So you may have watched my talk from the Asheville Conference on Morgan’s blog, if not you can watch it below.
So to follow up on my new gTLD presentation at Rick’s Asheville Conference where I said Geo extensions are death here are some stats from .Miami domains I own:
artfairs.miami
artshow.miami
basketballtickets.miami
buyacondo.miami
buyahouse.miami
caraccidents.miami
comedy.miami
concerttickets.miami
conventions.miami
cosmeticsurgeon.miami
cosmeticsurgeons.miami
cosmeticsurgery.miami
cruiseships.miami
dates.miami
fairs.miami
festivals.miami
footballtickets.miami
getajob.miami
hotelroom.miami
hotelrooms.miami
limousine.miami
limousines.miami
officerentals.miami
penthouses.miami
plasticsurgeons.miami
rentacondo.miami
rentahouse.miami
soccertickets.miami
weekend.miami
Keep in mind that Miami has a professional baseball team, football team and basketball team. It’s also the home of the biggest art show in the country Art Basel and of course is a huge real estate and vacation market.
The total number of visitors for the last 12 months is 532 for all of the above domains. The highest is weekend.miami at 55. For the year.
Prices for renewals range from $15.50 to $55 a domain. Moreover not only haven’t I sold a .miami domain I never got an offer on any, at any price.
This is the first in a series of posts where I will break down my new gtld stats and give my thoughts on where I think the extensions are headed. I will include what my plans are for holding or dropping. I will be dropping the majority if not all of my .Miami names and most other “geo” related new gtlds.
Thanks a lot for the information.
These are not very good domains even for .miami.
2-word new gtlds are a big no-no!
I disagree with you.
Some names are to generic that does not specify the niche of that business.
For example:
cosmeticsurgery vs cosmetic
caraccidents vs accidents
officerentals vs rent a car ,rent a house, rent jewelry etc…
Agree Konstantinos.
Some of those are 3 words… Buy a condo, rent a house, get a job… ? Not sure what the plan was for those. SEO play would take a lot of time. How good would those types of domains be in .com? As .coms, those types of domains may appeal more to domainers than end users… and therein lies the problem. The two TLDs registered have to appeal to businesses that operate locally and are proud that they are operating locally in their city.
Even the names like baseballtickets.miami (although *may* sell for a few hundred eventually) really is a hard sell. It’s not a local service, no clear benefit for local end users. When people think baseball tickets generally they aren’t thinking local, also if they are thinking local, they know the sites they can buy from.
Geo gTLDs do well when they are one word services or words that are short, verbs and nouns, especially services that people may want to differentiate their search as local… For example if people in Miami are searching for dumpsters, realistically they may search for “dumpsters in miami” so if renting out dumpsters in Miami is your business, you may want to own dumpsters.miami for a few reasons:
1. To rebrand from a longer less impactful domain, website, even email addresses.
2. For vanity reasons
3. To own THE shortest perfect fit domain for your business
4. To prevent a competitor from acquiring THE shortest perfect fit domain for what you do
5. To invest in the possibility that there will be future SEO benefit with keyword Geo’s
6. Because you see that either dumpsters.miami is more memorable or you think there’s a strong likelihood it will be more memorable in future
7. To ad to your marketing mix (along with spend on flyers, local radio, local TV, you may want to spend a few grand on a domain like this to make those other campaigns more memorable)
Anyways, it may take 10 years for these to gain traction or reach values that are worth selling.
My view is that most domainers should stay away from all new gTLDs (including geos), although there is an opportunity for those willing to research, take a calculated risk and do some work with outbound and maybe a little educating end users. Also only for those who have the time to spend learning, watching regs and drops and usage… Not for everyone. But then again investing in .coms isn’t for everyone either!
Thank you, Mike, for your honesty.
Before you drop all of your .miami
you can list them for sale, for free
on my listitfl (dot) com website 1,400 plus visits monthly
and miamidadecounty sub-domain around 500 visits monthly
Who knows? Might sell a few?
Contact me by email if interested
Those domains suck!!!
