.TV Spotlight Post #13

Happy New Year .TV’ers!

It was a hot finish of 2010 and even better start to 2011 with many great .TV sales being reported already. First off, James Black reported in the forums that he recently sold Pilot.tv for $20,000. The new registrant is Five by Five Inc a company that operates AF.tv an online flight training and pilot school program.  At Sedo, Melodia.tv rang up €350, SuperCasino.tv raked in $2,500, Boca.tv gobbled up $2,100, FreeWeb.tv earned $1,250 and Going.tv went for $1,000. Namejet also sold Investigation.tv for $565 and DigitalCable.tv exchanged hands at NamePros .tv sales forum for $300.

Over the last week the domain Sports.tv was registered for $49,050, it was picked up on the drop and is now held at Name.com, the whois is under privacy protection.  Prior to its drop it was a $100k/year renewal owned by Sheeraz Hasan.  There is a lot of debate whether this was a good purchase for the money.  Something I find funny is that in the thread/poll at NamePros where members were asked if Sports.tv was a good buy at $49k, so much of the discussion and opinion seemed to hinge on if the new owner has a development plan for the domain.  I think that it was a great purchase from an investment standpoint at $49k (+ whatever % fee the registrar tacks on).  From a developer standpoint, full scale development of a name like Sports.tv would cost lots of money, probably multiples of the registration price.  So it does depend on the buyer, their resources and drive to stick it out through all of the hurdles that come with developing a name like this.

The secret is getting out to the mainstream world that .TV domains are perfect for development.  An article I found with the help of TVEverywhere.tv mentions how prevalent .TV domains are at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas which is going on through Jan 9th.  Among the .tv names you will see at CES are of course Ustream.tv (where you can watch live coverage from the show), GeekBeat.tv, Twit.tv, TubeFilter.tv, GamerLive.tv, MarkandSpencer.tv and probably several more that I would have seen if I were actually there!  For startups .TV just seems to make the most sense, even more than a .net, .co or other ccTLD’s.  Everything is moving towards video online and even though many .TV names in use still redirect to .coms, keep your eye out in 2011 I think you will see a huge trend towards .TV sites in the start-up and Internet marketing space.

The .TV Spotlight section is sponsored by DomainStore.tv – a great outlet to buy or sell .TV domain names. If you are looking for .TV bargains or wish to sell your .TV through a trusted and active .TV specific vehicle be sure to sign up for DomainStore.tv. Also, we get lots of help with sales data and upcoming .TV news from AllThings.tv which is a .TV dedicated forum.