A New Domain King is Born
With already over 1,3 million Dot ME web pages and blogs, it appears as if a new domain king has been born. Well that is what speculators seem to think.
The new Dot ME TLD has launched onto the scene with record sales, grabbing the attention of high-profile domainers, industry executives, media companies, investors, and technocrats.
There are reports that the volume of .ME domain registrations on opening day, July 16, broke any previous record of registrations within the first twenty-four hours.
Over 5,000 domain names were purchased worldwide with in a few minutes of the opening of the dot ME registrations. As both individuals and businesses alike rushed to secure their preferred .ME extension, the activity became so intense that it caused some technological errors.
By August 5th, within only two weeks of opening, more than 100,000 ME domain names had owners.
So what is so appealing about the dot ME extension? Well quite frankly, it is a new extension. It is as simple as that. These days, domainers seem to have an insatiable appetite for new domain extensions.
We see it all the time. We have unlimited press coverage and lots of hype about the new TLD. Normally, there is a general sunrise period where all eligible trademark holders can register their names for the new extension.
We then have a count down to the launch day where registration is open to everyone. Public Relations specialists carefully choreograph these dates and events.
When all is said and done, domain investors and speculators would be so hooked on the new potential to make “millions” from the new TLD, that they will register AnythingWhatsover.NewTLD at the earliest possible chance. Some even take it a step further by creating huge lists of potential new domains, and then use automated software to do mass registrations.
The general sunrise period for the dot ME registration started May 6th, 2008, and registration was made available for all on July 16, 2008.
Dot ME is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that has been assigned to Montenegro.
The dot TLD is easy to remember and can be creatively branded. For example, Love.me, Date.me, See.me, Take.me, Meet.me are all catchy domains.
The first auction, which was closed to those bidders who placed fees on selected names, grossed over $2 million in revenues. Toyota.me sold for $90.000, Insure.me sold for $78,000, and many .ME sold for five figures, including Lasvegas.me, India.me, Korea.me, and China.me.
The catch line for dot ME domains is that “dot ME is about you” This is expected to make the domain extension the most popular domain extension for web blogging.
Should we expect dot ME to become the new darling of the promotion and marketing world? Will we see dot ME being utilized to sell products and services on the web, mobile phones, TV, and in print ads anytime soon? We will just have to wait and see.
Personally, I will not be investing a penny in dot ME. I took the same stance with dot MOBI and it was a decision well made.
So far this year, I have dropped over 2,000 domain names in the dot CC, US, BIZ, WS, CO.UK, INFO, and ORG extensions. ALL these domain names were single-word domains, and included some of the most popular words in the Englsh dictionary.
It is quite simple. If you can’t monetize or brand a domain name, don’t register, buy or renew them. I put emphasis on branding. With any domain name regardless of the TLD, just ask yourself, is there an end-user who could really successfully brand this domain name? Could you brand it? How? Would it be a hit with customers and web surfers?
I believe however, that dot ME domains do have potential. But if I had to choose, I would choose the dot COM extension of the domain name. If the dot COM is taken, then I would be happy to take the dot TV version, as dot TV is just as universally recognisable as the dot COM.
Please share your thoughts.
October 26th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I Dont think that figure is accurate. If you obtained it using the site:.me command on google, this command returns figures far higher than actual registrations. I tested this on a few name spaces were solid figures are available. Using this command also includes parked pages which dont mean much. Id say it would be far lower than 1 million.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Excellent post. Spot on.
October 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
“as dot TV is just as universally recognisable as the dot COM”
Over .NET?
Net > TV
October 26th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Thanks David.
Sammy – This is debatable. Yes, .NET is a top TLD. I just believe that customers would tend to mistakenly visit the .COM version of the domain, which would result in valuable traffic being sent to the competitor with the .COM extension.
In terms of branding, I believe .TV would stand out more in the crowd. Just my thoughts anyway, there is no official stats to back this up.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:59 am
You are right on .me, have similar feelings.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:28 am
i remember that day when the .ME came out, it was so annoying to try register your names while godaddy just froze and all the good .ME domains gone…
October 27th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Interesting one, However I regd CheapFares.me last week and sold it on Sedo for $109.. its inn Sedo escrow at the moment and hopefully will be getting paid in coming week
I think keywords with huge web presence do have potential in geo tlds.
October 27th, 2008 at 7:33 am
“I believe however, that dot ME domains do have potential.”
Everything has “potential”. A rock sitting on the ground has the potential to be a murder weapon if someone picks it up and kills someone with it.
If you develop something.crap with a captivating business model ANY domain can be built into a large corporation.
It may take lots of marketing dollars to get people to find the site and remember the domain name including the extension but it certainly can be done.
However, I’m guessing that 98% of these new .me regs are for resale speculation and that “weight” will eventually kill the credibility of the .me extension.
Hopefully the 2% out there will prove me wrong
October 27th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Good points up till the last para. .tv is not universally recognizable… nearly every time I’m watching a game over someone’s house and an ad with a .tv comes up someone says “what’s .tv, sounds like a gimmick.”
.org and the country code of your audience (esp. co.uk, de, and cn) are better choices than .tv
October 27th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I am really tired of people complaining about the new extensions. If you seriously registered and then “dropped over 2,000 domain names in the dot CC, US, BIZ, WS, CO.UK, INFO, and ORG extensions” it is clear that you have no type of game plan nor knowledge of what you are doing. That is especially true if some of what you dropped “included some of the most popular words in the Englsh dictionary”. Apparently you didn’t work hard enough. I bet you just had them parked at sedo and were sitting around waiting for end users. Well, domainers, get a clue. This is work. The lazy domainer is the poor, unsuccessful domainer. Give me some single-word, popular, dictionary ORGs and I will make some money with them. Domaining just isn’t for everyone.
