More Endusers Buying Indian Domains

November 22, 2008
5 Comments on More Endusers Buying Indian Domains

Note: This is guest post contributed by Ed Keay-Smith of OzDomainer and LaptopNomads.

About 6 months ago I made a list of about 500+ .co.in & .in domains that I was looking at registering.

I purchased about 100+ of the ones that I liked the best and left the rest for later or in this case other people.

One domain that I did not register was pvcpipes.in. A very good name, but I had others to deal with.

Well, checking back on it and others I see that quite a few of them have been registered by companies and NOT (as far as I can tell) by domainers.

The company that now owns pvcpipes.in is a manufacturer in India of you guessed it – PVC Pipes.

It is a trend that I think will get stronger as the Indian domain market gets more recognition from the Indian population.

What other choice do local Indian businesses have if the .com of their generic domain is gone?  Hey, let’s get our own ccTLD instead.  It will be a great deal cheaper and in most cases more relevant to people in India.

IMHO, the Indian market is where the .com market was 10 years ago.

If you do your research and look at the stats for strong keyword rich domains you WILL find some great unregistered domains today that someone or some company will want tomorrow or 6 months from now.

I am putting a great deal of time and money into this and I am confident that it will pay off over the next few years.

Shame I did not register pvcpipes.in, could of had a buyer.

PS. pvcpipes.co.in is still available

Indian Domain Sales Report

November 20, 2008
7 Comments on Indian Domain Sales Report

There have been a lot of sales of Indian domains since our last sales report – many small sales and a few larger ones.

The biggest sale was that of Welcome.in – a great hack that went for EUR 5,250 or about $6,690 in a private transaction.  This sale placed #11 in our record board of top reported sales of all time.  It was sold by the same person who sold 123.in, the holder of the #9 position in our record board.

LastMinuteTravel.co.in sold in a private transaction for $1,550.  The sale was to the owner of LastMinuteTravel.com.

There is another end user sale I just found out about that took place in February 2008 – the sale of Atom.in for $2,400 EUR to the owner of Atom.su.

In addition to the above large sales, there have been a number of three letter sales on Sedo over the last few days.  Eur.in sold for $198.  Eau.in sold for $70.  Lar.in went for $90.  Bau.in commanded for $98.  Sse.in sold for $90.  Ccm.in went for $90.  Wie.in sold for $60.  I think that these sales give a good reading of the state of the market for premium LLL.in.

Finally, there has been an interesting numeric sale – 1000.in sold for $260 on Sedo.

There are currently a lot of Indian domains on auction at Sedo.  Most of the auctions are for LLL.in, including Tss.in, Stp.in, Rts.in, Rsc.in, Ipc.in, Mna.in, and Hcm.in.

There is also an interesting NNN.in for auction at Sedo – 688.in.  iPromote.in is also on auction.  Finally, a previous auction for Onion.in has been cancelled and is now being re-run.

Indian Domain Sales – A Comprehensive List

October 31, 2008
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We have now published on our blog a comprehensive list of all sales of .in and .co.in domains for $100 or more that we are aware of.  You can find the list here.  For each sale, in addition to the price, we provide the venue and date of the sale.

The list will constantly be updated as new sales unfold, so you can bookmark it and check back any time to keep up to date.

The top sales to date are:

1) Poker.in – $60,000 (Domain Round Table Auction, August 2007)
2) Mails.in – $24,000 (Sedo, 2005)
3) Searching.in – $22,000 (Private Sale, Unknown, 2006)
4) LinkShare.in – 10,000 GBP = $19,755 (Sedo, 10th Jan. 2007)
5) Webcam.in – £9,200 GBP = $18,299 (Sedo, 8th May 2007)
6) Defend.in – $9,473 (Sedo, March 2008)
7) Tea.in – €5,700 = $8,355 (Private Sale, December 2007)
8.) Leds.in – $7,973 (Sedo, April 2008)
9) 123.in – $7,500 (Sedo, August 18th 2007)
10) Hollywood.co.in – $7000 (Sedo, 6th June, 2006)
11) Bingo.co.in – $6,000 (May 2008, DNJ)
12) IIT.in – $5,900 (DNF – March 29, 2008)
13) Blackjack.in – €4,000 = $5,255 (Sedo, 25th January, 2007)

See the rest of the list here.

If there are any sales you know of that we have missed, please let us know.

Report on Indian Domain Sales

October 30, 2008
3 Comments on Report on Indian Domain Sales

It has been fairly quiet on the Indian domain sales front recently.  In today’s DNJournal, Ron confirmed that the sale of Dial.in, which we had previously reported, had gone through.  No other .in sales made it to Ron’s report.

Other recent Indian domain sales include Reality.in which went for $650, ALV.in which sold for 110 EUR or $143, and Wallpaper.co.in which covered 500 EUR or $653.  Wallpaper.co.in had significant traffic – receiving 80 uniques per day.  That amount of type in traffic shows the incredible future potential of Indian domains.

There is only one upcoming Sedo auction for an Indian domain, namely SexClubs.in.

To find out more about investing in Indian domains, join the discussion at INForum.in – home of the Indian domain industry.

Status of LLL.in – 3 Letter Indian Domains

October 27, 2008
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The LLL.in buyout occurred about 9 months ago.  There is an insightful discussion going on about the status of the buyout at INForum.

