.art takes a million domains off its premium list

UK Creative Ideas, the .art gTLD registry, is removing premium pricing from over a million domain names and slashing the premium pricing on others.

The company said today that most of the names losing their premium tag were on the lowest pricing tier, which is $70 wholesale a year. I believe the standard wholesale fee they will be moving to is $12 a year. Retail registrars will of course add their markups on their storefronts.

The registry said it’s “also moving a number of names from some higher premium tiers to lower priced premium tiers”.

The price changes, which come into effect February 21, are designed to make .art more attractive to both end users and domain investors, the company said.

.art had almost a quarter of a million domains under management at the last count. Not relying on cheapo registrations, it has one of the least lumpy growth trajectories of any 2012-round new gTLD, having a reliably steady incline pretty much since its 2017 launch.

Its top registrars are Namecheap, GoDaddy, Tucows and SquareSpace (formerly Google) in North America and Alibaba in China.

Radix sold almost $8 million of premiums last year

New gTLD portfolio Radix made $7.8 million from the sale of $100+ premium domains in 2022, over $5 million of which came from premium renewals.

The company this week released its second-half premiums roundup, showing $4 million in total premium retail revenue, $2.7 million of which came from renewals.

That follows first-half numbers of $3.8 million total and $2.5 million from renewals.

It made $1.3 million selling 1,458 first-year premiums, and $2.7 million renewing 2,483 names.

First year renewals were at 61%, second year at 79% and subsequent years, as we revealed in January, at a whopping 90%.

The best-performing TLDs were .tech, .store and .space.

The dollar values are at the retail level; Radix’s own share will be about 30% lighter.

Radix premium revenue hits $3.8 million in first half

New gTLD portfolio registry Radix this week gave its twice-yearly premium domain sales report, declaring first-half revenue of $3.8 million.

That figure includes $2.5 million in renewal revenue from premium-priced names, because Radix charges premium renewal fees.

For Radix, premiums sold through the registrar channel are arranged into eight tiers from $100 to $10,000 a year. While there were eight sales at the top end, most sales were concentrated in the $500-and-below tiers.

The average first-year revenue was $558 per domain.

There were 1,767 premiums sold across the stable of 10 gTLDs, compared to 1,378 in the second half of 2021 and 1,436 in H1 2021.

.tech is the highest-performing, with $643,825 of recurring retail renewal revenue reported.

ShortDot drops premium fees on millions of domains

New gTLD registry ShortDot says it is making 2.4 million “premium” domains available at its standard registry fee.

From September 1, domains across .bond, .cfd, .icu, .cyou and .sbs will no longer have premium renewals.

The company said that “first and last names, city names, dictionary terms, and more” will return to standard prices, but it appears that it’s the mainly lower-tier inventory, where retail prices can be currently as low as $15 a year, being released.

Judging by the list, it appears that the vast majority of domains are four-character LLLL strings and three, four and five-digit numerics (including US zip codes).

Some geographic names representing low-population areas are on the list, while larger, more well-known cities do not appear to be.

A full spreadsheet of the names can be downloaded from Dropbox here.

Donuts punter welcomes our new alien overlords in December premium sale

When humanity finally confirms the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, what’s the new gTLD domain name you’d want to have in your portfolio?

Why, first.contact, of course. The domain name was registered with premium pricing from Donuts in December, according to registry data published this week, and is currently listed for resale with a $1 million price tag.

If domaining is often likened to gambling, first.contact has to be one of the biggest lottery tickets of them all — you’re betting on the biggest news story in human history breaking during your lifetime.

The chances of a final solution to the Fermi paradox may be unknowable, but a million bucks might not be an unreasonable ask if the gamble pays off.

I like the name, anyway, even if it’s more likely to be a drain on the registrant’s resources for the rest of his life.

It’s one of three .contact domains Donuts counted among its top 20 premium-priced sales for December, the others being my.contact and business.contact.

The company took over .contact from Top Level Spectrum in 2019 and took it to general availability last month.

.contact does not rank in the top 10 of Donuts’ portfolio of gTLDs for the month.

While Donuts does not publish sale prices for its premiums, the top name for December appears to have been category-killer office.furniture.

Three-letter .blog domains priced up to $100k

Knock Knock Whois There, the .blog registry, said it is going to release its inventory of three-character domains next month.

Roughly 47,000 names will be released at premium fees, with prices ranging “from a few hundred dollars to over $100K”, the company said.

That number suggests that pretty much all of the alphanumeric combinations and hyphenated L-L, N-N, L-N and N-L variants will be available.

The premium pricing only applies to year one; the names will renew at the standard rate of between $10 and $30.

The names will be released October 7 on a first-come, first-served basis.

.blog is doing pretty well by new gTLD standards, with over 190,000 registered names.

Radix premium renewals approach $1 million

New gTLD registry Radix made almost a million bucks in the first half of the year from renewal fees on its premium domains.

That’s one data point that jumps out from Radix’s latest premium sales report, released last night.

The company said that it made $1.96 million at the top line from premiums in the period, up 19% on the second half of 2019.

It added that $996,771 of that was from renewals, up from $903,687 in H2 2019.

Radix is one of the registries that charges a premium fee every year over the lifetime of the registration, a practice controversial among domain investors.

Still, it appears there is demand (or, at least, acceptance) among end users. Radix said it saw a 41% sequential increase in the number of premium sales in H1.

.tech, .online and .store were the biggest sellers, with the vast majority of sold names clustering in the $250 to $2,500 range.

The renewal rate after the first year was 63%, growing to 72% at the second renewal and a very respectable 78% thereafter.

