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Here’s what keywords people are searching for in the domain aftermarket

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NFT and meta aren’t surprises, but some of the other words are.

Graphic with the words Domain Search above a search box

Tracking the keywords people use to search for aftermarket domain names is a great way to keep a pulse on hot keywords. After all, lists of sold domains only include a small subset of what people search for.

Sedo published its list of the ten most searched domains on its platform last month:

1. NFT
2. Meta
3. Cannabis
4. Crypto
5. Automotive
6. Poker
7. CBD
8. Code
9. Chat
10. Bell

While the top two probably don’t come as much of a surprise, it’s interesting to see the strong interest in cannabis and CBD. Neither of these words has shown up in Sedo’s top ten this year until last month.

It’s the second month in a row that NFT has led Sedo’s search list.

You can see the monthly search lists here.

The problem with selling .org domains to Chinese entities

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Have a .org domain targeted to the Chinese market? Read on.

Do you own .org domains intended for Chinese buyers, such as Pinyin domains? If so, you should be aware of restrictions and trends that make aftermarket sales unlikely.

The chart below indicates the total number of .org domains registered in China over the last 15 years, according to China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). You can see a consistent decline in recent years, which fell to 146,000 domains in 2020. This number is really tiny when compared with the 19 million .cn domains registered in the same year.

Chart showing decline in .org domains in China

There are several reasons this might be the case.

First, website operators in China need a license, and the government doesn’t issue licenses for .org domains.

If you visit Aliyun (Alibaba subsidiary), the largest domain registrar in China, you may find the following notice on its .org domain registration page.

.org域名暂无法进行网站备案，请先注册进行保护

The notice says that you can register your desired .org domain, but currently, you can’t apply for an ICP license to build and operate a website on the domain in China.

Obviously, this means registrars in China don’t push/promote .org domains heavily, and Chinese businesses and non-profits will steer clear of these domains.

Second, it isn’t easy to become a non-profit organization in China. As I have said earlier in another article, in recent years, the Chinese government has been very strict in confirming non-profit organization status. While .org is open to any type of registrant, it is a preferred extension for non-profits.

Finally, .org registry Public Interest Registry began focusing on quality over quantity of registrations a few years ago, so cheap promos for domain investors are out.

These issues, primarily the ICP issue, mean that .org domains held for sale specifically for the Chinese market are probably an unwise investment.

End user domain sales at GoDaddy up to $350k

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Startups and big names bought domain names on the aftermarket.

Screenshot of Bodo.com, a website offering experiences. Picture shows person on an ATV and flying a plane.

Bodo.com was one of GoDaddy’s top aftermarket domain sales from November.

GoDaddy released its latest top aftermarket domain sales list. Keep in mind that GoDaddy doesn’t publicly disclose all of its top sales. The sales are from November so a good number of them have already been developed. Here are the domains and who bought them.

exclusive.com $350,000 – Exclusive.com will be a new platform for creators to sell content. A coming soon page states, “Your own Exclusive.com payment page. Sell, deliver and track your exclusive content and receive payments within a minute. Payments to the creator!”

bodo.com $200,000 – Bodo lets you buy and gift experiences like sky diving, horseback riding, and flying. It’s based in Istanbul.

https[.]com $197,000 – I wonder if this domain gets a lot of type-in traffic. Right now, it has a zero click lander that’s sending some visitors to a page that misleads them to download a browser plugin.

linktree.com $138,000 – LinkTree is a service people use to provide one link on bios that links to all of their other social accounts, sites, etc. Think of it like .Tel was meant to be, except using an easy-to-use hosted solution. The company uses LinkTr.ee for its site. It just raised $45 million.

clearstreet.com $125,000 – Clear Street is a prime brokerage service provider for trading equities and options.

hairplus.com $110,000 – The domain doesn’t resolve. The Whois record shows a buyer in California.

along.org $107,217 – Yes, that’s a .org for six figures! Gradient Learning, a non-profit, is launching Along to help teachers check in with students, whether they are learning remotely or in the classroom.

wingman.com $100,000 – Wingman claims it’s a security-minded messaging app. Ironically, it doesn’t have an SSL certificate on its site yet. (To be fair, it hasn’t launched yet.)

oder.com $100,000 – Note the spelling. It’s not odor. Maybe it’s a company named after the Oder river in Europe? The domain has Whois privacy.

security365.com $80,000 – Softcamp, a Korean technology company, offers cloud security solutions under the name Security 365.

aleader.com $68,500 – Whois shows someone in China.

bestmade.com $60,000 – Duluth Trading acquired this domain for its Best Made brand.

bright.org $60,000 – Data collection infrastructure company Luminati Networks Ltd changed its name to Bright Data and uses the domain BrightData.com. It does not own Bright.com.

handicraft.com $60,000 – Prym Consumer USA Inc is a manufacturer and distributor of sewing, quilting, and craft-related notions. Handicraft is a dictionary term for making decorative objects by hand.

wowlondon.com $57,500 – Wow Cosmetic Ltd, a cosmetics company in Israel, bought this domain for its website.

aqueous.com $57,500 – A company in California bought this domain. It’s a dictionary word for things made of water. Seems like it would be difficult to spell.

tallgrass.com $57,000 – Tallgrass Energy is an energy and infrastructure company.

goboo.com $55,000 – Goboo is a Chinese electronics company.

al-islam.com $45,211 – The domain forward to a Google form that references Mocco Company, a company still in development.

growth.ai $45,000 – This domain leads to a coming soon page. It has a private Whois record.

