3 ms·

Interesting, I wonder if all the new TLDs have eased the pressure on .com/.net/.org/etc. 10-15 years ago, any remotely intelligible expired .com/.net domain wo

by bserge 6y ago

Interesting, I wonder if all the new TLDs have eased the pressure on .com/.net/.org/etc. 10-15 years ago, any remotely intelligible expired .com/.net domain would be picked up by bots as soon as it was available and held for years. They would put them on sale for a much higher price (10x+ the yearly fee, much more if they were good domain names). That was the last time I cared about domain names, as did many other people it seems. Now it's just whatever. Make up a word that's easy to spell/pronounce/remember, even if it's nonsensical, and build a brand around it.

vmception 6y ago
That still happens. And everyone that gets approached by someone else for a domain name wants $10,000, at least, everyone. Outside of that market, the main pervasive idea in the collective conscious is that people need a .com, which also died 10-15 years ago. Making money on the internet does not require that. If you need "organic traffic" from a search engine or people typing your domain name in, your idea isn't one of the kind of ideas that make you any convenient amount of money. It just makes some youtube marketing guru some clicks, and some passive income course seller some money, because you'll definitely be coming back to those once whatever outdated SEO becomes clear that its not working. You can host entire businesses on a github hosting page. yoursubdomain.github.io You can host entire businesses on a mailchimp mailing list shared around as a direct link The reality is that your actual users will never be typing your domain name in. They will click and tap on it from social media and chat rooms. Your no name publication with a garbage domain name created yesterday can influence politics, we've seen that clear as day for half of a decade. You can absolutely sell ads on that stuff, or take hundreds of thousands to millions in payments directly from political action committees and NGOs. So, sure, do all sorts of domain name hacks using obscure TLDs, have fun with the branding, don't worry about the dot com, its just a "nice to have".
- mysterydip 6y ago
  This happened to me this year. I had a domain for almost 20 years that was on register.com. I refused to pay their fee, the discount codes no longer worked, and they made it very difficult to transfer (I made a few attempts). Eventually I got fed up and let it expire. It was instantly snagged with a $8500 price tag to get it back. Fortunately I had moved off every meaningful account so all they were left with was a bunch of spam. As much as I liked it, it was nice to make a fresh start with a new domain.
  - pmachinery 6y ago
    For future reference, and for anyone interested, not only do (ICANN accredited) have to provide a transfer authcode within 5 days of being requested, it's also possible to transfer a domain after it has expired, as long as it's still within the renewal grace period.
- dmd 6y ago
  > And everyone that gets approached by someone else for a domain name wants $10,000, at least, everyone. I own pandorasbrain.com and want to sell it. Every couple months I get an "offer" for a few thousand dollars, and every time I say yes -- which inevitably leads to the other person replying "actually I don't have the money right now, would you sell it to me for [$100, $200, maybe $400]". ... which I also say yes to! ... and then they disappear and never respond. I have no idea what this presumed scam is about, but rest assured there are people out here with .coms who want to sell for much less than $10k, but ... nobody's interested!
  - jen729w 6y ago
