OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
I posted some of .domains purchases in my post about .domains domain name sales. I was asked to post my best .domains purchases and had a glance and picked 14 of them.
A reader asked me if I had a plan for these as at $240 a pop for the yearly renewal fee I would have a problem keeping them because of the renewal fees. Well actually only 1 of the 14 domains I posted has a renewal at that level.
I try to stay away from the high premiums and certainly away from the Ultra Premiums. I coined the term Ultra Premiums for the domains that have a yearly renewal price for $1000+. Domains have been registered with renewal fees such as:
find.domains $1040 Enom.com
asia.domains $1360 Instra.com
expired.domains $1000 Name.com
top.domains $999 UnitedDomains.com
While others such as pro.domains, biz.domains, travel.domains, cat.domains, mobi.domains, tel.domains, keyword.domains and budget.domains remain unregistered because of those extremely high renewal fees. Go Daddy has a registration/renewal price on these at $1,499.99. I saw one registrar asking $1600/year for each one. But I also found prices at $875 and $920 per year.
So I had a look at my registrars and found out what I would pay to renew my domain names now. I didn’t use any of the Go Daddy pricing that is always the most expensive.
Here are the 14 domains I bought and their current renewal rates:
country.domains ($230.00)
o.domains ($108.90)
transfer.domains ($54.45)
renew.domains ($54.45)
purchase.domains ($54.45)
parking.domains ($54.45)
traffic.domains ($54.45)
newyork.domains (not premium)
generic.domains (not premium)
startup.domains (not premium)
niche.domains (not premium)
lasvegas.domains (not premium)
newyorkcity.domains (not premium)
newgtld.domains (not premium)
Regular (not premium) registration/renewals start at about $26.25 (Dynadot) and end up at $39,99 (Go Daddy).
So instead of paying 14*$230=$3220 as one would expect, I will pay $794,90. That is an average of $56,78. A few new gTLDs have higher renewals than this not to mention .xxx.
I am not sure how Donuts picks the Premium domains but I am sure that a few fall through the cracks. Do you consider my domains as “premium” domain names or not?
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Yes, you have some premiums. I agree that some of the premiums are priced for only an end user. I have had to stay away from those over $200 a year. The trick is picking the “premium” names with a relatively low price, as you demonstrated……I picked up Internet.Systems and Healthcare.Management on the cheaper side to my disbelief….
I had my eye on Internet.Systems but you paid more than what I would. 🙂
I would assume, anything over $30+ would be considered a premium renewal of sorts…
Generic.Domains for sure fell thru the cracks, well done.
What is the easiest way to determine if a domain name (specifically one of the Donuts gTLDs) has a premium “purchase price” and/or a premium (or ultra-premium) “renewal price”?
Can it be determined from comments/information displayed on a whois search? If not, which registrar has the clearest information (preferably ‘pre’ check-out screen) about the ‘purchase price’ and the ‘renewal price’?
Thanks,
Steve
Steve,
first of all it has to be available to register. (You can’t see if a registered domain is premium or not)
Then if you visit a registrar such as GoDaddy.com you will get the registration/renewal price when you enter the domain name into their domain search.
As someone who has invested in .TV (none with premium renewals) I can say from experience that even $25/year renewals can sting if you don’t have enough turnover. Higher-priced renewals plus acquisition costs ranging from hundreds to thousands are why I view many new TLD acquisitions as risky. No doubt there are some combinations which make sense and may do OK several years down the road – particularly with a GEO extension or maybe .WEB. However, the more effort I put into marketing my existing portfolio, the more convinced I am that it will be many years before a serious aftermarket develops for these new extensions. Most end users could care less about domain names unless they can be acquired for $50-$100 and that just isn’t the target sales price where you justify investing in a domain name.
Leonard,
This is essentially an investment that eventually the entire market will shift to distinguish domains in such a light. I agree even $20 domain renewals can be 3x that of .com, and will hurt portfolio holders, as they will realize very little traffic, and not much parking income from these domains.
If they choose to build out, good on them, but it doesn’t come cheap. Putting up a bunch of cheesy scripts will just get you lost in the shuffle. This is a long term investment, and the risk is essentially on the backs of the registrants, as this is no $8 per year gamble, upon many jumping the que in pre-reg, and then the higher renewals, this is not for the risk adverse.
You are correct the aftermarket is years away from having any substantial turnover, right now the sales you see are end users, and domainers fighting for multi bid domains in auctions. End users tend to win more times out of none.
I think the last 2 stats I saw was a company RentalLimo.com who basically bought out the majority of the good .Limo domains from the big 10 geo’s, and paying $3,xxx for their own name Rental.Limo, then paying about $1,7xx in auction for Chicago.Limo, and Renta.Limo each. This is an informed end user, who is trying to gain marketshare, and it may, or may not work, but they spent a nice 5 figure sum finding out.
There will be many more informed end users as time rolls on….That is the investing advantage we have now….
message was supposed to read; can’t see who gives a profit on some of those, significantly beating the $800 per year just to break even, looks tough. Such renewal rates are indeed tough to overcome.
https://www.domaincostclub.com/pricing.dhtml – lot cheaper than anyone, I’ll renew with them