Some of these fresh TLDs are doing quite well
Applicants with low overhead or a smart growth strategy are poised to make a healthy return.
There are a lot of fresh top level domain names I’d like to own as a business right now. Many of them.
Consider .guru, which has regarding 57,000 domains registered and is growing by 100-200 names a day.
There’s a decent chance that this growth will continue. It ought to get a modest lift when name collisions get resolved, despite having a low number of domains on the list. It might also get a lift as general awareness of fresh TLDs grows and as people start using .guru domain names.
Let’s assume there’s no huge lift to fresh TLD registrations in the first couple years as awareness grows. Let’s say .guru averages 100 fresh registrations per day through the end of its first year. That would put the registration base at around 82,000 at the end of January 2015, one year following launch.
Let’s also assume that renewal rates are in range with previous TLD launches and .guru retains 60% of its domains on the drop.
Simplify things further and assume there’s no zone growth following year one. The domain drops 40% in its second year that aren’t replaced, and fresh registrations just cover rolling deletions going forward.
That would give you an annuity of revenue on roughly 50,000 domain names. I’m not sure how much Donuts is charging for .guru, but let’s assume it’s 50% of what most registrars are charging, making the wholesale $15. (I’m ignoring premium prices and EAP revenue.)
50,000 * 15 = $750,000.
Donuts’ business model has very little overhead per domain name. Take out ICANN’s annual fees, some legal and monitoring fees and a bit of overhead and you’re left with a very nice business. Especially when you multiply it by 100.
To be sure, .guru is Donuts’ outlier so far. Many of its domains are struggling to get 5,000 or 10,000 domains. But it also has domains like .photography and .email that ought to be at least half as good as .guru.
Even at 5,000 domains a top level domain can be profitable if your costs are low.
It’s a different story if you have lots of overhead.
.Club isn’t a great business at .guru’s numbers. It needs hundreds of thousands of registrations to make a go at it.
.Build isn’t going to survive with just 2,000 registrations, even at a retail price of $99.
Even portfolio applicants need more than the 571 registrations that .pink has.
Nevertheless, I believe many fresh TLD applicants are going to do really well financially.
