NamesCon is less than one week away, and today we have an interview with NamesCon sponsor, Radix, one of the largest participants in the new gTLD program.
NamesCon will be held from January 11-14, 2015 at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. There are now over 750 registered conference attendees, and over 800 people are expected to attend this event.
If you have any questions or comments for Radix, please post them in the comment section below.
Can you tell us about your company and how long you have been there?
Radix is a major participant in the new gTLD program and currently manages registry rights to .WEBSITE, .PRESS, .HOST, .SPACE, .SITE and .TECH with many domain extensions to come. It is Asia’s largest new gTLD applicant with 100+ registrar partners and aims to play a substantial role in the global diversification of the internet namespace. The owners of Radix come with an industry expertise of over 10 years having operated one of the top 10 Registrars across the world & having been at the forefront of the domain monetization business.
This will be your second time sponsoring at NamesCon. What can we expect from Radix at NamesCon?
We are very excited about NamesCon, which arguably has become THE marquee event for the domain industry. Through our participation and presence, we look forward to engaging with domain investors, registries, registrars and marketplaces and especially the exciting ROTD auction in which have put up some great names from across our live strings, which we hope will really intrigue the audience present. Apart from the auction we have some entertaining ways to engage the NamesCon attendees with our TLDs.
What are your thoughts on the new TLDs?
They’re going to change the world! Literally! The internet namespace is going to evolve for the better and provide entirely new opportunities to find the perfect web address – meaningful and first choice names. Eventually as new TLDs become popular among users, the search page, which is the backbone of businesses on the internet, will be greatly impacted as well.
Of course, as Industry veterans often draw the analogy, this is a marathon and not a race; it’ll certainly take time for the market to mature and at this stage we are primarily looking at driving awareness, building strategic relations within the industry, and having active end users for our extensions. This would also create the best value for domain investors who have put faith in our strings.
Can you tell us about Radix’s premium domains?
The premium channel sales we have made are a clear indication that new gTLDs are here to stay – For our 3 strings that are live, we have made premium revenue of more than $170,000 in annual renewal, just through our Registrar partners that support premium names. These are besides the one-time sales we’ve made of Registry Reserved names.
We expect these keywords to have a higher renewal rate than standard registrations and thus, this channel should generate recurring revenue for years to come. This is especially relevant as many of the premium names registered are generic and have a lot of potential; it shows investor and end user confidence in our strings, and in Radix as a registry.
Some select top-notch keywords will be up for a one-time sale through the ROTD auction at NamesCon 2015:
- Jobs.website (winning bidder also receives job.website)
- Auctions.website (winner also receives auction.website)
- Bet.website (winner also receives bets.website)
- Shared.host
- Email.host
- Hollywood.press (No reserve!)
- Wallstreet.press
- xxx.website (No reserve!)
- Coupon.website (winner also receives coupons.website)
Radix will donate a percentage of its auction sales to WaterSchool, a global non-profit organization with a mission to provide simple, safe, strategic, and sustainable clean water and sanitation solutions to the developing world.
Where do you see Radix going in the next year?
Being a young and energetic team we are very excited about the future especially with our latest 2 nTLDs launching in 2015. .SITE and .TECH are, according to us, 2 of the most promising TLDs to come out of this process and our team is already working hard on launching them.
We will be undertaking large scale marketing activities to drive awareness and adoption for these TLDs amongst end consumers which in turn would benefit the entire nTLD market.
