Company goes direct to customers to promote its niche domain names.
“If you build it, they will come.”
Not if they don’t know you’ve built it!
Although there are close to 200 new top level domain names on the market, dozens of them niche domains for particular industries, very few people know about them. I’d bet fewer than 1% of business owners have ever heard of new TLDs, let alone most of the niche extensions.
New TLD backers need to get in front of business owners and explain their domain names face-to-face.
That’s exactly what Donuts is doing at the WWDMagic fashion event in Las Vegas this week.
I’m not going to write about every company that exhibits at an industry conference, but I think this is unique enough at this point to warrant covering. Donuts also recently exhibited at a photography even in the UK.
Here’s a picture of Donuts’ booth, which promotes its fashion domains including .boutique, .shoes and .clothing.
(photo via @donutsinc)
BT says
Smart. will be great to see other registries doing this next year as all the contentions resolve, lifting the value of everyone’s new TLD investments. A rising tide lifts all boats. 🙂
couponpages says
It may be a few years before people actually understand the nTLDs, but direct to consumer advertising is a good first step.
It’s still going to take at least one big site that’s not a .com to get true market acceptance (in the US). So far, I haven’t seen one.
Jose says
Hi Andrew,
Initially, I thought that the gtlds werent selling cuz people ddnt know about them. Now, I think it is actually more a matter of noone caring. They suck and are short lived.
couponpages says
I think both are true, a lot of people don’t know about them, and a lot of the people who do know about them are ignoring them. Oh… and I think they suck too.
However, an interesting thing is that among those who are ignoring them are people who have a lot to lose if the TLDs take off.
Consider this scenario.
You invested in land in New York City’s Times Square (.com) that you are hoping to sell for top dollar, then a big developer tells your potential buyers he’s got a bunch of lower priced units that are almost as good, in Hoboken, NJ (.net).
Then another guy pops out of nowhere and tells your potential buyers he’s got new locations that are better than Times Square popping up in about 1500 other cities (nTLDs).
What would you do? Some buy up some of the land while it’s cheap as a defensive move, but build nothing. This lowers the value of that land, because it doesn’t have any real tenants (sites).
A bunch buy up the land, and they too decide not to build, but not as a defensive move, but as a hedge in case the values increase over time. However, since a huge number of owners didn’t build, it’s a ghost town, so it never catches on to anyone but the investors.
So I ask again… since many domain buyers already own .Coms, why would they invest resources making the new locations more valuable, if in doing this, their existing prime real estate will decrease in value?
The best they can hope for is a stalemate. They will buy the new TLDs, making the registries some money, but without any major sites using them, it will take a long time to see any gains.
That said, I believe there will eventually be some gains. In the case where the Registries used premium prices, it will take even longer.
ChuckWagen says
They should install a Whack-A-Com arcade to further educate the kids about mean old school .com that has no place in today’s forward-thinking net-ciety.