Radix said it saw .store premium sales grow by more than fivefold during the half, which it attributed to the coronavirus pandemic:

While premium registrations and revenue have grown steadily for five quarters since Q2 2019, the 2020 pandemic has led to significant demand in eCommerce and have urged businesses from all verticals to build a strong web presence.

This has led to a surge in the adoption of premium domain names on meaningful extensions that are most suited for these businesses such as .STORE. Premium registrations for .STORE in Q2 2020 was up by 5.5X compared to Q2 2019.

More stats can be found here.

.gay prices and availability revealed as registry promises to give 20% of revenue to charity

The long-fought, once-controversial gTLD .gay is to launch a month from now.
Top Level Design, which won the string at auction against three other applicants last February, this week informed registrars that its sunrise period will begin February 10 this year. General availability will start May 20.
The registry, which beat a mission-focused, restricted “community” applicant for .gay, also said that it will give 20% of its top-line registration revenue to two LGBT charities — GLAAD and CenterLink.
With base registry fee of $25 per domain, that’s at least $5 going to gay charities for every domain sold. Registrars are being encouraged to match that donation at the retail level.
There will also be six tiers of “premium” domains — $100, $250, $650, $2,000, $5,000 and $12,500 — for which the 20% donation will also apply. Premium domains will renew at premium prices.
Top Level Design also says it is to enforce an anti-bullying policy. Any registrant using a .gay domain for “harassment, threats, and hate speech” will stand to lose their name. It’s a complaint-based enforcement policy; the registry will not actively monitor content.
Registrants who have forums on their .gay web sites will also have to police their user-generated content, to keep it in line with registry policy.
Its official policy even includes helpline numbers for bullied gay people who are feeling suicidal.
The registry appears to be making the right noises when it comes to calming concerns that an unrestricted, non-community .gay space could do more harm than good.
The key area where it diverges from the community application, which had been backed by dozens of gay-rights groups, is the lack of a ban on pornography. I’d hazard a guess that a good chunk of registration volume will come from that space.
The launch will comprise two sunrise periods and an early access period, before .gay goes to GA.
The first sunrise is the ICANN-mandated period, open only to those trademark owners with listings in the official Trademark Clearinghouse. That will run from February 10 to March 31. A second sunrise will be open to other trademarks, validated by back-end provider CentralNic. That runs from April 6 to May 6.
Both sunrise periods will include the automatic reservation of 10 potentially confusing Latin internationalized domain name variants, generated by CentralNic algorithm. This will include strings that transpose 0 and O or e and ë, for example.
EAP, the period in which early birds can grab the names they want for premium fees that decrease every day, runs from May 11 to May 17. Prices are not yet available.
GA is May 20.
Top Level Design originally planned to launch .gay last year, timed to coincide with National Coming Out Day in the US.
The new GA date appears to land on the anniversary of a landmark gay rights ruling in the US Supreme Court, Romer v Evans, but this may just be a coincidence.
.gay is launching about a month before the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, in June, so we might see some marketing around that event.
Registrars signing up to sell .gay domains are also being given some schooling, apparently courtesy of GLAAD, about what language is currently cool and uncool to use in marketing.
Apparently, the terms “homosexual”, “sexual preference” and “transvestite” are considered offensive nowadays and are therefore verboten in registrar marketing. “Queer”, as a partially reclaimed offensive term, should be used with caution.
I suppose Top Level Design had better hope the word “gay” is not added to this list any time soon, otherwise it has a serious problem on its hands.

Radix releases huge amount of premium domain data

Radix made $1,360,865 from premium domain names in its portfolio of new gTLDs in the first half of the year, according to the company’s latest report.
The company said that $522,365 of that came from new registrations — there were 619 in total — with the balance of $838,500 coming from renewals.
Radix is one of the registries that charges a premium fee every year over the life of the registration.
Because of this, its first-year renewal rates for premiums are not fantastic — just 54% of names registered in the first half of 2018 were renewed a year later.
But older premiums renewed at a more-than-respectable 78%, comparable to peak-.com, according to the Radix report.
.store and .online accounted for about half of renewal revenue.
.online and .tech accounted for more than half of new registration revenue.
GoDaddy sold 41.6% of all the names moved in the half.
For Radix, a premium domain is anything priced at $100 or above. That’s lower than some gTLDs’ base non-premium fee.
It sold three names at $10,000 during the period.

What happens in Vegas… gets released in .vegas

Dot Vegas is releasing 2,266 previously reserved .vegas domain names, most of which accord to a decidedly sleazy theme.
Based on my eyeball scan of the list, I’d say easily half of the names being released are related to pornography, prostitution, gambling, drugs, and venereal diseases.
A large number are also family-friendly terms related to travel, tourism and general commercial services.
On the release list are domains including taxi.vegas, rentals.vegas, motels.vegas, lucky.vegas and magic.vegas,
Registrars may be interested to know that domains such as register.vegas, name.vegas and names.vegas are also on the list.
Undisclosed premium prices will be charged for 283 of the names, with the rest hitting the market at the regular .vegas price, which at the top two registrars (GoDaddy and 101domain, each with about 38% market share) is about $70-$80 retail for renewals.
The registry said that the release is happening as part of “an ongoing effort to increase awareness and usage of .vegas domain names”.
.vegas has yet to top 22,000 domains under management and has been on the decline, volume-wise, since last July.
Because they’ve never been available before, the new domains will have to run through the ICANN-mandated Trademark Claims period first, enabling trademark owners to snap up their brand-matches first.
I did spot a few obvious brands — such as Playboy and ChatRoulette — on the list.
Dot Vegas expects this claims period to run from August 1, with the general availability November 1.
The X-rated part of list is actually surprising educational. I thought I knew all the words, but apparently not. Without leaving the T’s, who knew “tribbing”, “teabagging” and “thai beads” were things?
I feel so naive.