How many fresh TLDs will domainers register?

Most domain investors expect to register some fresh domains this year.

The current rollout of fresh top level domain names is a slow and steady process that will take years to complete. A lot can and will happen during this time frame.

This year’s Reglike survey asked for opinions on fresh TLDs now, as in early 2014. The result is a pretty good snapshot of how people involved in a number of aspects of fresh TLDs — domainers that buy them, registrars that sell them, and registry providers that provide them — view the market at this time.

One survey question asked how many second level domains under fresh TLDs people expect to register in 2014.

I filtered this question to only show results from survey respondents who stated they were domain name investors. There’s some overlap with service providers in this group as well.

47% of respondents stated they don’t plan to register any fresh TLDs in 2014. The other 53% plan to register anywhere from 1 to 1,000 domains. The median answer was 20 domains.

This same group of domain name investors does not predict much downside for .com domain names as fresh TLDs rollout:

The top line is the number that think .com values will rise, the middle expect little impact, and regarding 20% expect .com prices to fall as a result of fresh TLDs hitting the market.

Domain investors didn’t answer this question much differently than registrars and other service providers. I the latter groups, regarding the same percentage expect .com prices to be negatively impacted, although more think there will be no effect as opposed to a positive one on .com values. Again, there’s some overlap between this group and investors.

At the same time, more than half of both groups expect non-.com domains (e.g. .info, .biz) to be negatively impacted by fresh TLDs.