I purchased a .win domain months ago called socal.win for $40 that mainly focused on Southern California topics. It's a chan-style message board, different from the upvote digg-it/reddit system thedonald uses. I was also interested in purchasing other names such as norcal.win and so on and so forth to start a message board there but never went forward with it. The price last month for norcal.win was still only $40 a year to register.
All of a sudden .win domains shot up in price to now $400-500 a year! norcal.win is now over $400 to register. This may likely have been due to ICANN recognizing thedonald.win becoming probably one of the top 10 news sites in the country, which is what I suspect. Had socal.win been $400 a year I never would have purchased it. It was entirely just a side project and backup board.
I encourage anyone interested to make their own site if they can get an audience. but its such a shame they are price gouging and adding more .win names to the "premium" status right after the election. I really hate domain price speculation and have no interest in parking domains for profit, but everyone should really keep this in mind. This site is getting a lot of attention for its traffic!
Is that just capitalism at work? If .win at first wasn't in high demand then prices are low, if demand for other domains goes up, and network traffic to .win goes up, price for new ones goes up.
That's not gouging, that pricing the product for the market. Yea they overshot, but are they supposed to let their hot new domains be dirt cheap forever?
That's capitalism, baby.
ICANN is nonprofit, so typically they don't do things like this. But clearly they see the value in .win and its soaring name recognition. I'm just glad I got mine before they jacked up the price like that.
When is .trump coming? Gotta love all these new names.
If TDW gets slammed with gouged registration prices, then I think all of us creative pedes should start making merch such as stickers, patches, shirts, hats, bags, etc. and open a shop on here. I for one would donate many of my artworks and design services to help fundraise and keep this place alive.