closed Is .XXX a bust for domainers and a goldmine for registrars?

[katherine]

If I had to make predictions, I would guess we will see an auction à la .asia with a few decent sales but then the auction might be the last.

I am confident that the aftermarket will be almost nil.
As always don't invest more than you can afford to lose, in particular if you have no intention of developing the domains k:

 

[David G]

I also predict the .xxx aftermarlket will be a huge disappointment to .xxx owners who also paid so excessively to register the names what with the high cost involved. Even at a low reg fee they are way over-prced since very few will have future value and little doubt not deliver natural traffic. The .xxx market seems to be based almost entirely on an insignificant number of speculators and defensive registrations only.

 

[Raider]

Just another money grab by greedy individuals who are willing to dole out money to Attorney's for the purpose of enriching themselves further off the backs of Corporations and Domainers.

Polluting the internet even more.

 

[trafficpath]

@ Raider said "Polluting the internet even more."

Just wait until ICANN rolls out another 30 -50 new tlds in the next year.

Now that will really be pollution.

It should make all cctlds and .com much more valuable IMHO

 

[David G]

@ Raider said "Polluting the internet even more."

Just wait until ICANN rolls out another 30 -50 new tlds in the next year.

Now that will really be pollution.

It should make all cctlds and .com much more valuable IMHO

Disagree strongly. All the new extensions will in all likelihood cause heavy dilution to the old existing extensions and negatively fragment the overall traffic.

 

[edmondsander]

i guess some geo xxx domains maybe not be yet registered. not all countries talk about xxx publicly.

 

[katherine]

Disagree strongly. All the new extensions will in all likelihood cause heavy dilution to the old existing extensions and negatively fragment the overall traffic.

In my view the established extensions will stand out as the ones you can trust. The real thing that has always been around.
For a serious project, nobody is going to put their critical business operations on a TLD with no track record. You can bet that we will see failures and registries even going bankrupt.
I'm not saying new TLDs will not have an impact but it will take a long time.

Many other extensions like .xxx will probably be niche extensions, they will only appeal to a tiny market segment.

When you think of it, we have fewer than 25 gTLDs today but most people (at least in America) are probably familiar with .com/.net/.org/.mil/.gov/.edu only.
They don't really know the others much, predictably they won't trust them as much.

To sum up, I think the critical asset for any extension is consumer trust.

 

[Bill F.]

This extension appeals to nobody, and is notably rejected by the obvious end users, pornography makers. That leaves domainers and extortion from established brands trying to protect their name.
When movie x ratings were introduced, that was something most filmmakers wanted to avoid. Why would the domain be any different?

 

[Raider]

When their done milking .xxx for it's worth, it wouldn't surprise me if they roll out Fetish TLD's; .hairy, .pov, .bdsm, .midget, etc

 

[Bill F.]

.midget?
I don't see any growth in that extension!

 

[AtTheLake]

ABOVE POSTER Trafficpath seems to have good thoughts on .xxx

 

[jmcc]

Normally it takes three to five years for a TLD to establish itself. In that time the sale price for domains will oscillate. However the fear of brand owners is a big driver for registrations in new gTLDs and this is very much a test run for what will happen with the new gTLDs that will appear in the next few years. But for domainers, it might be a bit of an uncertain investment (more akin to a gamble than a sure thing). Ironically if .XXX had launched during the 2005-2009 bubble, it could very well have got a million registration in the first few days.

Regards...jmcc

 

[katherine]

Normally it takes three to five years for a TLD to establish itself.

We have seen that a TLD can die even faster than that :smilewinkgrin:

 

[jmcc]

We have seen that a TLD can die even faster than that :smilewinkgrin:

Some are even dead before they make it to Landrush. There seems to be one common thread - if small domainers (not the big investors) get worried in the first few months then the TLD loses momentum and has to rely on brand protection registrations. DotAsia would be the best example of this. But the more dangerous one is where the target market loses confidence in the TLD. The DotEU would be the best example of this. The work I did on surveying about 2 million .eu websites last October found very little actual development in the ccTLD - it has turned into what can only be described as a Gateway TLD where many sites are really leading somewhere else. But a more worrying thing for .eu is that German confidence in .eu domains has fallen (growth in German .eu domains collapsed/halved in November/December 2011). It will be interesting to see the effect on the real EU ccTLDs as this kind of thing often forces growth in the ccTLDs at the expense of pseudo-ccTLDs like .eu and some of the gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

 

[DomainsInc]

Normally it takes three to five years for a TLD to establish itself. In that time the sale price for domains will oscillate. However the fear of brand owners is a big driver for registrations in new gTLDs and this is very much a test run for what will happen with the new gTLDs that will appear in the next few years. But for domainers, it might be a bit of an uncertain investment (more akin to a gamble than a sure thing). Ironically if .XXX had launched during the 2005-2009 bubble, it could very well have got a million registration in the first few days.

Regards...jmcc

the funny or scary, depending on how much money you put into .xxx is that there are more .mobi registrations every day than .xxx. you'd think people would still be regging plenty seeing as how they are new but no. over 1000 new .mobi in the last 24 hours but only 136 .xxx domains. that to me spells massive failure.

 

[jmcc]

the funny or scary, depending on how much money you put into .xxx is that there are more .mobi registrations every day than .xxx. you'd think people would still be regging plenty seeing as how they are new but no. over 1000 new .mobi in the last 24 hours but only 136 .xxx domains. that to me spells massive failure.

Well in .com terms, it would be but it is the same growth rate as a small ccTLD. The .mobi is still an underrated TLD but from memory, about 40% or so of .mobi sites were parked on Godaddy's PPC landing/parked page. But .mobi has a niche market. The problem for .XXX is that you might be able to claim to have accidentally landed on an iffy .com site in work but try explaining how you landed on a .xxx site.

Regards...jmcc