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With
the ccTLD Market Booming Drop.com.au Joins the Growing
Competition for Expiring Australian Domains
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Two
weeks ago at this time
I was sitting on the opening panel discussion at
the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Las Vegas conference
talking about the growing aftermarket for
ccTLD domains (some hard data from that talk
is included in our latest
monthly newsletter). At that show
and again at |
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the
DOMAINfest Global conference that ran
last week in Santa Monica, California, I
ran into Fabulous.com's
long-time Business Development Director Mike
Robertson, who is taking advantage of the
ccTLD boom with Fab's new drop-catching service
at Drop.com.au.
The
service focuses on catching expiring games in Australia's
.au extension (most |
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notably
.com.au and .net.au) and they have had a lot of
success. As of mid-January, Robertson said
Drop.com.au had caught over 82% of the
domains they went after. As with most
dropcatching services, you can enter as many
names as you wish and you only pay if they are
successful in getting the domain. When multiple
orders exist for the same name, the caught
domains go to auction, but even in that format
the prices have remained very reasonable with
the average sale price being just over AU $43
since the service opened last May. As more
players have entered the space, that figure has
been steadily rising in recent months and
hit AU $73 in December. |
With
the growing interest in Australian ccTLDs the
competition is getting stronger for the best keywords
too. Drop.com.au's top five sales have been Printing.com.au
(AU $9,221), MotorHomes.com.au (AU $5,556), LiveMusic.com.au
(AU $4,501), FinancialAdvisor.com.au (AU $3,889)
and MotorSport.com.au (AU $2,531).
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When
I was in Australia for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Down Under conference that Fabulous
staged in November 2008, I couldn't help but
notice the .com.au domains on signs and
billboards everywhere I went. I also couldn't
help thinking that the extension could be a big
hit in the aftermarket if the severe
restrictions on .com.au ownership were relaxed.
Prior to the middle of 2008 .com.au domain
owners weren't allowed to resell names at all. The
space is less regulated now, which is opening
up aftermarket activity, however there are
still some restrictions on who can register and
own .au domains. That |
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doesn't
mean you can't invest though. Robertson said
Drop.com.au can get overseas customers set up so
they can participate in the Australian domain
market. You can learn more about Drop.com.au
services in this PDF
file. |
You
might also want to review some of the interesting monthly
reports released by AusRegistry.com
on growth in the .au space. For example, their December
report shows that the total number of .au domains
registered grew over 23% from the previous year
to more than 1.58 million. With the
aftermarket for this great nation now beginning to open
up, I expect we will also see more transactions and
higher prices for .au domains in our weekly domain sales
reports in the
months and years ahead. |
