It’s never going to be one of the biggest sellers, but sales aren’t the best way to measure of the success of a top-level domain anyway. And .inc is not aiming at the mass market. Rather it’s aimed at businesses, at incorporated companies. And for those who spend the 2 or 3 thousand dollars to register a .inc domain, or even more if you register before General Availability starts, there are member benefits that can easily make up the substantial outlay.
“.inc doesn’t have volume goals,” Shayan Rostam, Chief
Strategic Advisor at TLD Portfolio which is managing the .inc TLD, told Domain
Pulse, “but it’s focussing on usage with high quality businesses.”
“There’s also a growing market with over 900,000 businesses
incorporated in the U.S. every year alone. A short .inc domain can have
benefits on its own over longer domains with other TLDs. Or to purchase a short
domain in another TLD can often cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Rostam comes with a good pedigree when it comes to the new
generic top-level domains. He was part of the team that launched what was for
some time the largest of the new gTLDs, .xyz, now the second largest with 2.4 million
registrations. But as .xyz was focussed on numbers, .inc is focussed on providing
a professional service. This includes plenty of member benefits that for some
registrants will more than make up the significant registration fee.
“We’re currently able to offer registrants over $2,500 in
free member benefits with every .inc domain to grow your
business,” Rostam said. “Some of these benefits include up to $1,000 in free
transaction fee credits with Square, a free press release distributed by
GlobalNewswire to announce the new .inc website, 10,000 Delta SkyBonus points
after your first flight, 20% off rent for a year at a WeWork office space, and
quite a few more. We’re adding member benefits all the time, so for registrants
we believe the value will only get better.”
A Sunrise period for trademark holders finished on 30 April
and currently a Priority Public Registration (aka Early Access Period) is
underway with no restrictions on who can register and where prices decrease
each day until 7 May. And then on 7 May General Availability will commence at
standard prices.
Following Sunrise when Domain Pulse spoke to Rostam, he said there were over 270 registrations. Companies to register early on, Rostam said, included WeWork, Oracle, BMW, Google, American Express, Facebook, Fox Corporation, Taylor Swift, Chevron, Nissan and eBay. Companies using their .inc domain names include Fox Corporation (fox.inc), PayPal (paypal.inc) and Gap (gap.inc) who have redirected their domains to investor relations sections of their pre-existing websites.
For more information on the benefits of .inc, or even to find out more about registering a .inc domain name, see get.inc/benefits
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