Afilias Tells Fresh TLD Applicants to Limit Their Expectations
How many registrations ought to a fresh TLD expect?
A call for fresh top level domain name applicants to be realistic regarding how many domains they can sell is coming from an unlikely source: domain name registry Afilias.
In a blog post today, Afilias points out that history tells us fresh TLDs don’t get substantial registrations:
…Well, here we are in 2010 and the industry has now grown to over 190 million domain names. If you think it was since of fresh TLDs, you’d be wrong.
COM, NET and ORG have grown by over 80 million names. ccTLDs, like China’s CN and Germany’s .DE, have grown regarding 45 million names in total. But fresh TLDs have added less than 15 million names. Indeed, from a market share standpoint, fresh TLDs have never comprised more than 7% of the market.
As a supporter of fresh TLDs that will make money serving as a back end registry, Afilias’ comments ought to carry weight.
Afilias points out that, even though it “may not be realistic to assume millions of registrations”, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a successful and profitable top level domain name. It just means that history tells us millions of registrations for a fresh TLD are unlikely, at least under the current paradigm.
Keep in mind that fresh TLDs launched over the past decade had little competition. Fresh ones will face hundreds of competitors. That will make it difficult to rise to the top. I expect a number of competitive measures — counting very low registry prices for many of the fresh TLDs — as fresh TLDs are rolled out.
