He has an opinion on everything. Here’s what he thinks about new TLDs.
Last week I published comments from a number of domain industry professionals about what they think new top level domains will mean for domainers.
I think I forgot to tell Mike Mann to keep his comments to 100 words. So he came back with a smidge more, warranting this separate post.
Mann founded BuyDomains, later selling it to NameMedia. His company built up one of the largest portfolios of .com’s in the world. He has since started DomainMarket.
Here’s what he thinks about new TLDs:
DomainMarket.com will not apply for any new TLDs because buying those new assets is too risky, given practically unlimited decent possibilities for .com investing still. Why would someone take additional risks before they have exhausted the obvious low hanging fruit in premium .com domain values? Not to mention the related ability to consistently, competitively improve their google rankings and site conversions? And eliminate branding confusion; ride the coming flight to .com quality tide?
I am glad the players will be promoting domains in general and it will encourage more overall domain sales whether or not any ALT TLD sites get serious traction, which will be a small percentage compared to the corresponding .com match, that I may own.
The .com will get more traffic and brand recognition and go up in value irrespective of whether the inferiorly named competing brand succeeds or fails ultimately. I think the .coms that are truly premium are already worth much more than they sell for on average, and can only go up with the growth of the internet and “competing” TLDs, further reinforcing the need to fly to quality and control the best .coms at the expense of the confused masses who will eventually come around.
This article from Microsoft Labs helps clarify some of the many reasons why premium .com domains rule the Internet, “Domain Bias in Web Search”.
Also if we account for the fact one could use the .coms for years and they would only go up in value, it’s clearly a slam dunk to stay focused on the best lowest cost .coms until they are exhausted, before you take additional ALT TLD risks. Fleshing out the system could take years and we will probably find most ALT investors not appreciating their spoils, and finding they are and were confused.
I do own a robust portfolio of .co domains from Colombia and the best .org collection on earth and a lot of .net. But just the very best of those. Further down the quality line and confusion line you go, the greater the risk of your investment. So why increase risk?
.Co is a fantastic extension that even makes more sense than .com in many respects; shorter and stands for Corporation or Company, is universally recognizable, etc. But even that extension has to work hard to make a good living. I expect the vast majority of new entrants to dwarf .co in registration volume for those reasons. And people in general being oversaturated, confused, broke, and without time to study the deals.
.Coms will stand the test of time. If somebody builds something on .TV, then someone else builds it on .co.uk and .net, the value of the .com could skyrocket. .Com is king and will remain king, at least until the metric system is adopted by Americans. I’ll take 2 cents and a few million please, www.makemillions.com.
Jeff Edelman says
I think Mike is right. And for selfish purposes, I hope he is right. 🙂 I think that the dramatic increase in extensions is going to make the cream rise to the top. The cost of creating any kind of premium brand is already enormous. The introduction of all these different extensions is only going to increase that cost. And that will make the highest quality .coms worth more.
John UK says
Interesting. I often set the email on my .com’s to “catch all” and it is amazing the amount of misdirected emails I receive that are intended for other tld’s. THIS shows that those who buy the other tld’s rather than .com lose a LOT of business. The trouble is they often don’t know that, so have to be discreetly “told”.
@Domains says
Makes complete sense to me what he is saying, and I think we all know it deep down.
Surprising that so many other domain professionals are involved in applying for the new gtld’s.
Looking forward to seeing how it all shakes out!
DomainAnimal.com says
Interesting perspective. Here’s what Mike Curving thinks about new TLDs: More than half will fail within the first four years, as I’ve just written about.
John UK says
I also think, for what it’s worth, that these new tld’s will cause a LOT more work for trade mark / IP lawyers from/for several angles and reasons. All is alll I think ICANN are going to cause a massive mess.
rk says
100% agree with Mike Mann.
.COM values are about to skyrocket!
Prepare for the ride 🙂
Joe says
I agree. Too risky! And to those looking forward to registering great keywords available in the new gTLDs, .travel and .asia have been available for years and lots of amazing keywords are still available in those extensions. Why the sudden need for new namespaces?
David J Castello says
Great post, Mike.
Chris says
“.Co is a fantastic extension that even makes more sense than .com in many respects”
Really? If he owned zero .co’s would that statement have been made?
Oliver says
Yes i agree with Make Mann
.com will alwayds remain at the top and they will GET More traffic from the new Gtlds!
only .com value will go up.
