Over 50,000 names sold as .shop has successful launch day

GMO Registry has recorded one of the most successful new gTLD launch days to date, selling over 45,000 .shop domain names in the first hours.

The company said it sold 45,427 .shop names in the first two hours after general availability started yesterday afternoon at about 1600 UTC.

The total at that point was 51,755, including about 5,000 that were registered during the Early Access Period, during which names carried higher prices.

The latest .shop zone file contains 46,419 domains.

The registry had sold 616 premium-priced names already, GMO said.

The volume is quite impressive given the retail price tags — .shop is not priced for budget Chinese domainers, it’s selling for $20 to $30 at the major Western registrars.

That’s double, triple or even 10 times as much as Minds + Machines’ self-consciously ‘non-freenium’ .vip domains were selling for when it racked up a six-figure volume during its first day of GA earlier this year.

West.cn, the leading Chinese new gTLD registrar, priced .vip at $3 but is selling .shop at $25.

GMO paid a then record-setting $41.5 million for the rights to .shop at an ICANN auction back in January.

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Tagged: .shop, eap, ga, general availability, gmo, gmo registry, new gTLDs