Frank Schilling, Uniregistry founder.
Domain investor and Uniregistry founder, Frank Schilling, made a bold prediction about the future of new gTLDs.
Said Schilling:
“Registrations of new “not com” endings will out-pace .com and others absent heavy discounting.
We’re on track for 50 mil new names by 2019.”
This prediction might appear controversial to some, particularly as Frank Schilling’s own domain portfolio of more than 250,000 domains contains mostly .com’s.
Popular domain investor and blogger, Elliot Silver, commented on Frank’s statement:
“But haven’t not com registration numbers been growing as a result of heavy discounting?”
To this valid point, Frank Schilling responded:
“Indeed they have, and many will stick/have sites built, which will drive further registrations on shorter nicer looking names.”
Mike Berkens, domain investor and blogger from The Domains, chimed in:
“When is the heavy discounting going to end? FAMOUS FOUR just rolled out $.49 domains for the rest of the year.”
The truth is, new gTLD Registries are discounting some new gTLDs heavily, aiming at achieving high renewal rates once these domains begin to be used.
In our opinion, however, domainers that take advantage of discount promos such as the infamous penny per domain at .XYZ, will drop the majority of these registrations at renewal time, particularly if the renewal cost is high.
New gTLD Registries should instead spend their discount “loss” educating the general public about the many benefits of new gTLD domains, thus aiming for high rates of adoption from the get-go.
There are currently 24.833 million new gTLD domains, according to ntldstats.
My butler says closer to 60m million
I don’t think it would be fair to raise renewal fee for a domain that you have work hard for it.
There is zero doubt that newTDNs short, single word and memorable names will somehow be recognized eminency.
I’ve often thought that there is an undiscovered mathematical formula, not unlike Metcalfe’s law, related to the number domains registered with each new gTLD added to the web. As noted in the article, the price point of the domains and subsequent renewal fees are the wildcard.
Renewal rates on freebies tends to be in the region of 5%. Sometimes it can be slightly higher on Western registrars but most of these freebies and discounted registrations will not renew. I’ve already run the historical data and am testing a renewal prediction model on some gTLDs.
I think Domain Investing comments say it best – Frank has turned into a dishonest used car salesman. He knows for a fact that a majority of the current registrations were falsely done (or “fraud” as we would call it) in an attempt to convince others of acceptance. False suitability and market reports to stimulate awareness and income. The fail clowns discounting to $1 or less are doing nothing but feeding spam trolls – causing mass global penalties for the future use of these new extensions as most intelligent corporate email servers auto flag them as spam. 99 out of 100 decision makers have never even HEARD of .club, .xyz, or .tv for that matter, let alone most of the some 2000 other bastardizations of common sense. We need to slap some of these “consultants” for new extensions into a chair with a polygraph machine, and find out exactly how much they committed in illegitimate purchases themselves to try and give this industry screw up legs. Especially when you have major blue chips buying portfolios with useless names at silly costs, on the expectation that money will be publicly spent on new premium GLTD purchases to try and raise the false ceiling of value perception. Guess…
F Carson – Great opinion, as long as you back it up with some facts. It’s ok not to share Frank’s overall position on the use and future of gTLDs, but to flip the switch the opposite way reeks of tinfoil hat mentality.