Growth of .AU over last 4 years

[DavidL]

Just did a little bit of research and found this interesting.

Number of domain registrations count over last 4 years.

Total Internet

153m-----220m = 44% growth

Com/Net

80m----112m = 40% growth

ccTLDs

58m ----87m = 50% growth

and the standout...?

.AU

1m ----2.3m = 130% growth


Come in snoopy...

References:

http://www.verisigninc.com/assets/domain-name-report-march08.pdf
http://www.verisigninc.com/assets/domain-name-brief-december2011.pdf
http://ausregistry.com.au/domains/domain-reports

 

[snoopy]

Just did a little bit of research and found this interesting.

Number of domain registrations count over last 4 years.

Total Internet

153m-----220m = 44% growth

Com/Net

80m----112m = 40% growth

ccTLDs

58m ----87m = 50% growth

and the standout...?

.AU

1m ----2.3m = 130% growth


Come in snoopy...

References:

http://www.verisigninc.com/assets/domain-name-report-march08.pdf
http://www.verisigninc.com/assets/domain-name-brief-december2011.pdf
http://ausregistry.com.au/domains/domain-reports

Not very surprising given the lifting of sales rules, how about an actual liquid market? 40.com.au any takers?

 

[DavidL]

Not very surprising given the lifting of sales rules

Actually between 2004 and 2008, before any sales rules changes, AU domains climbed from 400K to 1m = 150% growth - even stronger than afterwards.

Next excuse please...

how about an actual liquid market? 40.com.au any takers?

What's that domain got to do with worldwide domain registration counts?

 

[snoopy]

Actually between 2004 and 2008, before any sales rules changes, AU domains climbed from 400K to 1m = 150% growth - even stronger than afterwards.

Next excuse please...

It is not an excuse, it is an explanation.

To take your 2004-2008 example other extensions grew in much the same way,

http://www.zooknic.com/Domains/counts.html

What's that domain got to do with worldwide domain registration counts?

I'm saying these figures aren't particularly helpful in terms of domainers making money. A liquid market is helpful and that doesn't exist with .com.au. I can't take your domain counts to bank and pay the mortgage.

 

[DavidL]

You can't just say .au isn't a liquid market. Liquidity is not a yes/no measure.

.com is definitely a more liquid market than .au but that's not to say sales in .au don't happen (sold one this morning as a matter of fact and about to agree on a second) and that one can't make a dollar out of it.

Equating liquidity with 'making money' is like saying you will make more money buying and selling cars then rare artworks say. That's simply not the case (necessarily) even though there are many times more buyers for a used car than a rare painting.

Personally, I would rather have invested in a market that has seen 140% growth than 40% growth notwithstanding the former being less liquid. But that's just me - each to their own!

 

[snoopy]

Equating liquidity with 'making money' is like saying you will make more money buying and selling cars then rare artworks say. That's simply not the case (necessarily) even though there are many times more buyers for a used car than a rare painting.

Simply not the case necessarily? Sounds like you're not sure what your point of view is.

I think high quality artwork is a liquid market, lousy stuff sold at suburban galleries probably isn't. Can't say I know people who trade art for a living though, I think that would be significantly harder to make money in than cars.

Personally, I would rather have invested in a market that has seen 140% growth than 40% growth notwithstanding the former being less liquid. But that's just me - each to their own!

The market hasn't seen 140% growth, that is registration volume. To take an extreme example you could argue .mobi or .me has done really well because of registration volume growth. Totally different to actually making money domaining. In my view .com.au returns have been poor despite all the changes.

 

[DavidL]

Simply not the case necessarily? Sounds like you're not sure what your point of view is..

Yes I'm very sure and I thought it was clear. let me try again in more simple terms:

A more liquid market does not necessarily imply a more profitable market.

Sorry I'm not sure what's unclear about my statement?

I think high quality artwork is a liquid market, lousy stuff sold at suburban galleries probably isn't. Can't say I know people who trade art for a living though, I think that would be significantly harder to make money in than cars.

Hmm not sure on that actually. The recent sale of 'The Scream' had 4 bidders in it's worldwide highly promoted sale. Not exactly a liquid market by any means yet the owner still netted $119m.

On the other side of the coin, try buying a Ford Falcon (or any car) then reselling it at a profit. There are literally thousands of buyers at any given time so it's a s liquid market if ever there was one but you would struggle... trust me!

The market hasn't seen 140% growth, that is registration volume. To take an extreme example you could argue .mobi or .me has done really well because of registration volume growth. Totally different to actually making money domaining.

Yep fair point.

In my view .com.au returns have been poor despite all the changes

Happily not for me

 

[snoopy]

The recent sale of 'The Scream' had 4 bidders in it's worldwide highly promoted sale. Not exactly a liquid market by any means yet the owner still netted $119m.

