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How much are domain names selling for in China?

by — Domain Sales 6 Comments

Here’s a handy way to find out what domains are selling for in China.

Screenshot of eName's domain price search

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.

Western end users buy domains from China

by — Domain Sales 0 Comments

China sucked up a lot of domains, and now Western end users are bringing some of them back.

Yellow background with one arrow pointing to the left and one to the right

China is known for buying domains from the west. Examples such as 360.com, JD.com, and OFO.com are readily found. It’s a trend we all know. However, isn’t it reasonable to expect the opposite to also occur after so many good domains have gone to China? Two recent transactions remind me of such a possibility.

In September last year, Chinese domain company 62.com reported that it facilitated the sale of MPT.com. The buyer is the American public company Medical Property Trust. The exact price was not disclosed but reportedly more than 7-figure yuan (more than $150,000). Medical Property Trust’s corporate domain is Medicalpropertiestrust.com so MPT.com is the perfect upgrade. The company also owns MPT.net. Currently, MPT.com redirects to Medicalpropertiestrust.com.

In November last year, Chinese domain company West.cn announced the sale of Viafintech.com from its marketplace. The buyer is Barzahlen Cash Payment Solutions GmbH in Germany. The domain was sold for 46,980 yuan (about $7,000). The fintech startup owns the Viafintech and Viacash brands. It also owns Via-fintech.com, so Viafintech.com is a nice upgrade. Currently, Viafintech.com redirects to Viacash.com. The seller was Lu Chen, located in China, according to the Whois record.

These two sales may be a sign of what is to come. If it does become a trend and we see end users in the west buying domains from China, is there any implication for domain investors? That will mean you can find good domains in China for sale to end users in the west. This further means that you need to spend time watching the Chinese domain market. Reading my articles as well as my daily posts on LinkedIn may help.

EnglishDotCom domain strategy live and well in China

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Chinese companies often choose an English name.

Screenshot of Airlook.com

Like many Chinese companies, Airlook chose an English name.

I started using the term “EnglishDotCom” several years ago to describe what I saw in the Chinese domain market. I was really amazed to see startups in China using an English brand on the .com extension for their corporate website. This trend has not stopped, and the startup we’ll look at today is another example.

Airlook is a Beijing-based mapping company. It produces 3D maps to model the real world. Major clients are government agencies, research institutes, and domestic and foreign companies. Its technologies are used in land survey, highway control, city planning, and many other fields. Founded in 2015, the startup has already raised several rounds of funding, with the latest $150 million round completed just a few days ago.

Airlook’s Chinese name is 埃洛克 (Ai Luo Ke), which is a phonetic translation from its English name. In other words, the founders were thinking of an English name for their venture first. Once they settled on the English name, they translated it to Chinese phonetically. See how it is different from the conventional wisdom of thinking of a Chinese name first. The startup’s corporate domain is the brand-matching Airlook.com. It does not own Ailuoke.com (for sale now, though), indicating the emphasis is the English brand.

The EnglishDotCom strategy is very useful for startups aspiring to go global. In the internet age, this also means almost every startup. English is the global language and .com the global extension. The EnglishDotCom domain strategy prepares a startup as a global player from day one, and its founders won’t have to worry about rebranding or acquiring the matching .com domain later when they become big enough to go global.

If you watch the Chinese domain market regularly, you’ll notice a lot of companies following the EnglishDotCom domain strategy — BabyTree.com, VIPkid.com, SenseTime.com, Keep.com, Tencent.com, and many more. The implication is that there is a large market in China for English-based .com domains. Domains based on simple English words can be sold to Chinese buyers.

So, don’t worry if you don’t understand Pinyin. Focus on English and there will still be a lot of fish to catch in your domain game.

Will Chinese IDN domains become widely used?

by — Uncategorized 20 Comments

So far, Chinese IDN top level domains have struggled.

Image of lanterns with the words "Chinese IDNs"

Just a few days ago the Internet Society of China announced the formation of a working group to promote the use of Chinese domains. Is it the trigger we need to see Chinese IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) flourish?

As the organization is supported by the Ministry of Information Industry, this also suggests a strong desire from the Chinese government to see the widespread use of Chinese domains. The working group aims to resolve technical issues so that Chinese domains can work nicely with browsers, email systems, search engines, and other aspects of the internet. It will also promote innovation and application of Chinese domains to enable their popular use.

Let’s look at the current situation. Below is a list of Chinese IDN top level domains with registrations of more than 1,000. The data is taken from Namestat.org.

Ranking Extension Domains Registered
23 .网址 (web address) 176,133
60 .公司 (company) 37,364
66 .手机 (mobile phone) 32,741
80 .商标 (trademark) 27,498
81 .在线 (online) 27,375
104 .商城 (mall) 21,700
140 .我爱你 (i love you) 15,979
297 .网店 (web shop) 4,706
356 .中文网 (Chinese web) 2,917
372 .集团 (group) 2,560
383 .信息 (information) 2,349
387 .购物 (shopping) 2,310
410 .企业 (corporation) 1,794
447 .移动 (mobile) 1,046

As you can see, the numbers are quite dismal. For example, No. 1 .网址 (web address) was launched in 2014. It peaked at 380,000 domains and then remained stagnant at about 200,000. Currently, it sits at 176,000. No. 2 .公司 (company) was also launched in 2014. It grew to 53,000 and has remained stagnant over the years. Currently, it sits at 37,000.

Apart from these new extensions, there is also a Chinese IDN extension which has been available since 2006: .中国 (.china). For many years, this IDN extension never exceeded 500,000 registrations. Then, it suddenly shot up to 1.9 million in 2018 then down to 1.8 million last year. The cause of this surge is unknown and so further observation is required.

Consumers may prefer Chinese content on corporate websites but do not necessarily demand the corresponding domains to be in Chinese characters. This is evident in the 2019 Top 100 Chinese Internet Companies Report where none of the leading companies use a Chinese IDN as their corporate domain.

So, Chinese IDN domains are still tiny when compared with mainstream extensions .com and .cn. Their impacts are yet to be felt.

How NameJet has changed over the past four years

by — Domain Sales 6 Comments

Joseph Peterson returns to write about NameJet. The Chinese market implosion and new expired domain deals have changed the face of NameJet since he last wrote.

Yellow and blue graphic that states "Namejet four years later"

I stopped writing articles about domains at NameJet for DNW about 4 years ago.  “My how time flies!” would be one reaction.  But some things never change.  Or do they?  How has the domain market changed?

Rewind to January 2016, and we were looking at a record-breaking month for NameJet – technically a recap of December 2015.  Indeed, 2015 set and broke new records almost every month, as sale prices soared and transaction volume ballooned.  Chiefly this sudden growth occurred within a few categories of short domains prized by China, which were traded eagerly by speculators worldwide.  It was the year of the Chinese surge, as the graybeards will remember.  Prices were only going up, would always go up.  And if that market sector has deflated somewhat since, well, that may explain some of the gray beards.

Now we’re reviewing sales from December 2019.  What changes can we observe?  Let me reproduce this data from exactly 4 years ago: Click here to continue reading…