Sunday Thoughts and Updates

Now that we have a baby and an almost three year old, there aren’t really anymore lazy Sundays for me anymore. I can’t say that I miss those days all that much, but I wouldn’t mind sleeping in once in a while 🙂

Here are some thoughts, updates, and news for the weekend. As always, you are welcome to share your own thoughts and/or news if you’d like to share.

  • Congratulations to Kevin Murphy of DomainIncite.com on the 5 year anniversary of his website. I visit DomainIncite.com daily, and I wish Kevin continued success.
  • Regardless of how much I offer someone for a domain name in the aftermarket, it always seems like they just received an offer thousands of dollars higher than mine. It’s a negotiating tactic I’ve learned to ignore.
  • Pablo Palatnik, CEO of ShadesDaddy.com, wrote an article on Forbes about how to recover from a domain name hijacking. Domain Gang covered the theft and subsequent return of the domain name.
  • Igloo.com scored another excellent exclusive listing. Last week, the company announced it had an exclusive on Single.com.
  • It’s a bit strange that I could spend a week or two  researching a large purchase, and I could spend just 5 minutes deciding whether or not to spend five figures on a domain name.
  • Archive.org got a pretty nice update, which is currently in beta. I use Archive.org for a variety of domain name related activities, as well as a source of information for articles here.
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
  1. Some nice useful thoughts there. I’m going to share a thought about the new gTLD’s. Speaking as someone who still regards .com as the overall “king” for most cases by a mile, though most definitely not all.

    I began as a bit of a naysayer about the new g’s like many, but I have warmed up to some of them, and have basically always supported just the idea of their fundamental availability based on higher principles whether they succeed or not. Some of them, however, are definitely an asset and a benefit.

    Now that the dust has settled so to speak sufficiently on the basic phenomenon of new gTLD’s, though obviously we know more are pending, I’m going to announce the winner. I’m even going to say it like that, not even with prefacing remarks like “in my opinion,” etc. Obviously of course it is my opinion, however.

    The winner of the new gTLD’s is (no surprise):

    .Club – .Club rules them all. Not only the new gTLD’s, but also the one people have been waiting for, the one people might still believe would and should be the “king” of the new gTLD’s – .Web. That last part may be the element of surprise in my statement of opinion here.

    (Regional geo’s deserving honorable mention as best of their kind for the US are still .NYC and .Vegas of course. I’ll reserve comment for the geo’s outside the US.)

    The reason why .club rules even .web is simple: .club holds an unmistakable and permanent “cool” factor that captures the hearts and minds. As such, it clearly is also not just limited to the literal sense of the term “club,” but because the “cool” factor is so transcendent and appealing, .club itself is also supremely desirable as a completely generic new gTLD as much as or even more so than any of the more blandly, literally and linguistically “pure” generics such as a .web or similar. “Web” is also really a bit of dated term while still being current, and I suspect .Net really still has more appeal to people in general as a TLD than a “.web” would.

    .Web would still be very good, however, and of course best for some keywords, certainly obvious ones like “hosting.web” for instance.

    So while if/when .web ever actually gets released it may still have many more early and initial regs quantitatively, .club still possesses the “zestier” qualitative factor that actually appeals to the heart and mind.

    • Really? I’m as cynical as the next guy, but what are people to do, just sit on the fence all the time and not take a stand? .Club rules the roost, and it remains to be seen whether .web will capture the hearts and minds of anyone but domainers (sorry, that’s domain investors) buying them in droves and looking to score if it ever gets released. When I write opinions like this, I am also writing from the perspective of what appeals to the general public in terms of real live active sites they want to visit and use, not from the perspective of what one might simply be able to sell for a profit.

    • P.S. One of the reasons why .com itself is king, aside from being around so long and so early, is because “.com” is also the very quintessence of the “cool” factor, too, in every sense one can describe. It is by no means merely a bland or banal literalist appellation. (Who knew you could find yourself using all these vocabulary words naturally and actually meaning it? 🙂 ) Name any element you can, and “.com” is not only simply meaningful, but powerfully appealing and cool.

    • John,

      Saw your comment over at Thedomains and followed it through here. I am thankful for your support. Funny thing is – I actually came at the market a bit like you did with a lot of skepticism about the new gTLDS. I am still a bit skeptical about generics that try to compete with .com. .com is a great domain extension. And when I have had to register an alternative like .net, or .co I really felt the message was I couldn’t get a .com so I settled for second best. Alternatively, I have registered my wife’s school with a .org over a .com as it better represented what she was trying to do with her school.