4 bidders around that price is a liquid market. That is not something that is the norm for .com.au. Put a name up for sale and maybe there will be one person expressing interest, if it is a good quality name.

On the other side of the coin, try buying a Ford Falcon (or any car) then reselling it at a profit. There are literally thousands of buyers at any given time so it's a s liquid market if ever there was one but you would struggle... trust me!

People buy and sell ford falcons for a profit all day long, these mythical creatures are called "car dealers".

 

[DavidL]

4 bidders around that price is a liquid market.
That is not something that is the norm for .com.au. Put a name up for sale and maybe there will be one person expressing interest, if it is a good quality name.

Are you trying to argue that the fine art market is a more liquid market than .au domains? And that it follows that it's easier to turn a dollar in that market? Just trying to get this right.

People buy and sell ford falcons for a profit all day long, these mythical creatures are called "car dealers".

I've sold cars for 12 years, AU domains for about 4 years and, trust me, the domains is the easier gig by far.

 

[neddy]

Good positive post David on the growth of our local market.

Though I do agree with Snoopy that you can't measure profitability simply by the growth in numbers of registrations.

However, having been at the coalface of selling .au domains for the last few years (as you have for even longer), I can tell people emphatically that values have been rising exponentially.

In my view .com.au returns have been poor despite all the changes.

I respectfully totally disagree with this statement. I have made excellent money on my portfolio on an overall basis - as have many other domainers that I know.

Sure, I have bought some domains that I have just let drop. They were simply errors of judgement that we all have made.

I'm not in the .com market on a day to day basis, so I make no comparisons.

One day I'm sure we will also get "big bucks" for some of our domains - imho.

As for liquidity, I don't have trouble in selling reasonable domains. I've sold six in the last 10 days.

But I did let my number domains drop (40th, 50th etc) - they were obviously not popular in our market at this time.

 

[findtim]

great thread guys.

140% domain rego grow can not be discounted as a positive, its great for me as a developer and of course i speak from that point of view.

this is like a landrush still going on, more and more businesses are jumping in and most of them have absolutely no idea what the best tactics are for an online presence.

i see sooooo many silly domains dropping on netfleet daily , its almost my "gag line" for the day, i tell helena "hey, guess what.... someone actually registered "wich1.com.au" once !!! "

i had a client come to me a few months ago and said they wanted another website for a particular area of thier business, we got lucky and got a good name previousely unregistered that suited, the moral of the story is i can't see why (it seems to me) people rely on drop and netfleet etc to manage domain sales when picking up the phone and calling the person most likely to want it would be far better for profit.

i have done deals and when i have known someone would want this domain i own and i just ring them, i've done research and it sells for the price i want.

the more domains get registered the more "used cars " will come through, this is good for all

tim

 

[ttfan]

This was recently published in the ausregistry 2016 edition of 'behind the dot'. Growth does not look very encouraging.
I'm considering buying some good names in my industry, but it's hard to justify buying them based on growth potential.... you'd have to make a good business case for each domain name, and I'm not sure if I can.

 

[snoopy]

.au has been a bad place to invest at pretty much any point in time, having said that prices have been on the decline since 2012, that is largely due to Google exact match changes in organic rankings. Despite what Ausregistry is saying it has nothing to do with new tlds.

Ausregistry and AUDA are hoping direct registrations will save the day but a lot of it is simply speculative hot air coming out of the market.

I my view things are like to get worse for .com.au because of the prospect of direct registrations, this has the potential to fracture the market but more likely is a weak 5-10 years whilst people wait it out to see if .au gets any traction.

Given Ausregistry's and AUDA's track record of launching new extensions (absolutely abysmal) you can just about bank on .au being a flop.

 

[Data Glasses]

Oh we have our extension? ..... fancy that

 

[Bacon Farmer]

The majority of decent domains were already registered before 2005. There's about 2 million just waiting for the owners to have the uh oh realisation.

 

[ttfan]

The majority of decent domains were already registered before 2005. There's about 2 million just waiting for the owners to have the uh oh realisation.

Yes I agree, and I'm taking about whether it's a good investment for me to buy one of these.
I know there's always talk of high growth of online sales continuing to outpace that of traditional retail, but this has been true for many years already, yet the domain market growth in going in the opposite direction. What would make it change direction?

 

[snoopy]

Yes I agree, and I'm taking about whether it's a good investment for me to buy one of these.
I know there's always talk of high growth of online sales continuing to outpace that of traditional retail, but this has been true for many years already, yet the domain market growth in going in the opposite direction. What would make it change direction?

There would need to be changes that made domain names more important. Also depends on the style of domain, e.g. Google changes have a big impact on popular keyword domains. Even though online sales are increasing each year there is a fair bit of downward pressure on .com.au domains. Unless you have a definite plan for the domain that you will implement right away I would not suggest investing in .com.au domains.

Look at .com instead.