Thanks to a penny promotion for its second anniversary, the .XYZ gTLD more than doubled its numbers from less than 3 million, to more than 6 million domains.
Priced at $0.01 dollars, the mass registration of .XYZ domains came at no sweat to domain opportunists, who went after every left-over keyword not taken previously.
Almost 2 months later, the promotion is over and the .XYZ numbers are plateauing. That’s because 30-40 days after registration is when expired domains drop off the zone files.
Without continuous promotions, often below the wholesale price, it’s questionable whether even the 2.8 million number right before the penny promotion would have ever been achieved.
But time is running out for those 3 million plus .XYZ domains that were the direct product of the recent penny promotion.
Domain investors who “bit the bait” at a penny a pop, are left with 10 more months during which they have to either flip these domains, or build web sites on them. The third option will be to drop, at renewal time, those that stand no chance to recover even a penny, plus the renewal fees.
According to numbers provided by ntldstats, 45% of all .XYZ domains are parked, although the definition of “parked” isn’t clear. There are thousands of domains registered with Chinese and Japanese registars that clearly display automatically generated pages that aren’t pure “parking” but aren’t true content either. We aren’t sure if ntldstats counts these pseudo-developed .XYZ domains as parked or not.
What is the ultimate goal of .XYZ remains to be seen. It can’t become a .COM substitute, despite the wishful thinking of its charismatic CEO and founder, Daniel Negari.
Going public as a successful business venture, at least as far as the pure registration numbers assert, is one possible goal.
Getting acquired by a big Internet venture, or registrar, or Google themselves, would not be surprising either. Silicon Valley ventures and angel investors don’t follow the type of logic that average domain investors share.
As long as the .XYZ numbers keep increasing – at whatever cost – these goals are quite possible to materialize.
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