Reminder regarding .TREE Top-Level Domain

A long ago, I think it was in the beginning of 2009, I published a new gTLD concept...to plant trees.

This "project" has been printed in many brochures such as this one from Banner & Witcoff I found this morning (and which I recommend the reading).

I would like to remember this is a concept and I have no plan to apply for a .TREE new generic Top-Level Domain in 2012.

The funny thing is that:

• I received a lot of questions regarding this concept;
• A person named "erik ludwick" registered most of the generic domain names such as dottree.org;
• I was offered:
• Back-end registry solutions;
• Consulting;
• An offer to develop the project.

If you look for a list of possible projects, I recommend checking Registries.tel. This site is the one to list all known existing projects.

NB: did I forget a happy.new.year ?

.TREE Top Level Domain

What about planting trees?

There is an interesting business model to set up here based on the creation of www.company.tree domain names:

Let's imagine a tree costs 1€ to plant and a ".TREE" domain name sells at 5€ for the Registry.

As a reminder, a Registry is the legal entity which acquires the management rights to distribute ".TREE" domain names to the Network of ICANN accredited Registrars. Only one company is authorized by ICANN, after the validation of its application.

Setting up the ".TREE" Registry costs an average of 250 000€/year to maintain but according to the number of trees planted, the Return On Investment (ROI) on such a project can be 1500% for 1 000 000 domain names sold.

The 2003 International Telecommunication Union reports 49,85% of British businesses with 10 or more employees had a web site in 2001 (59% in France and 66% in Germany…). Such figures show a lot of companies worldwide use domain name and we are soon to be in 2010.

Many companies who use domain names can afford to plant one tree/year for a small fee and have the benefit of their domain name to highlight their participation in a great cause.

A domain name has to be renewed each year: they could even plant one tree per year.

A few figures:

• Selling 1 000 000 ".TREE" domains names can be done easily with a nice action attached to the purchase of a domain name. For a cheap fee, a company acquires its ".TREE" domain name and plants one tree each year (ex: www.guillon.tree = 1 tree planted/year).
• 1 000 000 domain names sold can be reached within 2 years,
• Renewing 1 000 000 ".TREE" domain names a year means 4 000 000€/year,
• Renewing 1 000 000 ".TREE" domain names a year means 1 000 000 trees planted each year.
• 4 000 000€ - 250 000€ = 3 750 000€/year: profitable isn't it?

Think about it and pass the message.