This is the title of the book I’m working on now. I spent almost 13 years immersed in the process of helping new Top-Level Domains come into existence and grow. My first exposure to it occurred during my last five years at CentralNic, from 2007 to 2012. This was the first time that ICANN opened up the process en masse. Any credible person or entity with a reasonable amount of funding could apply for and “Get their own Top-Level Domain.” Almost 2000 applications were received, and the result today is that domain registrants have ~600 choices in terms of endings to their domain names.
In 2013, I began working for 101domain, one of the most essential registrars in the industry because they were the first to offer all Top-Level Domains. To this day, you cannot find a more comprehensive source for researching and buying the most exhaustive list of new generic Top-Level domains in the world. It was our philosophy to take all comers to be the one-stop shop for the purchase of all top-level domain names. We released anywhere from one to ten new gTLDs for the entire period of 2013 until 2017 (when I went to work for Afilias).
Now, ICANN is doing it again. In 2026, they will allow applicants to go for their own top-level domain. To get a feel for how important this is, consider the following:
Top-Level Domains as Assets
Domain names have become assets. In 2021, the Boston Consulting Group conducted a study on the domain industry and included the “secondary market” as a factor. They concluded that the secondary market in domain names is almost as large as the primary retail market, close to $2.1 billion.
Now consider this.
As of the fourth quarter of 2024, Verisign reported that there are $364.3 million domain names registered worldwide. At the same time, there are only about 1,500 Top-Level Domain names in existence. Word strings are a limited resource, with each holding varying value. No two are the same. They can be similar but not the same. Some word strings, like finance, travel, and business, represent wide-ranging and significant commercial value. Others, like yarn and pens, represent more limited value.
My point is that these are rare objects. If 365 million registered domains represent $2.1 billion in value, how much value is represented by 1.5 thousand top-level domains? No one really knows. But I think it is safe to assume that the value is significant.
I’m not planning to “sell” the idea of applying for top-level domain names. But I certainly have helped people apply successfully in the past, and I want to help those who wish to do so this time. I hope to have my book released by the end of April 2025.
The book will contain my perspectives, the basics of how to apply as it was done in the last round, and perspectives of what we might expect in the coming year. It also contains at least three interviews of people who applied in 2012.
