New Business 2.0/CNN Article on Boom in .US and ccTLD Domains

[Duke]

A new article from Business 2.0 writer Paul Sloan appeared on CNN.com this morning talking about the boom in ccTLDs, including .US:

Staking a claim on domains beyond dot-com

 

[whitebark]

I don't know whodatdog - if info, biz and org get tiered pricing that will only drive prices up for cctld's. If .net and .com follow after that... well cctld will be the only way to go.

And look at it from a web developers point of view - I can buy a top notch .ca for a quarter to half of what it would cost in .com. And any .ca will rank as well as a comparable .com, but when you have money left over from buying your name you can use that for SEO and advertising, thus surpassing your .com rival for no extra cost. If yahoo, msn and google change the way they display north american search results then things would be different but as they stand now, why spend till the cows come home if you are not going to be reselling the domain name?

 

[Irish31]

The number of good, one word or two word .com's are not enough for the number of people/companies out there.

I think to an extent WhoDatDog is correct, some of this stuff isn't going to go too far. But on the other hand, again, if you are a company, why pay for greatsportsgear.com when you can get sportsgear.cc for the same price and market the better name.

It will come down to what the public is going to care about. The suffix or the name itself. If you are only going to care about .com's, then enjoy the chaffe. If you want to market a good name and brand the suffix, go for it.


I know what I would rather have.

 

[Bill Roy]

Duke,

That is a nice article, although again very brief. Thank you for pointing it out to us all.

BillBo

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

I am sure Ron reviewed such documentation first. I know I have numerous $XXXXX sale sthis year and still he asked me

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

Just typed in the domain and...available... eu.st ibm.st kelly.st etc etc tec $35 a year.

http://www.nic.st/whois.php?varName=college.st

 

[Bill Roy]

LJP that is €35 a year not $35. But if you do plan on registering 10 or more join their partner program and the price reduces tremendously.

2 letter domains are €999 for the first year.

 

[Irish31]

This is getting interesting..........

 

[zouzas]

nice sales for this new extension of ugly ducklings.

In July, Hotels.eu sold for $330,000, according to Sedo, and Shopping.eu fetched $200,000.

in dukes report tonight.

 

[carlton]

nice sales for this new extension of ugly ducklings.

In July, Hotels.eu sold for $330,000, according to Sedo, and Shopping.eu fetched $200,000.

in dukes report tonight.

Had not heard ... impressive sales. Wonder if originally acquired with the Benelux trademarks. I see no mention of trademark claims in the whois.

 

[eq78]

No SHERLOCK don't have but two .us domains always knew who you were on both forums It was just good to see that over there they did not allow this bs

 

[Duke]

The funds we reported for the College.st sale definitely changed hands. We require documentation (copies of financial records) before reporting a sale. In some cases, including this one, we go beyond that. Since this was the first high .st sale report we received I wanted to make sure it was real so I contacted the CEO at the escrow company that handled the transaction (whom I met personally at the Domain Roundtable conference last spring) to get a direct confirmation from him that the documents I had were real and that they had received payment, taken their commission, received confirmation from the buyer they had received the domain, and disbursed funds. He confirmed everything was correct.

I can't imagine anyone going to those lengths to fake a low five-figure sale in a small ccTLD as any lone sale at that level is not going to have a material impact on the overall market for domains in that extension. However, if someone wants to hire a private investigator and see if they can find some connection between the American buyer and the seller in the UK, by all means be my guest.

 

[David G]

Sounds like Ron did his due diligence and even beyond. Why do you think DNJ was 'had' ?

The one odd thing is that after more than 2 mos it resolves to the .st extension registry page so a little surprising after paying so much money it still does not have at least a temporary website or at least go to a regular parking page.

P.S. The buyers name is far from common. All I could find on the name was this: http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/...4/CROSSROADS/606040389/0/NEWS&theme=GRADS2006 Perhaps not the same person but could be the same since the name is a college name and she may be a college student soon. Maybe she is going into business promoting all the college streets around the nation?

 

[DomainEngineer]

When all the good looking girls are taken most people have to settle for the ugly ones. If they were smart they would just find a way to get enough money so they could get the pretty ones. Ugly girls sometimes have nice personalities, but nobody dreams about meeting one. There's a sucker born every minute.

IReit has shown a great ability to raise money from billionaires. The constant pushing of the .us and IReit in various articles will not trap me into buying that crap. I can see through all of this. Nobody wants the names in most of these stinking extentions.

A new domainer would be a fool to buy names that aren't dotcom, and most experienced domainers can figure out how to make money in dotcom, and therefore have no need to buy names in extentions the general public has never heard of.

I give people credit for trying, but you guys are going to have to try harder to fool me.

I agree 100%.

I am in domains for 9 years and I try my best still to avoid CC TLDs.

Stay with the King i.e. DOT COM and you be fine.....especially if you are a newbie.

