events It's bad. No worse. It's sad.

[betthelot]

OK imagine you run a domain business and you sell $7.9 million dollars a year worth of domains but it costs you $18 million dollars to operate the business.
What would you do?
Well MMX owners of such names as .work .beer .london .boston decided to pay the CEO $1.1 million and stop outbound sales.
Did you hear that guys, the main stream bloggers will not pick that up THEY STOPPED OUTBOUND SALES OF PREMIUM NAMES.
They had 13 sales people whose only job was selling premium names in 2015 and it didn't work. These sales people could negotiate the price given they own them and had millions to choose from, a big advantage but it was not financially viable; endusers were not interested.
So a $10million operating loss. They are one of the biggest pure play new gTLDs company and they are hurting like many of them. Will be sold for cents on the dollar within 2 years. Their only hope is .vip launches next month in China.
Invested? Strong sell.
Announced today by the CFO reporting 2015 audited accounts to the London Stock Exchange

 

[Rainmaker-NL]

Is .xyz free for US and Canadian citizens?

 

[namerav]

Is .xyz free for US and Canadian citizens?

Why free

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Not free but very cheap (< $2). It's one reason why .xyz is popular among spammers.

And .com is cheaper than most of the new gTLDs.

Quite a bit of spam just forges the from address anyway, and looks for open relays.

 

[bmugford]

And .com is cheaper than most of the new gTLDs.

Really? Please direct me to where you can buy limitless .COM for under $1 each like with .XYZ, .Top, and all the other extensions with inflated registrations numbers based on cheap or free regs.

Brad

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Just some examples -

namecheap

.com $10.69
----------------
.ninja $14.88
.fyi $16.88
.mba $24.88
.movie $248.88
.coupons $39.88
.dog $24.88
.run $16.88
.love $25.88
.cafe $24.88
.sale $24.88
.video $19.88
.chat $24.88
.help $15.88

Many of the new gTLDs are cheaper for the first year, and they are being exploited by scammers - like .party and .review. How the registries respond to that, time will tell, but most of the cheap ones are only cheap for the first year and then the price goes up considerably.

Being more expensive than .com doesn't mean they won't be used for scams, good scammers like to present themselves as being affluent. But those running large numbers of sites for the quick in and out scam won't use the TLDs that are expensive.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Anyway if you want to avoid spam, use a good spam filter that filters based upon the IP address the message is being relayed from as well as the content. That tells you more than the domain name which is easily forged.

If you are looking to avoid scams, for anything of value only do business with sites that have an EV certificate. An EV certificate is expensive and difficult to get, only the highest calibre scammers (e.g. ponzi schemes) will have them.

Be wary of brand new domains, whether they are on .com or not.

 

[brandnow]

you guys always reiterating about reg numbers are missing the point..

.tk has a lot of regs too :p

 

[Kate]

Being more expensive than .com doesn't mean they won't be used for scams, good scammers like to present themselves as being affluent. But those running large numbers of sites for the quick in and out scam won't use the TLDs that are expensive.

Correct, the spam problem is concentrated in a few extensions, that is the cheaper or loosely regulated ones. And of course .tk is a well-known example.

But the bad reputation spills over to all new extensions in general, and instills in the mind of consumers the belief that any new extension is probably unsafe/not legit.

Some reasons why people don't trust new extensions:

• they never see any being advertised
  
• they are not familiar with them, or don't know what they represent (eg what is .desi for ?)
  
• they have had a bad experience (spam)
• they actually tried to buy one, but every single name they checked was already registered/reserved for sale at outrageous prices ("what a scam !")

Many of the new gTLDs are cheaper for the first year, and they are being exploited by scammers - like .party and .review. How the registries respond to that, time will tell, but most of the cheap ones are only cheap for the first year and then the price goes up considerably.

The renewal price doesn't matter, because spammers/scammers use them as disposable domains, and they rotate domains quickly. The shelf life is measured in days. Those names won't be renewed. So I think the registries are responsible for what goes on in their zones.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

But the bad reputation spills over to all new extensions in general, and instills in the mind of consumers the belief that any new extension is probably unsafe/not legit.

To some, but most people don't bother the care what the extension is. Hell if people cared, they wouldn't constantly click on the bit DOT ly links where they have no clue where they lead.

Some reasons why people don't trust new extensions:

• they never see any being advertised
  
• they are not familiar with them, or don't know what they represent (eg what is .desi for ?)
  
• they have had a bad experience (spam)
• they actually tried to buy one, but every single name they checked was already registered/reserved for sale at outrageous prices ("what a scam !")

I saw them advertised, that's how I found out about them. I think it was a Donuts advertisement.

Unfamiliarity isn't a problem, they are familiar that they work the same way as any other link.

The renewal price doesn't matter, because spammers/scammers use them as disposable domains, and they rotate domains quickly.

Yes, it will be interesting to see how the registries doing the cheap first year respond when they get so few renewals. They may find the cheap first year deals aren't worth doing.

 

[brandnow]

I'm long on .horse

j/k

 

[betthelot]

MMX had a great launch of .vip yesterday 150,000 first day 95% registered by Chinese registrars. given the company a lucky life line as they never identified it as a diamond amongst their horse sh*t. been saying for some time its their ace up the sleeve and their last chance. it will only extend the inevitable but give them another 5 years