OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
.Blog domain names entered General Availability yesterday, November 21, at 15:00 UTC and a few hours later the total number of registered .blog domains was 16,430*.
This number includes the domains registered by the registry itself and its founder’s program, the about 1,000 domains registered in the Sunrise phase by trademark owners and the domains registered in the .Blog landrush. .Blog had 1,744 registered domains before general availability.
.Blog did not even make it to the top 100 of new extensions according to NameStat. It needs to get to 18,770 domains to enter the top 100.
The .Blog registry had a bad launch with will hunt .blog for many years to come.
The registry registered for themselves the best keywords and also reserved many names including all one, two and three character domains.
Regular retail prices start at about $30 at various registrars ($27.99 at GoDaddy) and go up to $139,999.99 per year at GoDaddy from premium names.
They explained that they did what they did with reserved domains simply because they can!. That didn’t left that much for people to register in general availability and the domains that are available have crazy registration/renewal prices.
Automattic, WordPress and the .blog registry pushed .blog domains today with the help of a few registrars, including GoDaddy that issued a press release, but somehow the 250,000 registered domains by the end of 2016 goal (set by the registry) seems unattainable. .Blog only added 14,686 domains in the first few hours after general availability when the bulk of the new extension registrations happen. A few more domains will be registered in the next 24 hours but it is all an uphill climb from now.
The registry has made an estimated $150,000 from sunrise, another $150,000 from landrush and another $315k to $400k depending on the registration/renewal price of registered premium domains. These are wholesale prices to the registrars and add up to a total of about $700,000 USD. This is revenue, not profit.
And this figure is a long way afar from the 19 million dollars that Automattic and its subsidiary Knock Knock, WHOIS There spent to purchase the rights to own and sell .blog domains. And the 19 million dollars don’t include the cost of the new extension application (at least $500k) and none of the ongoing operating and marketing costs.
*This is the number of .blog domains that appear in the zone file today and may be slightly higher because some domains with no nameservers don’t appear in there.
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Yes the prices are farcical and a joke to me and many others. To the peeps at Automatic it’s a sound and well thought out Business and Financial strategy. Time will tell.
In their defense. Is there any difference between these prices and the many domainers who think their word jumble Two Word .Com is worth 5 or 6 figures or that the sale of their bucket of Chinese CHiP and Dip is going to allow them to retire at 30?
The outrageous farcical multiples of true worth to asking price are the same. Just go look on Sedo, Flippa or Go daddy and look at the thousands of names with telephone number sized asking prices.
The domain industry is built on and feeds on an endless supply of new shmucks entering the industry that will buy worthless domains and hope they will be able to sell them for 6 figures. They are constantly being encouraged to keep the dream alive by the sprinkling of WOW sales that are peppered in domaining blogs.
We should not complain about the pricing of .Blog and other new Gtlds when we condone, justify, encourage and covert the same misplaced logic in setting prices for our own names.
Want to help the industry, end users and your bank balance go reduce your current unrealistic price expectations by 80%. Are that’s right you won’t your domain name is very valuable and worth 6 figures.
Well the renewal at six figures is certainly something new and worthy of complaining about lol.
Well I see a difference. It is different to ask for 6 figures annually than to ask for 5 or 6 figures one-off.
So the one-off price is immediately reduced by 90% over a 10 year period.
And the domain extensions with the one-off price have proven track record in several aspects. They have had numerous successful websites, marketing campaigns, traffic and revenue.
(Actually most of the time my prices are at 5 figures so my prices are a lot more reduced.)
Great comment Eric. Very true. I got 1 .blog today at reg fee. But i do not have any unrealistic expectations when it comes to pricing. 12 hours after purchase i am hoping now i will get lucky.
This was supposed to open the door to end users who could not afford the .com
All it has done is made it impossible for end users to afford the renewals. Greedy
I registered one today, although honestly I don’t know for sure that I actually own it as you can still try to register it via their platform.
Seems like they are really misguided with the idea that someone is going to pay over 100k per year in annual renewals. No firm I am aware would think this is a good idea, 100k buys a lot of adwords placements and at the top tier price points its all about ad budgets.
Great article Konstantinos and thanks for the heads up, keeping track of the latest domaining news can be arduous at times.
BTW, do you know how the resale of the .Blog is going to work? Can they be bought and sold like any other extension (eg: a .Com)?
Thanks again,
JTW.
Yes, there are no restrictions that I know of.
Thank you for your kind words.