New gTLDs: Increasing Lowball Offers

As you know by now, ICANN voted to approve the new gTLD program in Singapore, and this will allow for the creation of new domain extensions like .nyc, .eco, .law, and likely hundreds of others. I received a few emails asking me for my opinion on the gTLD impact on the domain investment space, and I am sure I will write a post about it at some point soon.

It seems that some people may be using the new gTLD approval as an excuse to send lowball offers on .com domain names. Cataclysmic emails talking about the demise of .com domain domination and valuation, which include lowball offers to take them off the hands of the owners are amusing to me. Thank you, but I will take my chances with my .com domain names!

The short of it is that I do think consumers will adopt the usage of gTLD domain names in time, but over the next few years, I believe .com domain names will continue to be the “go to” domain extension of big and small business alike. While companies like Canon appear to be interested in applying for branded gTLD extensions, I can’t imagine that will be the case for the vast majority of companies.

Similarly, I can’t foresee a company that doesn’t apply for and get a gTLD moving to a different gTLD. For instance, I can’t imagine a company like Staples using something like Staples.shop or Honda moving to Honda.cars. I do believe some companies will opt for gTLD usage, but I still see it as a limited opportunity for established brands.

I will flesh out my thoughts later, but for now, the “sky is falling” emails complete with lowball offers are amusing.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

17 COMMENTS

  1. Boys and girls

    hold on just a minute

    these news are not that big of a news, and here is why

    are you really going to name your site

    glamourphotography.nike
    or
    glamourphotography.coke
    or
    glamourphotography.vegas

    NO
    you would want
    glamourphotography.com or glamourphotography.co
    to legitimize your site

    The biggest winner is going to be .CO because now people will see this as a better version of .com in a short better mobile world.

    so all in all slight negative for .com
    big positive for .CO

    put the other extensions in perspective folks. They are only going to be niche sites.

  2. Robert…..you just copied the same post you made at TheDomains. You keep seeming kind of spammy if you ask me.

    I’ll let everyone eventually sort it out and when they are ready they can buy my .com domains at full price as always.

    This is great news for .com owners as the confusion will make one thing clear: To not confuse the public you will need a .com domain.

    .

  3. .COM just became so much more important and valuable than it already was.

    I’ll be lowering the number of non-.COM’s in my portfolio from 5% to about 1 or 0% over the next year.

  4. Not sure my thoughts on this yet, but I know search engines are still search engines. Correct me if I’m wrong, but they say they don’t take the TLD into account. An example being if two site (we’ll say smithsonian.com and smithsonian.museum) had the exact same content, the “.museum” would not influence SEO.

    Anyway, here’s the article…
    http://bit.ly/k0tt1F

  5. new extensions will make .com more valuable.

    The process will bring new money, new speculation and SOME new end users to the party OVER time. Remember, no extensions will roll out until 2013.

    I could see how .biz and .info MAY decline in value as would .net but everyone who gets a non .com will ultimately WANT the .com.

    So, everything that is non .com is clutter and noise.

    However, I will say that .org will hold it’s value for the right domains, maybe .info to a certain extent since it is international, maybe .tv since it means video.

    .net will fall in value since it is not .com (I think it has already substantially fallen in value).

    ———

    Maybe compare domain names to metals…

    .com = gold
    .net = silver (still a precious metal but worth WAY less than gold)
    .info = aluminum (all purpose metal)
    .org = iron (good for health)
    .tv = mercury (interesting)

    new extensions are like specialty metals… they will have a purpose under the right circumstances but VERY specialized and only needed by certain people with specific uses in mind.

    With that said, let the .co bubble-type speculation frenzy begin!

  6. Geeze the .co people are as annoying as the .tv people. We get it, you think your extension is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

  7. It’ll just be a lot harder for a TLD to come and establish their presence, more so if a lot of other TLDs are going to arrive alongside it.

    I think it’ll only give more value to the .com considering how established it already is and how dominant it is in the market. More like ‘if you want to avoid confusion over other extensions, get the .com’.

    On another note, this might be trouble for the .CO though. I know how well they were trying to fortify their identity but the dozens that’ll arrive soon might contribute a losing factor to that.