    I’ve been doing the same with the spammers that ask me if they can send me an SEO report or “generate content for my site” for which I’ll be paid. I respond, eagerly, in the positive. And not one of them has yet responded. What’s the point? Am I just confirming my identity to a bot? And even so ... to what end?
  - vmception 6y ago
    I'm an actual buyer occasionally that has dealt with actual people with no problem. My offers were real. As someone that owns domains names, I haven't really seen this market but I keep whois privacy on I guess.
  - pmachinery 6y ago
    When you accept immediately people automatically think their offer was too high and the name (or whatever item) must not be worth it. Next time ask for 20-50% more than they offer.
  - jobigoud 6y ago
    What marketplace are you selling it on? I think on some of them like sedo you can set up a fixed price that doesn't involve bargaining and that people can buy instantly if they are interested.
    - dmd 6y ago
      None. These are cold emails.
syntheticnature 6y ago
I can say that one organization I've helped with IT for had a few associated domains for future use. One of them, an eight-letter English word followed by .net, expired accidentally due to personnel changeovers. Someone snagged it and apparently used it for a game server for one year, and after it expired again it's remained unclaimed since. (I advocated for not worrying about it, since said "future use" has never materialized.)
toyg 6y ago
it actually happened recently to me with an unused .io domain I let expire. Io is an Italian pronoun for me/I; judging by the silly joke-page he put on it, the new registrant is also Italian and is basically just squatting.
ohashi 6y ago
I think there might be more pressure on .COM (nobody cares about .net and .org only if you're anything non-profity - it's still the 800 lb gorilla). A lot of TLDs, people don't even know or recognize. There's questionable billing policies/pricing policies. A lot of it feels like a gold rush from registry side, not to actually benefit consumers. Premium domains from registry, get that nice one word domain you want - but instead of a one time fee, pay it to us yearly to the registry. At least with a .COM the fee is low post acquisition.
- ryan29 6y ago
  > There's questionable billing policies/pricing policies. I blame ICANN. A few years ago Uniregistry changed pricing for a bunch of TLDs including existing registrants and ICANN did nothing. All of the other registries routinely reclassify domains as premium when they drop and it's really short sighted IMO. Domains would make an incredible, pseudo-anonymous, collision free web identity system, but many of the registries (AFAIK) are owned by private equity and can't see past the next quarterly earnings report. It's really sad. The new domains could have been an opportunity to expand the market by convincing regular people to buy domains for email, identity, etc., but instead we got a bunch of short sighted price gouging :-(
memset 6y ago
I don't know the answer to your specific question, but I can say that .com still makes up the vast vast majority of what customers are purchasing, even when presented with all of the other TLDs when they search. Anecdotally, I've had conversations of the form: Me: "My website is joe.pizza" Friend: types in joepizza.com
- jobigoud 6y ago
  Appropriately enough, both joe.pizza and joepizza.com are parked domains...
dsgriffin 6y ago
They've deeply weakened .net as it was always second fiddle - now there are more specific/relevant second fiddles to choose from. Good .com's are worth much, much more now (e.g. Voice.com sold for $30 million USD recently). I think some of the shady behavior from the new extension registries (they seem to hold back every decent name as a "premium") really hurt their adoption.

