Recently OwnIt published an article called History Has Its Eyes on You .NYC in which the last 3 years of this city TLD is summarized.

It’s an interesting travel through time reviewing the .NYC’s place among other cityTLDs, the success of the Best of Boroughs campaign and a look at the range of businesses, not for profits, individuals and other entities being a part of it and how premium domain sales are shaping up for the city and the registry.

The article described the premium .NYC domain sales:

It was just a year ago that we kicked off .nyc’s second year anniversary with the release of thousands of “premium” .nyc domain names.  A premium .nyc domain name has a higher intrinsic value than the average domain name, and is likely to be in far greater demand. To date, over 515 premium .nyc domain names have been sold to New Yorkers through the world’s leading domain retailers, with a collective value of over $595,157 — making .nyc domains some of the hottest tickets around in the digital real estate world!

Check out a few examples of the premium .nyc domain names that recently sold through our network of domain retailers over the past year and are waiting to be developed: Lawyers.nyc, dating.nyc, local.nyc, beauty.nyc, smile.nyc and modern.nyc. Of course, the ones we’re the most excited to share with you are the premium domains that our customers have already started using for their personal or business brands and big ideas.  For example, check out:  Moon.nyc, VR.nyc, and Ken.nyc.  The prices for these premium names ranged from $255-$7,000.

I recently highlighted one man’s shopping spree on 21 NYC domain names totaling almost $90,000 and had to do a follow up article when he purchased news.nyc for approximately $7,000 more. This was after his purchases of sex.nyc and beautiful.nyc. The article and the evidence through the NYC domain sales chart indicates that there is demand for premium domains and I applaud Neustar and the City of New York for not charging premium renewals. So when someone purchases a premium .nyc domain they can rest assured that a year after registration they will only need to pay the standard renewal fee ($20 to $30/year on average). Not all registries operate in this way for example the .store TLD: I was ready to buy a premium .store for $399 at GoDaddy (this was shown as discounted from $1,299) but the small print showed that my yearly renewals would be $1,299/year. So the $399 purchase would be followed by another $32,500 over the next 25 years – shocking.

The article also made special reference to first name .NYC domains, focusing on Ken.NYC.

Ken.nyc, in particular, is a great example of how an individual can build a personal brand with a .nyc domain. Ken simply points his branded .nyc domain to his LinkedIn profile page. Let’s face it, it sounds a whole lot better to say “connect with me at ken.nyc,” than to try to remember and share your cumbersome LinkedIn profile url!

I completely agree and have some first name .NYCs in my portfolio. I sold Tony.NYC to a commercial real estate broker, and have traded others including Lily, Adrian, Bryan, Jin, Daisy, Ciaran, Carmela, Lola, Marco, Roberto, Eddy and Steven. I think that premium first name .NYCs provide a great opportunity to provide an extremely credible, relevant and short URL for a personal or resume website as well as a memorable professional website for people working in certain sectors especially real estate where name value and relationships are important. The added benefit to a first name or premium generic .NYC domains is in the email possibilities. As mentioned in my article, “Email is Still the Killer App in Business – Can gTLDs Help?” owning peter.nyc or pretzels.nyc gives the registrant a great marketing opportunity each time they send or receive an email at their _____@peter.nyc or_____@pretzels.nyc email address.

The OwnIt article also touched on the results from Neustar’s premium auctions:

Going Once, Going Twice…Sold!

Shortly after the premium names released in 2016, we followed up with our very first .nyc premium domain name auction. For the first time ever, 20 of the most highly sought-after .nyc domain names were offered through a public online auction. Super premium domain names like RealEstate.nyc, Apartments.nyc and Studios.nyc, were just some of the gems on the auction block. We held two more auctions over the past year, one fashion-themed during Fashion Week and one tech-themed coinciding with Internet Week in the spring of 2017.

Domain name auctions are a great way to offer high value, premium .nyc domains to the public in an unbiased, transparent way. Bidding was open to all and starting bids were just $500 for the premium .nyc domain auctions. With such a low entry point for high quality domains, auctions make it possible for any bona fide New Yorker to own valuable digital property at a great price. As most auctions go, there are always a few items that spike with high demand during the final minutes of bidding, sometimes reaching tens of thousands of dollars.

In fact, our .nyc premium domain auctions made history with several top-selling domain names, including Shop.nyc for $33,500 and RealEstate.nyc for $21,300.

There were also some excellent premium domain names that ended up going for a steal in our auctions. Here are a few really great deals that some lucky New Yorkers nabbed:

• Photographer.nyc – $2,200
• UX.nyc – $2,150
• Lofts.nyc – $1,200
• Chat.nyc – $525

Ditto that – many of the names in these auctions went for a steal. Originally it was suggested that the premium, themed auctions would include about 20 domains and would run every two months. This has slowed down and perhaps this suggests that the market isn’t ready for the auctions or hasn’t matured enough to generate final sales prices that many of us might expect. This was great for investors or people in business looking for a great name to move their brand forward. Take a look at the results from the previous themed auctions.

• NYC Real Estate Domains Auction Results
• NYC Fashion Domains Auction Results
• NYC Tech Domains Auction Results

Although there are some domains that sold at a high price, others must have been a a shock to both the registry and the new owner that they the final auction price was so low! Congrats buyers.

The OwnIt article ended on a positive and fitting note and I hope they don’t mind if I plagiarize it for my article too!

Onward and Upward!

The future is bright for .nyc – and our growing .nyc community. We can’t wait to see more of these uniquely local, digital properties developed with your big ideas, your passions, your businesses, your personalities and your dreams.

We look forward to continuing our support and to seeing all the great things we will accomplish together in 2018!