Slow months for new domain extensions

Maybe it is just me and I should not think others do the same but I stopped watching which new extensions are released week by week. I have checked the registration numbers for the latest extensions, here you are.

ExtensionGeneral availability dateNumber of registered domains
.dog8/19/20153529
.hockey8/19/2015803
.run8/19/20152396
.taxi8/19/20153408
.theater8/19/2015574
.hiv8/26/2015568
.coupons8/26/20151132
.movie8/26/2015701
.online8/26/201581439
.soccer8/26/20151363
.amsterdam9/1/201521673
.fans9/2/2015893
.fyi9/2/20153414
.mba9/2/20151089
.ski9/8/20155625
.taipei9/9/20152171
.men9/16/2015767
.tickets9/21/2015559
.courses9/23/2015737
.rent9/24/2015793
.college9/29/20153154
.miami10/2/20159779
.film10/6/2015810
.study10/14/2015226

The numbers are quite low, except .online, .amsterdam and .miami. So it seems domainers and end users still think about domain extensions the same way as they did in the past, be generic (like online which is a cheaper version of com) or specific by location (so city extensions are the cheaper version of country codes). Nothing else. Topic specific nTLDs cannot shine yet(?). Extensions like .taxi, .soccer and .movie: all of those represent a serious industry, still there are almost no registrations. We can find .study at the bottom of the list, which is nearly non-existent with 226 registrations. There are many domainers out there who hand-registers more .com domains in a single day. Numbers also show that domainers became much more cautious and only register domains with the best new extensions.

Anyhow, I don’t think that .study extension is that bad, there are so many worse out there. Besides the constant low popularity of topic specific nTLDs, there is another serious problem here, pricing. Maybe I can accept a higher registration fee, (the whole early registration process was invented to find the highest bidder for the domain) but surely not a yearly “premium renewal fee”.

I have checked the first .study domain that came to my mind, it is math.study. It is still available with a registration fee and renewal fee of as much as $5,400! So considering that I would like teach math online for 10 years, this domain alone would cost $54,000. I don’t see an option to make this project profitable with so many other costs. As a comparison, mathstudy.com is available on Sedo and it is parking with an average 2 visitors/day, it has an Estibot $1,000. So who will pay $54,000 for a worse domain? Clearly no one. And blocking all the good names of a new extension (because this pricing is equal to blocking) is a method to destroy the whole extension together. If I can only register math-lessons.study like names than thank you but I will find a .com than. It also has the consequence that the domain name will not good enough to attract high quality developers and content creators. We would never start a domaining portal on a domain like domainer-tricks.tips. High quality sites will run on high quality domains, it is so simple. Don’t block your good domains, stop asking for premium renewal fee, please.