by bserge 6y ago

vmception 6y ago

That still happens. And everyone that gets approached by someone else for a domain name wants $10,000, at least, everyone. Outside of that market, the main pervasive idea in the collective conscious is that people need a .com, which also died 10-15 years ago. Making money on the internet does not require that. If you need "organic traffic" from a search engine or people typing your domain name in, your idea isn't one of the kind of ideas that make you any convenient amount of money. It just makes some youtube marketing guru some clicks, and some passive income course seller some money, because you'll definitely be coming back to those once whatever outdated SEO becomes clear that its not working. You can host entire businesses on a github hosting page. yoursubdomain.github.io You can host entire businesses on a mailchimp mailing list shared around as a direct link The reality is that your actual users will never be typing your domain name in. They will click and tap on it from social media and chat rooms. Your no name publication with a garbage domain name created yesterday can influence politics, we've seen that clear as day for half of a decade. You can absolutely sell ads on that stuff, or take hundreds of thousands to millions in payments directly from political action committees and NGOs. So, sure, do all sorts of domain name hacks using obscure TLDs, have fun with the branding, don't worry about the dot com, its just a "nice to have".

mysterydip 6y ago
This happened to me this year. I had a domain for almost 20 years that was on register.com. I refused to pay their fee, the discount codes no longer worked, and they made it very difficult to transfer (I made a few attempts). Eventually I got fed up and let it expire. It was instantly snagged with a $8500 price tag to get it back. Fortunately I had moved off every meaningful account so all they were left with was a bunch of spam. As much as I liked it, it was nice to make a fresh start with a new domain.
- pmachinery 6y ago
  For future reference, and for anyone interested, not only do (ICANN accredited) have to provide a transfer authcode within 5 days of being requested, it's also possible to transfer a domain after it has expired, as long as it's still within the renewal grace period.
dmd 6y ago
> And everyone that gets approached by someone else for a domain name wants $10,000, at least, everyone. I own pandorasbrain.com and want to sell it. Every couple months I get an "offer" for a few thousand dollars, and every time I say yes -- which inevitably leads to the other person replying "actually I don't have the money right now, would you sell it to me for [$100, $200, maybe $400]". ... which I also say yes to! ... and then they disappear and never respond. I have no idea what this presumed scam is about, but rest assured there are people out here with .coms who want to sell for much less than $10k, but ... nobody's interested!
- jen729w 6y ago
  I’ve been doing the same with the spammers that ask me if they can send me an SEO report or “generate content for my site” for which I’ll be paid. I respond, eagerly, in the positive. And not one of them has yet responded. What’s the point? Am I just confirming my identity to a bot? And even so ... to what end?
- vmception 6y ago
  I'm an actual buyer occasionally that has dealt with actual people with no problem. My offers were real. As someone that owns domains names, I haven't really seen this market but I keep whois privacy on I guess.
- pmachinery 6y ago
  When you accept immediately people automatically think their offer was too high and the name (or whatever item) must not be worth it. Next time ask for 20-50% more than they offer.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  What marketplace are you selling it on? I think on some of them like sedo you can set up a fixed price that doesn't involve bargaining and that people can buy instantly if they are interested.
  - dmd 6y ago
    None. These are cold emails.

syntheticnature 6y ago

I can say that one organization I've helped with IT for had a few associated domains for future use. One of them, an eight-letter English word followed by .net, expired accidentally due to personnel changeovers. Someone snagged it and apparently used it for a game server for one year, and after it expired again it's remained unclaimed since. (I advocated for not worrying about it, since said "future use" has never materialized.)

toyg 6y ago

it actually happened recently to me with an unused .io domain I let expire. Io is an Italian pronoun for me/I; judging by the silly joke-page he put on it, the new registrant is also Italian and is basically just squatting.

ohashi 6y ago

I think there might be more pressure on .COM (nobody cares about .net and .org only if you're anything non-profity - it's still the 800 lb gorilla). A lot of TLDs, people don't even know or recognize. There's questionable billing policies/pricing policies. A lot of it feels like a gold rush from registry side, not to actually benefit consumers. Premium domains from registry, get that nice one word domain you want - but instead of a one time fee, pay it to us yearly to the registry. At least with a .COM the fee is low post acquisition.

ryan29 6y ago
> There's questionable billing policies/pricing policies. I blame ICANN. A few years ago Uniregistry changed pricing for a bunch of TLDs including existing registrants and ICANN did nothing. All of the other registries routinely reclassify domains as premium when they drop and it's really short sighted IMO. Domains would make an incredible, pseudo-anonymous, collision free web identity system, but many of the registries (AFAIK) are owned by private equity and can't see past the next quarterly earnings report. It's really sad. The new domains could have been an opportunity to expand the market by convincing regular people to buy domains for email, identity, etc., but instead we got a bunch of short sighted price gouging :-(

memset 6y ago

I don't know the answer to your specific question, but I can say that .com still makes up the vast vast majority of what customers are purchasing, even when presented with all of the other TLDs when they search. Anecdotally, I've had conversations of the form: Me: "My website is joe.pizza" Friend: types in joepizza.com

jobigoud 6y ago
Appropriately enough, both joe.pizza and joepizza.com are parked domains...

dsgriffin 6y ago

They've deeply weakened .net as it was always second fiddle - now there are more specific/relevant second fiddles to choose from. Good .com's are worth much, much more now (e.g. Voice.com sold for $30 million USD recently). I think some of the shady behavior from the new extension registries (they seem to hold back every decent name as a "premium") really hurt their adoption.