Many insiders the domain industry are confused about the roll out of the new gTLD’s
So what about the consumer?
One thing is for certain the registrars are not helping.
Here is an email I got yesterday from EuroDns.com:
Hi Michael,
So you think you’re an expert? It’s not too late to place a pre-order for the new .EXPERT domain extension, priced at €40 each. It’s first come, first served and we only accept one pre-order per domain name; but hurry there’re only 2 days left to pre-order. Once the domain opens to everyone (estimated for May 14th), we will immediately register your domain. If we can’t secure your domain name, we’ll give you a full refund.
Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the .EXPERT domain; a crackerjack extension for all you wizards, hotshots, and aficionados. As a new domain there’s still huge availability, but don’t wait too long because there are a lot of experts out there getting downright excited about it.
We put our heads together and came up with some suggestions for you, check these beauties out…
Webdesign.expert, nailart.expert, coding.expert, domain.expert, duckherding.expert, fashion.expert, goalscoring.expert, riskandfraud.expert, electrical.expert, languages.expert.
It’s new so there are still hundreds and thousands of names up for grabs – but everyone’s an .EXPERT, so get registering now!
Happy hunting
The EuroDNS Team
www.eurodns.com
sales@eurodns.com
So for one the registrar is telling people to pre-order them at €40, first come first served, yet they don’t mention anywhere in the ad, even at the fine print at the bottom that many of the domains are priced as premium domains with premium prices and therefore are not going to be €40 but much, much higher. (€40 lets just call it $50 although its more)
The second problem is the examples of domains the registrars are using in the ad.
Here are the domain names that appear in the EuroDns Ad
“We put our heads together and came up with some suggestions for you, check these beauties out…”
So out of the 10 “beauties” they picked out 2 are reserved by the registry and not available now at any price:
fashion.expert Reserved
Domain.Expert Reserved
Two of the 10 are Premium domains and are not available for €40
Nailart.expert is a premium priced at $129.99 to register and renew (Godaddy price)
coding.expert is a premium priced at $199.99 a year (Godaddy Price)
Two of the domains are already registered:
Webdesign.expert Taken
Electrical.expert Taken
These 4 “beauties” are available but I think we all will agree are simply horrible domains:
Goalscoring.Expert
Duckherding.expert
Languages.expert
Riskandfraud.expert
Ok maybe Languages.expert is not horrible but I have never heard the term duck herding in my life and if that is the one of the best 10 you can get after putting your heads together well you need more heads.
You might ask why did I use Godaddy.com prices in reference to a EuroDNS.com ad?
Good question
The answer is I could begin to understand what EuroDNS.com is charging or why they are charging the amount the are.
So when I tried to pre-register one of the two premium domains listed in the email coding.expert which Godaddy is charging $199.99 to register and which carries an annual renewal fee of $199.99 at Euro DNS this is what I got
If you click on the image it will get bigger and you will see EuroDNS.com is not charging €40 but a “one time set up fee of $165.06 AND one year of registration for $160.93 for a grand total of $325.99
So for a domain advertised in an email we received we have gone from about $50 to $325.99.
I have no idea what the justification for a “one time set up” fee is much less one of $165, so that is why I used the Godaddy price.
Moving on to NetworkSolutions.com and Register.com, who sent out the same email, here is their email:
So out of the three examples they gave in the email, Money.Expert is reserved by the registry and not available to be registered.
The other two were already taken before general availability but were available at the time of the mailing
Bottom line if your a registrar and going to email everyone in your database its a good idea to make sure that the domains your promoting are actually not reserved by the registry.
Don’t tell your customers to go and register something that is not available.
It will probably piss them off.
Don’t your customers they can pre-register a domain for $50 if its really going to cost them $360.
I think that is business101.expert
and yes that domain is available as of publication.
Duck herding …
Reading this post, Mike, is like watching you drop-kick a dozen ducklings.
Two thumbs up!
Confusion can only get worse.
This is like having 1000 departures with no Air TRAFFIC controller and no flight paths or patterns. CLIMB ABOARD!!
I think sitting back and waiting to see if a secondary market even exists on ANY particular extension is a prudent way to proceed. I am a numbers guy and when I look at the numbers, they have ALL stalled. I think it is the job of each extension to go out there and define themselves. But if those companies FAIL to define themeselves, then the world will define them or more likely, ignore them alltogether.
The marketing overall has been HORRIFIC so far and the numbers spread over 100 extensions is so bad everyone has to add them all together because if they listed each extension and the daily registrations individually it would be pretty bad when MOST are double and single digits. lol.
And you NEVER get a second chance to make a good first impression. So some of these guys hoarding their premiums will end up like the .mobi folks. Still hoarding after all these years. They would have been better off selling them ALL off on DAY ONE!
I mean there is a roadmap of pitfalls here with .mobi and a playbook of successful marketing by .co and both lessons are being ignored by all those that will never even TASTE their success.
Somebody might do it right, but by that time, fewer and fewer will be paying attention as each day domainers in particular seem to be getting more and more frustrated and some even angry.
RE: “Confusion can only get worse. This is like having 1000 departures with no Air TRAFFIC controller and no flight paths or patterns. CLIMB ABOARD!!”
pfffffff the same could be said about the entire internet with all these different social platforms.. there are lots of them now.
yet i seem to be the one confused and everyone else (that actually uses them) is not confused and very involved. these were the people who never touched a computer in my high school daze. counting on people to become “more confused” as time goes by is desperate and completely backwards.
you “numbers people” are counting wrong. there might not be a TLD with hundreds of thousands or millions of registrations.. its going to be all of them together.. thats the point of having 1,000 “limited” extensions. when you have that many it becomes closer to “unlimited”
how many .COM domains have the word “expert” in them. probably a lot but when compared to the entire .COM zone file its pretty insignificant isnt it?
finally, anyone who brings .mobi and .co into this as a basis for why its “not gonna work out” clearly has gotten tired, grumpy, jaded. its an awful comparison.. 1,000 TLD’s being released at one time isnt .mobi and .co
Re: “pfffffff the same could be said about the entire internet with all these different social platforms.. there are lots of them now.”
Yes, and less than half a dozen of the social networks really matter, with one reining supreme over the rest. So is that a ringing endorsement for the success of the gTLDs?
.mobi looks like great success compared to these new gTLDs
new gTLDs have only one hope left…GOOGLE
The fact that the registrars are holding names for ransom as premium names from a hand reg perspective instead of on a first come first serve basis has always seemed rediculous to me. I understand the registrars getting involved in the aftermarket, after the domains have actually been registered at least once, but from the first release seems odd and a bit unfair. On top of that having to renew at the premium price as well yearly? Didn’t .tv try that and lose a lot of original registrants, because they were trying to make yearly renewal rates through the roof? Then the next person that got to register that same “premium .tv domain” got it for the regualar yearly renewal of $39.95 or whatever each registrar charges for tv.
The price is still salty, it is ideal to wait to see if the name will catch on.