Hanging in there?

[mulligan]

Hey all, how's things? Hanging in there?

I've dropped most of what I had, kept a few hundred but have, for the most part given up on making any money from them.

[dave_5]

Holding since 2003. Dropped all my .net and 90% of my .com.

Forget making money. Bad investment...

[blackpower]

I would not call it bad investment outright... There were many erroneous ideas floating around in the early days; most of them have proven wrong;
I have only Portuguese (95%) , dropped many and now have about 250 that I see future with;
I started first full scope website and it woks fine given the circumstances; I don't dedicate much time to it though....
Many times increase in visits and sales inquiries... But dismal ppc and main problem is how to monetize.

[basel]

sold all names in the forum from the beginning :)

[Fka200]

Still check the forum often.

Anyone actually do anything interesting with their IDNs? Anyone still get offers? I get 3-4 offers a month.

[bwhhisc]

Hey Mulligan,

I think maybe you supplied the data....if not remind me who did if you remember.
Can you run your numbers on how many IDN .com, .net and .biz are registered currently and see how that compares to the "last" survey of same. Wondering if total registrations are holding their own, or dropping off.

All I know if when I drop a decent name someone more often than not snaps it right up on the drop auctions. I am cutting number of names I had to maybe 1/3 mostly geos.com, or top key words, or anything that gets traffic. For the moment I going to stay the course. :) I too get low ball offers, and usually counter that I would do a domain lease or monthly payment over x years, as long as they agree to develop the name.

VeriSign fu.....ed up what was a good plan for idn.idn and by splitting the .com and .com(idn) to potentially different owners, that dampened a lot of enthusiasm and forced you to "pay double" or go home IMO.

[dave_5]

As the holder of IDN.com will I have a priority in registering the IDN.IDN?

I see Mulligan mentioning something.

Thanks!

[bwhhisc]

As the holder of IDN.com will I have a priority in registering the IDN.IDN?

I see Mulligan mentioning something.

Thanks!

If you own the idn.com, you do have priority when they rollout the new idncom, but if you don't register and pay for it then and every year thereafter it goes to free market.

The original plan was that the .com holder had the rights to the idn(com) but did not have "pay for it" until YOU chose to "activate", but it was protected and not available to anyone else to register.
So essentially you got a free ride, and the IDNcom stayed paired with the owner of the ASCIIcom.. VeriSign got bent over to accept this "new" plan in order to get approval from ICANN and some of the
committees (GAC, GNSO) that made these recommendations and basically stonewalled them to not be able to rollout unless they accepted their "plan" which VeriSign finally agreed to, probably a year
after other "new" gTLDs were already live in the market.

So if you don't register the IDNcom and pay during release or sunrise you stand to lose it to someone else registering it. Then you potentially have 2 .com(ascii) and .com(idn) for the same keyword.

Now your basically stuck paying double every year, instead of activating it when you are ready to develop or at your choosing which was the plan VeriSign proposed, and most everyone hoped for.
I guess if you currently have a .com, and someone takes the new gTLD IDNcom and it gets huge traffic, you will benefit from some spillover typos to .com or vice versa.
If you have any really great names or names that get traffic, it would probably be worth it to own the IDNcom and pay the extra +- $10 a year.

If owner of com does not take the IDNcom, the registrars are in some cases, putting some pretty crazy prices on the idncoms, many in the mid to high xxx, and up.

[mulligan]

Can you run your numbers on how many IDN .com, .net and .biz are registered currently

Give or take a few, this is what's registered today:

COM - 994,205
NET - 213,750
ORG - 24,623
BIZ - 36,855
INFO - 22,127

Last time I ran the numbers was in August 2015, almost exactly 3 years ago :)
http://www.idnforums.com/forums/35107-breakdown-of-the-number-of-idns-currently-registered-in-com-net-org-info-biz.html

If someone wants to compare the two sets of numbers go for it...

[bwhhisc]

AUGUST 2015 // AUGUST 2018

Total: 1,443,045 // TOTAL- 1,291,560

.com - 1,085,858 // COM - 994,205

.net - 289,969 // NET - 213,750

.org - 26,333 // ORG - 24,623

.info - 26,305 // INFO- 22,127

.biz - 78,153 // BIZ - 36,855

[dave_5]

If you own the idn.com, you do have priority when they rollout the new idncom, but if you don't register and pay for it then and every year thereafter it goes to free market.

