My first five or so domain registrations were all .com domains. That was from 1997 to 1998, and in 1999 I registered my first .org, still focusing on .com domains.
The first domain I ever sold was a .com, in 2000, for low four figures. That year I saw my domain registrations reach double digits; I invested in .com, .net and .org domains after perusing droplists provided by DomainsBot (sadly, not the same company anymore.)
So the original TLD triad of .com, .net, and .org still goes strong today. In terms of numbers, there are almost 105 million .com domains, about 15 million .net domains and just over 10 million .org domain names.
Originally, .org was ‘reserved’ for organizations and other non-profits. I guess Phun.org is a non-profit, in some sense.
In a similar fashion, .net domains were perceived initially as the network’s ‘geeky’ resort. Sure, they were used by ISPs and corporate networks but soon every usable keyword got picked up. Frank Schilling picked some great ones during the aftermath of the great dot com bubble. Canada.net is one of them.
I’ve sold dozens of .net and .org domains at prices that made some early players scratch their heads in disbelief. Buying keyword .net and .org domains for $10 – $50 and reselling them for thousands. Nothing beats the potential of positive keywords, when acquired by buyers with a plan.
For the sake of argument, which web site looks more professional: Documentary.net (sold for $3,400) or OnFilm.com (sold for $22,500). Does the look and feel of UUN.com (sold for $15,000) appear to be richer than Symposium.org (sold for $4,004) ?
My point is, there is no reason to behold a silly prejudice against non-com domains, particularly those that belong to the original TLD triad rolled out as part of the ‘commercial’ Internet.
Some troll at Rick Schwartz’s blog even stated, that buyers of .net and .org domains are being “cheated“. But sales numbers aren’t indicative of the business potential of a domain, particularly one that was acquired with the intention to build a business on it. On the other hand, there are plenty of expensive, high-profile .com domains that are sitting ducks, even after spending thousands of dollars on them.
Still not convinced, and want to get rid of your .net and .org domains? Send me your positive meaning, aged, dictionary .net and .org domain lists for sale and I will continue to excel in what I do.
I agree that nothing is WRONG with .net and .org. Yes, they will work as intended, but the reason .net and .org will never ever have the same value as their .com counterpart is because they hemorrhage valuable traffic to their .com brethren.
As such, they can never be used as a strong foundation of a serious website. For every visitor you get, two or more will have been lost.
As such, I say that only .com makes sense to buy and-or use.
Dotcommer – I suppose you didn’t click on the examples I provided then. Nobody cares about ‘valuations’ when a business is built on a non-com TLD, or a ccTLD for that matter. When you brand with a .net, a .org – or even, with the much spited .co – your brand drives the way. Type-ins worked well when PPC was king, it’s not the case anymore, content & brands are the new leaders of the game. If you can build any brand on an Armenian TLD, such as instagr.am, you can do that just fine on .net and .org that have been around as long as .com.
I agree. Good post.
you should take a look at the websites of incs top 500 fastest growing companies list.
the only companies with keyword domains were the mike mann companies LOL. many dash.com’s and some .nets, but basically zero keyword domains. just shows that building a good business is more important than landing a great keyword.com
Dotcommer: You’re right buuuuuut.
There’s different question – would you lose more traffic NET->COM or you would lose much more traffic senseless.COM vs. meaningful.ORG for same price.
There are very few people with huge budget for domain. But there is huge amount of people and small startups with moderate budget.