23 TLDs up for Auction

Here's a chance to own your own TLD, not just your own domain.

[bhartzer]

UNR has decided to auction off 23 of their TLD (top level domains), the auction is set for the end of April.

I took a look at the TLDs, and most already have domains registered (1,000 or more domains), while one has 18,000 domains registered, and another hasn't been launched yet. For most of the TLDs, there is a minimum bid but there isn't a reserve price.

All of these are up for auction:

.audio
.blackfriday
.christmas
.click
.country
.diet
.flowers
.game
.guitars
.help
.hiphop
.hiv
.hosting
.juegos
.link
.llp
.lol
.mom
.photo
.pics
.property
.sexy
.tattoo

The auction site is auction dot link.

[lucy24]

The auction site is auction dot link.

So the auction itself is at one of the TLDs being auctioned off? Interesting. (Possibly in the “May you live in interesting times” sense.)

[jmccormac]

Some potentially good gTLDs there but they would need a lot of marketing to turn them around. The timing could be better as there's a major deletion in progress on .ICU and without inflated zones like .ICU holding the totals of new gTLDs registrations high, the focus may be on the multi-million domain name drops over the next few months. The first year renewal rate on some of them is pretty solid but the geographical markets is an important metric. US/CA/EU/AU regs generally have strong renewals. The Chinese market gTLDs are more boom and bust. The real killer for new gTLDs is web usage and development. Forget about that rubbish from the ICANN CCT report. The reality is that development is difficult and there has been a major shift back to the bluechip TLDs (the ccTLDs and .COM) over the last year. I ran a full new gTLD web usage survey in December along side the legacy gTLD and some ccTLD surveys. Some of the new gTLDs are still struggling to find their niche five years after launch.

Those gTLDs do seem to be keyword driven choices linked to the value of the keywords in .COM gTLD. That's not surprising. But the 2021 market is very different to the 2013 market. Even the 2013 round of new gTLDs was a response to the artificial shortage of "good" domain names caused by ICANN's failure to take action against Domain Tasting over 2005-2007. (Covered in the Domnomics book along with the stats.) By the time the 2013 round new gTLDs launched, the demand for many of the new gTLDs had almost disappeared. The early landgrab by Frank/Unireg on potentially valuable premium domain names flatlined the landrush for many of those gTLDs. Commerically, it may have made sense but new TLDs need a buzz to sell them. The Godaddy affair when Unireg upped the prices didn't help but it was the right decision at the time. It could have been handled better but higher reg fees actually result in higher renewal %s. Godaddy kicked most of the Unireg gTLDs off its platform and that effectively cut these gTLDs off from the biggest US market.

Some of them may be trade sales to portfolio operators but I'm not sure that all will sell.

Regards...jmcc

[zulu_dude]

Very interesting!

I would suggest that some of those starting bids are rather optimistic, especially in the very useful context given by jmccormac.

The few that I tried searching for on GoDaddy weren't available, which would surely significantly drop the value of the gTLD.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

All the fancy gTLD had potential, but in real life, nothing exists beside .com .net .org, and ccTLD. Eventually, the .io gained some popularity, but even the .info and .biz are nearly of no use.

Also, the gTLD have awful renewing prices.

[lucy24]

The one that jumped out at me was .help, which does seem as if it could develop into a useful niche.

Isn't .io mainly for people who had their hearts set on a particular name, but the .com was already taken? (Besides, all those island nations have to do something for money now that they’ve sold all their guano. There are a couple of others you see pretty often.)

[bhartzer]

.Help definitely has some good potential, maybe offer all the fortune 500 companies and others a free .help domain in the hopes that it will be used for their customer service efforts.

major deletion in progress on .ICU and without inflated zones like .ICU holding the totals of new gTLDs registrations high,

I haven't heard anything about the deletion in progress on .ICU, I know that they're biz model was to keep price low to get a lot of registrations, same with .XYZ.

[csdude55]

I bought a bunch of 4-letter domains using a wide range of extensions, since the .COM and .NET weren't available (but unused since 1999). I couldn't use them, though, for fear that the actual owner of the .COM would inevitably take advantage of my marketing and suddenly have a ton of traffic sent to his .COM for free!

I let them all go several years ago, and they're still sitting there available... no one even bothered to buy them with the hopes of selling them back to me! LOL

The only realistic use I can imagine would be if someone wanted to have an extension in lieu of a subdomain; eg, instead of linking to pics.example.com they could use example.pics. Or maybe if they had a cutesy version of their company name; eg, the owner of hiaudio.com might want hi.audio. It's not marketable unless you own the .COM of the domain, though, and if you own that then why would you pay for something that can easily be replaced with a free subdomain?

[edited by: csdude55 at 3:51 pm (utc) on Feb 4, 2021]

[jmccormac]

The dump on .ICU has been ongoing for some time. There's another spike from last year that will be up for renewal. The .ICU, like most zone stuffing gTLDs has a very low renewal rate on these discounted regs. It is aleady down to around 2.6M regs from about 3.5M at the start of the year. It is also down from a peak of over 6M regs from this time last year.

[namestat.org...]

The zone stuffing/Boom and Bust model is a highly cynical one and is based on a small percentage of discounted regs renewing. Most will not. But if the registry does this kind of a promotion long enough, it will, as .INFO and .XYZ have done, build up a core of renewing registrations. The problem is that it needs a wide geographical spread of participating registrars. The .INFO and .XYZ got this aspect right initially. Those registries who tried to emulate .XYZ's initial success concentrated on the Chinese market. The problem with that is that the Chinese market is a highly volatile and early phase one where renewal rates are not as stable as EU/US/CA/AU markets. Most of the discounted regs are never developed into active websites and go straight on to PPC, Gambling or Adult affiliate landing pages. The depth of the discount removes a lot of the economic problems for these networks.would face with full price regs in legacy gTLDs. There has also been a shift of bad actor (spammers/malware etc) registrations from the legacy gTLDs to the discounted new gTLDs.

The problem with deep discounting is that it destroys the credibilty of the TLD over the long term. The .LOAN and other Famous Four Media run gTLDs used this model and then the registry management was replaced and the wholesale fee went back to normal. Registration volume collapsed. The singular/plural problem created by ICANN (allowing singular and plural versions of TLD strings) affected other similarly named gTLDs.

Regards...jmcc

[bhartzer]

I just spoke with the owner of .ICU, and they're going to be launching .CFD very soon, as well. Supposed to mean Clothing, Fashion, Design. If they do the pricing like they did with .ICU, then I expect a ton of registrations, also probably a lot of burner domains in there.

I am using a .BOND domain, which is priced differently (also owned by ShortDot who owns .ICU). And the .BOND domain/site is doing pretty well on Google.

[jmccormac]

Given the performance of .ICU, .CFD might be the replacement for that gTLD. As long as it covers costs, ICANN fees and makes a small profit for the registry, it is seen by the registry, and those who don't really have a clue about domain names and zone stuffing (like ICANN's well intentioned CCT team), as a success. Unfortunately most of the zone stuffing gTLDs run at a Quick Delta replacement level of over 70%. That means that 70% of a zone from the calendar month from the prior year, compared with the current zone, are deleted. By comparison, .COM runs around 18%. It will probably end up concentrating on the Chinese market because the costs of marketing it against .COM or .ccTLDs outside of that market are too high.

Regards...jmcc