In a recent post, XYZ Registry CEO and founder, Daniel Negari, gloated over the company’s growth in 2016.
Negari stated that .XYZ registrations outsold those of .COM by “over 1 million in June.”
That number might be true: more than 3 million .XYZ domains were registered in June, 2016, when an ongoing “penny” promotion allowed anyone to register .XYZ domains for $0.01.
According to stats from ntldstats, .XYZ had 2,920,917 domains on May 30th, the eve of the massively discounted promotion. On June 2nd, there were 6,091,042 .XYZ domains – a delta of 3,170,125.
The promotion continued through the month of June from various registrars, at lesser discounts, ranging from a couple of dimes to a dollar, increasing the total number of .XYZ domains to almost 6.5 million by the end of June 2016.
Effectively, .XYZ more than doubled its registration numbers at a loss, through the penny promo. Negari stated that the registry incurred a loss of “7 figures in ICANN fees.”
Domain analyst, John McCormac, operates Hosterstats. In a recent comment to DomainGang, John stated:
“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.”
If the 5% rate holds for the $0.01 .XYZ registrations, the Registry is looking to retain 158,506 domains and lose more than 3 million domains at anniversary time, June 2017.
Renewal fees for those retained domains just might equalize the 7 figure loss in ICANN fees, thus matching the June 2016 promotion costs.
Brilliant or dumb?