English-based domains DO have a market in China

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Kassey Lee shows some more examples of Chinese companies using English-language domains.

Image with the words "English domains in China"

It thrills me almost every day to come across well-funded startups in China using English brand names and domains. The more I read about them, the more I am convinced there are selling opportunities for English-based domains to the second-largest economy in the world.

For example, below are some Chinese startups with funding raised recently.

Company Business line Domain
Compass (鑫蜂维) Business IT CompassHZ.com
Duckbill (鸭嘴兽) Container trucking DuckbillSCM.com
LinkDoc (零氪) Medical tech Linkdoc.com
inxmed (应世) Medical tech inxmed.com
Sunmnet (三盟) Smart education Sunmnet.com

As you can see, even though these companies have Chinese names, they use domains based on their English brand names. Also, .com is the first choice in corporate China. All five startups in the list above use .com.

You may also notice that some of the domains do not precisely match their English brand names, for example CompassHZ.com and DuckbillSCM.com. This is where you may find selling opportunities if you own the shorter domains (Compass .com and Duckbill .com).

My daily observation reflects what I see in the 2019 Top 100 Chinese Internet Companies list, where a significant 30% of the companies own English-based domains. Below are some examples.

Rank Company Domain
1 Alibaba (阿里巴巴) Alibaba.com
2 Tencent (腾讯) Tencent.com
5 Ant Financial (蚂蚁金服) Antfin.com
18 Cheetah Mobile (猎豹移动) CheetahMobile.com
19 Autohome (汽车之家) Autohome.com

Clearly, English-based domains do have a market in China. If you own such domains, be sure your domains are available to buyers in China too. This can be achieved by listing your domains at a marketplace that has retail outlets in China, such as Afternic (fast transfer). This approach also helps you avoid language and payment issues when selling to China.

Two thoughts from GoDaddy’s conference call yesterday

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

GoDaddy execs comment on WordPress and the domain aftermarket.

GoDaddy logoGoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) released Q4 2018 and full-year earnings yesterday and held its investor conference call.

Two things in the call stood out to me.

First, the company discussed continued progress on GoCentral and its growth in managed WordPress.

GoCentral is GoDaddy’s homegrown website builder. It’s designed to be extremely easy for any type of business to start a website. I’ve tested the product and it’s definitely an easy way for a restaurant, mechanic, or any of hundreds of other types of businesses to create a web presence quickly and without the help of a developer.

On the call, GoDaddy CEO Scott Wagner noted, “Our Managed WordPress offering automates the entire process of starting and maintaining a secure WordPress website, which saves our customers literally hours of work, frustration and distraction.”

Later, in response to an analyst’s question, he said (quoted from SeekingAlpha transcript):

The biggest issues with WordPress, if you are working and using on it, are plug-in maintenance and overall security and just the level of time and attention that it takes to actually run that. Look, our managed platform, managed WordPress platform, totally automates and simplifies that process and we are making it easier and easier and easier. And so the feature improvement is both security layer, but more importantly, on app plug-in and theme updates to just make it super easy for performance and reliability. So I think you are seeing it not just for pros, but also for pros handing sites like that off to individuals or small businesses that are managing it for themselves.

I think that starting a WordPress website is something in which GoDaddy really shines. It uses onboarding wizards similar to GoCentral to get you started quickly. I’ve used WordPress since 2005 and, despite all the improvements in the platform, still find it hard to spin up a site with a good design. It’s much, much easier with GoDaddy.

Wagner noted that GoDaddy is now the largest host of paid WordPress instances.

One future opportunity for GoDaddy is to help companies make the leap from GoCentral to managed WordPress. GoCentral is a good product and will meet many companies’ needs. Over time, though, they might want to get the flexibility of WordPress. It would be very powerful to have a one-click migration from CoCentral to managed WordPress.

Dreamhost is doing this to a degree with its Remixer product. Remixer is a much simpler website builder, though.

The other thing on the call that caught my attention was CFO Ray Winborne’s comment on the domain aftermarket:

For the first quarter, we expect revenue of $705 million to $715 million, representing 11% to 13% growth versus the first quarter of 2018, as we began to lap the gains from changes in merchandising of aftermarket domain sales in early 2018.

This reconfirms that GoDaddy saw a marked improvement to aftermarket domain sales when it changed how it presented premium domains in domain search results. At NamesCon this year, GoDaddy GM Paul Nicks said conversions increased 30% with this change. It apparently had a material impact on GoDaddy’s revenue. I think there’s other low-hanging fruit here that GoDaddy can tap in 2019.

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