Registry gets huge uptake on its five-year payment plan deal.
The .Club registry has released its quarterly report of premium domain name sales, including $2.7 million “topline value”.
“Topline value” is in quotes because $2.5 million of this represents sales made through five-year, no-interest payment plans. Many of these buyers will surely fail to stop making payments, so .Club won’t see all of this as revenue over the next five years. Some domain investors are looking at this deal as a sort of “call option” on domains that will allow them to lock them down and give them some time to try to sell them at full price.
.Club has been very open about its premium domain sales data, and it will be nice if it provides ongoing data about how many of these subscription domains are paid.
The $2.5 million represents 189 of the names sold in the quarter.
Buy-it-now sales totaled $205,000 for the quarter. 37 names were sold via two auctions.
.Club reports that pinyin names saw high demand during the quarter as Chinese registrars added the tiered premiums to their shelves following MIIT approval for .club domain names to be used in China.
sooooo $2.5 million is a bad marketing gimmick that they know they won’t get and the real amount is $205,000 in one-time fees . They are the best run new extension, they don’t need to post fantasy numbers.
If these are the “new metrics” that they need, in order to get some attention, it can always be topped by others.
e.g. Sell Example.TLD at $25/yr for 1 Billion years, and that would be considered, by the .CLUB standard, as “$25 Billion in ‘Topline Value’, clearly demonstrating that new gTLDs are on the move!”
I hope they go public one day, so we can see the real accounting figures according to GAAP.
@nick @george Thanks for the comments. Not really sure what the issue is. We clearly reported financed vs. buy it now sales. (And BTW, the 205k does not include the monthly payments on the 2.5 million). Not fantasy, but rather an example that a payment plan for premium names clearly offers opportunities for both investors and end-users. It’s a viable option and part of our revenue mix.
It’s a fantasy because you are well aware you won’t get the 2.5 million, You know the people who bulk bought them were domain investors who are going to cold call end users to try to flip them, then drop the ones they don’t sell. You really going to pretend to believe you will collect the entire 2.5 million in monthly payments over 5 years? The people that bought them said flat out they will drop the ones they can’t flip.
@Nick We’re simply reporting the facts as they are at the end of the quarter, as we’ve been doing regularly. Nowhere do we state we expect all names to complete all 60 months of payments. We’ve been very clear and upfront that the Easy Payment plan is like a subscription and can be canceled any time. We’re clear it is the top line value of the names under subscription, not the amount we have or will collect. Thanks for your comment.
@Jeffrey: Actually, it’s *selective* reporting of some misleading “facts”. That’s why GAAP exists, to see the full picture according to accepted standards of financial reporting.
I seriously thin that ‘uptick’ won’t even cover for their payroll and operational costs…