All the new Gtlds will fail we saw it
.mx
.com.mx
asia
.mobi
.cm
ETC WE SAW IT
its a waste of money buy .com there are godo deals not waste your money new TLDS its all waste of money wont last long.
then .com prices will up more than before 🙂
ASK says
I agree with Mann. If 100 million plus people already own a .com website, why would they buy one of the new extensions and have to re-brand their site. Makes no sense. One could add an additional site for traffic, but is it really worth the time and money? Me thinks not.Besides, do you really think they will sell you a premium name for a small registration fee? me thinks not.
MyLocator says
A network of 30-300 premium generics in the hands of a major web player will be a force to be reckoned with. Google wants 50, demand wants 100, donuts wants 300, shilling wants 100, domain holdings wants 60. This is a game changer. It’s all about the network.
Domain Storage Unit says
So, it looks like this time we all agree with Mike Mann.
How often does that happen? Or, any two domainers for that fact?
This is one time most agree it is a boon for registrars and a dismal failure for registrants.
So sad to see ICANN fu*k up like this!!!
Gene says
Fully agree with Mike on this one.
To use a specific example of why dot-coms will increase in value, consider this scenario:
A group spends the moneys to apply for an operate the dot-‘widget’ registry.
After spending seven figures in marketing, they convince a few thousand businesses to license names like, Blue.Widget, Free.Widget, and CreateA.Widget.
The salespeople for those licensees are all out there promoting their products, while leveraging their niche slice of the dot-Widget pie.
Shortly thereafter another salesperson knocks on the buyer’s door, offering identical products, but his business card cites Widget.COM as his firm’s domain name.
You can’t possibly argue (successfully) that the buyer isn’t going to perceive the Widget.COM firm more favorably – and more credible – than the preceding ones, all other things being equal.
AND THAT IS WHY KEY DOT-COMS WILL SKYROCKET IN VALUE, AND MOST OF THE MATCHING GTLDS WILL FADE INTO THE HISTORY DUST-BIN.
Jon says
Mike is 100% spot on regarding net tlds.
One of my .coms has a real chance of becoming a new tld. I figure at least 10% of all the emails meant for this new tld will go to my .com. I will be selling email forwarding for $100/year per email addr. That is $100K/year in extra income for me for each 1,000 email forwards.
serg says
@Chris,
That’s not the way it works. Obviously if he didn’t care for .co he would’ve never purchased any in the first place and therefore would’ve never made that statement. He didn’t go out and buy premium .co names and then decide to say what he said.
By the way, Mike and Rick Schwartz think alike on this subject. Couldn’t agree more!
Uzoma says
I don’t know whether Mike Mann is right or wrong.
I do know this: domain names are a lot trickier than usual.
Nobody should forecast investments or optimism based on what Google, or other big players register. I recall being fooled by .CO because twitter was going to use t.co, Godaddy was going to use another one letter .co, Google was going to use G.co or something like that, and so on and so forth; all those happened, but none of those companies thought the extension to be serious enough as to threaten .COM. The only company that took .CO seriously enough to re-brand, Overstock.com, quickly made a U-turn after a few months.
The way I see it, the new gTLDs are tantamount to “intranet” activities. Just like some companies have their own inside networks for email etc, not for “internet”.
Mann does have one point: if .CO with a successful launch and marketing campaign, a worldwide acronym, a beautiful VP, could only establish a mediocre extension, why would any other top it?
I will wait this one out. I am neutral on this one. I don’t care if it succeeds or fails. Well, I want it to succeed for the economy sake.
S.W. says
@Jon good idea, hope it works out for you. If I recall correctly, Josh @ Chicago.com has that setup working very well for his domain(s).
Jon says
@S.W. – yes, I have no idea why Josh from Chicago.com is trying to get his hands on .chicago. The best thing for him would be for some strong player to spend a lot of money and make .chicago a success. Every company that uses .chicago for emails will have zero choice but to pay Josh for every single one of their employees emails in @chicago.com. Otherwise lost emails will be completely catastrophic for companies using .chicago.
And Josh charges $ hundreds per email per year I think. He should help promote .chicago complimentary – go to .chicago and register your beautiful new URL for $20. Then come back to me and pay me $ hundreds a year for each employee email, now you have no choice.
David Yang says
Don’t ingnore .co’s power. .Co makes .com scared. They could be brothers when they are serving for the identical target, and they could be also the most conflict once they plays different roles in different targets.
jayjay says
“The Mann’s on the right track” 😉
Years ago there was a science show called quantum or catalyst (changed it’s name I think) with one particular episode that stood out.
It was a simple psychological experiment about exploring different flavors of ice-cream and it involved a large group of people who where told to select their preferences from about 100 different flavors.
