Expensive domain finds buyers.
The .Inc top level domain name has crossed 500 registrations after getting 237 registrations in the first hour of general availability today.
While this wouldn’t be noteworthy for most top level domain launches, .Inc domains have a wholesale price of $2,000.
Over 270 domains were registered during the trademark sunrise and five additional names were picked up at a higher price during Early Access.
Among the dictionary word registrations so far are sex.inc, marijuana.inc, bitcoin.inc, offshore.inc alarm.inc, pets.inc and b.inc.
Some trademark holders appear to have waited until general availability to get their names.
To learn more about .Inc’s unique model, listen to DNW Podcast #232 with Shayan Rostam.
Given they paid $20million for the tld they have a way to go yet. I suspect this will be mainly for defensive registrations and a lot of the registering may have already been done.
Unless they can get to a couple of thousand registrations quickly I don’t think this registry will be viable. Even at that level the ROI would be very poor.
It’s marketing 101. Make it really expensive and some people will feel like they have to have it. If it was only $50 or less then Beyonce and Taylor Swift probably wouldn’t even consider it or know it exists.
(Otherwise known as “smoke and mirrors.”) 😉
I think it’s a cool extension, for a business better than a .com. Definitely better than long-tail keyword .com
Update, their volume seems to have quickly dropped to a trickle (2 registrations yesterday according to ntldstats). Looks like they have 630 reges subtracting registry reserved names.
Personally I think the model is flawed and they’ll never make an ROI.