The original plan was that the .com holder had the rights to the idn(com) but did not have "pay for it" until YOU chose to "activate", but it was protected and not available to anyone else to register.
So essentially you got a free ride, and the IDNcom stayed paired with the owner of the ASCIIcom.. VeriSign got bent over to accept this "new" plan in order to get approval from ICANN and some of the
committees (GAC, GNSO) that made these recommendations and basically stonewalled them to not be able to rollout unless they accepted their "plan" which VeriSign finally agreed to, probably a year
after other "new" gTLDs were already live in the market.

So if you don't register the IDNcom and pay during release or sunrise you stand to lose it to someone else registering it. Then you potentially have 2 .com(ascii) and .com(idn) for the same keyword.

Now your basically stuck paying double every year, instead of activating it when you are ready to develop or at your choosing which was the plan VeriSign proposed, and most everyone hoped for.
I guess if you currently have a .com, and someone takes the new gTLD IDNcom and it gets huge traffic, you will benefit from some spillover typos to .com or vice versa.
If you have any really great names or names that get traffic, it would probably be worth it to own the IDNcom and pay the extra +- $10 a year.

If owner of com does not take the IDNcom, the registrars are in some cases, putting some pretty crazy prices on the idncoms, many in the mid to high xxx, and up.

Thanks for answering!

If I wish to register the IDNcom, could the domain register charge premium ($xx,xxx if top name) price or same price as any .com domain ($10)?

Thanks!

[bwhhisc]

Thanks for answering!

If I wish to register the IDNcom, could the domain register charge premium ($xx,xxx if top name) price or same price as any .com domain ($10)?

Thanks!

IDN.com is what we have been registering since 2000, they are still about $9 +- at Dynadot or Name.com for fresh regs.

The new gTLD .IDNcom is what they are adding a premium price to, with exception being if you are the current IDN.com holder, you can get the matching .IDNcom at registration fee at the sunrise/ launch of the new gTLD.

[dave_5]

That is what I received from Dynadot regarding the new Hebrew IDN:

"At present we do not have information if we will be supporting the new IDN.

If so we will advise via the newsletter and if so, you will be able to register the domains in your domain management account."

The Priority access starts like in 10 days and they don't know if they will support it????

If not I will have to transfer all my domain to another domain register. That might take some time.

Anyone had experience with registration of the new IDN domains with Daynadot?

Thanks!

[sbe18]

quick question on Hebrew.
I am thinking of several two word domains that are plural.
Years ago people said hyphens were needed.
I understand the grammar need for the hyphens, but from a branding or SEO is there a change ?

thanks
s/

[clipper]

That is what I received from Dynadot regarding the new Hebrew IDN:

"At present we do not have information if we will be supporting the new IDN.

If so we will advise via the newsletter and if so, you will be able to register the domains in your domain management account."

The Priority access starts like in 10 days and they don't know if they will support it????

If not I will have to transfer all my domain to another domain register. That might take some time.

Anyone had experience with registration of the new IDN domains with Daynadot?

Thanks!

I was pretty actively involved with the Japanese rollout in 2016 and it's clear that Verisign messed things up and the registrars messed things up. Dynadot was very slow on the uptake, but they did everything by the book. Not every registrar did so, and a lot of "rules" were broken.

The Korean rollout I wasn't very interested in, since I had few worthwhile names in that language, so I can't comment on that.

Issue 1: There was premium pricing on what Verisign saw as "premium" domains. Over 10,000 names had "premium pricing". The list is bizarre, as most of the highest priced domains were mixed script (e.g. sex.コム), and many of the names we would consider premium were not (e.g. 東京.コム, Tokyo.com was not prime). There were six tiers of premium pricing, the lowest of which was ~US$180 and the highest was over US$12,000, depending on the registrar. Verisign did not publish a list of premiums, but if you looked around you could find it.

Issue 2: Every registrar had different information. 101domains.com (http://www.idnforums.com/forums/35275-good-news-for-people-who-like-bad-news.html) was the first I saw to publish premium pricing. But they all had different available dates, different pricing, everything. I hit the registrars hard, creating 20+ accounts at different registrars. And I signed up for zone access (http://www.idnforums.com/forums/35200-%E3%82%B3%E3%83%A0-zone-file-populating.html) for xn--tckwe (.コム) so I could see registrations as they happened, daily.

