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Do you invest in Dot TV domains? Then read on. Dynadot will be changing their pricing structure for the New Year, at the moment they offer a first year registration of $10.75 – $12.99 depending on your bulk account pricing structure, it is not only this price for the first year, it is this price for up to ten years if you add years when you first register the domain. When I register a .TV I try and reg it for 3-5 years at $10.75 a year because renewals at Dynadot have been about $32.
Apparently that is all going to change in 2014 and new .TV reg’s at Dynadot will be about $25, so if you have been eying any .TV domains this might be the time to grab them. On the upside I think renewals will go down to about $25 also.
And since I am talking about .TV I will go off AGAIN on how ridiculous I think their registration rules are. I agree 100% with Ammar at Domains.tv and I am going to campaign with him to try and get .TV to change their registration rules that I think hold back the extension, not help it, good luck with that right? I am going to try anyway.
How it works is .TV used to offer names they called “Legacy Premiums” and they charged a premium annual fee for the names, anywhere from $100 a year to $100,000 a year, yea that is PER YEAR, so if you got a “Legacy” domain years ago you have been paying an annual premium.
In March 2010 they changed the rules, now domains they deem “Premium” come with a first year “Premium” fee and then regular renewal rates, no more annual “Legacy” fees, but even this is crazy because domains like D.TV and P.TV were not considered “Premiums” and were got for a reg fee, and domains like HairTraffic.TV are considered “Premium” so it has an $1100 first year “Premium” fee lol, so they are obviously nuts right?
And to keep things complicated they threw another monkey wrench in the spokes and made it so first year “Premium” domains cannot be transferred out of the registrar where they are registered, another stupid rule and regulation that just confuses buyers and limits the extension imo.
And the owners of “Legacy” domains just got left in the dust, they are still paying the legacy annual premiums with no option to get out of it and on the new program. Some legacy domain owners tried a trick where they pay for the backorder on their legacy domain at Name.com if it’s available and then let it drop in the hopes that Name.com would pick the name back up when it expired and then they could keep the name with the one time premium fee and regular renewal rates.
That used to work when there was a 99.999% chance Name.com would grab the domain, but now there are other players in the game and that is no guarantee anymore. I hope the original 13.tv owners weren’t trying to do this as the .TV registry decided to just keep that one for themselves when it expired.
Dot TV should be more like .ME or .CO imo, if they play it right I think .TV could really benefit from the rollout of the New G’s, if they play it like they have in the past they will probably just isolate and limit themselves even more, too many rules and regulations.
Will they see KeyLimePie.Cooking at $8k a year and bring back legacy premiums lol? After all it was their idea, I wouldn’t put it past them, I think they are hustling backwards, they are not very good at marketing imo. If I was marketing .TV we would all have some, even Snoop, remember Snoop? I am pretty sure I could even get Elliot to invest in a few of them, now that would be a Challenge, lol… 😎
Anyway here is what Ammar posted at Domains.tv:
“Legacy Premiums & Future of .TV
We have contacted Verisign on numerous occasions and they have no plans to remove the legacy premiums from existing registrants, which obviously has caused quite a bit of an issue for the extension to continue moving forward. Here are the four main points I would stress to have .TV really take steps ahead of the competition:
1.Remove all legacy premiums for all existing holders. Essentially, grandfather the registrants with an upfront price and standard renewal from then on. I realize this will have quite a bit of impact on the drop/backorder game, but the ultimate progress of the extension is #1.
2.Remove the restriction from transferring any upfront premiums to any registrar. In other words, if you registered a name post March 18, 2010 or picked up an ex legacy premium and have it at Name.com, you can not transfer it away. This causes issues with potential buyers and removes the flow of domain names to other registrars.
3.Take all existing premiums on the shelf and sell them. Do another landrush/goldrush and have the public buy them. This creates more scarcity and less options for end users, which will ultimately drive prices up.
4.Start marketing .tv like .co. I am not a personal fan of .co, but their marketing efforts have been spectacular. We need to do that with .tv to really continue to create the viral behavior and buy in.
What do you think?”
I think count me in, I couldn’t agree with you more Ammar, well put…
Here are the domain picks dropping on Dec 28th 2013:
AugmentationSurgery.com – It’s a breast thing
ARReality.com – Arkansas Reality?
