Recent Posts
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- .my domains to be sold globally next month
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
- A million “free” .music domains up for grabs
- D3 to get $5 million in crypto to apply for .ape gTLD
- Alibaba hit with ICANN breach notice
- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
- Cable company unplugs its dot-brand after acquisition
- Germany crosses 10,000 dot-brand domains milestone
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- Some registrars have already quit ICANN’s Whois experiment
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- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
- Amazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
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- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
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- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
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- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
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- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
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- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
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- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
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- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
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- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
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- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
.rich promises new marketing after pitiful launch
I-Registry’s .rich may have taken the ignominious title of Worst New gTLD Launch Yet, but the company says it’s not in any rush and is planning to start its marketing campaign in about a month.
According to zone files, .rich has 22 registered names, despite the fact that it’s been in general availability for a week. All 22, according to the registry, were registered during its sunrise period.
The price has certainly got a lot to do with that — the registry fee is $1,750 and you can find registrars selling for as much as $2,599 — but the non-existent marketing may have also played a part.
Visiting the I-Registry web site today won’t give you any idea where you can buy the names or any indication that they’re even available.
As I and others have pointed out, the .rich string is a hard sell. Andrew Allemann of Domain Name Wire, with his tongue only a little in his cheek, doesn’t reckon it passes “The Douche Test“.
But I-Registry’s Michael Hauck told DI that the company is planning to launch a revamped nic.rich site, possibly as early as next week, with an all-new “marketing site” to follow about a month later.
“It will communicate the right message around .RICH,” Hauck said of the nic.rich site. “Clients will understand much better what we intend .RICH to be. And of course you will find a list of supporting registrars there, which today amounts to over 40 registrars.”
The marketing site will offer to sell .rich names directly via an ICANN registrar, he said. Email, hosting, privacy and other stuff will be included in the price, he said. He added:
“We will be also offering an affiliate program with a very attractive PPS program for people who are not registrars or resellers to market this domain product and give them all the margin that usually a registrar has,” he said.
“So a guy who is running for example a millionaire’s dating website or is writing about exclusive products and services in his blog is able to work with us and to promote .RICH,” he said.
Given that the registry doesn’t seem to have sold a single domain during its first week of GA, I think it’s going to need as much marketing support as it can get.
Did they secure .Online as well?
They’ve got .onl, which I don’t get either.
Not only is .onl a pretty crappy TLD, but they appear to be making the same marketing mistakes on it. I believe it launches tomorrow. You wouldn’t know that from going to their site!
If you think about it, there aren’t many registries doing significant .co-style marketing for their launches. They’re mostly basically trying to get them out the door as quickly as possible and worry about that stuff later. It’s only especially noticeable in this case because the numbers are so low.
But i-registry doesn’t even seem to be blocking and tackling.
I don’t expect Donuts to ever do .co style marketing. Same with some other portfolio applicants.
There’s a third possibility; perhaps the new gTLDs have domainers in mind as, ummm as, as – the end user?
If that’s the case, they are adveriising plenty, and getting free press to and from their targeted audience: domain bloggers. You. Me. Us.
Sure, a redesigned nic.rich will make more millionaires register .rich. NOT!
.Onl is even worse than not.rich.
The only useful new TLD is .email
Get yourself Paris.email , Sydney.email (of course these are already registered) or even yoursmalltown.email
and you can make a fortune
It may be even better than yoursmalltown.com