One day searching the zone file I noticed this (http://www.idnforums.com/forums/35394-wow-how-did-this-happen.html): a domain (tokyo in Japanese, 東京) which was registered in .com had been registered in .コム by another entity at a different registrar, before the "priority registration" period was over, but during the "priority registration" period. This shouldn't have happened, and it was later revoked (during the course of that thread) by the registrar. But another member here grabbed it in the meantime, and it was later revoked from him (weeks later, but during the course of that thread, if I recall).

Here's the short version of my understanding of what happened:

I'd never heard of the registrar (the initial registrar of tokyo.com in IDN, 東京.コム), but for some reason the registration was cancelled within a few hours. This thread (http://www.idnforums.com/forums/35394-wow-how-did-this-happen.html) started a discussion where some of us noticed that another (much larger) registrar (Enom) was allowing early registrations without landrush fees. Another member here got the name when it was deleted by the initial registrar (but it was later deleted from his account).

A lot of us were playing coy in that thread, for good reason. Premium names were available at certain registrars, but not all... previously "blocked" .com domains because of a conflict between Japanese and Chinese characters and punycode conflicts were able to be registered in .コム. Those who were paying attention and had lists ready got super prime domains for reg fee. One comment got me a super prime name I wasn't even thinking of for reg fee, not a premium, and I still have it (travel.com, thanks Alpha). Someone (maybe inadvertently) revealed that Enom (and maybe other registrars) were allowing registrations to the general public before any other registrar and they weren't charging landrush fees (they were basically allowing anyone to register a .コム even if they didn't own the .com).

Many, but not all of the names registered prior to the landrush were revoked by Verisign (techguy (http://www.idnforums.com/forums/members/techguy.html) harmlessly alerted us to this not realizing by posting (http://www.idnforums.com/forums/225941-post77.html) some names had been registered "yesterday" in that thread, and I knew that Yokohma was mine and Tokyo had been Bill's for weeks at that point) without contacting the registrants: only the registrars were contacted. One registrar owner vacuumed up ~200 of the most prime names that were removed from our accounts (including Tokyo and Yokohama). I believe he still owns the majority of prime .コム names.

Verisign must've done this by hand, since there was no rhyme or reason as to which names were able to be kept and which were deleted. There were no "hard rules" as to which names were deleted and which were retained. The CEO of Hexonet wound up registering most of the names that were deleted.

So, that's how smoothly this can go. Good luck. :)

[clipper]

Hey all, how's things? Hanging in there?

I've dropped most of what I had, kept a few hundred but have, for the most part given up on making any money from them.

I've never had more than a few hundred. But I've dropped to a few dozen.

[blackpower]

Thanks for answering!

If I wish to register the IDNcom, could the domain register charge premium ($xx,xxx if top name) price or same price as any .com domain ($10)?

Thanks!

There could be interesting situations...
For example, I regged sãopaulo.online for regular price, but saopaulo.online in premium registration and registrar is asking #11,500/year for it...
.online is a very good, popular extention for latins...
I wonder if them can just rise the renewal fee anytime even for registered and active domain/websites? If that's so, I'll stay away from new tld no matter how good the domain is....
What are your thoughts, guys?

[dave_5]

I have all my Hebrew IDN's with Daynadot. Until know Daynadot does'nt know when they will add support to registration for the new Henrew IDN's.

I don't want to miss the "Priority Access Period". Should I move my domains to another domain register?

[bwhhisc]

I have all my Hebrew IDN's with Daynadot. Until know Daynadot does'nt know when they will add support to registration for the new Henrew IDN's.

I don't want to miss the "Priority Access Period". Should I move my domains to another domain register?

Hi Dave
I spoke to Jacqueline Daly at Dynadot, she says that they will be supporting the Hebrew IDNcom registrations, they will launch during the priority period at earliest September 4th, and latest September 6th.
The priority period goes until October 1st at 23:59 UTC.

[dave_5]

Thank you so much bwhhisc!!

I emailed them few times and all I got is indecisive answer regarding if and when they will support. After waiting for 15 years, I didn't want to miss the Priority access.

[abe]

I hate to break it to you but expect lots of "funny" things...

In addition, I do know that they will probably charge very premium prices for some of the names.

I also think that in general IDN's are.. dead :(

The best of Japanese IDN.コム dont get any inquires.
The best of Israeli hebrew .co.il dont get any interest. Israeli's barely use domains. They use FB.

The best of Chinese IDN ccTLD's and the best of their .com (in Chinese-not Verisign's junk extension which didnt launch yet) get 0 interest.

Idn's are pretty much gone at this stage, and regular domains at this stage except really premium are also not doing well..