Getajob should be Jobs.miami
Hotelroom should be hotels.miami
You registered a bullshitttt extension with bullshitttt domain names
Atleast get premium one word domains for new gtlds
With 50 years of domaining experience, you know better.
Comedy.miami is the one.
Also:
conventions.miami
limousine.miami
limousines.miami
(Although limo and limos may be preferable to the longer spellings of these two)
Many of the names are directory-type names rather than end user and that is a lower payoff proposition for an extension with a limited market reach such as .Miami (even if Miami does have sports teams, etc).
I agree comedy is one of the better ones – although who is going to buy it? Maybe their is a comedy club, but are their 20 comedy clubs in the city? Even comedy.miami is going to be difficult to sell – services are easier. Also agree the shorter limos is better that the full word which most people cannot spell.
hey, new gtld honk,
I sold Wire.berlin for $8750, so language has “F” all to do with the new gtld cluster fuck
Robotics.london has never gotten an offer either
New gtlds, but for a minuscule segment of possible novelty names therein, has been a colossal bust!
ntldstats.com chronicles the daily hemorrhaging and evidence of the criminal bust is indisputable !
You may have more sport taking someone else to school, on domains.
MANY THANKS
OMG, this is the state of domaining. I thought I was being nice in my reply despite the ridiculousness of you registering English words with the German .Berlin.
Anyways, let me school you some more. The German word for wire, is wire. Moron.
“The German word for wire, is wire”
Huh?? The German word for wire is certainly not wire.
Richard, that should have said isn’t… I was distracted by a dog climbing on me at the time of pressing submit.
Very interesting comment about traffic in Geo gTLDs. Some of them are saturated with holding/PPC so they have an up-hill battle to gain traction in their markets and this may be affecting type-in traffic. Not all geo gTLDs are equal though. The ones that are effectively marketed are seeing some uptake.
Great info! Thanks for sharing. I never liked miami, since at the time i was participating in .nyc actively and considering relatively not busy .nyc, i would say miami was not likely.
Better names would be stay.miami, enjoy.miami, and play.miami.
They are available for registration on Godaddy right now.
However, here are the current reg prices and the reason why new gtlds suck for domain investors:
stay.miami – $2,599.99
enjoy.miami – $519.99
play.miami – $1,049.99
Domain investors are essentially being positioned as end users who have to pony up the upfront acquisition price to the registry and registrar, who are squeezing out investors in the new gtld space.
There may still be upside beyond these lumpsum, first year payments as ongoing renewals are at lower levels, but the cost/payoff analysis a limited market extension such as .Miami is different since the base of potential buyers is smaller than for .com’s, etc.
Who is willing to take a chance investing in these extensions with the high upfront capital requirements imposed by the registry and registrar?
Add to that the very present danger that future renewals could be jacked up at the registry’s whim.
There is very little certainty or price visibility for investors in new gtlds since a premium pricing structure and no price caps are in place.
Watch the fireworks if .org or .com try to spread this type of pricing structure to their extensions.
There is no country for domain investors.
Domain investors are being squeezed out for sure. Not a lot of meat on the bone but the one word domains you mentioned may be attractively priced for end users (definitely not domainers).
The fun in all this is for domainers to find little gems, maybe even those the registry should have marked as premium but didn’t. Especially with registries who do not charge any premium renewals which limits risk.
I bought my first few .Miami’s yesterday – GD has a sale, they’re $4.99 and I picked up “pt” and “physical therapy”. Such little risk, especially for a two letter domain. Even in a year at full price the renewal will be $13!
“Domain investors are essentially being positioned as end users who have to pony up the upfront acquisition price to the registry and registrar, who are squeezing out investors in the new gtld space.”
That has always been the case with new tlds, the end of the line person is typically a domainer. Businesses aren’t using this in any volume. For most names a registry will make far more from domainers renewing year after year. The other big revenue stream is defensive registration where business are paying to renew names they’ll never need. Very little of it is about usage.
That said registries are not doing well from what I can see of it, dramatic price changes all over the place and the actual financials that come out show red ink. Volumes are at 10% of expectations and very few are going to do well in that environment.
gTLDs aren’t for domainers.
