Registry already has some notable premium domain name sales.
GMO Registry paid a whopping $41.5 million to acquire rights to the .shop top level domain name.
Hiro Tsukahara, CEO of GMO Registry, told Domain Name Wire in a podcast that will be released Monday that it will take a while to recoup that investment. But the company is confident in the domain’s long-term prospects.
It’s certainly having a good start with some major premium domain sales. Beauty.shop sold for somewhere less than $500,000 and Fan.shop sold for just below $100,000. Each of these domain names has a premium renewal price, too. (GMO is a public company, so Tsukahara couldn’t provide exact selling prices.)
.Shop is in early access and general availability starts on September 26.
On Monday’s podcast, you’ll learn about another big six-figure sale. Tsukahara also discusses how people in Japan surf the internet and how domain names often take a back seat. Subscribe to the podcast now: iTunes | Android
ada says
Just marketing before release.
.store is doing badly and shop is not much superior extension from it, so it is quite easy to imagine how they will be doing.
Henry says
I believe that .shop is a better tld than
.store. .shop is better suited for online shopping than .store. Besides, people shop not store making for a better correlation with what buyers (shoppers) do online.
Maybe I am way off but that’s how I see it.