Huge Marketing Opportunity: New Domain Extensions

Domain names are often called “virtual real estate.”

And everyone knows that the three most important factors in real estate are “location, location, location.”

In the online world, that translates to having a short, memorable, descriptive domain name as the online “location” for your business.

In fact, buyers with deep pockets (and sometimes-not-so-deep-thoughts) have forked over some major cash for domains such as Candy.com ($3 million), Toys.com ($5.1 million), Beer.com ($7 million), Diamond.com ($7.5 million), Business.com ($7.5 million), Porn.com ($9.5 million), Hotels.com ($11 million), Sex.com ($14 million), Insure.com ($16 million) and the completely absurd $30 million for PrivateJet.com and $35 million for VacationRentals.com.

Well over 100 million “.com” domains have already been registered, which often makes it very challenging to secure a decent domain, as anyone who’s tried recently can confirm.

That’s why it’s great news for sharp marketers that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) recently decided to introduce 1400 new generic Top Level Domains (“gTLD’s”).

What’s a “gTLD”?

It’s the set of letters that you type into your browser after the “.” (such as “com” or “net” or “gov”) to get to a particular website.

Many of the new gTLD’s will be brand-specific (such as “.microsoft” or “.aarp” or “.statefarm”), that only the companies owning those trademarks will be allowed to use.

But there will also be hundreds of new gTLD’s that smart marketers will be able to use, such as:

• .pizza
• .realestate
• .love
• .game
• .jewelry
• .home
• .free
• .expert
• .baby
• .book
• .dental
• .money
• and, of course: .marketing

Have the wheels in your brain started turning yet?

Are you already starting to think up some potentially profitable domains for yourself?

Well, keep thinking. Because ICANN plans to introduce only a few new gTLD’s at a time.

Three will become available at midnight Mountain Time next Monday, November 11th:

• .luxury
• .menu
• .uno

If you can think of a domain you want with one of these extensions that you think someone else might grab before you, here’s the good news…

You can get on a list to be notified when each new gTLD becomes available, and you can even pre-register your domain name choice to give yourself a better chance of getting it, by going to this page at GoDaddy.com.

Even if you don’t want to register a domain with any of these first three new gTLD’s or get notified when new ones become available, you can check out a great example of smart marketing just by going to that page to see the various options GoDaddy is offering to help people register new domains through them, and you can also see a list of over 700 of the soon-to-be-introduced new gTLD’s.

I already own over 100 domains myself, and you can be sure I’ll be claiming a lot more of them as these new gTLD’s arrive on the scene. Certainly “.com” will continue to be the most-coveted, most-recognizable and therefore most-valuable extension – at least for now.

But…

1. Who knows? Maybe someday “.com” won’t be the automatic default gTLD that people think of whenever they search for a website; and
2. I can certainly think of some potentially VERY effective and lucrative domains to use with some of the new extensions.

How about you? Got any great ideas for new domains?

HINT: Don’t list them below in a comment. Because only one person can own any given domain, you’ll want to keep your brilliant ideas to yourself until AFTER you’ve secured your chosen domain. *THEN make sure to come back here and let me know what brilliant domain(s) you got!

And one more thing…

I suggest you make sure to act quickly to attempt to claim any new domain you may want, because something tells me that GoDaddy’s site won’t crash after only 6 people register new domains on the first day they become available.