MapleDots said:
Here you are making two correct points in one statement
1. Yes the average user knows little about domains.
2. They know very little about .com or .online
They do however know that .ca and .com belong at the end of an address, the average user gets very confused when they see an address with .online
Even when that is resolve the issue the @fm made comes into play.
Then one of the most important things of all.....
The $1 registration which always goes up significantly in year 2.
I did an experiment and registered 100 $1 .ca's and not one sold in the first year.
Two sold in the second year and 6 in the 3rd year.
For .online that would probably have been a lot slimmer and registration renewals would have eaten away the profit margin.
Frank....you don't see this the way I do. I've just been involved in the domain business for a little over three years and it was a little over two years ago I happened to see this local charity group online that displayed their website;
https://pingpong.gives/ Not fearing anything I clicked on the domain and Voila! Please check out the site, and a friend of mine Dr. Scott Sautter (The Memory Clinic) and his partner Ken Lees started and run this very successful charity for "brain health" Even though I was 70 years young at the time I thought, "how cool". That was my first introduction to new gTLD's. Unlike FM's problem with .email, not once have I had a problem with their site. So liking it like I did, I spoke to my new Linkedin contact Rob Monster of Epik and he told me it was safe. I then started registering a boat load of .today domains like FreePizza.today and OpenHouse.today. Remember I said I registered a "boat load", and even Rob said something to me like, "Richard, are you trying to be King.today. This led to me buying dozens of .golf domains like Focus.golf, Laser.golf and CountryClub.golf. I also bought a boat load of financial domains like Job.loans, Hurricane.loans and Disaster.loans. I thought I died and gone to heaven. I even arranged with Donuts to have a booth in Myrtle Beach at the worlds largest amateur handicap golf tournament, but it was about the time the founder of Donuts Paul Satchura? was leaving the company, so it never came to fruition. Not to be deterred I started buying a bunch of .homes domains from the "hoarders" and "unethical" f
ools at DominionDomains.com right here in my hometown.
Frank I'm telling you all this because I thought I would attract a technical partner who might compliment my name talent and my sales and marketing experience. In the interim, I learned that few domains sell themselves, and I learn all you can expect to sell annually is 1-2% of your portfolio. I thought how ridiculous is that? And when I told my business peers, they too thought it was absurd. Then Verisign publicly states the real problem with the industry is "hoarding" of mostly .com domains. Another Voila! moment for me since I'd been sharing with members of another message board just how screwed up this industry is.
While my portfolio became mostly .coms again, I started makng a few $$$ last year selling a few domains at GD and Epik. This was all by accident, but then another opportunity came along in September 2020 to buy another boat load of .realty domains for $1 immediately followed by another opportunity to buy .online domains for $1. I've now spent about a thousand dollars for .realty domains and .online domains where their .com equivalents are valued at well over two million dollars. Frank....the majority of the .com equivalent of these domains aren't available to buy at any price.
Finally, I know "end users" aren't looking for the domains I've bought, and it's up to me to look for buyers. Frank, if you sold holistic meds online, and HolisticMeds.com wasn't available to buy at any price, wouldn't you at least consider buying HolisticMeds.online? I can't remember who it was, but one of the DN.ca members here actually said that domainers are
"collectors/hoarders". Not only does Verisign know it, I know it, but even your domain peers know it. Any wonder I see a
HUGE OPPORTUNITY doing domains my way? Thanks for putting up with me, but I know I'm on to something pretty big.