Here’s a handy way to find out what domains are selling for in China.
From time to time, I get asked to look at a list of domains for advice on how much to sell them for in China. My reply is always the same: do your own research. One thing you can do is to look at similar domains being sold in China. So, today I’ll write about a website you can use to do your research.
eName is one of the Top 10 domain registrars in China and it also offers some content in English. Just visit eName.com and click the English button. From the Find Domains menu, select BIN. This gives you all domains listed with a price. From here, you can set up filters to find selling prices of specific types of domains you are interested in. Here are some examples of use.
Suppose you want to know the selling prices of 4 letter .com domains. Click the Category drop-down list and select “4-letter”, then click the Suffix drop-down list and select “.com”. Finally, click the Search button. When the search result appears, click the Cur Price heading to sort the prices from the lowest to the highest, and change “Each page shows” to 100 so that you can examine a significant size of the domains. If you want to know details of a domain, just click its name. Since some information is still available in Chinese, you can use Google Translate to get a rough idea of the content.
This is the result of the 4 letter .com search that I see as of this writing: there are 41,714 domains listed with a price. The cheapest domain is UQTG.com at 550 yuan (about $80) and the cheapest 100 domains are priced at less than $150. Now you can compare your domain with the displayed domains and try to arrive at a price for your domain.
How about 7 number .com domains? From the Category list, select “Pure Number”, then enter 7 to 7 for the Length. The result shows that there are 6,574 domains listed with a price. The cheapest domain is 4177778.com at 75 yuan (about $11) and the cheapest 100 domains are priced at less than $45. Again, compare your domain with the displayed domains and try to arrive at a price for your domain.
You can look at many types of domains such as Pinyin, mixed characters, and Chinese IDN, as well as a variety of extensions such as .net, .org, and .club. So, be sure to spend some time and learn how to use the filters for your purpose.
Steve says
High-end domains are very difficult to sell in China. Chinese are very difficult to negotiate with, where as with western customers you can use logic and rationale to persuade most buyers, if they have an actual interest and plan to utilize the domain. With the typical Chinese buyer, what motivates them is the thrill of getting a killer deal. It is a winner take all proposition, meaning you the seller has to lose. For those that do manage to get 90% of the value when selling, that is like a miracle, one shot in a million.
Can anyone think of any Chinese purchases where you say the seller did the best they could?
I have 3 in mind.
Kassey Lee says
Doing business in a different culture is always a challenge. There is even regional difference. I remember the days when I was visiting companies in Silicon Valley and New York. The valley guys were relaxed and had time for chit chat. N\ew Yorkers were all about business and money and had no time for casual talk.
As a side note, I was talking with a friend in China yesterday. He owns liquid domains but he said VC has dried up and selling high-end domains is tough now.
Steve says
Very keen observation regarding east/west coast and even regional differences in China. It is very hard to lump all Chinese into one collective group when there are so many differences between the inhabitants there. What do Beijingers, Shanghainese, Cantonese etc. have in common? Not much, except maybe similar last names.
China is a very tough nut to crack just ask any Western tech company trying to do business there or even any companies with tangible products. When local branded bottled water that sells for several renminbi is also a victim of being knocked off…
I shouldn’t be so judgmental as there are Western executives here that believe you can build an excellent product and capture market share based on the merits of the product alone and that there is no use for a good name. For whatever reason they don’t get and understand that a category killer like cars.com would only help accelerate their growth and marketshare if they were in that related field. We can launch two identical products for the auto field but with different names. Which is going to be more successful when all things are equal cars.com or buymyride.com? Names matter. That is one thing that is shared culturally. And what lesson can we apply from the past to the future? History is cyclical. What may be en vogue today will be out of style tomorrow….and what was in style years ago may be en vogue again. Not saying etoys is coming back, but maybe date.com, toys.com, care.com, calm.com etc. Remember Monster.com? Kind of like Fliggy.com (flying pig) in China. Nonsensical names that seem childish. The pendulum swings. Chinese investors should ditch the 4l and what not and focus on phrases. Tough to do if you don’t speak Chinese though. Still a bit of a risk as well since most internet users don’t know how to type in a domain thanks to Wechat.
Kassey Lee says
Many excellent points. Thanks Steve. I think category defining domains are great in marketing. Simple English-based domains are fine in many cultures, such as Hotels.com. Say it in the ad and consumers can remember.
I like what you said that history is cyclical. What was considered worthless could become sought after tomorrow, so I always keep an open mind when sifting through thousands of domains everyday at the garbage dump.
Regarding 4L domains, they actually have value to end users. Some in the Top 100 Chinese internet companies actually use 4L as their corporate domains, e.g. MGTV.com, CCTV.com. So I won’t discount them. 5L or longer? No.
Steve says
Noticing more inquiries from China for lll.cc and 6n.com
265.cc just went for $25k
Kassey Lee says
Some people have pushed .cc as .ChineseCompany. How about that?