Company tops expectation it set last month.
Last month MMX (Minds + Machines) forecasted that about 70% or more of .VIP domains registered within the first 31 days of general availability last year would be renewed.
A commenter on that post claimed “There is no way it will be 70%”, insinuating it would be less. Now the totals are in and the number is indeed about 70%. 75% of domains registered during this period have been renewed.
This is an incredibly high first-year renewal rate for a new top level domain, especially one dependent on Chinese domain investors who have been scaling back investments lately.
In an announcement today, the company also said sales from H1 2017 won’t be as strong as the peak last year when .VIP launched. MMX didn’t launch any new domains in the first half of this year but will launch .boston later this year. However, it expects to reach breakeven based on renewal revenues covering fixed costs this year.
The company also said it is continuing to complete its “strategic review”, aka discussing selling the company.
Thanks for posting this, Andrew.
These numbers are impressive. But as one of the biggest enthusiasts of dot-VIP I’m disappointed to not (yet) see any noteworthy sites built atop the extension; although Amazon.VIP is used by the company to take Prime members directly to their section, and that’s noteworthy.
I know that that will change over the next 12 months or so (including one or two of my names being deployed by partners), but the extension does need some real world catalysts – soon – to really take off.
A redirect to a dot COM webpage is now a “noteworthy” use of amazon.vip–LOL! How desperate the new gTLD “true believers” truly are–BTW, Amazon also uses amazon.com/prime “to take Prime members directly to their section.”
Yeah, what a stupid example: Amazon’s decision to forward visitors to via a dot-VIP is only based on a deliberate decision of the branding department of the world’s largest online retailer – to send their best customers to a dedicated landing page.
And btw, we ‘true believers’ (in dot-VIP, in my case) also hold plenty of dot-COMs,…which aren’t doing so hot in the secondary market lately, in case you hadn’t noticed. Ask any Chinese speculator if you don’t believe me.
.VIP make a brand strong and meantime it’s making a marketing segmentation based on a traditional .com platform which has a huge of users already.
By the way, .VIP is absolutely a mark for the premium service. It’s impressive.