OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Looking to buy the domain name fashion.blog, music.blog or news.blog? You are out of luck…
The .blog domain name registry has registered for itself and its partners about 90 .blog domains. 27 of the domains correspond to some of the most searched for keywords on the internet.
Per ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) rules any New gTLD registry can register for its own use up to 100 domain names. But it can also reserve an unlimited amount of domains for whatever reason. The 100 domains are the ones that can resolve to a website, the others are not allowed to. Some registries like Uniregistry and Mind+Machines created shell companies and registered thousands of reserved domains thus circumventing the ICANN rule.
Here are the 27 domains with some of the best and top keywords of the internet:
movie.blog
tech.blog
science.blog
school.blog
music.blog
art.blog
food.blog
photo.blog
african.blog
game.blog
law.blog
travel.blog
design.blog (only design.blog currently resolves to a website)
fashion.blog
health.blog
video.blog
family.blog
finance.blog
business.blog
smallbusiness.blog
fitness.blog
politics.blog
sport.blog
news.blog
poetry.blog
car.blog
code.blog
The registry has also registered a few domains for the use of the domain name registry:
my.blog
get.blog
nic.blog
getyour.blog
domain.blog
home.blog
Other domains were registered either for showcase purposes, registry partners, early adopters, Automatic internal use and testing or for use of people in the management:
konstantin.blog (early adopter)
om.blog (early adopter)
maggie.blog
data.blog (Automattic blog)
nicola.blog (Automattic employee)
scottgoodson.blog
paolo.blog (Automattic employee)
elysium.blog
howfarfromhome.blog
cate.blog
dereksmusic.blog
odd.blog (Automattic employee)
luca.blog (Automattic employee)
true.blog (venture capital firm)
markarms.blog (Automattic employee)
matt.blog (Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic)
mslaurynhill.blog (early adopter)
watirmelon.blog (Automattic employee)
toni.blog
saopaulo.blog
snowmads.blog (early adopter)
netnames.blog (partner)
kkwt.blog
blogspot.blog
jjj.blog
breadface.blog
armstrong.blog
bluehost.blog (partner)
club.blog (blog of the .club domain name registry)
somethingnavy.blog
dave.blog (early adopter)
digiphile.blog
doc.blog
blacknight.blog (partner)
dreamhost.blog (partner)
brownpaperbag.blog
david.blog (early adopter)
gorillavsbear.blog
goop.blog
calm.blog
bread.blog
dries.blog
stackoverflow.blog (early adopter)
don.blog (Automattic employee)
ev.blog (Ev Williams, CEO of Medium)
tim.blog
helen.blog
hello.blog
carminegallo.blog (early adopter)
hostpapa.blog (partner)
squarespace.blog (partner)
ericgoldman.blog (redirected by hostgator.com to a parking page)
chuck.blog
justblaze.blog (early adopter)
james.blog
(These are the domains that are in the .blog zone file and have the registry as owner. There may be more registered domains that have no nameservers thus not appearing in the zone file. Some of the domains above can be transferred to their respective owners thus opening more spots for the 100 ICANN allowed domains.)
Many more domain names reserved
Of course the registry could and probably has reserved hundreds or probably thousands of domain names like sex.blog, weather.blog, cars.blog, sports.blog, movies.blog and videos.blog that are currently not registered but not available to purchase.
.Blog landrush and premium domain name pricing
Right now early adopters can reserve domains from November 2nd through November 9th at a higher price, and if there are more than one people interested an auction. Click here to learn more about the .blog landrush. Following Landrush, General Availability for all will begin on November 21st when the remaining domains are offered on a first-come, first-serve basis at standard or premium prices.
The good keywords that are available for purchase are priced with premium cost of $625 up to $125,000 USD per year for registration and renewal.
Here are some examples of the most searched for keywords in the internet that are available for purchase in .blog domains and their respective registration and renewal prices:
website.blog $125,000 per year
hotel.blog $125,000 per year
hotels.blog $125,000 per year
free.blog $125,000 per year
girls.blog $125,000 per year
mobile. blog $125,000 per year
support.blog $12,500 per year
2016.blog $12,500 per year
newyork.blog $6,250 per year
email.blog $6,250 per year
cancer.blog $6,250 per year
tube.blog $6,250 per year
bikini.blog $2,500 per year
astrology.blog $625 per year
The .blog registry is ‘Knock Knock, WHOIS There’ that is a subsidiary of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com and Jetpack. It was created in 2015 to manage the launch and development of the .blog gTLD.
The registry says it will have more than 250,000 registered .blog domains before the end of the year. This number seems somehow impossible to achieve.
UPDATE:
The registry has also reserved all 1, 2 AND 3 character domains:
http://onlinedomain.com/2016/11/08/news/blog-registry-not-releasing-1-2-3-character-domain-names/
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free.blog $125,000 per year… That’s an expensive “free” blog 😉
I think it’s appropriate to reserve a certain number of premium domains so that the registry can assign them to high-profile partners who will put them to use. That’s good marketing. Judiciously chosen partner projects will drive visibility, which increases demand for other names within a TLD – whether those other domains are for sale by the registry or owned by domain investors.
There’s a limit to how many premium domains a registry can allocate, though, since their staff is small. Beyond a short list, it’s better to distribute premium domains by means of crowd sourcing – i.e. domainers. But that ain’t gonna happen with renewals of $125,000 or even $625 per year. No, sir!
Maybe they will use the domains?
Some of them. You may be right.
Point is to get a few developed sites to point to. Ideally some other company pays the registry for the privilege of owning a domain; then they spend their own pocket money developing and marketing the site – TLD included.
But if no such companies step forward, then I do think registries ought to develop sites themselves. After all, if nobody at the registry believes in the TLD enough to build on, then why should anybody else?
Self-Dev = Proof of Concept + Good Faith + Advertsing
Would you better pick Peterson.blog or Petersons.blog? Will people purchase ‘s’ versions or plain last-name one?
@Mike,
Depends on what the “s” means.
Is it possessive? Bob’s Blog = Bobs.Blog.
Or is it plural? Exercise.blog versus Exercises.blog … Cars.blog versus Car.blog … etc. Notice this: “Car” may be a noun ordinarily. But in “car blog” it isn’t a noun; it’s an adjective that describes the blog. Singular “nouns” can function as adjectives; plural nouns tend not to.
If you see something like Musicians.Blog, it’s hard to tell whether it’s a plural noun or a possessive noun. But the more idiomatic reading – to my ears – is the possessive.
@Mike,
Oh, I misunderstood your question. Possessive with the first name if it’s 1 guy. If it’s a company, well, they often use plural / possessive surnames.
Give it a few months they will be 99 cents
Aren’t all two letter .blog names reserved? Or just some of them? I don’t get this…
Only the less than 200 2-letter country codes are reserved and any registry can ask for permission from the country and then release it.
MY is a country code (Malaysia)
Sure. They got permission for it. Or at least I think they did.
Others have done it. e.g. The .Club registry has registered my.club.
See here: https://www.icann.org/resources/two-character-labels
Craps left for domainers, too bad.
The registry has also reserved all 1, 2 AND 3 character domains:
http://onlinedomain.com/2016/11/08/news/blog-registry-not-releasing-1-2-3-character-domain-names/
Just bought 15 Blog domain names today!