  8. From Bloomberg:

    “So far we’ve seen relatively little corporate interest” in getting additional domain names based on brands, said Alan Drewsen, executive director of the International Trademark Association, whose board of directors includes Microsoft Corp. and PepsiCo Inc.’s Frito-Lay. “There’s a significant marketing challenge. These companies have spent so much time and money directing their customers to their sites.”

    IMO, just another way for ICANN to squeeze money out of corporations….

  9. I think.com will stay stronger. Most companies will stick to .com in order to avoid confusions in other gTLD extensions.

    Branding is the most sensitive criteria in products and services marketing. Any big companies will not dare to stuff up their existing branding by changing domain names or any LTD extensions.

    Companies will never create confusion in their branding, so in selecting new domain name extension, it needs to be very careful to keep consistency in branding.

    For example the famous company brand NIKE. There will redirect the new shop.nike, shoes.nike, social.nike, nike.sports, nike.deals, nike.run , shopnike.local to NIKE.COM main site.

    But Nike will pay big price to own so many extensions to protect their branding.

  10. Search engines most definitely DO take the tld into account, especially if the tld is part of the search string. You can easily show this by finding a ‘kw’ search that .org comes top, and then searching for ‘kw com’ , or ‘kw net’ – how about ‘kw tv’ heh. Who is top now?
    I have been wondering since this first came on my radar ages ago whether, all other things being equal, londonhotel.com or london.hotel would win. And you know what, I think google AND humans prefer london.hotel . Just my opinion.
    I think the new gtld program is awesome, for more reasons than would fit here!

  11. The launching of new gTLDs would bring up the value for .com / .net / .co which I believe some users gotta disagree with me. Yes, the upcoming new gTLDs definitely has its own values but only with those big players. ex; nike.sport, godaddy.hosting, citi.bank.

    Smaller companies might still prefer using .com, .net or .co.

    correct me!

  12. Let’s try to analyse and compare between .com and new gTLD extension.

    Let say compare .com and .sport available on market and its impact on pricing.

    Assuming a company has a choice to buy either soccer.com or soccer.sport or soccer.games

    The fees to reg soccer.sport is about $185000 – $500000. This fee will affect the current value of soccer.com down to equivalent of $185000 – $500000, as soccer.com is supposed to be well over millions of dollars value.

    The company will have a choise and definitely spend $500000 soccer.sport as opposed to $8m soccer.com

    So, this general assumption indicates that the value of .com will drop significantly depending on supply and demand of the industry.

    If .com drop value, so as all other .net .org .co extensions. Quite scary, time to get out of this saturated market.

    Another bright side, get into MOBILE APPS application where this is an emerging mobile device market.

    Any suggestions? What’s your plan?

  13. @ Rayy.co

    There is only 1 Soccer.com. It will always be valuable.

    Not to mention how many great words even fit in any of these extensions. Take .SPORT

    After the top sports, what else fits?

    Are people really going to register and develop SoccerBalls.sport, or TennisShoes.sport? I don’t see it.

    There are too many good alternatives now that already have credibility.

    Brad

  14. @ Brad Mugford

    You are right. Soccer.com will stand out.

    Or Soccer.CO can be good and clean option.

    Those domains you mentioned are long and messy…I think consumers have trouble to remember all these variations. Only Soccer.com or Soccer.CO people can remember…

    These names below are good but confusing….very hard to remember with hundreds of variations…

    SoccerBalls.sport
    TennisShoes.sport
    t-shirt.sport
    runningshoes.sport

    Only single generic word can be good and valuable eg,

    ski.sport
    soccer.sport
    football.sport
    cricket.sport
    water.sport

    Let’s try another way,

    Soccer.com
    i.Soccer

    Looks like both options are equally valuable. Soccer.com can hold $8m or its market value if i.soccer has already fully developed and can command its secondary market value of $8m matching with soccer.com value.

    It means, someone can speculate i.Soccer with $185000+ cost, develop it and sell for $8m+ depending on supply and demand equation and market conditions… or bit of LUCK of course…

    So someone/big players who got big capital upfront can make good money from gTLD, provided they can secure top end single generic word.

    I am just guessing and analysing all these…

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