They’re an option for end users.
The registries that will survive and thrive will be those with usage in their namespace.
Maybe stop promoting them on every blog post then? These names are bad for anyone who goes near them…..expect you of course because you made a profit in 1 year out of 5 and are now an expert in the field.
Not promoting them. Read my comments. Yet you have a campaign against them.
What is your hidden agenda? What personal self interests do you have aligned to the failure of new gTLDs?
Thank you Mike
It saddens me to read of the difficulties Michael has had with .miami names.
Michael’s candor serves domainers well.
I echo the new g’s city extensions lament.
mortgage.berlin
robotics.berlin
engineer.berlin
have never gotten an offer
Thank you Mr. Berkens
They speak German in Berlin. This is why your domains are not receiving offers.
Also imagine your 3 keywords with a .Miami, I don’t think engineer.miami would have a lot of demand, maybe robotics.miami would sell for $200 for a club/league/contest, mortgage.miami may sell for $1-2k to a broker. This is the scale of success which has to be considered against the renewals and risk.
I agree that Rob’s names are not good but I do not think they’d do any better in German. There has been 1 .berlin reported sold in the last year.
Let’s stop trying to make up excuses as to why everyone’s new tld names aren’t selling (like the excuse you made about MB sales lander being down) and face facts that new tlds do not sell well.
Read this thread and any other I’ve commented in, no excuses, just logical reasoning.
You don’t think that Rob would do any better keeping the language on the left of the dot the same as the country on the right. Hmmm, ok, but not sure that’s solid reasoning.
No I don’t think he would do better, it is just a really bad bunch of names. He has problems with the keyword, the extension, and the asking price. Needs to start again from square one.
Snoopy, having English words with a German TLD is ridiculous, obviously he should stick with a related language. You arguing that it doesn’t matter and the TLD is the problem is equally as ridiculous.
What is your hidden agenda? What self interests are you not sharing that are pushing you to make such illogical comments, grasping at anything to make negative comments about the whole gTLD program?
Where have you invested your money in domains? Which TLDs? (any non-.coms?) How much have you lost with .biz, .mobi, .info? How many .coms are you holding?
When you sold gas station.com, trillions.com and rivalry.com for 10k (way too low IMO) were they your best names?
Would you like geo TLDs and other new gTLDs to do better? More registrations and usage? Or would that fire you up to be more against them?
Well, you did well with your .com names, so it’s all icing on the cake.
We do appreciate your candor, and as someone who made substantial investments on both sides of the table, you can provide invaluable insights about the Gs, the traffic, the offers, etc
Enjoyed the talk and thanks for sharing, Mike.
Thanks Mike, appreciate the very candid nature of the video and this post.
Hi Michael..
First of all thank you very much sharing your experience.
If I am not wrong you are not actively participating in blogs/conversations… I really like to see your articles and experiences. I believe there is lot to learn from your times.
Will be following here for more insights…please share all your experiences not only ngTLDs but your domaining life.
Thanks,
Ravi.
Sorry but those names are just awful!
Drop them all, no brainer.
Thank you for your talk, Michael!
Please be careful with what data to share, though – we don’t need an army of competitors to come 🙂
Interested in knowing if the 532 visits for the past 12 months, were vetted. It would be interesting to see if those visits came from domain investors, just checking to see if anyone owned the name or maybe curious to see what was on it, versus an actual potential end-user typing it in. They also could have come from robots visits.
Domain investors and tech entrepreneurs are a faster type of crowd that’s “in the know” about these types of domain extensions. Your average internet user, even business owners, have no clue that anything exists beyond .com, .net, .org, .info and maybe .biz … so there’s a high probability that those visits were not potential end-user type-ins. This data would be important in evaluating things.
Well, i had dropped all of my gTLD’s including “one word” .club , .news and whatever.. i only keep a one letter geo for my own pleasure.
in fact, it would insane of myself to invest in domain names when the industry is rigged and corrupt by their leaders.
i invite everyone to visit my website http://www.bdq.ca not only i know about the rigged internet industry, but i truly know about the DNC hacking… you can see part of it on my site.