Domain Magnate

DomainMagnate.com presents an interview with Jeff from DomainBits.com

Details about yourself, occupation, age, location.
Hi Michael! Thanks for the interview. I’m in my late 30s, and live in Ottawa, Canada, with my wife and 4-year old son. My wife and I work together from home - on domaining as well as marketing and running our websites. I also write the blog DomainBits and write for DomainNews. I really like domaining as I like to do things my way, and domaining has no paths that you need to follow - you create your own path and your own success. Staying in my pyjamas all day, being around for my son when he’s not in school, and making good money are all good perks too!

What is your primary focus, e.g. generics, country tlds, short domains etc?
I think that for people who are newer to the industry, there are lots of good opportunities in ccTLDs. These domains are much cheaper than .com domains, and there is solid end user money coming into these extensions to ensure that they continue to do well in the long haul and are not simply speculative bubbles.

So, I concentrate on ccTLDs. I particularly concentrate on UK, Canadian and Indian domains. I’ve found .uk is a particularly strong ccTLD, and my .uk domains do well in terms of type-in traffic and end user offers. I’m in Canada, so I understand the local business climate well, and so I invest in .ca for that reason. I like .in and .co.in for the long term, as India is a huge market whose primary language is English and where there is still going to be a large movement to the internet by both consumers and businesses. read more »

Here is some interesting information about the .in domaining space. .in domains became available for registration only in 2005 (there was .co.in before that, which is less popular now) and all the top names are taken by several individuals/organizations.

There are currently around 400k-500K .in domains registered. For comparison .asia which just started recently has a similar number of registrations and is perceived by many domainers as “quite useless” and .ca domains have just crossed 1 Million registrations.

Indian economy is growing fast and many companies are eager to establish their online presence. Only about 6% of Indian population have internet access and the potential for growth here is enormous. While the prices are still quite low it provides an excellent investment opportunity.

.in domains can be registered by anyone, no Indian presence required (in contrary to for example .ca domains, which are only for Canadian residents).

Cybersquatters beware .in registry imposes very strict rules to protect trademark owners. Offenders may face very high legal charges and fees.

The highest reported sale for .in domain so far was poker.in for $60K (check other high sales here), which to a western person makes perfect sense, but in fact poker is not popular at all in India so the may actually be much harder to monetize than it seems. As usually there are many high value unreported .in sales and the end user interest is quite high in these.

There are no 1-2 character .in domains, but the LLL.in and NNN.in are quite popular and are traded a lot. Premium LLL.in domains reach around $60-100 minimum prices and in my opinion they represent one of the best investment opportunities now. We’ve seen in .com, net, .org and even in .ca domains how 3 letter domains grow in price on the reseller market and have very good end user potential due to many possible acronyms. Indian domaining space is expected to grow significantly over the years and the value of these names should skyrocket!

Some historical registrations figures, available from INregistry

• Feb 17, 2005 - 24,000 domain names registered on first day
• Feb 21, 2005 - 75,000
• April 05, 2005 - 100,000
• Nov 7, 2006 - 200,000

Generic and GEO .in domains are almost impossible to get now as most are owned by several entities below.

• Indiaportals.org own an amazing portfolio, including some of the best generics. The best among these can easily go for 5 and even low 6 figures.
  bakery.in
bank.in
bar.in
beauty.in
books.in
box.in
buy.in
call.in
card.in
care.in
casino.in
casinos.in
cell.in read more »