.Biz Screams “Fly by Night”. Why Perception is Everything. I Review Current Extensions. Good, Bad and Ugly!

Afternoon Folks!!

Ok, this post is gonna piss some folks off. It is not meant to and I hope my explanation stands on its own.

I never talk much about .biz as an extension because for whatever reason, my perception of the .biz extension is "Fly by night". I can't help that. It is how I think each and every time I hear a .biz. Call me prejudice. I can't explain it in words other than to say I know the type folks that bought into .biz. Another "Second coming" that never materialized. The "Z" crowd.

I hear .info registrations are down. That is not surprising. Domainers registered some of the worst domains I have ever seen under .info. So that accounts for the loss of domains registered. However, I still see .info as a viable extension when matched up correctly that might get a second look.

.TV is still a powerful extension matched with powerful end users. It is nt universal like .com, but it allows everyone in the world to broadcast their own TV shows and have it designated as such.

.Me is a nice extension when matched with a proper verb or noun that fits the extension. Again, limited but powerful.

.Org is for charities and non-profits and works best when match up to help the human cause.

.Net is an orphan that may get a second look with 700 .whatevers but still tough to build your main identity on without losing traffic/customers to the .com. Confusion sucks.

ccTLD's all have their purpose in their home markets. The minute that market spills over their physical borders, it is time for the .com

.Mobi is just a loser But with .mobile coming does .mobi get a second chance or do we have Loser #1 and Loser #2?

.Co, is simply confusion central and when the end-user or start-up, grows up, they will want the .com. Why? It will be cheaper and more rewarding to harness those already looking for them than the expenditure of advertising for new hit and miss business.

.US, don't write it completely off just yet. See if the 700 new extensions unfold the way each of these operators believe, than there is little question that the extensions already existing will also get a second look during that decision-making process.

.Com, King of the hill. An empire that will rule for the lifetime of every domainer and end-user reading this. It is just starting to gain traction not the other way around. But as always, marginal domains are worth marginally less today. When you buy slum property, prices don't go up easily. When you buy oceanfront property, you set record sales after record sales. The asset goes up and up. Simple parallel.

.Whatever, I will review each as they come to market. Most will be one word reviews. MeaningFUL or meaningLESS.

.Web, I would say the biggest open question at this moment is will .web be another .net or another .com? This is the most universal sounding name. This is where we get back to perception. Domainers won't judge the outcome they will simply BET on the outcome! HUGE difference! So if you don't look at it right, hard to get it right.

The best will rise to the top naturally. It won't be forced. The extensions will either be universal or limited in scope of combinations that make sense. There is an infinite amount of ones that don't make sense. Matter of fact, domainers have cornered the market on worthless domains. Sad but true.

.Aero, .Travel, are not even on the radar at this juncture so nothing much to say. I was seeing some .travel commercials last year, but have not seen them in a very long time. Indicating that the results were not stellar.

Rick Schwartz

 



33 thoughts on “.Biz Screams “Fly by Night”. Why Perception is Everything. I Review Current Extensions. Good, Bad and Ugly!

  1. Homero A. Gonzalez

    Rick, I agree with your analysis 100%. Time will tell, and that is the beauty of your blog. Lets come back to this post in say, 4 or 5 years and see… who is right. And yes, .biz brings fly by night feelings to me as well. Why is this? I am looking forward to other comments…

    Reply
  2. Scott

    Great post! This is my first time visiting the blog but glad I did. Like you, I believe, .US will get a second look. If they can try some advertising and awareness it might see a lift. I have been using it in a small niche that has made end-users and visitors to these websites believe, that these domains are somehow related to the American Government. Sometimes it is all about perception.

    Reply
  3. Jacek

    I don’t get it: until now I’ve always thought nothing stayed the same forever. The only constant was change itself. Now are You telling me .com will stay no.1 forever? Will there never be nothing even remotely close value-wise?

    Reply
    1. Rick Schwartz

      No, I said in YOUR lifetime!
      Just like an 800 number is synonomus with Toll Free, .com is synonymous with the Internet.
      That is reagrdless of new extensions.
      New extensions only reinforce the .com or the 800 number not the other way around.

      Reply
  4. DonnyM

    I think the chances of something making it in 4 letters or long are very very slim.
    .web is just solid to me. I don’t think people want to type out extra words. Also when you advertise on a billboard .online or .insurance or whatever takes it up a lot of space.
    I think the real killer is Big- G they will be giving away domain names in my opinion. That is going kill this market. Think of how easy it will be to set up a website with them. If they give away names it will be a silent killer. They will be making money off the cloud and ads. My money is on .web

    Reply
  5. Jonathan

    Louis Vuitton or any other to brand could chop the price, but it would no longer be “The” Brand just as giving away the bag/luggage is worthless to all especially G in the long run.

