New domain continues to grow in China.
.VIP is proving to be a winner for MMX (Minds + Machines).
The company announced today that it already has $5.5 million in sales (wholesale) of .VIP domains after three weeks on the market.
It paid $3.0 million to win rights to the domain in an ICANN auction. Not a bad payback period.
Over 400,000 .vip domain names have been registered and all have been paid registrations. MMX CEO Toby Hall commented:
The exceptional take-up we are seeing of .vip is being achieved without using a freemium strategy or equivalent to boost numbers – the latest surge coming from standard name registrations bought through the registrar channel. This bodes well for renewal rates and the long-term reputation of the domain. We very much look forward to the ongoing growth of .vip billings.
While most of the demand has been in China, .vip also has some demand in the West. I pre-ordered about ten domains at GoDaddy and all but a couple ended up in auctions. I now own Florida.vip, Austin.vip and Backstage.vip.
Pete says
Excellent domain this Vip!
Gene says
Excellent names, A
JZ says
best gards.
Joseph Peterson says
Backstage.vip is a good one.
John says
It looks and sounds great on paper in terms of “brandability,” but think about it – who in the world would really want it for a good price (for the seller)? Only an extremely small and limited possible audience of end users for an extremely limited and narrow range of use would want it at all, and that’s very iffy with all the existing big media out there covering what it can be used for already. So this domain is more of a pure gamble than anything else. And they might just prefer going to BuyDomains for the .com if anyone ever wants the phrase at all enough. I never would have registered this domain.
Now the other two he listed are definitely and more clearly what people should be calling “good ones.”
John says
The first year price is not bad, but the renewal pricing is high, so I expect there may be a lot of drops after year 1. I almost didn’t even register any because of the renewal pricing.
steve brady says
Thought of Hospice.Vip today. Taken Day1 of GA, dang what a fine domain. Have to guess it was premium priced, as consolation for not having registered it.
John says
Horrible one.
ALAstair Hine says
But is it really VIP?
Pat w says
Excellent Story Andrew on this Hot New Dot .VIP — you did great on the three .VIP’s that you did get… The potential is extremely high on the .VIP because on the Business end Marketing End the Advertising Possibilities are extremely high compared to most of the rest of new gTLD’s out there — which have maybe one or two possibilities built into their Domain Name — for use only in a narrow range of Business… The Chinese see it that way to because to them this name means a Lot More than “Very important Person” to them too…