Sedo released their 2014 first half domain market study on July 31. One of the things that stood out to me was a quote from Tobias Flaitz, the CEO of Sedo. Mr. Flaitz said, ““It’s exciting to finally start seeing new TLDs being traded and already commanding significant market value,” Where is the excitement ? What is Mr.Flaitz defining as significant market value ? I am not a new gtld hater, I own some, I think everyone has the right to run with an idea and succeed or fail. There are extensions that make a lot of sense imo and those that make no sense. There are some that should never have been approved, and singular and plural is a complete money grab by ICANN in my opinion. They should have gotten everyone who won the singular, and everyone who won the plural of the same keyword, and did an auction with the proceeds going to charity, so that they could show some good came of this whole program. That’s just my opinion, I could be wrong. The Sedo study discussed a six figure sale of a new gtld, conveniently that sale is under an NDA. I am not going to say that is a false statement, but the registry who owns the string of that sale, should have went out of their way to ask the buyer if they could release it, even if they had to pay them. It would be good pr and show that even if it was an outlier, someone paid six figures for a new domain. Again the new gtlds will do what they are going to do and they are not all equal in value, usage,logic, etc… The domain investor for the most part is interested in making money with domains they register, they want liquidity, they want action, they want to see this excitement that Mr. Flaitz talks about. I think there is little excitement and I wish there was, no hater here, I want to see Sexy and Clubs and Media names selling for six figures all day long. The fact is this is not happening, and the new investors reading a report from Sedo and hearing there is excitement, may spend more than they should. I don’t blame Sedo for that, each person has to do their own homework and work within their own budget. Still Sedo is a staple in the industry and the name still carries some clout, especially to those new to domaining. If we look at some recent sales or auctions there has not been much excitement. Media.XYZ went for $400 on auction at NameJet on 7/25 Media.info in comparison sold for $15,000. NewYork.Pics not the greatest name in the world but for a new extension on the block, not bad, if you want to start a photo blog and you live in New York it is intuitive, if I lived there and was into photography I would consider regging this. It sold for $1 on Flippa, negotiated after the auction, meaning there were 0 bids and the person took $1. We are in the first inning of the new gtld baseball game, some want to say the game is over and others want a rain out, but to be fair it is still very early. On the flip side we cannot have any industry leader saying there is excitement and significant market value. We are just not there yet.
About Raymond Hackney
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Spot on, I see no excitement, a keyword like media should go for at least x,xxx.
Three reported gTLD sales a week on DNJournal.com, mostly in the $1k to $3k range, isn’t what I would consider an aftermarket and is nothing to get excited about. We all know that Luxury.Estate sold for $50k, but the odds of that happening at the present time are about 1 in 1.7 million.
It appears that the registries aren’t adding enough value to encourage any significant end user adoption. At this time most businesses aren’t willing to switch from .com, even if it is an inferior .com. I think the registries are going to have to do some guerilla marketing and come up with creative ways to encourage those end users with a less meaningful .com to switch to a more meaningful gTLD.
I think that makes sense Patrick…. go out there and get their hands dirty, market like you need to pay the rent.
Thank you for posting something intelligent instead of just bashing. I can respect the opinion of someone that looks at all sides not the bloggers that just want to rip the new GT LD’s because they own.com
Media.xyz sounds like $400 too much. What would mediaxyz.com be worth? I’d say a fat 0, and media.xyz is worth a small fraction of that.
Yet when i try to list a .media domain i get ‘invalid extension’ message ??
It just reminds me to separate hype from fact.
It’s almost obligatory if you’re the CEO of a company defined by sales to emphasize to the point of exaggeration any and every new sales channel or product. Rather like a political speech in its way, since rosy statements affect mass behavior.
He wouldn’t be doing his job, in a sense, if he expressed skepticism or missed the opportunity to attract more buyer interest.
Glad other people do express such skepticism…