Since the buyout, premium LLL.in have done really well – which is not surprising, given the increasing adoption of .in by endusers in India and the fact that these domains have premium letters.

However, the non-premium LLL.in have not fared too well.  The for sale sections of the domain forums are full of people selling their LLL.in for bargain prices – often $5 or less.

Given the timing of the buyout, over the next few months there will be a lot of LLL.in coming up for renewal.  Given a market price of $5 or less, a lot of people may decide that it is just not worth renewing their LLL.in.  The buyout is in danger of ending.

What has happened?  As member jag pointed out, the economic conditions at the time of the buyout were quite different.  At that time, the registry had a special on .in registrations – and the retail price was in the $3 to $4 range.  Now, retail pricing is at least $13.49.  As well, the buyout occurred in much better economic times – the current financial crises had not yet occurred and people were generally very bullish.

I think that this situation illustrates well the problem with pattern domaining.  While some LLL.in are good investments, others simply aren’t (at least at this point in time).  As member trevor99 points out, there are lots of LLL.in that aren’t worth registering.  I think that this situation shows the importance of having a plan in investing – a careful choice of letter combinations can pay off well, while a poor choice can cause trouble.

What do you think will happen with LLL.in over the new few months?  Join the discussion at INForum – the home of the Indian domain industry.

DNXpert Domaining Essentials Contest

October 22, 2008
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DNXpert is a blog about the business of domaining – covering everything from buying to selling domains, parking to developing domains, and more.  It also covers news and developments of significance to domainers.

John over at DNXpert is running a Domaining Essentials Contest.  This is the second domaining contest he is running, with the first one having been a big success. 

INForum is proud to be the first announced sponsor of this contest.  The contest launches on November 1, 2008.  Until then, John is announcing all the prizes available.  There will be a whopping total of over $4,000 of prizes given away during the contest.

The Mentis.in Case

October 21, 2008
1 Comment on The Mentis.in Case

The INDRP case of Mentis.in was recently released.

As you are probably aware, Mentos are the makers of various candies, mints and chewing gum. They have held trademarks for the word Mentos since 1966 and a trademark for the word Mentos in India since 1983.

In this case, Mentos claimed that the domain Mentis.in was confusing and almost identical to their trademark Mentos.

I find it really strange that they would choose to go after Mentis.in when they do not even own Mentis.com – actually, Mentis.com is owned by none other than Frank Schilling. I have checked Mentis in a few other ccTLDs and it does not appear that Mentos owns any of those domains.

While there is no website on Mentis.in, the owner was in the software business, and was using the domain for internal purposes. He showed the panel how he had set up a number of systems there, including for stock maintenance, sales, awards, etc. He also had a plan for further development of the domain. As well, the respondent had never tried to sell the domain to Mentos.

The decision was made by a sole arbitrator. He found that Mentos and Mentis were indeed confusingly similar.

However, the arbitrator found that the owner of Mentis.in had a legitimate interest in the domain. He was making a bona fide use of the domain, and that the goods and services offered by him were completely different than those offered by Mentos. He had no intention to mislead, divert Mentos’ customers or tarnish Mentos’ trademark.

As well, the arbitrator found that Mentis.in was not registered or used in bad faith. The registrant had never tried to sell the domain to Mentos, plus the services offered by both companies were so different that there was little possibility of confusing by consumers.

In the circumstances, the arbitrator dismissed Mentos’ case. This was a good decision under the INDRP. Mentis is a generic term. It is Latin for “mind” and also a surname. It is a common word – there are many, many websites out there using the term mentis in their domain. As well, the chances of people getting confused between software and candy are, I’d say, pretty slim. I’ve never gotten a sugar high from a piece of software. I’m glad to see that the panellist saw through the Mentos’ blatant overreaching in this case.

INRegistry Allows Longer Domain Registration

October 20, 2008
3 Comments on INRegistry Allows Longer Domain Registration

Until now, INRegistry has only allowed Indian domains to be registered for a maximum of 5 years at a time.  This has just been changed – now, Indian domains can be registered for up to 10 years in advance.

This change makes a lot of sense and I applaud INRegistry for doing this, as it standardises its practices with most of the gTLDs.

Google is thought to look at for how long a domain is registered in ranking a website, so if you’ve got an important website, it may be worth adding a few years of registration on.  Also, for any company larger than a mum and pop company, it normally makes sense to register your domain for as long as possible, to minimize chances of accidentally losing your domain by forgetting to renew.

First Canadian Domain Conference – Auction Results

October 16, 2008
3 Comments on First Canadian Domain Conference – Auction Results

Today the auction, run by Fusu, for Canada’s first domain name conference – Domain Convergence – finished.

A total of 11 domains sold for $17,501.  What was interesting were a couple of good .ca sales – Quality.ca for USD$4,800 and Climb.ca for USD$2,500 - solid prices for these domains.

The results in full (unofficial) are (in US Dollars):

CanadaTrademarks.net – $220
CanadianPub.com – $420
Quality.ca – $4800
DownloadPDFs.com – $120
ChargerKits.com – $310
CelebrityNews.ca  – $230
Climb.ca – $2500
BuyLand.ca – $100
uDonate.net – $2500
ParkingDemo.com – $101
dqf.com – $6200 – a very solid result given that qav.com closed at $4,700 today at auction on Sedo.

I hope that this conference becomes a regular event and thanks to the organizers for putting this together.

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