| In
the near future there will be a variety of new top level domains
(tld's) available to register. The big questions on every avid
domain buyers mind is… Are they worth registering ? Will
they dilute the value of .com's ? |
| The
answer to these questions is a bit of a mystery, but I will
try and shed light on them. Firstly, some of the new tld's might
very well gain popularity. Possible ones such as ".shop"
could give consumers more comfort in doing browser type-ins
to find what they are looking for since the new tlds will be
much more targeted than current ones. |
| One
way to manipulate the new tld's would be to gain residual traffic
to an already established site. Using ".shop" as an
example you might register "yourproduct.shop" to redirect
visitors to your already established "yourproduct.com". |
| As
for starting your internet presence from scratch using one of
the new tld's, I don't recommend it. There will be companies
though that will heavily try and brand a site using this method.
I can already imagine commercials with sales pitches such as
"a different web address for a different kind of company".
To establish a site like that will take some big bucks for advertising.
This is the main weakness I see. |
| All
major companies already have their dot com's somewhat established.
Why would big names such as Amazon, Yahoo, Etrade, Monster,
etc, care about new, untested tld's when they have already spent
many millions in branding their sites on the most popular tld,
dot com. They wouldn't. These new domains might only be worth
registering/developing once a company with some very serious
money starts heavily branding the extension into the average
surfers mind. |
| Slightly
off topic but important, is that some of the new tld's worth
will try and be inflated by the registry owners. That's perfectly
understandable. They want you to see their tld as very valuable
and get you to register as many as possible. I believe a similar
strategy went into the sale of Beauty.cc which was sold for
1 million dollars on greatdomains.com. I don't know all the
details but remember hearing it was kind of a publicity scam
where the buyer was one of the registry owners or something.
As more and more tld's come out there will be increased tactics
of this nature going on. Be smart, and if something seems too
good to be true, it is. |
| As
for the question of whether the new tld's will dilute the value
of dot com's, I don't see it happening at all. Billions of dollars
have been spent putting .com addresses in front of consumers
eyes the last 5 years. Dot com's are what people know and are
comfortable with. They aren't going anywhere. They are the prime
cyber real estate and their value will not be affected. Prime
real estate just doesn't go down in value. |
| The
bottom line is that some of the new tld's may eventually have
value and with low registration costs it is more than worth
the risk to register some with high type in potential. This
is the best strategy for domain buyers and can be summed up
as, "Don't go all out with new tld's, but don't be left
in the cold either". |
| With
all the new tld's that will be probably be available in the
next few years it will make the domain scene a bit more interesting,
and if you play it right, you could have a new source of type
in traffic to supplement your already established and valuable
dot com collection. |
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