    Reply
  6. UFO

    Homero A. Gonzalez – Rick, I agree with your analysis 100%. Time will tell, and that is the beauty of your blog. Lets come back to this post in say, 4 or 5 years and see… who is right. And yes, .biz brings fly by night feelings to me as well. Why is this? I am looking forward to other comments…

    .Biz sucks because it wants to be .Com but uses slang. People that use slag for proper commercial undertakings don’t have the same credence. See, if you operate under a .biz the first question any customer will ask themselves is ‘why not the .com’ and their own thought processes will lead them to the conclusion that its because you cannot afford a .com and that is because you’re not that good at business or a scammer. All negative attributes.

    Reply
  7. UFO

    Nb: Customers know that when you’re trading from an expensive .com thats a match for your business then you can’t scam because you’ve got reputation and value to lose. Nobody is going to scam someone for a $100 when they are trading from a $100k domain. Thats an insurance policy for any customer.

    Reply
  8. Leonard Britt

    Yes, the registration stats show that .COM is not just #1 but gaining traction. .Web may be leading the new GTLD race but I view it like .CO – developers, bloggers and startups who don’t want to pay for an aftermarket domain may register these but they aren’t going to work too well for most speculators. Think of most premium keywords and then add .Web vs. .Com and there is no comparison. .Web sounds cheap

    Reply
  9. kerry

    the .pro registry doesn’t market themselves well like you see in .pw, .co or .me but there is a 150K registry base of users. Recent sites like http://tech.pro/ keep me interested in the extension and believe there is a future for the extension. At least .pro isn’t being labeled ‘fly by night’ so thats a good thing!

    Reply
  10. UFO

    Ok, last comment from me before I start looking like a spammer. But, you know, customers like everyone else start from the gold standard of everything and ONLY make concessions on price for quality.

    So, a customer wanting to buy a generic widget from .com or .whatever is always going to buy from a .com because there is nothing else to drive the customer towards buying from the .whatever. The only way that customer would buy from the ,whatever is if its cheape. And thats why .com’s are more expensive and valuable because all those reductions in price to make the sale all things being equal have a capitalised value.

    100k for a decent .com is cheap. A good 5 letter .com is worth 250k imho and a 4 letter is worth 500k+ (I am talking about good dictionary words here).

    Reply
  11. Hary Ballsac

    .TV will probably see end-users flee when awareness of the real meaning of .TV (Tuvalu, not “television”) increases to the point that huge organizations (NBC, Major League Baseball) are embarrassed by their branding in a third-world country’s ccTLD. It’s only a matter of time before America’s “national pastime” (Major League Baseball) sees the light only after its short-sighted advertising agency and PR department turn shades of red when patriotic baseball fans realize MLB.tv really means MLB-dot-Tuvalu, and not MLB-dot-television.
    My guess is that Major League Baseball will flee .TV and utilize MLB.us, and they already own that. I know lots of major league ball players from the Dominican Republic, South America, and even Japan, but none from Tuvalu.
    Harry Ballsac

    Reply
  12. Donnym

    They can’t give away names like google. The others will have to charge because they have no marketing dollars to make these extensions known in the public. They will have to compete with 1000 others for same search term.
    They have nothing to offer. No gmail,labs,cloud, docs for free zero0000
    Everything is free with G, but not really, they make money on all your ads on gmail, youtube and everywhere else. Just look at the promotions box on your gmail account..Woooh money maker. If .web don’t make it nothing will.

    Reply
  13. Inland Desert

    Always a fan, yet somewhat surprised at this view about .pro. I am a business professional and I’ll be launching several websites using .pro as my branding identity. Since .pro means “professional,” I’m confident this will be understood by prospective clients in many countries.

    I believe the perception of .pro is an extension that sets a high standard for the domain owner and customer expectations and I’m looking forward to launching my sites. There is certainly not the confusion between .com and .pro as there is with .co

    Best Regards,

    Inland Desert

    Reply
  14. Homero A. Gonzalez

    I generally do not like ccTLDs that want to be gTLDs. It just not the way things were conceived. Additionally, it does bother me as well the fact that some ccTLD’s may be controlled by some “Particular” government(s), that may choose to behave in an “undemocratic”, “unreasonable” or “despotic” way… A ccTLD should be just that a ccTLD.

