I tried to register 18 new domains today. I failed once again.
Five more of Donuts’ new top level domain names revert to standard pricing today — .florist, .solar, .coffee, .house, and .international.
I came up with 18 domains that I thought might be worth registering in these new extensions. Regrettably, I went 0-for-18.
Perhaps I’m not being creative enough. I’m admittedly coming up with domain ideas that many others would think of, too. But the results suggest that it’s very difficult to get the best new TLDs at launch at regular registration fees.
Here’s the breakdown:
9 – Name collision list (NXD)
4 – registry reserved
4- registered in Early Access Program at premium
1- premium domain
The name collision list was, once again, the biggest culprit. It has simply destroyed the launch of .house with a whopping 107,365 strings blocked. These are domains that the registry would like to sell but can’t (yet).
Here are some of the .house domains I tried to register that are on the NXD: green.house, rental.house, beach.house, boat.house, new.house, buy.house, miami.house, austin.house.
One decent .house domain is actually available: vacation.house. I wavered on this one for a while since the more common usage I’ve heard is vacation.home. The final nail in the coffin was when I saw the premium pricing on this domain: $500 per year. If it were Vacation.home I’d consider it, but not Vacation.house. (.Home has been shelved indefinitely due to name collision concerns.)
The two .coffee domains I searched for, gourmet.coffee and black.coffee, are registry reserved. Ditto with usa.florist and nyc.florist. Another domain I searched for, local.florist, was snapped up at a premium in the last phase of the Early Access Program (EAP).
The same goes for Texas.solar and Austin.solar. Honestly, had I been on the ball, I may have paid the premium for Texas.solar assuming it was just the EAP premium and not a recurring one. I wouldn’t do it for others because I think the upside potential for resale is limited.
Florida.solar was registered in the fourth day of EAP at an even higher price.
Finally, California.solar is off-limits thanks to the NXD list.
I got 1 out of 113.
Blaming the collision lists is not quite right. If the domains you mention were not on the collision lists they would be either registry reserved (more probable) or premium.
1 out of 113? So was it worth your time to research all of those? That’s the question I’m facing.
Your point about the NXD list is valid. I imagine most of the domains I searched for that were on the list would be premium, or at least taken during EAP.
I have a system that doesn’t take me too much time. But even that it is not worth my time, no. I try to spend less and less time researching.
The new gTLD registries promised choice and innovation. After all the hype, folks are choosing instead to stick with established gTLDs. For example, according to RegistrarStats.com, 222,315 of 227,615 (97.7%) of yesterday’s (April 8, 2014) new domains (excludes most ccTLDs) were com/net/org/biz/info/us, leaving the “new” gTLDs with a meagre 2.3% share of fresh registrations. If all ccTLDs were included, the new registrations share of new gTLDs would shrink even further.
It’s always amusing to me to read domainers complaining about somebody else asking lots of money for a premium domain name. 🙂
Kevin I have never complained about the price of a domain name.
I don’t mind paying EAP fees.
But reserving all the good domains without any clear plan of what you intent to do with them and also charging $3000 or $10000 for renewals is something else.
Andrew, I think an angel is protecting you and your wallet.
On regards to reserved names and pricing if I am not mistaken some promises were made in Florida:
No reserved names No variable pricing etc etc…
Is there a site with a simple and definitive schedule of the new gTLD releases? I would like to see something with the extensions grouped by weeks and also where you can look up specific extensions to see its scheduled release date.
I wouldn’t call it “simple”, and it’s certainly not 100% comprehensive, but Calzone.org has most of the TLD launches.
Donuts has its own schedule at donuts.co/tlds. Keep in mind that the last column is the start of the early access phase. The regular pricing (true general availability) starts one week later.
They are worse than Google. They want your money but also want to keep the domains.
It gets clearer daily that the new TLDs will fail miserably except for those selling them.
Before long they will all be looked at like a .mobi or .info extension.
What a silly game looking for a domain to reg. Pass.
In a way the registries are like domainers in that they have a monopoly on selling domains for a particular extension. Since they control the terms, they can also continue to collect premium renewal fees ach year. And as opposed to domainers who have to abide by trademark law, the registries (and ICANN) even benefit from selling trademarked domain names to the trademark holders in the Sunrise period. Nice!
You forgot selling trademarked domain names to NON-trademark holders.
As a domainer, I think the best deals were in the first batches of gTLDs that Donuts released. There are still some gems in those batches (.tips, .today, .center, .technology). I am still finding some for regular registration price that have a decent number of exact match searches (in the thousands). I also think their aftermarket value could be higher since they have a lot more registrations. I’d mine in the top ten list on ntldstats.com
What aftermarket?
donuts should really be publishing what domains are held back as premium, etc as i am very tired of wasting time searching for domains only to have 99% of them be reserved. it seems next to impossible to get anything half decent once general availability hits regular pricing, the pre-orders snap them up. i had 4 domains that showed as available at noon today but by the time i checked out 3 of the 4 were gone via pre-orders and i end up with a credit at the registrar…lame.
I’m 0-for-0 so far.
All popular phrases are always reserved, or charged as ultra premium. As they’re forward, they are scanning to see what terms are being taken in all gtlds and moving these to premium designation as well. Andrew your shut out trend will most likely continue to happen sorry to say.
They miss some of the better terms b/c they can’t know every industry and niche. Then again, I don’t know every industry either.
I understand, this is all very confusing. I believe .red, .pink, .blue are supposed to be released tomorrow, but I can’t figure out how to register them? Even went to the Afilias website…any idea?