*** Here Is A List Of Some Of The Best Domain Name Resources Available ***NEW YORK, NY – It takes a lot for a guy like me to give-up on a project or otherwise throw-in-the-towel, especially when I am not even sure how hard I really tried to begin with, but I like to be two steps ahead, and I like to work smart, not hard. That’s why I told Uniregistry to keep the Find.cars URL domain – forget it, let it expire, I’ll just re-brand as FindCarsforSale.com.
Here’s my thought process and how it all went down; hill.
Two years ago, when .cars domains became available (January 20th, 2016), I was just as excited as the next guy, or at least the ones who did get excited about new gTLDs being released, especially the cool new automotive ones. (I am fully aware that sometimes to get the upper-hand you have to act fast), so I scooped up a few .cars domains even though the price tag was $2,800.00 each. In fact, I grabbed three of them and wound up finding a discount registry which allowed me to get my grubby little hands on them for $2,100.00 each at Name.com (they were running a special). At the end of the day, I spent almost $7,000.00 on three of these .cars URLs. I happily purchased Find.cars, LI.cars, and LongIsland.cars (being that I am on Long Island).
Last year, when renewal came up, I was looking at another near $7,000.00 just to hold onto them all. (To maintain a discounted rate, I had moved them all to Uniregistry). So being that it was a full year later, I wanted to see who had purchased NY.cars, and NewYork.cars and no one had been using them or even purchased them (how horrendous, they are still available). At the time, I was surprised, but with such a large registration fee, you would have to be crazy (like me) to buy them. I figured if no one has interest in owning the larger state domains, why should I bother holding onto the smaller regional ones, so I let them expire last year and renewed only Find.cars.
This kept my total investment in the .cars URL under $10,000.00.
So another year later it was, yet again, time to evaluate the future of .cars [and what it means to my business having one], at least in my opinion, and whether or not it was going to be worth it (to me) for another round of renewal fees in the tune of $2,100.00. (I mean, these guys at Uniregistry, and I think they are all great people, I do… Frank and his team, they are all good people, and I am sure they all work very hard, but they should be paying me to keep this site live and be a showcase – I probably should have asked about this.) Well, anyway, this time, not even Find.cars passed the sniff test. Something that came to mind was seeing Cheap.cars, which I think is potentially a better name, failed to find a bidder over $100.00 on Flippa last month.
To add more fuel to the fire, I thought I had till January 20th 2018 to make the final decision, but for some reason Uniregistry processed the renewal a month early (no idea why) and I could not get a refund unless we deleted the domain entirely from our Uniregistry account. So that was the final nail in the coffin – I didn’t get a chance to fully think it through and I wasn’t going to be forced into a renewal beforehand, so the domain was deleted from our Uniregistry account this morning and we will not be using it any longer. We will simply re-brand as FindCarsforSale.com, at a reasonable one-time acquisition fee from HugeDomains.com and nominal and ordinary renewal ($10.00 bucks).
Here is why I feel it’s just better to stop the bleeding now:
- PRICE: The price of the .car and .cars URLs are ridiculous. Even at a discount, if you are lucky enough to have one, the domain is not worth what is being charged for registrations and especially yearly renewals and this has likely resulted in many drops and will continue to result in drops if this is not done away with eventually.
- ROI: No one is using the domain names and I continue to see lack-luster results as far as future potential. I like my investments to mature within a reasonable amount of time, say 5 to 10 years – tops, not fifty years, which is what this is beginning to look like for these new URLs.
- BRAND: After using the site, having sales people discuss the site, printing cards, folders, materials, etc., it’s not sticking with consumers and I am likely fighting a losing battle, sending traffic to FindCars.com, which is a complete waste of effort. It’s just not smart and we’re not seeing enough of a buzz-factor to keep it going.
- PRACTICALITY: Although people seem to find interest in the name, and it seems to raise some eyebrows here and there being that it is new and fresh, and it make sense when you really think about the left and the right of the dot, and the key-words and all of that – however, at the end of the day, the URL acts more as a conversation starter, a novelty, and is less a practical way to conduct serious business.
So it is deemed, at least in my opinion, better, smarter and cheaper, to move away from the novelty of Find.cars, and begin re-branding the service, as FindCarsforSale.com – Why Search When You Can Find®
So that is my story of the day. Hopefully some readers can benefit from my experience and learn something from my $10,000.00 mistake. You win some and you loose some; that is just the way it is. But it is better to be in the game and have the opportunity. However, you need to know when it is time to cut your losses and walk away. Enjoy and have fun out there.
