorite) TLDs.

I spent so much time regging them, catching them...etc....
and now with this moronic behavior, all they are doing is bringing their value down AND getting people who probably will never use the domains to reg them.

Affilias is pathetic.

 

[mark]

all this free .info thing and lowering the price is very sad.
.info is one of my favorite (well, after .com, it is my favorite) TLDs.

I spent so much time regging them, catching them...etc....
and now with this moronic behavior, all they are doing is bringing their value down AND getting people who probably will never use the domains to reg them.

Affilias is pathetic.

----
wouldn't worry too much about it. .info will remain a popular extension. if you have some good ones, who knows, maybe one of those new people who ended up registering bad ones due to lack of experience in the business, will become motivated to get better ones and buy yours....or mine or anyone else's here.

 

[clemzonguy]

Affilias is pathetic.

Neulevel Is The Future :approve:

 

[DNnic]

all this free .info thing and lowering the price is very sad.
.info is one of my favorite (well, after .com, it is my favorite) TLDs.

I spent so much time regging them, catching them...etc....
and now with this moronic behavior, all they are doing is bringing their value down AND getting people who probably will never use the domains to reg them.

Affilias is pathetic.

I agree with you, it really will bring the price down... :disappoin

 

[seeker]

the 'free' thingy will be ringing in EVERYONES ears for a LONG time.
Even my 'super duper' names will be looked down at.
I'll probably get an email for me to sell my $XXX caught .info for $10 because someone who doesnt know will think I got it for free.
Why?
Because the free thingy is bound to make headlines.
They are simply stupid.
There I said it.

...
oh, and soon.
They will offer a free Big Mac menu to go with it...
Come on!!!

 

[Ed30]

Why should it bring the prices of .infos down? The good ones will retain and increase their values. The only free names being registered are crappy ones (myself included) - all the goodies are long gone.

 

[David G]

all this free .info thing and lowering the price is very sad......

Agree, this will dilute the value of .info's due to excessive supply on the market. Can you imagine how many info sales threads we will soon be seeing which will in effect obscure the good info names among so many for sale. I am lucky to say I did not buy many of them in the past.

Do you realize the percentage which are developed will now drop even more than the current poor percentage and be by far the lowest in-use tld of any. A very low number of developed sites tends to drag down the tld's exposure to the public, and its overall value.

 

[stoned]

Yeah, I havent got any! I wish I could though, I planned to develop some good site's with them. If anyone here can get some for me I would be more than happy!

 

[JuniperPark]

Did .com become less valuable when it went from $100 to $70? Or $70 to $30? Or $30 to $6.95?

If your answer is 'yes', please don't tell the buyer who paid me $1,200 for a .INFO name *today*, ok?

Some of you are showing your youth here or just plain forgetting history...

 

[Web]

I believe this policy will drop the info’s prices. In the short run the scarcity of .info will raise the price but in the long run the fact that many of the domains are own by speculators that won’t waste money in developing or advertising their domains will produce a big devaluation. Info domains need some big branches advertising their sites with the .info extension and I don't believe this is going to happen with the domains registered for free (at least with the almost all of them).

 

[clemzonguy]

If your answer is 'yes', please don't tell the buyer who paid me $1,200 for a .INFO name *today*, ok?

It depends on the name, market, and the buyer. I've sold domains for 2,3, & 4 figures but I do think these changes will have some effect on the market as a whole or else Afilias wouldn't do it. What those results will be....only time will tell. Domainsite needs to come back up. :dead:

 

[all4cost]

These are only 1 year terms - and I personally think in the long run ... It will help .info's - This Promotion is more than likely due to a lot of "Drops" Coming up (They don't want the amount of domains Reg'd to drop too suddenly) IMO ~

 

[pdkpl]

I think in the long term it will not bring the value down - .info is a good and quite popular extension and the fact that you got something for free doesn't matter - because all good names are already taken, so you won't get them for free, even though the .info itself is free at the moment. Good names will keep the value.