There are thousands of nice domains still available in dot com.

Btw, its no wonder that dot-com has 55 million domains registered.

(In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data).

 

[beatz]

My 2 cents:

Yeah, .com is king.

cc tld's make sense if the country's own market is strong enough (.de, .co.uk)

Everything else basically doesn't make much sense because people from the street basically don't know the extension and even if you have a great keyword with it, you have to "market" it to people (=loss of $).

Then again, especially in the light of ICANN's latest stunt they try to pull and the possibility of the same proposed terms being applied to .com soon i ask myself this:

Why is it that everybody praises companies like Ireit, Buydomains etc for their great and large portfolios ?

Sure, they can be admired from a domainers point of view for their business sense and buying power etc etc - but am i the only one that sees that single companies that each own portfolios in the amount of xxx,xxx names are a reason as well for the .com/.net space to have no good names avail anymore ?

Like, it's a bit problematic when .com is king but at the same time there are no good names left in .com neither for domainers let alone for the public or internet community.

Think about it - companies owning like 400,000 names or more in a way are just the same a threat to .com/.net space and to the "public domain" aspect of the internet as ICANN is a threat to the .org/.info/.biz space and to the internet community at the moment.

It has become a lose/lose situation : .com is king but no good .com's left, and the alternative extensions are unknown to the public.

Kind of the flip side of the general success of domain business; it's really some domain companies have become *so* successful with aquiring names that if you combine them they kind of have a monopoly for the good names.Nothing left.

Ironic in a way.

Or even more drastically, if you define the .com space as the one consisting of the good .com names (because who wants bad names anyway, be it in .com or any other extension for that matter) then these companies very soon *OWN* the .com space.

Because there are no good names left and they own them.

Simple as that.

Face it: Most people here are crawling around either trying to sell/buy semi-decent .com names because that's all what's left or try to sell/buy great keywords with a crappy extension attached.

Both parties have in common they try to hype their crap as the hottest shi*.

When in reality we all know that the *real* good names are gone and the majority of us is not who owns them.

So next time you admire the big players, think about it twice; maybe as it is with any other monopoly it's not so good if a few single companies have the monopoly on the (good names) .com space ?

Just to be clear: I'm not saying these companies have done anything wrong in legal terms, they're just doing what big players are doing, profit maximation and they're entitled to go for that but still - and if it's just from the public domain view of the internet:

Something has and is going wrong.

Just some food for thought, don't flame me.

 

[jazzpetals]

WhoDatDog, I think everyone is entitled to their opinions, be it about what extensions are more valuable, or about whether a sale is legit.

However, I've read many of your posts in various threads, and my question to you is this...why so negative about everything?

 

[DomainFatigue]

In a little over six years, I have stuck primarily with .com, with a few .net and .org domains scattered about. I have never sold a domain other than .com for what I consider to be serious money. I'm simply not convinced that the others have present or future value. However, I do welcome contrary opinions and will openly admit having been wrong several times in the past...

Don't worry about WDD, he's a big softy at heart. Actually, a lot of us respect a person who is willing to speak their mind and debate with conviction. The key I suppose is to do so in a manner in which legal argument doesn't become street argument, that is, personal or accusatory in tone...

 

[Beachie]

Thanks for bringing the article to our attention, Duke

Regarding college.st - I can understand that the .st registry might have an interest in faking a sale (to add value to their extension, of course), however, college.st seems an odd choice of domain to do it with. Surely you'd pick a higher profile keyword and fake some seriously big bucks, to ensure you got greater media coverage?

 

[Bob]

Thread cleaned.

Guys -

1) Do not make claims that you cannot prove.
2) Do NOT threaten or insinuate a threat to another member
3) Do not talk derogatorily to a member

This thread is getting near the line. Keep it clean or the plug will be pulled.

-Bob

 

[Bill Roy]

WhoDatDog,

In the past few days in several threads on this Forum you have accused me of lying, cheating, attempting to cheat, fraud, and criminal acts. Well I tell you what WhoDatDog, just realise that the rest of us live in the real world. You never know someday you might want to come and join us all! Now there's a thought for you to ponder over.

Your insinuations and accusations against me, and by default the buyer of College.St, has now been refuted by the very people we (domainers) know we can trust. Even Duke explained that he was ultra careful in making sure everything was legitimate because it was the first sale to reach the main board for a .St.

You have shown the kind of person you are to all. You admit that you have been banned from another forum, no doubt for relatively similar kind of insinuations, accusations, and attacks. Please realise that you are wrong and cease these unfounded attacks upon my person and integrity.

Oh and by the way, investigate all you want, there is nothing to find out. But please take your time doing it, it is best to do a totally thorough job. So to this end may I suggest you spend 24 hours a day for the next ten years doing it and leave us grown-ups to get on with the business of shaping the future of the internet!