      Alternatively, I am more supportive of domains with meaning. RollingStones.com has a different meaning then RollingStones.club. One is clearly about the band and maybe a place to purchase merchandise. The other is clearly a fan club and community. If the TLD has meaning I believe it will have staying power.

      I have bought two other names recently – registered.today which features registrations on a daily basis (surprise, surprise). And Doggy.toys for a friend who runs a dog toy business. .Toys may never be huge but Doggy.toys (at G.A. pricing) explains exactly what they are trying to pull off and for that reason, they will always see value in it.

      Thanks again for the support.

    • No problem, Colin, and thanks for embarking on this venture with .club in the way that you have. 🙂 I could easily imagine another party having brought it to market in a way that was far less appealing and with far less incentive to use.

      One thing I had wanted to mention more explicitly above has to do with that “cool” factor, and why I contend that this extension is not only literal to the conventional sense of the word “club,” but without question powerful, appealing and effective for those who actually publish as a “generic” above and beyond that literal sense – also similar to the reason why “com” is so appealing to begin with as well.

      It’s really all psychological of course – all about positive connotations and associations that capture the heart and mind whether one is consciously aware of them or not. It’s about the higher and more “abstract” positive connotations of the term “club.” What it means is that if you are a publisher and your potential visitor or customer discovers this extension and your site for the first time, and even sees that you are not even at all simply an actual literal “club” no less, those higher senses and positive connotations of the term come into play. Your visitor and potential customer then becomes part of the conscious or subconscious idea of participating in and being a member of that higher, more abstract and figurative notion of the conceptual “club” of the subject matter of your site, and the positive thoughts associated of the term “club” they have formed and experienced over the years can and I believe do tend to attract one to give it a chance and pursue it.

      So from the perspective of someone who is more interested in commercial use and publishing than simply domain investment sales per se, .club is definitely an asset and a winner for those pursuing commerce in the World Wide Web club. 🙂 Although I like to remain anonymous and do not want to “out” myself on the blogs now, I can nonetheless also tell you from experience that a site I am personally publishing on a .club right now, and which has not even been up very long, experiences visitor action in a way that I would hold to most likely be entirely consistent with the above. It would not surprise me at all if it turns out to be a quite successful site as well. 🙂

  2. The link to the .NYC stats was very informative. Assuming all that data is accurate, it supports the contention that the majority of the .NYC registrations are for investment purposes only , i.e. so very few active websites compared to the total number of registrations. The Google “site:.tld” search function reveals a lot about development vs. speculation.

    • Number of sites dont show up on sites:.nyc search . I have few sites that rank on google, but they dont show up on .nyc site search.

      Though going back to the post, the reality is, a lot of people bought name and havent developed them but planning. I dont belive majority names that are being bought now are for investment purposes, i watch .nyc daily registrations and currently majority is bought by end users. In the initial stages of launch, it was a more for investment but its not been the case for a few month now.

      Infact if you check https://domainpunch.com/topm/ .nyc has 21 domains in top 1 million alexa vs 10 for .London and 2 for .Vegas.

  3. “I just got an offer for several thousand more…” may be a politer way of saying, “You’re Elliot Silver and you run a blog where your goal is to flip/resell domain names” and they think you’ve seen some value they’ve missed. Unless, of course, you use a pseudonym to buy names with.

    • > Regardless of how much I offer someone for a domain name in the aftermarket, it always seems like they just received an offer thousands of dollars higher than mine. It’s a negotiating tactic I’ve learned to ignore.

      Curious what your response is here. Do you just ignore them completely, stick to your guns or walk away?

      • Depends if I think I can pay more. Usually I mention that I made my best offer (or I increase my offer a bit), and I will give an out to the owner to try and get a deal done. I might say something like the other offer could be expired now and no longer valid or that I can pay right away vs. might not be the case for the other offer. Giving an out like that allows him to save face and say yes to me. Worse case is that the other offer was legit and the owner passes.

  4. Congrats Elliott on your baby boy! Being a dad is the greatest joy as you know. I know the feeling not getting much sleep, I haven’t had 1 good night sleep since my twins were born(lol) Congrats again Elliott!!!

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