Sit and Ponder

I look over at DL and see all the .uks being snapped up and I think to myself, ‘who is actually buying that shit?’

Genuine question.

Many of us My rational is:

many companies who own the co.uk have just bought the .uk of their name and some will make the .uk the default

many sme's have been unable to get the co.uk they want and will be able to get a better quality .uk ( the registrar's will offer these as exact matches to customer searches - ie birminghamchinese.uk )

many co.uk people will have Google penalties on their .co.uk's and this is a reason to try again

some people caught good .uk's who never had the chance before and now will develop them

Thus over the next few months .uk's will appear more in use, as they appear more in use people will think it is ok to have a .uk and hence more .uk's will go live ( this is the standard model of any adoption curve - once an adoption goes past 7% it becomes established as a norm ). Thus the uk will have the .co.uk and .uk system for many years.

lee said:

‘who is actually buying that shit?’

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Some examples of shit domains??

https://www.pokerstars.uk/

Not proper but gives a feel https://www.google.com/search?sourc......1..gws-wiz.....0..0j0i131j0i10.TZ8VDtM3OUw

If someone is willing to pay £20k for gay.uk I'd say .uk has a future. I think over time the short .uk will become more popular, it's new and few outside domaining realize what's happening. Some of those .uk domains will be worth a lot more in the future and as others have said it is a chance for some to develop real businesses with names they wouldn't get with the .co.uk taken. Many good .co.uk's are undeveloped, this gives those with the .uk who develop quickly a solid head start. I can't see google showing both the .co.uk and .uk versions in the serps for the same name.

Wouldn't surprise me if we see insure.uk top £20k, that is a base for building a brand and selling the package on when it hits big numbers. I agree with dougs this is an opportunity, but I want everyone else to think they are worthless

insure is on my list for next week aswell as some others

It's totally an opportunity. Like it or not, I suspect it will become part of the general publics norm as the ror is over. People will start using it. It's shorter, which is always good from a marketing and memory standpoint. I don't think it will be an either/or. It will just be like .net, .com. co. io, co.uk . uk

For cross populating sites there may be a traffic leak either way but ultimately people will find what they're looking for.

gay.uk is even easier to say than gay.co.uk . If i'd had that deep pockets, I would have paid it. I tried on a couple others. Stopped on one for other reasons, but ultimately these major keywords are cracking opportunities if you have a bit of wedge.

It's a no brainer.

When gov.uk first came about, you'd see people getting confused. Its pretty much the norm now... companies house switched over to their gov.uk. Just need the majors to do the same.

BBC, Google, Amazon, eBay - once those 4 do it, the "adoption" question is pointless.

Actually if The Sun, National Lottery, and Daily Mail do it... the same thing happens

2pence.

There are a lot of similarities/parallels to the .nyc launch (Oct 2014) and market. I write about its progress, direction and investing here.

Before .nyc, there was a .nyc.gov TLD (e.g. schools.nyc.gov) and now some of the government campaigns have started to use the shorter .nyc domains.

Also the more that these are seen in the wild, the more awareness people will have around them (.nyc photo gallery).

I switched a lot of my investment to .nyc when I moved here and also when .co.uk was shook with the introduction of .uk and the 5 year rights period.

For what it's worth here are a few words of caution from my experience:

1. My original belief with .nyc was too optimistic that 3-5 years the solid adoption would come. It's been pretty good, they're in use, but many domainers have dropped their .nycs, I'm still bullish picking them up - however, a more realistic timeline for market maturity is 7-10 years of holding. So if you drop 5k on a .uk I think you may be looking at the same timeline to get the return you want.

2. Just like .nyc and .uk are both effectively new gTLDs and they're looking to take market share from the biggest franchises on the planet (.com and .co.uk), from an investor standpoint there's significant risk all depending on end user adoption. This may sound obvious but in my opinion investors will not make the money they want before end users have got in there and developed/marketed their own .uk websites and the .uk market has proven itself more solid. There is such a hurdle still that people know and love .co.uk - maybe shorter isn't always better? (For many folks.) That's another reason why I think the 7-10 year maturity period is more realistic.

I wrote this whole piece on the eras of the .nyc domainspace and it shows the steps that Neustar, the registry operator for .nyc, have taken to release and continue promote .nyc.

There has to be promotion of .uk - that's another thing. Otherwise this may just be another product on the shelf like .org.uk and .me.uk.

But what kind of promotion can Nominet do for .uk that won't in some way harm .co.uk ?

Anyways - interesting times!

Just wanted to add a couple more things (sorry - no one else to talk to ):

1. Domainers by our nature are entrepreneurs. We dedicate time and money but it's a fun and hopefully profitable business, enterprise even game! With any business or game, the most important thing to succeed is knowing the rules and other info (market condition, other key players, threats/risks, opportunities, etc.)

When .uk came up it shook everything and injected massive uncertainty along with a significant devaluation of domains that folks were holding. It made the game less fun, more risky and changed the rules and market in ways that we wouldn't know for 5 years or more.

So now that we're at the end of the 5 years, with the .uk release, I think many domainer's spirits are coming back to life, we can finally breathe. The fun and excitement is back (with the catches), the rules are starting to come back (no more RoR), the market has a chance of settling and the entrepreneurial spirit that we have (in searching and jumping on opportunities) is back!

This may mean in the short term that many folks are paying more than they probably should for .uks, but that doesn't mean that they won't make a profit in future. They may be paying 2x/3x the value now, but in future they may sell for 10x/20x. That's why we're entrepreneurs, we take calculated risks for greater returns.


2. One function of domainers, in the launch of a new TLD is awareness spreading through outbound. I write about this a little in my article on Developed: An Investor’s Experience with NYC Domains for 4 Years. Here are the key pieces:

Personally, my view is that investors play an important function in the growth and success of new TLDs because they provide a cash boost for a registry at the landrush phase (when a new TLD is launched and anyone can register a domain with that extension) and throughout premium priced domain releases and premium auctions as well as ongoing yearly renewals. This cash boost can help with marketing and awareness campaigns.

Another important function of domain investors is that they assume part of the risk that the registry has when it makes the initial investment to get the domain extension up and running. This sharing of risk is important, it creates an additional group of stakeholders who have interests aligned with the registry to ensure it is successful and thrives – ultimately to protect and grow their investment...

When investors reach out to prospects to sell a domain on a new TLD, part of the work is in educating people and organizations that there is an alternative to .com. This ‘awareness spreading’ organically comes from investors reaching out to hundreds if not thousands of potential end users and the registry and namespace benefits from this (through a greater awareness and more registrations and usage in future).

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So now's the time for domainers to do their part with outbound marketing to sell some domains. Even if they many don't sell (because it's still my belief that to get a decent return on investment it may take 7 years+), domainers reaching out, sending emails and making calls, will spread the word about .uk, which will help the whole namespace (awareness, registrations, renewals, hopefully Nominet will use some of this £ for marketing, more big sales announcements, more usage on trucks/vans/cars/TV/shop windows/billboards/radio, more people using [email protected] emails, fewer online webforms rejecting [email protected] email addresses as invalid (it happens) and finally more inbound enquiries for domains and bigger sales.

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lee said:

I look over at DL and see all the .uks being snapped up and I think to myself, ‘who is actually buying that shit?’

Genuine question.

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Instead of a subdomain?