Automattic (aka Wordpress) to Offer .blog TLD by end of year

[Ryuzaki]

The sneaky fellows over at Automattic have had a trick up their sleeves for a while...

They paid $19... read that again... $19 million to control the registry for .blog domains. Soon, by August or October they say, they'll open that up to the world. Not just for Wordpress sites, self-hosted or not, but all sites. They'll likely charge somewhere between $7 and $20 annually per domain.

Even if their profit margin is 10%, they are about to break even in the first few years (maybe?), and then they'll be annually re-billing everyone and likely at higher prices once they've hit some milestone of domains sold.

Of course they're already going to have registered some for themselves to keep and some to auction, but I'm sure there's some kind of legal restriction on just how much they can get away with. If you're in the EMD game or even just as a domainer, I'd start scratching my noggin NOW and as soon as sales open, I'd start buying up as many as I could.

 

[dresden]

When are we getting .buso? I'll place the first bid for acai-colon-cleanse.buso

 

[built]

Personally I hate the non standard domain tlds

 

[contract]

In the future there will be .everything.

I mean this is just a huge cash grab right now.

All this time there's been subdomains...

blog.domain.com

In reality, I still don't get the .com, .com, .whatever.

It should just be: domain and that's it. No .com, .blog, etc.

That's innovation.

Type in Google and you go for instance. Or Buildersociety and bam, you're there..

But of course, that wouldn't be as profitable

 

[Ryuzaki]

That reminds me of AOL keywords...

"Visit us at www.BuilderSociety.com or type in the AOL keyword buso today!"

 

[Andrewkar]

Personally I hate the non standard domain tlds

I like them in general, but I would like it even more if I could register a specific one ONLY for my own brand and in my niche. For example, all .immortals would be reserved just for my brand.

Bur srs, in a regular way besides pure branding this way of doing things would have no impact, probably... Or let's say I managed to build a strong brand and I own .immortals. My brand is recognizable, trusted and authority in its niche. People by hearing immortals are going nuts, the brand is money magnet. I could then invite just few chosen companies and offer them to rent one from me so they can do bus under my brand's umbrella and profit tremendously, that would be cool isn't it?

 

[RomesFall]

This is why SERPWoo is fucking awesome for SERP research.

Most of these domains, that I agree with @built - look like shit, don't rank... Now I'm not saying that's the be all, end all. But I'm not going to reduce my ranking potential by using some horrible .site, .website or .top TLD.

So before people go off buying these, at the very least they should consider that and see exactly what TLDs are ranking in their SERPs. Kind of like checking what parasites are ranking before diving in headfirst not knowing.

I'm sure some of these TLDs rank, but in my experience it's not as easy as with a .com and I hardly ever see them in the SERPs.

Until that changes I'll be sticking to what I know is a safer bet.

 

[Andrewkar]

Yeah, agreed 100%. Anyway, I own one of them, it's .club and I'm going to see soon how G is interpreting this thing. As far as I can tell there is no difference for now, but it's early to judge as it's 4th page at best for some LTKs