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China conference leads to 49% .vip spike
The Global Domain Industry Conference, held in China over the weekend, has led to a huge boost in .vip domain sales.
Registry Minds + Machines told the markets this morning that the recently launched gTLD hit 404,892 as of 1600 UTC yesterday, up 49% from Friday.
CEO Toby Hall confirmed to DI that China is very much behind the spike, and that the conference helped raise the profile of .vip.
Billings and orders have now hit $5.5 million, up from $3.2 million on May 22, M+M said. That number includes sunrise and premium sales.
At GDS, M+M sold eight .vip domains auction for a total of $232,000 before auction commissions, which very likely inspired the spike in base-fee registrations.
Photos of GDS published on social media yesterday show a packed auditorium, with hundreds of attendees.
what did they say on 2016 Global Domain Industry Summit? what did you care? find it : https://t.co/wTRKX1Fbxq pic.twitter.com/xQNMZNGUxl
— 西部数码 (@westdotcn) June 6, 2016
While M+M makes much of the fact that it has not used a “freenium” strategy for .vip — which it says may lead to better renewal rates than competitors — retail prices are still pretty damn cheap.
At West.cn, its leading Chinese registrar, a .vip can be had today for about $3. It’s closer to $10 at GoDaddy.
Today’s batch of zone files have not yet been published by ICANN for verification, but yesterday there were 245,872 names in .vip.
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So Vip is averaging $13.60 per reg…
Definitely not a “freemium” strategy.
Interesting to see the results of future domain releases with the new strategy of no freemiums & low cost renewal rates.
$13.60 great average.
It’s definitely working for VIP.
It’s still a cheap first year strategy, and the renewal price it too high, so there may be a lot of drops after year 1.