Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Accredited Registrars to offer Premium ".club"

Generic ".club" domains  now open to all
Until then, it was difficult to register a good domain name ending in ".club". It required to go through a confusing auction procedure and no matter what you think: a normal end-user doesn't do that. Try with football.club: you understand what I am talking about.

Standard domain name end-users (Registrants) usually register their domain names with their Accredited Registrar because the process is familiar to them and also...because they trust them.

There are other places to register Premium domain names but they are for professionals who know how to manipulate domains. Last week I attended the French NDD.camp for Domainers and I learnt that one of them generates thousands of Euros with a short list of 120 domains generic domains "only": the guy generates traffic and gets paid by...Google.

A Good news for non professionals
As soon as tomorrow, it becomes possible to register one of the 8,000 exceptional ".club" domain names directly at your accredited Registrar.

In simple words
This is what the Registrars wanted: to be able to present and sell .CLUB premium names directly, instead of having to explain their customers that they should go to another website.

What is important here
The most important thing is that the premium price is for the first year only. All renewals are always at regular General Availability prices (unless your Registrar invents something different).

An example
If you pay €100,00, €800,00 or more for your generic Premium ".club" domain name, the price you will pay each year could be as low as €12,00 !

I want one (the official list)
The complete list of Premium domain names is available here and they can be registered with Nameshield.com or Namebay.com.

New gTLDs: .ANIMAL names in the second Round?

Round 1 of the ICANN new gTLD program has been successful in many areas and industries such as "colors", "clubs" and "city domain name extensions" (city Top-Level Domains). In which areas of interest should we expect the the second Round to be as successful?

Colors are selling pretty well in Round 1
A few figures:
  1. .RED : 31,609 domains registered;
  2. .BLACK : 4,950 registrations;
  3. .PINK : 13,330 registrations;
  4. .ORANGE : This is a trademark;
  5. .BLUE : 15,585 registrations;
  6. .GREEN : 1,464 registrations.
Afilias submitted four applications for colors: red, black, pink and blue. A trademark applied for the .ORANGE new gTLD application and .GREEN was submitted to represent the Green movement ("Earth's domain").

What about animals?
Some applicants realized that speculating with new gTLD applications was possible. Auctions for some of them also seem to have been lucrative but this is nothing compared to private auctions: some new gTLD applications were won in auctions for millions of Dollars leaving their applicants with more money than what they spent to apply.


For the second time, I hear about "animals" and with the experience of Round one, I wouldn't be surprised to see applications related to names of animals. If speculating on domain names has existed for the past 20 years and speculating on new gTLD applications is profitable, it could become the next trend.

A few animal names I heard recently:
  1. Lion(s);
  2. Crocodile.
There are many more possibilities:
  • Bull
  • Panda
  • Tiger
  • Jaguar: application was submitted already for a Trademark.
  • Gazelle
  • Eagle
  • Penguin
  • ...
Some of these names are Trademarks too so here is my next question: what if an applicant was to submit an application for one of these animal names?

.BRAND new gTLD Reports are updated once a month: CLICK HERE !