October 27th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Opps. That was a little harsh. Anyhow, that’s what the bickering over new extensions sounds like to me: a bunch of frustration of not knowing how to make money with domains. Sorry if I was a little brutal.
Peace.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Good article… I wanted to point out that I think you bring up a fantastic point that makes .tv so compelling.
People do NOT forget .tv like .net. If .com is not available my #2 choice is usually .tv as well – provided it can work with the .tv extension. It also helps that the web is becoming so video intensive.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:35 am
David McAllister,
Please feel free to express yourself. I only delete comments that have certain “bad” words in them, or may contain defamatory remarks.
I’m very pleased to read your comments.
Let me try to answer some of the points you have raised. Like many other domainers, when I entered the domain space, I was less knowledgeable and took some risks and eventually made some bad decisions.
The beauty of experience is that you become intimate with your mistakes and learn how to avoid making them all over again. I now write with authority as I have now experienced the good, the bad and the ugly in the domain industry.
PPC is having a very long and painful death. To make money with domains you need to develop brands or resell domains. Given my outlook on the future of the web and domain industry in general, especially in the face of a recession, branding is absolutely vital.
End users don’t buy rubbish domains and selling to other domainers for a few pennies above registration fee is a waste of time.
Hence, if you really want to make money selling domains, you have to follow the money. Find end-users and offer them domains that can brand their ebusinesses.
In my honest opinion, 95% of some domains in some extensions are just not brandable. I would not brand them.
Launching eBusinessDomains.com was a new game plan. It is working. When I was getting ready to launch this new marketplace, I thought long and hard about using PremiumDomains.net. This would significantly help our search engine rankings.
However, as much as Francois of PremiumDomains.com is such a nice guy and the fact that we have different business models, I couldn’t risk losing traffic to him.
If you can brand other domain extensions apart from dot COM and dot TV, well done to you, and good luck.
I will be offering my remaining CCTLD at very low prices to our email newsletter readers. You may want to subscribe to get them. I will now be focusing on dot COM and dot TV going forward.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Great article! I couldn’t be happier with the .me domains in my portfolio. Where else am I going to get 5, 20 and 40 million searched terms for $20 a year. The answer is, I am not, unless I pay $,$$$,$$$.xx or jump into my time machine and head back into the 90’s!
So, I have just developed my first “work-in-progress” .me and there are a number of domains still to get developed. I guess I am a modified version of the 2% from Rob Sequin’s post above. My philosophy is: Everything (with one or two exceptions) is for sale if the price is right…but I plan on developing as many as I can, but will sit on the rest of them until it can get done.
I hope others develop thier own .me domains sooner then later too. The potential is absolutely enormous! Several major search engines have already picked up my new site and the robots are frequent visitors! It has been launched for only 16 days. I see great things happening for that domain name right away.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:20 am
A new domain king? I don’t want to be in the same room with you when Rick Schwartz hears that statement.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I don’t forsee myself registering any more .ME
I just have this small handfull:
CHOCOLATEY.ME
COFFEETIMEWITH.ME
CRAFTWITH.ME
OCEANVIEW.ME
PALMCOAST.ME
and I got my Rick Schwartz BOBBLEHEAD
at Bobbleheads.com — did you all
get yours ??
Now I want a Ron Jackson DNJ bobblehead…
la la la…
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
October 27th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Totally agree, I rather concentrate the dot com and build around it.
Too much hype
October 28th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Dot me rocks.
It is the second best only to dot com.
In some cases dot me is better than dot com.
Regards,
ASHISH T.
October 29th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Hi to all, it’s my first time here, and i’m new in the domaining world, so i’ll probably say a lot of stupid stuff, but on the other hand i still have the buyer/webmaster mentality. I think the value of domains is very different to domainers and to webdevelopers, domainers worry too much about extensions and shortness even if it’s just a bunch of non sense letters, and it’s all based in a lot of speculation and some “established rules”. On the other side there are the end users who look mainly for keywords that define in the best possible way the business/brand desired. End users probably will always prefer a housesforsale than a hjkx (these are just examples) i also believe that an end user will always prefer the desired word even if it’s not a .com than changing the wanted words just to get a .com.
Like it was said here, money is with end users, not among domainers, for two reasons mainly i believe, on one side speculation has rised the domain prices to ridiculous absurd numbers, on the other side all domainers are looking for bargain prices.
It happens a lot specially in forums some domainers knocking the value of a domain for sale and then trying to buy it for a low price.
If domainers don’t keep end users in mind all this market as we know it will fall apart, it’s the history of all markets and of the world.
I know i’m just a newbie in this business, but these are my thoughts about it, i would like to read your thoughts
Regards to all
October 29th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Helder,
Well said.
Welcome to our crazy domain blog, where we blog about anything domain, and of course Barack Obama.
Welcome to the exciting world of domaining. Looking forward to seeing you share your thoughts here on a regular basis.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Personally,
Reginal TLDs are more sucessful than ccTLDs.
I have invested in dot EU and dot Asia and having already traffic coming through these names.
Dot Com is a king
Dot Asia is a queen
But the King is lead by the Queen!
November 30th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Hi,
This was a great article… I love the way people are constantly debating the value of a .Me.
I have a couple of interesting one:
ecredit.me
ECreditcards.me
Radiostation.me
eProperty.me
FloridaCity.me
CreditFinance.me
Funders.me
And I’m also trying to develop some of them… I’m currently in the process of developing an online radiostation using my Radiostation.me domain.
I hope one day I can sell it….
Any interested buyers here’s my email address: lebohangkambule@live.com
But great article.