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XYZ slashes $10 million a year from premium stash

Kevin Murphy, September 11, 2017, 15:15:46 (UTC), Domain Registries

XYZ.com has slashed the asking price of a few thousand “premium” .xyz domain names, in some cases by many thousands of dollars.
Overall, it looks like the company has dropped prices by a total of $10.8 million.
At the top end of its reserved list, several single and double-character domains previously priced a $55,000 per year have been reduced to $13,000 per year.
At the lower end, domains previously priced at around $1,300 are now around $300.
Those are the recommended retail prices. Some registrars are offering them with a substantial mark-up.
The reductions affect 2,700 of the domains on XYZ’s premium list, which runs to about 3,075 names in total.
Whereas the previous hypothetical value of the full list was $15.3 million a year, it’s now at $4.4 million a year.
Of course, they’re not worth anything unless somebody is willing to pay the price, and the domains still seem to have end-user price tags on them.
Premium renewal fees have so far proved unpopular in the domain investing community due to the large carrying cost.
XYZ’s full list can be obtained here.

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Comments (8)

  1. Mo says:

    There renewal price is ridiculous!
    Nobody who is somewhat sane would spend on buying a premium domain with a high renewal price!! Definitely not domainers and neither end users.
    As is one needs to pay a high registration fee. The renewal fees dont make sense. Many renewals have been dropped already.
    End users can barely manage to convince their managers to pay a high price for a domain …but it is so much harder for them to explain the high renewal rates.
    Daniel has this all across the board on all his extensions, even on no meaning domains like this…(checked at uniregistry and others).
    Reach out and grab it…
    jlkjlkj.protection is available$2,888.88
    Renewal $2,888.88 for 1 year

    • Rubens Kuhl says:

      Actually, there are some that believe that the only way for a domain to cost more than others at registration is for them to also have a higher than usual renewal fee. There arguments on both sides, but no matter which approach one chooses, it should be focused on what value end-users see. Domain investors are temporary holders of a domain, so something they prefer might be different from the actual end-user value perception, but if a registry chooses its pricing based on investors, it will favor the transient state of the domain, not the end state.
      Perhaps one way to handle both needs would be to have a standard renewal fee if a premium domain doesn’t have DNS servers or points to a standard registry page with selling information, but it would require the premium renewal fee if actually used.

      • Kevin Murphy says:

        Would that be legal under the RA? Seems like a slippery slope to charging successful registrants more than unsuccessful ones.

        • Rubens Kuhl says:

          I don’t see any RA clauses preventing such a thing. Registrars might not like that pricing system since that introduces a bit of uncertainty to their billings and some operational complexities for avoiding some of their auto-provisioned DNS services.
          The only RA requirement is for Ry getting thru Rr a positive consent on renewal value differentiation.

  2. Richard Funden says:

    Premium renewals and transfers need to go the way of the dodo.

  3. Elena says:

    Unless they slash the prices of those “premiums” to $1/year I don’t see how 99.99% of these will ever sell.

  4. ada says:

    I do not want those names for free.

  5. Mo says:

    Daniel- Once again
    jlkjlkj.protection is available$2,888.88
    Renewal $2,888.88 for 1 year
    Your renewals pricing are ridiculous…
    This was just one example…

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