About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of Internet Marketing Services Inc. He specializes in Website Monetization, is a Google AdWords Certified Professional, authored a ‘how to’ book called ”Mastering Your Website‘, and is a key player in several Internet related businesses through his search engine strategy brand Searchen Networks®
The problem with pissing into the wind is …… you end up smelly
Sorry for your loss on those names. It’s good that you were able to find a suitable name in .com to replace find.cars.
Just curious but do you have any traffic stats for find.cars?
Very little traffic William.
All gTLD are not priced extremely high
The .autos gtld only runs 700 a year and only auto dealers can purchase the name. This allow you to still have a descriptive domain name or use this as a lead generation page and backlink this site to your main site. Either way it will help with your ranking
I can provide you articles that explains how this work. If you are interested, shoot me an email.
I’m aware of .autos and wouldn’t bother with that one either at this point.
People would be lucky to make money if the were priced at $7.
It doesn’t matter if people pay $50, $700 or $7,000 per year the end result will be exactly the same. People just need to let all this drop, the only potentially viable business model is for the registry selling this stuff, everyone else is on the wrong side of ledger.
Smart move John, many premium new gTLD owners will be faced with the same issues.
Think of all the great domains you could buy with saving $10,000 a year.
Great posting, thanks.
Ultimately anyone who chooses a new GTLD faces the massive challenge of having to spend limited and precious connection time introducing prospective consumers to the registry existence instead of their core service propositions. We have a 99.5% public non-recognition, with 9 in 10 still not knowing .tv exists, and most believing the .co is a typographical mistake with the “m” falling off. Let alone the insanity of 2000 new extension concepts with zero foresight by ICANN or any other leader to prevent mass chaos with basic pricing controls and ethics assurances post market turbulence. Marketing costs more. Communications penetrate less. You inherit automatic spam based penalties for many GTLD’s as the platform owners price whore for survival near free giveaways resulting in mass abuse. Basic consumer linking intuition and the psychology of inferred credibility is corrupted. You’ll spend more time spelling out and explaining the existence of the the GTLD itself than you could ever comprehend or believe before going into it. All the while even a group like GoDaddy will prioritize objectification, puppy mills, Van Damme’s groin, and an “Internet of Things” before ever mentioning their existence in a national ad. The insanity of an industry perpetually drinking bogus koolaid in the face of deafening silence in the advertising and education world. They prop and sell you woof tickets to sunrise opportunities for new GTLD’s that can’t sustain their daily operations, use China to create the false illusion of 4N/5N investment opportunities without telling you that most of it is used solely to bypass currency controls and isn’t real, will stimulate tales of wild interest over crypto based domains, and then slam every auction out there managed almost entirely by lawyers who keep their mouths shut while they schill all day long to get the occasional premium. Pay the extra money for the .com, and circumvent the insanity that benefits two dozen domain industry heads that should voluntarily choose to go away.
Good article. It is hard to justify the cost of domains like that every year.
The new extensions at this point are not really new and exciting any more, They are just extensions with limited adoption.
It might have played out differently if so many registry operators did not let greed get in their way. This type of pricing model has effectively priced out even the vast majority of end users.
Brad
Agreed Brad….. Yes, very limited adoption…..
Especially on these due to their price.
Reiterated.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/why-i-told-my-new-gtld-project-to-suck-it-will-rebrand-with-king-of-all-urls.1056962/#post-6498605
I’m sorry to hear that you were scammed. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people sucked into the new gTLD scam. It was pretty clear to the old-school domainers that a lot of people were going to lose a lot of money, just like they had with .BIZ, .INFO, .MOBI, .TV, .CC, .PRO, .NAME, .XXX and all the others that came and went before, but nobody would listen to us. We really did try hard to warn everyone.
I wouldn’t consider it a scam… Just a very poor investment on my part….Potentially takes the cake of one of my worst financial investments of all time.
Great post, thanks for sharing your personal experience. Real experience matters the most and indeed a learning opportunity for those not experienced.. In my view .com and ccTLDs will get stronger day by day
People should dump as soon as they can. Don’t don’t stuck in the trap of gradually letting go of high reg fee fee names. Eventually you’ll let them all go and it will be a long painful process. Do it now and save yourself a lot of money.
Premium reg fee names and have no future in any extension.
“otherwise through-in-the-towel”
So why should we listen to someone that does not know how to spell “throw?”
Thank you. Let me go and fix that… Seems no matter how many times I read over my material, I often have a misspelling in there somewhere.
You did the right thing, John. The new gtlds are a bust, a foolish waste of time and money. At least you realized it was a money suck before it was too late. Many will not be so lucky. Instead, be smart and buy the .COM and be the recipient of the massive traffic bleed, not the other way around.