    @UFO, I understand your point about .biz Thank you for explaining!.

    Reply
  15. Jeff Schneider

    Hello Rick,

    The Biz abbreviation with a .COM following it is a horse of a different color. The different framing of the value of the Biz abbreviation, for business uses, can be very valuable to an end user in a service business or software business or ????

    Take for instance UseBiz.com a six letter .com that I own that has attracted some pretty substantial offers over the years.

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

    Reply
  16. Jim Holleran

    Hary Ballsac you are so wrong on .tv. They don’t care what country, just like end users don’t care if .me is Montenegro. If you own a Sports.tv, or a Meet.me which Rick sold for $450K with his partners, your going to get big bucks from end users.

    Reply
  17. M Altaf Hossain

    I found all extensions got Rick’s attention and reviews here. Nothing much nothing less. But I am surprised why people got engaged in daily hand registering those .biz or. other ext. with good kw domains?

    Reply
  18. UFO

    @Eric

    Why .host when .net already exists?

    Any new TLD needs to be short, focused and satisfies some potential desire/need. Effectively new TLDs look to own a segment of the market that .com had, and ideally consolidate and brand that segment better.

    E.g. If someone said to me choose between a new TLD of .host or say .city I’d choose .city as there are plenty of geo situations that would work well with it and provide a major hub for commerce and information. To take .host would be to reinvent the wheel and compete on price rather than non price issues against .net. Trying to sell domains cheaper to gain advantage is not something that shows exploiting latent potential / leverage etc. Everything is about gaining interested eyeballs through motivated developers who can see the $ potential.

    Reply
  19. UFO

    nb: .host also isn’t very marketing focused thats why most isp’s have stayed on .net. Godaddy as it was more marketing focused used .com. These new TLD’s imho opinion are only good for marketing plays to less sophisticated users not seeking credible assurance of .com (I.e. information content and entertainment rather than ecommerce etc).

    Reply
  20. Kassey

    I’m with DonnyM. Big G may turn out to be a game changer. Free domain name plus easy to set up website for each one of the 7b population, in exchange for your personal info + ads. They did it with email. They can certainly do it with domain names.

    Reply
  21. steve

    So My question here is, does a company register all the extensions in order to protect their brand or just the .com and maybe the .tv because they already have a trademark on their name and don’t have to worry about anyone else registering their other extensions?

    Also is it feasible to register the other extensions if and only if the .com is take and the name is an EMD with high search and CPC? Thanks

    Reply
  22. Rick Schwartz

    @steve
    Depends on the domain. Each domain has characteristics and so does the idea behind the domain. So the job is to think if there is a way to use another extension in the future. I tend to focus on .TV and .Me. Not as defensive registrations but as marketing tools. The only real defensive registration I need is the .com and maybe the plural or singular of whatever domain we are talking about if I think it helps.

    On the other hand some are better in other hands with a great success and I can just reap the benefits.

    Reply
  23. Hary Ballsac

    I personally don’t believe the $450K sale of Meet.me. It may be true, but it seems to me it’s probably one of those “creative finance” deals which means not much money (if any) really changed hands yet. Once again, I reiterate that, currently, no one except domainers and a relative few actually know what .me stands for, or what .tv stands for, so you can probably still take advantage of that as is MLB, NBC, and perhaps Rick Schwartz. But when education becomes important, those extensions will fade into oblivion. It will take some time, but it will happen that way.

    Reply
  24. Hary Ballsac

    My my my. Testy, aren’t we? Last time I checked, one cannot research the future. It’s not nice to resort to name calling. But that’s what one gets here for merely expressing an opinion.

    Good luck to you all, you now know what the deal is here.

    Reply
  25. Haven

    Regarding the possible success of .web: To me, .net stills sounds and looks more authoritave than .web. Think about it. Which word is used in the real world more often as is relates to “going online”? Net or Web. It may be just me, but I haven’t heard anyone refer to the internet as the World Wide Web since the early 90’s.

    I think it’s possible that .net will get another look when all the .whatevers come rolling in. Of course, either way traffic will be lost to .com for quite some time.

    Reply
  26. Ninja

    Great blog. Would it be a good idea to use hyphens (-) as a defense registration for domain names? For example registering artsupplies.com and art-supplies.com. I would think the SEO is still good and I would be kind of pissed if someone piggy backed my marketing of artsupplies.com on the same search listing by simply adding a hyphen in their domain name.

    Reply

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