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There are two kinds of new domain name extensions: those dedicated to selling domain names through the network of accredited Registrars and those dedicated to a personnel use. I call these “dotBRANDs” or “.brand” new gTLDs since they are used—most of the time—by Trademarks for their own benefit. This article focuses on .BRAND new generic Top-Level Domains. In the ICANN vocabulary, these are “Registry Agreements with Specification 13”.
As one can imagine, this often is the first question: “when is the next round of the ICANN new gTLD program, and when can I submit my application?” And this is my answer: as long as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) does not provide a date, let’s just say that no one knows. What about 2022 or 2023 maybe? No one can tell, and not even that consultant who works for this ICANN Working Group on the next final version of the “Applicant Guidebook (AGB)”.
This notion of “AGB” is important because all information provided in this article comes from the only available methodologies provided by the ICANN, and it is 2012 new gTLD applicant guidebook. If many documents are being worked on at the moment for the next round, only the final (and complete) version of this AGB will offer the right details about the next round of new gTLDs, methodology, prices, etc… All this to remind that the prices provided in this article come from the 2012 Applicant GuideBook and these could change.
Let’s call the $185,000 “an investment” to submit your application. If I perfectly understand that some Fortune 500 companies can throw away that money just to secure their assets and not do anything with their .BRAND new domain name extension, these companies are not really representative of: 1) Companies worldwide; 2) Best practices for such a tool (a dotBrand new gTLD is a tool, not just a domain name).
As of 31 July 2020, many companies who had applied for a .BRAND new gTLD withdrew their application and lost their investment: 1) One reason is that they didn’t find a concrete use for this tool eight year after being validated by the ICANN (we call this “delegation”); 2) It cost them too much to maintain maybe? Let’s just not forget that applying is not the only expense: far from that.
Did you know that applying for a .BRAND is not exactly the same as registering for a domain name? Let’s compare the two:
1) You select a good ICANN accredited Registrar (you can do this by yourself); 2) you register the domain name and pay the initial fee: between $10 and “more”; 3) you renew that domain name once a year (most of the time) and for the same amount (most of the time too); 4) the domain name belongs to you until you stop renewing it.
1) You select an experimented service provider to fill in, and submit, your application (I suggest not to submit your application by yourself); 2) you pay the initial fee: $185,000; 3) you pay your service provider according to the contract you signed with him to take care of ICANN procedures during the life of your .BRAND new gTLD (most of the time your Backend-Registry service provider offers that service); 4) you pay your Backend-Registry service provider according to the contract you signed with him (I suggest to sign a contract according to the number of domains you plan to develop and for less than $1 per domain per year); 5) you pay the ICANN quarter fee ($6,250) for a total of $25,000 per year; 6) don’t forget the mandatory monitoring fee; 7) “plus the rest”.
In more simple words, it is not the same as maintaining a domain name: if there is no plan to truly use your .BRAND new domain name extension, it is just money thrown by the window. The Registry Agreement Termination Information Page shows the list of terminated .BRAND new gTLD applications, and when investing your money, you don’t want then to appear on that list.
Operating a domain name makes things simple for emails… you know… sending an email that matches with your domain name? It is obvious that if my domain name is “guillon.com”, my email address will end in “@guillon.com”, isn’t it? It is to me, but what will it be when you operate your own domain name extension? How will you organize emails for your employees? What about if you have different branches: most will probably have their own personalized domain name, which means different domains for their email.
This is an internal discussion to have before submitting an application to the ICANN because end users are not yet familiar with .BRAND new gTLDs, and instead of enforcing trust in your brand, you could do the opposite: will your clients feel comfortable navigating on www.service.brand and receive emails from your old email ending in @servicebrand.com ? My answer is “no” unless they’ve been informed about changes long in advance: you don’t want your visitors/readers/consumers/clients/patients to be confused, and that is why they need to be informed—in advance—if you change to a .BRAND domain name extension. By the way, this is exactly what I would like my bank to do to limit phishing attempts (but that’s another question).
You are familiar with what your customers read on your front page, and they often access it the exact same way. This is to be considered before your application is delegated by the ICANN because:
Coming next, “Reasons Why YOU SHOULD apply for a .BRAND new gTLD.”
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