ChildrensLight.com – I could see a site that sells night lights for the kids room
CrowdHelping.com – Maybe the crowd can help you out with something
DoubleSpeed.com – Do have something that is twice as fast?
EPUV.com – It’s a VCVC?
JustBoys.com – Sorry girls, this one is not for you
Mounters.com – I thought adult lol. But maybe a TV mount site would be better?
OutdoorMaps.com – It’s got to be better than indoor maps
PinkStilettos.com – Can you make a living selling these? Probably
TheBreathalyzer.com – I have never had to take a breathalyzer, good thing
YRIG.com – It’s got the word Rig in there
BioGlass.net
Brainwashers.net
Counterpoints.net
EUFX.net
ForexShop.net
HomeImprovments.net
Measle.net
SEOResources.net
ValenciaHomes.net
WrongWay.net
iEnterprise.org
Locking.org
NMRealEstate.org
PorkChops.org
RealEstateCapital.org
Tanking.org
TeaPartyPAC.org
Encouragement.me
Filthy.me
Grains.me
iGreen.me
iLaw.me
Mins.me
RCH.me
Reputable.me
Temples.me
Accessing.tv
DigitalNews.tv
FitnessTraining.tv
Lorenzo.tv
Manual.tv -premium
MovieNews.tv
AllAmerican.info
FXMarket.info
Desalination.us
Disappear.us
IDProtection.us
Jellies.us
WebAccess.us
YAL.us
Make sure you also check out Domain Shane’s Big List of names and Domaining.com for some other great domain blogs and domain name lists.
Domain of the day: Debut.tv – Make me an Offer!
Thanks for visiting…
Transfer away lock is really strange for current premium list as all domains after 18-3-2010 are with normal fee so could stay at any registrar.
It is a big barrier for sales as many people want to have all their names at 1-2 registrars.
As for old legacy premiums of ENOM, another strange case, Verisign kills old owners who spent tons of cash at premium fees and most of their names prebackordered by others.
I feel bad for the old “Legacy” domain investors, it is not right what Verisign is doing imho…
Mark,
Thanks for the post! Glad to see the word getting out. I think there are some subtle changes that need to occur to really have .tv fly. I did receive news today that Verisign does NOT have any plans to drop legacy premiums for existing registrants!
Will keep all posted!
Thanks for that Ammar…
Professore would be good at least to disable this transfer barrier between registrars for the new premiums.
Also for me the big problem with old premiums is that create a confusion at Marketplaces. Would be easy for sedo and others to write a small script and if a name is not ENOM or is registered after 18-Mar-2010 to not have these warnings for premium fee.
If a name is NOT at ENOM it has 100% normal fee
If a name is registered after 18-Mar-2010 it has 100% normal fee
2 simple rules marketplaces do not adopt at all.
I actually just wrote about the structure to identify a legacy premium renewal. This can be used a template for places like Sedo to reduce buyer confusion and have a higher success rate of closing sales.
if a .tv is at godaddy it is 100% transferable and has normal fee.
it is good filter rule for marketplaces as more than half of registered .tv are at godaddy
Great post Mark,
Those are some of the reasons why I don’t invest in .tv.
The “Legacy premium” thing was a “legalized extortion”, as some of the new gtlds pricing practices.
What’s more, I’ve recently found out that also ICANN, in a very stealthy (and weird IMHO) way, has “withdrawn” from the market some super premium .com, and I’m referring to some names which have never been reserved by IANA/ICANN, as was the case for single-letter and single-digit domains.
Greed is really a bad “disease” …
P.S.
I emailed ICANN and they told me the name in question was reserved, something which is not true, since old Whois clearly show private owners …
Btw, the domain I’m referring to looks “deleted and available again” … lol
Any view on this? 😉
Andrea,
Very interesting…
I am going out, it’s Friday Night 😎 but let’s talk about this more tomorrow…
I had a conversation years ago about the transfer rule on the one time premium names after March 2010.
The answer I was given from Enom and Verisign was that they did this as a favor to the registrar, kind of like a gift for selling premium .tvs I guess. They wanted to make it that they keep getting the renewal income.
Its a dumb rule, I have had names that I was brokering and had a buyer, the buyer said I only deal with Go Daddy, I will not open an account at Dynadot, so there was no deal.
Other potential deals before agreeing on a price someone has asked can it be transferred ? When they were told they were no longer interested in the domain.