But it doesn't mean that I like the fact that they give it for free. I don't like it - the larger supply of the worse names will in the short term bring the value of other names down. But not for long, I hope.

 

[Leading Names]

I have my concerns also…

My main concern is that ‘us’ resellers will simply be registering tons of domains because it’s free (most of which we will drop next year). It the short term however this locks up masses of 2nd rate names which ordinarily may appeal to end users (at reg fee prices). And at the end of the day it’s those end users, who actually register to develop who build and establish the namespace – not us.

If we get into the realms of only third-rate, low quality.info names being available to register they might as well go for a .com, and most probably will.

In the short term this will only stunt the growth of the namespace, at least that’s my view.

IMO, this promotion came about because .biz registrations have been higher than .info for the last month or so and they wanted to maintain their total registrations lead.

Allowing 1 free registration per registrant would have been a great move, and a healthy one. Allowing 25 is just stupid IMO.

- Rob

 

[skylight]

i dont think i t will bring down the value. Since .info is offering free, it could mean more chance the .info will get to be developed, hence more visibility for .info

You can try NameSecure for the free 25 .info and since the 25 .info at domainsite are free, we can only wait for the site to be up. Only those really have their domains there are the poor ones because they cant manage their paid domains.

 

[David G]

I think the reason this is being so agressively marketed is similar to what NetSol did with their free transfer and free 1 yr renewal offer of last yr.

Are these free info's good for 1 yr registration? If so, the registrars are obviously offering this on the assumption that a definate percentage of free info buyers will later renew all or some of the free names at standard renewal rates, i.e. NetSol's old offer.

Of course, another reason to offer this is the registrars will have a good chance to sell other services to all the new clients such as webhosting, other domains and extra services.

Would not be surprised to also see .biz offer this too very soon.

 

[owen]

I don't know if the free .INFO specials will lower their value or not, I suspect it will not and possibly it may just increase interest in .INFO. The price paid for a domain usually seems to be based on the value of the individual domain and not so much on whether or not there are lots of less expensive names out there. There are tons of cheap .COM's but you will still get top dollar for a domain that has value. When you think about it, there is not much difference in a wholesale cost of 6.99 and free when it comes to how you are going to price a domain for resale, is there? Do you charge $6.99 less for the domain? I guess there might be a flood of domain names for 50 cents for a dollar or something like that but my guess is that those will be low quality domain names and the valuable domain names will still fetch good money.

As far as DomainSite is concerned, with our special we were hoping to just drive a little more traffic to the site. It worked too well.

 

[Mr Webname]

Won't do any harm at renewal time either :-D

 

[owen]

Won't do any harm at renewal time either :-D

That is true. Except my guess is that somewhere around 99.89% will never renew.

 

[clemzonguy]

Would not be surprised to also see .biz offer this too very soon.

.BIZ doesn't need any help it's going strong.
Small business fuels most of it's growth rather than speculators.
Neustar has a winning combo with .BIZ & .US

My guess is that somewhere around 99.89% will never renew.

If these people do not sell the domains within a year then most probably will not renew yes but most are going to try and resell them. I might be likely to continue renewing some of the names I have obtained through this offer as some relate to my business but it buys me another year to kind of "wait and see" what happen before making a comittment. I think this is very scary for the extension as it indicates to me that people did not have faith in it to begin with.

IMO, this promotion came about because .biz registrations have been higher than .info for the last month or so and they wanted to maintain their total registrations lead.

Well then let's keep good records of which registrars were offering the names for free until december and keep a database of these names and then throw them out of the total running and also record the percentage of renewals, transfers, owners, etc. :-D

But then you have the situation of reduced prices like at ENOM for $3 which also factors into the situation.

the registrars are obviously offering this on the assumption that a definate percentage of free info buyers will later renew all or some of the free names at standard renewal rates, i.e. NetSol's old offer.

I will renew or transfer wherever there is the lowest price a year from now. d