In addition to .Healthcare, four other new gTLD’s are launching tomorrow into General Availability; three are focused on the military, .Army, .Navy & .Airforce & then there is .Vet which could mean Veterans as in those who served in the military or Veterinarians those doctors who treat animals
Thought the Sunrise period for trademark holders and the five day Early Access Program for those who paid an additional fee to register a domain ahead of GA here are the total number of registrations as of yesterday:
.Vet 74
.Airforce 49
.Navy 48
.Army 38
Yeah
Horrible
Honestly I never got the .Army, .Airforce and .Navy extensions.
My step son served in the military and I have met a bunch of his friends over the years and they are not tech guys by in large. If there in the army they get a .Mil address for their use. if they are no longer in the military they move on to other jobs, professions and occupations. Either way i just don’t see a lot of people who would want their online identity tied to the military. Of course there are very few premium domain names in any of these extension, further hindering the desirability of the string.
It cost Demand Media, Inc, (DMD) the company that applied for these extensions before its got spun off to Rightside (NAME) $565,000 just in application fees for those three extensions and will cost them $75,000 a year in ICANN fees ongoing. Over 5 years its another $350K in ICANN fees or around $1 Million in just application and ICANN fees.
Just to cover those costs they will have to get some 25,000 registrations combined.
They are sitting at 135 registrations.
I don’t think they are going to get to 25,000 registration in five years, without some deep pricing discounts down the line, and even then.
As far as .Vet I’m pretty surprised that there are not more registrations.
Maybe releasing the extension the same week as .Army, .Airforce and .Navy is making users think of the extension along the lines of the military and not along the lines of a Veterinarian which of course is the better commercial use for the term.
On the other hand almost every Geo .Vet domain is premium priced as well as some of the more natural terms.
Of course for a lot of terms .Vet is on the wrong side of the dot. Common uses like Vet Hospital, Vet School, Vet Clinic the word Vet is just on the wrong side of the dot. Clinic.Vet not so great and at that its not available.
I checked some .Vet domains and of those not reserved or on the collision list, here are some premium .Vet domains we found with their premium registrations and renewal rated (Based on Enom.com rates)
Newyork.vet $60,012.
Orlando.vet $60,012
Emergency.vet $60,012
Holistic.vet $1,262
247.Vet $1,262
Finda.Vet $762
Horse.Vet $762
IamA.Vet $762
School.Vet $420
MyPets.Vet $420
Of course those are the renewal prices as well.
The gtlds are simply not in demand. All will soon fail for the reasons you list above. None of the registries will be profitable for the very same reasons. People just don’t want these things. Time to do an analysis on your gtld stance. Becoming obvious that they are withering on the vine. Oh, except for .xyz.
My post was about one post that K published, it was not about the new gTLD program in general, but if you want to talk about that Donuts is making a fortune, 1M domains registered in the first 8 months at even $25 average not counting all the premium registrations, EAP’s and string they lost at auction which they are collecting 7 figures for a $185K spent. Some registries are not going great but .best was never going to do great. Not even extension is great. Not every new business fails. Its 8 months old and the good stuff including Google’s and Amazon haven’t even launched. Each registry had to put up3 years of operating expenses into escrow so none will fail, for three years. Sorry for those that had the money to apply and didn’t. People are walking away with millions by losing for their $185K others are operating a profitable business less than 8 months old.