OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
.Club had one of the best first days of all New gTLDs up until now. Just a few hours after general availability it had 25,781 registrations including sunrise and landrush domains. But this success was partly due to someone that registered 7,572 domains names in that first day. That was close to 30% of all .club registrations.
These 7,572 domains are behind whois privacy (c/o WHOIStrustee.com Limited) so I am not sure who the buyer is. The buyer could be from the UK because I see a lot of UK related domain registrations.
The registration fee for .Club domains is set at $19,64 at hexonet’s website. ($14,50 in my account) So the buyer paid about
$148,714 or $109,794 (or more likely something in between if he/she used a reseller).
Most of the 7,572 registrations are for 2 word domains. There are a lot of cityxxxxxx.club domains such as:
newyorkgolf.club
vancouvertennis.club
newcastlegay.club
cardiffpizza.club
aucklandcigar.club
Among the 7,572 registrations there are 494 xxxxxclub.club domains that all seem very bad to me such as:
angelclub.club
baseballclub.club
basketballclub.club
boatclub.club
bodyclub.club
bollywoodclub.club
bondageclub.club
boobsclub.club
bookclub.club
There are some decent 1 word .club domains but these are the exception:
novelty.club
bell.club
planets.club
polar.club
prestigious.club
And of course I noticed some Trademark domains such as:
xbox1.club
playboyclub.club
And there are some plain stupid domains:
portugesemadeirasocialsports.club
pingtunguniversityofeducationfootballteam.club
pioneervillagecountrymusic.club
kaohsiungmunicipalrueisiangseniorhighschool.club
beijinginstituteoftechnologyfootball.club
I checked all the corresponding .com domains and found that 5,415 of the .coms are free to register. 2,157 or 28,5% from the 7,572 domains are registered in .com.
Most of these I don’t get. They seem like a stretch, especially since I don’t really like 2 word New gTLD domain names. The power of New gTLDs are in strong 1-word.NewgTLD combinations. If I had a lot of money to waste I wouldn’t register more than 250 of these domains and I would really had to make myself buy them.
None of the these 7,572 .club domain names that I checked resolve. So who is this mystery buyer and why did he/she spend all that money on mostly worthless domains?
I must not forget. No Mike, the two domain sherpa’s did not change the New gTLD registrar market. The registrant above used Hexonet (1API) or a reseller of Hexonet to register these 7,572 domains. Mike noticed that Hexonet’s market share in .club domains was at about 30% when it’s usual New gTLD market share was at about 1% or less. Hexonet had 7,777 registrations on day 1 but this single registrant had 97,36% of these registrations. Only 205 registrations were made from other parties. A week later and Hexonet (1API) is down to it’s usual sub 1% market share in new gTLD registrations. Here is today’s breakdown from .expert:
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wow …and i thought i was crazy buying 230 names at $9.99
@Zournas,
But would reluctantly register up to 250 of these? Really?
Great investigative reporting guy! I give you a 100 (out of 250) for this work! I would have given more if you found out who done it. Is it the Registrar? Is it the Registry? Who? This is important.
You did a great job, as you promised, cracking Berkens bombastic boast, albeit rhetoric, that he and one other guy shifted Registry numbers. Bravo!
Sure if I had unlimited funds then sure I would.
But I don’t because I can find better domains to register.
And these domains can’t bring big money.
Big clubs have their .com and small clubs don’t have any money.
The domains are behind privacy and don’t even resolve. Someday we will know.
I saw this number jump yesterday as well, it was abnormal, if anyone was going to register they were better off to put the preorders in on day 1. I can’t see anyone putting $100K into this without having more of a story, some of the names mentioned are dreadful, and when it comes time to pony up another $100K, let’s see what happens. I have keywords just a credit, and marijuana and I have yet to yield a serious offer on gtld’s how will this person fare with this pigeon shit. 10 great 3L .com’s would have been the best way to spend $100K.
Robbie these were all on day 1.
There was a big jump in reg’s from the previous 2 days, yesterday went from 37k to 42k?
I don’t see it here:
http://ntldstats.com/tld/club
This is an important part of the unfolding GTLD story re .club. Great reporting. Thank you.
It brings up a related topic – gambling and domain names in general.
The nameservers REGISTRAR-SERVERS.COM are owned by namecheap.com at Enom.
REGISTRAR-SERVERS.COM redirects to namecheap.com.
Great research – the buyer could probably use your help to find someone to flip all these names to. With $100k one could make a down payment on a new home and a new car.
Flip all these?
I don’t think so! 🙂
Great investigative work! Thank you.
It seems this person is under the influence that .club is the new .com, very strange registrations, some of them. I guess you will have to wait for the content to go live to see what this is all about. Most likely for sale landers, unless this person has money to burn, putting this list together, and executing the orders is an immense amount of work. They would have most likely needed to wire the money to hexonet. My guess to get to the bottom of it, try to contact the whois email to buy a name, see what you get…
I tried the email with some other strange domains and never got a reply! 🙂
If you really think about it, all they really had to do, was find a partner and put some more money in, and go into contention with a big keyword .gtld and split the proceeds of the bounty. Best way to make money with the new gtld’s…
Going thru .expert, long term for a gtld
Looks like M.Berkens paid $3,xxx for ReputationRepair.Expert
Great Investigation Zournas and always 1word ngTLDs preferred and its surprising how come this guy has spent $110k registering more than 1word domains its simple waste of money. If I had that money I would have bought a small house with website dotclub.house
* I registered couple of following .club domains, No Regrets
– NewDomain.Club (Planning to develop it for new domain names registration website)
– RealEstates.Club (Waiting for 5 or more digits offer buyer)
RealEstate.Club reserved for 137499.99 USD on 101domain.com
You had a tough job considering more $100K took alot, and all the reserves, you made the most of your $20 well done, hope it pays off for you.
Thank you Robbie……
Just couple of minutes back I won Aussie.club but lost Coo.Club in Auction due to multiple applications in GA. I disclose for how much I won the Aussie.Club and the guy who won Coo.Club but before that let me know your opinion to what extent I can go to win above domains
Great job from the best domain blogger
It’s clear to me that those appear all registrations made by the registry to raise the reputations of its .club
With so much advertising they did, they have found an easy way to create smoke and mirrors. It will works for the mass, not for domainers, especially for those who always read this blog
A fool and his money are soon parted……….
Hi Guys
Just couple of minutes back I won Aussie.club but lost Coo.Club in Auction due to multiple applications in GA. I disclose for how much I won the Aussie.Club and the guy who won Coo.Club but before that let me know your opinion to what extent I can go to win above domains
I like Aussie.Club, nice one and worth it !
thank you pax ……………
I would not put it past the .club registry to have done this. It pumps their numbers, gives them a great story, and helps increase the value of the names. It is also cheap for them to do.