XYZ.com registry have marked the second anniversary of the launch of its general availability with a large-scale marketing campaign, selling the domains for record low prices for two days in a row. Yesterday a Uniregistry registrar was selling domains in .XYZ for 1 cent each per year. Domain Incite said many other registrars dropped their prices accordingly.
According to the latest ntldstats file count, the gTLD has added almost 800,000 domains to reach nearly 3.7 mln domains in one day. It is an absolute record. Analysts, however, doubt whether this campaign would bring any serious profit to the company. Experience shows that only few domains bought “for peanuts” make it through renewed registration process.
If you look at XYZ’s first big giveaway, when it had a deal with Network Solutions, you’ll see very low retention. NetSol had roughly 360,000 .XYZ names under management following their promotion in July 2014, but that figure dropped by 95% a year later, when most names had been deleted. To make mattes worse, XYZ.com will have to pay around $200,000 in ICANN fees for the added domains, according to Doman Incite.
