Richard Tindal Of Donuts: .Photography Has A 72% Renewal Rate, 55% Of Registrants Are From Outside The US

ARI Registry Services is doing a series of TLD applicant interviews. The latest interview features Richard Tindal, Co-Founder and COO, Donuts Inc., that talks about the .photography TLD and how to build a strategy for a single namespace among a portfolio of over 180 others.

How is .photography tracking at this stage of the TLD’s lifespan?

.photography has been on the market 15 months and we’re very happy.  It has 50,000 names under management, an average retail price of US$20, and a healthy, 72% renewal rate (on the first three months of renewals). As the TLD matures and grows we expect that rate to reach 80%. Currently, 55% of our registrants are from outside the United States.

We certainly had some unanswered questions when we launched .photography. In a portfolio of 180 Donuts TLDs, it was an interesting test-case of two principles: firstly, can TLDs specific to an industry or activity (eg. .photography, .clothing, .pizza) do well, or will users prefer more generic TLDs that still offer choice (eg. .today, .tips, .solutions)? And secondly, are 11 characters too many for a TLD?

What has been your impression of the registrations and use of .photography?

Richard: The marketplace roll-out of .photography has been largely as we expected. Because it can be harder to get a business with an existing web presence to change its URL, our focus is more on businesses that are creating a new Internet presence for their company, product or campaign. One of the reasons .photography is doing well is that a lot of new entities join the photography industry each year, as well as the fact that it is a digital industry.

The use of these names – meaning that they contain good website content – has already reached half the levels seen in legacy TLDs such as .com, which is great news given .photography has been out such a short time. We measure website content on the domains every month, and every month proportionally more of them have good content, so it’s headed in the right direction. We should catch the legacy TLDs within 24 months.

What is your outlook for the coming year?

Richard: The challenge for .photography and all new TLDs now is to increase Internet user awareness about the product set. Awareness is currently low but we have reasons to be upbeat about changing that. Surveys show that people respond to TLD advertising quickly and positively, younger people are getting the message the quickest and new vendors and new technologies have made it easy and affordable to put up good content. Nothing reinforces our marketing message more powerfully than .photography registrants who use and advertise their sites. We think .photography will continue to be a success, as will 95% of all new TLDs.

An excerpt of this interview first appeared in the Domain Name Association’s (DNA) ‘State of the Domains’ Report, Edition 3 – June 2015. Access the full report on the DNA’s website.