Poll: So… Have You Registered a New gTLD Domain Name?

I tried to pre-register two new gTLD domain names – one in .Ventures and one in .Holdings. Prior to securing the domain names, another company bought the .Holdings domain name at a premium price. The .Ventures domain name is currently in a private auction because there were other people or companies who pre-registered the same domain name.

I may or may not bid more, so there’s a good chance I won’t end up with any new TLD domain names yet.

As of yesterday morning, there are now over 26,000 new gTLD domain names registered as the first eight TLDs became available. Without knowing important factors like marketing costs, projected renewal rates, profit margins…etc, I can’t really say whether I think these numbers are good or bad, but I would imagine the registries are at least moderately happy and cautiously optimistic about the roll out.

After doing a bit of research and speaking with colleagues, I understand that domain investors have been buying domain names, but I am not sure to what extent. If you are willing to share, I’d be interested in knowing whether you’ve bought any new gTLDs yet by voting in the poll. You are also welcome to share what new TLD domain names you purchased – or what extensions you’ve been focusing on buying for now.

This isn’t scientific, but I am trying to gauge the interest level of domain investors for these new domain names.


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

36 COMMENTS

    • Grave_Domainer – it’s pretty much too late after the first day of widespread general availability. The short supply of keywords that would make sense with these niche/novelty domains would be gone.

  1. Like someone stated it is a marathon, not a race, when you have a new extension for every day of the week coming out for the next few years, they will have a tougher time getting to even 500 reg’s on some extensions.

    This being the first round, plenty of hype, and money, which cannot be sustained over time, and svr

  2. Haven’t bought any, and I don’t think I will ever. With the same money people are using to pick up .whatevers, I’m acquiring pretty good .com’s and building brands around them, then selling them as small startups. I still buy .com’s with the intention of selling them as-is with no development in plan. New gTLDs are not for domain investors. They are for small companies that can’t afford to pay, not a thousand, but a few hundred dollars on a pretty neat .com from the aftermarket.

  3. Diversification is the key of every smart investor’s strategy. My current gTLD domain holdings are in the single digits; as new gTLDs come out I will definitely be investing in more meaningful “keyword + gTLD” brands.

    • Abdu – Oversimplification of a market generates such faux dilemmas. One can make money selling anything; as long as there is a market for it. My career isn’t a single line, it’s a group of interactions tapping several markets.

      If you’re insinuating there is more money to be made selling .com domains, I won’t necessarily disagree; but one has to see the bigger picture and the long term effect of gTLDs.

    • very well said. no one knows what will happen, i prefer to lose money rather than hating myself for not registering a good gtld for rest of my life. 🙂

  4. Picked up icefishing.guru for $27.37. Plan to develop it in the next month or two and see how we rank with the engines. Taken in most other extensions. Passionate hobby for many, with viral world record videos and fun to be had, if you do it right! Can’t afford the dot com. I have no problem dropping $69 to catch a dot com drop on a daily basis, so this was a no brainer for me to see what happens. I’ve pre-ordered others that are coming out later this year.

  5. @ Elliot

    Has your .GTLD auction for the name you are after gotten that uber out of control, that you can not see it being plausible to pay up for it?

  6. .Net and .TV have been around for over a decade and I believe I have some pretty decent keyword domains in those extensions. But given the overwhelming demand for such domains, I guess it will be quite a few years from now before there will be meaningful end user demand for many of these new TLDs at any price that makes it worthwhile to acquire and renew them for several years. I believe exerting effort trying to market keyword.whatever to an end user in 2014 is going to be a waste of time.

  7. There are a lot more .guru that have been registered than the others – so I picked a one-word .guru for $30 – maybe try and find some more one-worders

  8. Okay, all of the suckers throughout the universe have been summoned to beckon the gtld call. They are now all officially accounted for and have all paid their recurring $25 dues. Maybe a few stragglers will still wander in, but less than a handful. In a day or two, it will be obvious that the registration numbers have fallen off of a cyber-cliff, that the application predictions of most registries were not even close to reality, that the gtld program was an absolute bust and that tld history has, once again, repeated itself.

    Brace yourself for some registry backpedaling and exit strategizing.

    What a dumb idea this was. Do we really need to watch innocents lose even more money in the process? Can’t we just abort this ill-conceived idea now without going any further and causing more damage? Can we learn anything from O.Co’s shortcut failure in which the Overstock board told disappointed shareholders that their anticipated traffic leakage was a killer 61%? Or, how about the failures of .Mobi, .Travel, .Coop, .Museum, .Biz, .Name, .Tel, .Pro, .XXX, .Asia, .Cat or .Jobs? Seriously, I’d love to hear someone …anyone…tell me why these silly and super-long-assed gtlds are going to be any different. I think it will unquestionably end in exactly the same way, but take far less time to get there.

    • not everyone can purchase .com domains, internet is just getting bigger and bigger and there are not enough .com names left, also people/small companies wont have so much money to invest on .com domain
      it only make sense to create more extensions so everyone can get what they want
      when all over 1000 extensions are out , people will get forced to use them, it is just matter of time and it will not happen over night
      i have spoke to someone who works in google and he was mentioning that eventually all the search engines with narrow down the search based on the domain extension, for example if you are search bmw car first it will go and search under .car and then search for bmw and when you think about it, it really make sense.
      this is purely my own opinion nothing else
      good luck

    • Alex said:

      “i have spoke to someone who works in google and he was mentioning that eventually all the search engines with narrow down the search based on the domain extension, for example if you are search bmw car first it will go and search under .car and then search for bmw and when you think about it, it really make sense.”

      Congrats, you win the bs post of the day, haha. What a bunch of nonsense.

    • it will be me laughing at you in few years
      i know you have spent so much money in .com but its ok , it is life, you will get over it.

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