The behavioral scientists and statisticians monitored the selections and tallied the results. What they learned was some what interesting.
When considering the variety of different and exciting flavors to chose from the experiment revealed that most of the taste testers trended toward the normal everyday flavors like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry ect.
With all the great flavors in front of them they where simply overwhelmed with choice
which to the discovery of the behavioral scientists involved the taste testers literally canceled out of their selection criteria.
The experiment proved that when someone is overwhelmed with ‘choice’ especially with a limited time frame to select from, one tends to go with familiarity or something that is as close to familiarity as possible from life experience.
It’s not surprising then that if a sample of people where given the same experiment with the new sTLD’s that the dot com will champion over the other selection choices, it’s the TLD thats synonymous with the www itself.
This experiment was yet again proven with Overstock’s branding of ‘o.co’ and we all what the results where.
Maybe some food for thought of the new multi million dollar start up’s arising right of the dot, after all as Mann points out,
? ? ? ? ???”Why would someone take additional risks before they have exhausted the obvious low hanging fruit in premium .com domain values?”
😉
IDC Studio says
i do not like more domain of new ltd.and i just like .com domains.
Domainer Don says
I have done a lot of contemplating about the new TLD extensions, and came to the conclusion that .com is and always will be king, at least in my lifetime. Mike has mirrored and articulated my thoughts and conclusion. Sure, there will be a few successes, but the ultimate result of this “ICANT” experiment will only be to the advantage of premium generic .com name holders. It’s a hard thing to bet against Frank Schilling who according to my estimates is Schilling out a cool $10,000,000 just in initial costs for his gamble. I am assuming that he has the money or he wouldn’t be taking the risk. I’m just not sure of the wisdom of making a defensive play when he has done so well on offense all these years. I think Mike is right on in his explanation of future values of the .com extension. I am betting my whole portfolio the assumption that he and I are right.
Stop ICANN says
To all you .co apologists:
.CO is a string SUBSET of .COM
What’s next?
.ne (instead of .net) ?
.or (instead of .org) ?
.bz (instead of .biz) ?
.mo (instead of .mobi) ?
.ed (instead of .edu) ?
.pr (instead of .pro) ?
etc. (in other words, TOO SIMILAR, i.e. get a clue)
Secondly,
*STOP* *ICANN*
I mean, again, get a clue:
nfl.sports.com
com.sports.nfl
sports.nfl.com
nfl.com.sports
com.nfl.sports
sports.com.nfl
Get the picture?
John UK says
It would have been much much better if ICANN had instead sold them as ,for example , .com.art , .com.london etc etc etc Would have been much better. Now it will be a big big mess.
CO is powerful says
.CO is not a part of .COM.
.CO is a classic suffix of domain extension.
.CO is an opportunity for the domain investment.
.CO is driving active websites without instead of .COM.
——————————–
*Winners never fight against because that they can take profits from that*
3dsavvy says
.COM “Low Hanging Fruit?” What?
Mann, Schwartz, Schilling & countless smaller players own or have sold all the low hanging fruit. Slick Promoters? Positions of Strength? Confused?
$10,000,000.00 to play defense?
Reality is boys and girls that .coms are all but gutted, ah but for the aftermarket.
Rich manns’ game. Stinks
smells
domainer Don says
@3dsavvy: The bottom line is that nobody really has all the answers. <> In all actuality, the estimates are that Schilling’s costs for development, marketing and establishing his registry are north of $60,000,000. Yes, that’s 7 Zeroes. So we know that he has done quite well with the .com extension, thank you very much. If he were to stand pat, he could do just about anything he chooses for the rest of his life. To put out $60 million for the new gTLDs seems to me a defensive move to protect his .com assets and obviously a calculated risk to take the lead into a new phase of the development of the internet. Maybe he doesn’t want to retire until he is a billionaire. Like I said, its hard to bet against Frank. But all I am saying is that I think that Mike Mann is making the right move by betting that this introduction of 1,931 new gTLDs by ICANN will only enhance the value of his .com portfolio. When you look at the risk/reward equation, I think there is a case that both are right. Only Frank knows how much he is willing to risk. This might well be the single most profitable move in the history of the domaining business. When I heard that Mike Mann was registering zero names, I thought to myself – “good move Mike”. I hope Mike makes a $kazillion on his domain portfolio. I hope Frank Schilling does the same. I weighed in on the side of the equation that I feel will be the best move, and I think Mike owns that one. That’s all…
Henry says
Tlds are a scam to extort brand protection fees from dotcom owners. You never find a Tld on page one Of Google.