The Fight For gTLDs Heats Up – Big Money Meets Bigger Money

With so many companies applying for new gTLDs it is becoming clear that there will be some very heavily contested TLDs and some major players fighting to get them. While in many situations big money can win any battle, this is a case where many of the organizations applying for new TLDs have big money themselves. This makes it a bit like a battle of the banks as heavily-funded entities are going into battle because just like there’s only one inc.com, and help.com, and web.com, there’s also only one entity that can own .inc, .help, and .web.

Of course buying a hot gTLD could mean very big money, and big money chases big money. Still with me? My point is this, there will be a few gTLDs that take-off and become major hits. These will make the people who run them look like geniuses (which they very well might be) and make them and their investors a nice chunk of change. This probably represents about 5% of the new gTLDs that people are applying for right now. The other 95% will be relatively unknown, but the companies running them can still have a nice profitable business without having to be in the limelight or seen as a runaway success by the domain community.

Now let’s go back in time, to a time when many of us (myself included) were not in the Domaining space, during the days of domain tasting. The idea here was to try-out a domain and see what kind of direct navigation traffic it was getting before deciding to buy it. Now fast forward to today, what we are about to see unravel before us is high stakes TLD tasting. None of these companies know what that top 5% are going to be, the TLDs that really take-off and get massive registrations. However, like gold mining, the risk can sometimes be worth the reward if you hit it big.

With major players like Donuts, Inc. in the ring gTLDs like .web could see some very serious competition. The question is, will there be enough of that top 5% to go around or will one company get all the good ones and leave the scraps for the rest. Either way I think most of the people investing in new gTLDs will come out ahead since even scraps in the gTLD space could mean $1 million+/year in profit, which is not half bad. Still, these guys live for the 30, 40, or 50 million dollar hits and that’s what they’re all fighting for.

Who do you think will get the best TLDs? What do you think the best gTLDs are? Comment and let your voice be heard!

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