Just my 2 cents... others seem to think differently.

[blackpower]

One of the biggest mistakes in the early idn days was that catchy phrase: ".com is King".
Yes it is but not for all markets...
.com is king where they use .com;

For the market I concentrate on, Brazil/Portuguese, .com is king in Brazil because .com is just a shorter version of com.br, the local extention;
Also, Portuguese ids are full idns already- this is a huge difference.
I started website on idn (in my signature) and it is behaving fantastic as far as SEO, ranking and potential.
I have some problems with software I use but this should be fixed this year and have plans to add two more sites on idn domains.
As far as markets like russian: .com is virtually unknown (I have said this before but nobody listened); However a good domain is still a good domain;
I keep only two big commercial russian domains that I may put sites on later sometime when we have .ком.
Not long ago a good chinese .com was sold (travel).
So, yes, people have registered a lot of crap expecting idns behave like .coms in the States; It did not happened but let's separate apples from oranges;
I million idn .com are still registered;

[Fka200]

I hate to break it to you but expect lots of "funny" things...

In addition, I do know that they will probably charge very premium prices for some of the names.

I also think that in general IDN's are.. dead :(

The best of Japanese IDN.コム dont get any inquires.
The best of Israeli hebrew .co.il dont get any interest. Israeli's barely use domains. They use FB.

The best of Chinese IDN ccTLD's and the best of their .com (in Chinese-not Verisign's junk extension which didnt launch yet) get 0 interest.

Idn's are pretty much gone at this stage, and regular domains at this stage except really premium are also not doing well..

Just my 2 cents... others seem to think differently.

IDNs might be dead but traffic is still there. Use them to guide traffic to whatever is "alive"

[bwhhisc]

IDNs might be dead but traffic is still there. Use them to guide traffic to whatever is "alive"

Whether you like him or not, the guy has probably been more right than wrong and made a lot of money in this business. He never bought into IDNs but he makes his case for the future of domains.

From RicksBlog.com

They Made Domains Great Again!! Thank you Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter!

Morning Folks!!

Want to be in charge of your own destiny on the Internet? There is only ONE WAY to accomplish that. It starts with EVERYTHING revolving around your Domain Name. EVERYTHING!! I mean that IS your front door is it not?

Many of us have been talking about how big a mistake it is TRUSTING these 3rd parties with your content and with your future since Day 1. Now the world knows why.

So with the recent bannings and the fact that third parties control YOUR destiny has finally woken people up inquiries are going thru the roof. This was something I could see coming and my first post when I started to blog again may make a little more sense now. My shortest post ever:


The Life, The Death and The Rebirth of the Industry of Domains.

"Coming this summer."
Welcome to the rebirth! 8-8-18. Mark it on your calendar.

Sorry, but free speech is free speech and as we burn the books and words we don't like it sure reminds me of another time. I thought that was a lesson learned. I guess not.

But be that as it may, it is GREAT, for domain names. It is great for those that invested wisely in domains. It will also be a tough lesson for those on the sidelines trying to sell worthless crap.

Google, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter have "Re-Birthed" domain names. It won't do crappola for the "Domain Industry" but it is doing wonders for solid and in demand domains.

These events will challenge EVERY brand and entity to rethink their social online strategy. While first contact may be made on social media, follow up contact should be done within the confines of their own website. It is a HUGE business mistake to allow these third parties such control of your business and lives.

If you are opening an online business and you dependent on Google for your traffic, GOOD LUCK!! Google traffic is a BONUS. Your job is to use all other sources FIRST! If Facebook or Twitter is where you conduct customer service, it's FOOLISH at best! Their #1 job is to transition them off of these platforms and to their website!

These 3rd parties are TOOLS, they are not FOUNDATIONS! The domain name is the ONLY foundation you can control on the Internet.

This is a tough lesson that MILLIONS of businesses around the world are learning TODAY! It will take a while to manifest itself further. Many board meeting will be setting new agendas and that is ripe with the fall business boom!

The "Masters of the Universe" are they YOUR master? Do they control YOUR destiny? They do and will if you allow them. Unfortunately millions of businesses have been blind to it. But they are blind no more. They are TERRIFIED! As they should be.

GAME ON!

Rick Schwartz

[sbe18]

Rick never disparaged ASCII foreign language domains
In an email exchange 8 or 9 years ago, he said when idn.idn email addresses work is when IDN's as a market would be global and viable.