I have been quite interested to see the prices that .net.au domains have been achieving over the past couple of weeks.
It's got me wondering, has anyone here had much success with reselling .net.au domains to retail buyers or selling developed .net.au sites?
Secondly, has anyone read or done any studies on if a similar exact match bonus is applied to .net.au domains as .com.au domains?
.net.au performance is a long running debate on this forum mate. I think from a domaining point of view the resale value in the current market is less than impressive and the high $$$ sales of recent times aren't a clear indication of a rising in that trend.
For end users I think the fear is using a .net.au means that marketing efforts/money could be lost to the .com.au competitor. So in this instance, instead of running with bookkeeping.net.au, people tend to use abcbookkeeping.com.au or geobookkeeping.com.au. Some small business owners are recognizing the value of generic.net.au's and starting to build feeder sites/networks with lets say bookkeeping.net.au building authority to abcbookkeeping.com.au via content and back links.
In my experience, and as you would know domain extension is only one of 200+ factors for the big G, so content + concentrated link building etc can still get a .net.au ranking. Personally I have found that an exact match .com.au can be on front page within weeks with 5-6 decent original articles (depending on competition) but alas, the .net.au does take longer for some reason.
With that said, there are a squillion .net.au generics and names still available for reg fee and could return a high return on investment % in that instance over time.
I don't have a massive amount of startup capital, so I generally chase one decent .com.au, then try to capture relevant .net.au's that relate to it.