I wouldn’t have paid anything for this domain until I realized this.
With 4-letter domains still in slump, a 5L domain consisting of seemingly random letters may not excite most domain investors.
An example is the domain CNLZD .com. Without any knowledge, I would not pick it up even for free. To me, the domain is not pronounceable and is hard to remember.
However, if you did the research, you would discover that the domain can serve as an upgrade for a well-funded company in China, thus making it valuable. I came across this company while doing reviewing venture capital news.
Chao Neng Lu Zhan Dui (超能鹿战队=superpower deer squadron) is a Nanjing-based fitness meal startup founded in 2016. Its meals are based on low sugar, low salt, low fat, and low calorie. The company operates a franchise system to sell the meals at 400 retail stores in 150 cities across China.
The matching CNLZD.com.cn is the corporate domain of Chao Neng Lu Zhan Dui. So, it is likely the company would be interested in upgrading to the shorter and better CNLZD .com.
There is another piece of information — the company has just raised its first round of funding of 12 million yuan or about $1.8 million. Now, if the company has the need and the financial ability to acquire CNLZD .com, wouldn’t it make the domain valuable?
Next time you come across a domain, you may want to do an end user research before giving it up. Read my article “Three steps to Chinese end user research” for some simple steps you can try.
Alan Built says
The 5 letter translated acronym value is a stretch, I think it only has value because it is registered in another extension, in this case a Chinese one. Probably so much of a stretch as to to be considered cyber-squating opening one up for a UDRP filing.
Kassey Lee says
Agreed that UDRP issue must be considered when acquiring a domain,
Alan Built says
This one isn’t even worth an $8 hand registration.
quinnj102 says
Lol
Robbie Mahair says
If you are reading this, please consider spending your energy providing a real service or creating a real product, rather than trying to ransom domain names so people who want to use them have to pay more for them. That is called “rent-seeking”, and it is evil and very bad for the economy.
Andrew Allemann says
Duly considered and rejected.
Kassey Lee says
Maybe Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella can tell us how they feel about this issue. Last time I read in 2015, according to DomainTools.com, Google owned 480,000 and Microsoft 190,000 domains. The majority of the domains, I may venture to speculate, are lying there unused.