Have Aussie geographical domains been that successful?

[Jamie-AU]

Back in 2005, auDA had their geographic domain name ballot whereby thousands of city/town/suburb names in Australia under the 2LDs of ".com.au" and ".net.au" were available for the first time to register for $825 for the winner drawn.

From what I read, around 2,700 of these geographical domain names were snapped up during the ballot process, with some of the most highly sought after being those pertaining to Aussie capital cities, like Perth.com.au, Canberra.com.au, Hobart.com.au, etc.

I read in this forum that Hobart.com.au recently sold for $65,000 - obviously a massive premium over its original $825 cost from 7 years ago and a prize investment.

However, that's more of the exception to the rule. You only need to go into Netfleet and see that some of those geo domains bought in the ballot are going for less, most actually have no offers made, and the few that do have offers, are only at around the $100 mark.

Secondly, I am sometimes seeing a few of those geographical domains ending up on auDA's published expiry list and then just eventually being dropped, as I guess the person who first paid $825 is now cutting their losses and not paying further renewal fees.

I personally think most people got a bit too excited with the geographical domain name release, probably expecting to make quick profits or having the value of their domain increase dramatically over time.

After all, people were putting their hand up to pay $825 for the .com.au or .net.au of some extremely obscure towns and even the "north", "south", "east" or "west" versions of residential suburbs within cities which would have little marketing value you would think.

Apart from the high profile ones like capital cities (e.g. Hobart.com.au), large cities (e.g. Newcastle.com.au) and high profile locations (e.g. ByronBay.com.au), was the $825 paid for most of those geographical domains way over the top?

Another point is, many of those high profile names, after 7 years, have provided very little value to the internet. For example, the .com.au's of Newcastle / Perth / Canberra / Toowoomba are filled with generic content about their destinations, and the .com.au of Ballarat and a few others have been snapped up by the local government or tourism organisation of the area to simply provide links to their official site(s) to ensure other people don't take the geo domain.

What are people's general thoughts about the outcomes, now 7 years later, of the 2005 auDA Australian geographic domain name ballot?

 

[DavidL]

Where did you see 2,700 being snapped up? Sounds like a lot to me. I would have thought only a few hundred max would have gone? With probably a lot more going shortly afterwards for usual reg fee.

 

[Jamie-AU]

According to auDA after the ballot:

"In all there were nearly 10,000 applications for over 2700 commercial geographic domain names across Australia"

Reference - http://www.auda.org.au/news-archive/auda-19082005/

 

[DavidL]

Yeah right. That's a lot. If that really is the case, then I agree there would have been a lot of money burnt. But I just can't see it. Perhaps some nutter applied for 2,000 names then bailed when he got the invoice!

I applied for 5 and got one (not Hobart.com.au - that was a later release in 2007) which suggests the actual demand wasn't that great doesn't it?

 

[Jamie-AU]

I applied for 5 and got one (not Hobart.com.au - that was a later release in 2007) which suggests the actual demand wasn't that great doesn't it?

From memory, I applied for about 5 to 10 of them - all the capital cities that were on offer and a few other big cities around Australia. I got none of them. So either I was exceptionally unlucky, or the odds against me were high due to the competition with my popular choices.

Mind you, this ballot process caused a few tricks by bidders. I recall someone registered a whole group of different variations of their business name so they could make multiple bids on highly sought after domains, thus improving their chance of getting the domains of their choice. Apparently this person managed to get 5 of the 20 most bid on geographic domains.

See: http://www.dotau.org/archive/2005-08/0017.html
and: http://www.dotau.org/archive/2005-08/0019.html

 

[johno69]

Oh the good ol' days of e-info

 

[snoopy]

Jamie,

Agree with your general sentiments, though don't know much about the ballot. These names are very difficult to make something out of. The very tourist focused names are far better than the rest because there is at least something to latch onto in terms of hotels. A few years ago there was a lot of domainer talk about geos in the .com area, I haven't heard of anyone whose plans turned out well from that time.

Do a search on Google and pretty much any geo term, eg hobart, sydney, there is no advertisers. If you are going to buy an EMD in the hope of getting a benefit with ranking on a term like say "Melbourne", what is the point of that when the traffic is worth very little? If advertisers can't make it work what is the chances of a domainer or small webmaster making it work? The best hope is resale, all you are really getting is an impressive sounding "brand" with these names unless they are clear tourist names (and almost none are). That could work for a tourist bureau but not someone trying to start a site.

 

[FirstPageResults]

Where did you see 2,700 being snapped up? Sounds like a lot to me. I would have thought only a few hundred max would have gone? With probably a lot more going shortly afterwards for usual reg fee.

You obviously never heard of PlaceNames.com.au then:

The Placenames domain name portfolio, with 1320 geographical domain names, is for sale.

Summary Information

· The domains may be sold in one parcel and are all “.com.au” names.
· These domains include names such as bundaberg.com.au, bega.com.au, blacktown.com.au, frankston.com.au, daydreamisland.com.au, cashmere.com.au, ryde.com.au etc ...
· All 1320 domains are geographic domains that correspond to towns and suburbs in Australia.
· The total population of these related towns and suburbs is over 6 million people.

 

[johno69]

You obviously never heard of PlaceNames.com.au then:

But they are only worth what people will pay for them, and the majority these are still unsold from what I can see.

I have a list of over 4000 Australian suburb .com.au's available for hand reg so they aren't exactly flying off the shelf so to speak.

 

[Jamie-AU]

"The Placenames domain name portfolio, with 1320 geographical domain names, is for sale."

Well, if their entire portfolio came from the auDA ballot of 2005 (although it may not have), that's cost them almost $1.2 million. plus tens of thousands of dollars each 2 years to keep their registrations going. Yet they are considering all offers over $750,000. Looks like a loss to me.

 

[DavidL]

From memory, I applied for about 5 to 10 of them - all the capital cities that were on offer and a few other big cities around Australia. I got none of them. So either I was exceptionally unlucky, or the odds against me were high due to the competition with my popular choices.

Well the latter surely - you had a 1 in 138 chance of getting perth.com.au, a 1 in 93 chance of getting canberra.com.au etc etc?

Mind you, this ballot process caused a few tricks by bidders. I recall someone registered a whole group of different variations of their business name so they could make multiple bids on highly sought after domains, thus improving their chance of getting the domains of their choice. Apparently this person managed to get 5 of the 20 most bid on geographic domains.

See: http://www.dotau.org/archive/2005-08/0017.html
and: http://www.dotau.org/archive/2005-08/0019.html

 

[DavidL]

"The Placenames domain name portfolio, with 1320 geographical domain names, is for sale."

Well, if their entire portfolio came from the auDA ballot of 2005 (although it may not have), that's cost them almost $1.2 million. plus tens of thousands of dollars each 2 years to keep their registrations going. Yet they are considering all offers over $750,000. Looks like a loss to me.

It would seem that way. Shame as he had a few lovely little community sites running at one stage. However I guess it wasn't scalable across all the domains.

 

[FirstPageResults]

No idea what came from the ballot.. just speculating.

But yes - hefty renewal fees. They'd probably be hoping to sell the odd gem here and there to cover them (which looks like they have managed to do to an extent)..

Surpised they haven't managed to sell bega.com.au though

 

[snoopy]

It is a pretty ordinary list with probably some gems sprinkled through it, and you can see the names have been registered for the wrong reason, ie they are ranked on the basis of population. Looking at some of the high populations areas that I know, eg preston.com.au, frankston.com.au, balwynnorth.com.au (major confusion problem as I think it is more commonly described as north balwyn). I'm not really sure why anyone would buying preston.com.au or balwynnorth.com.au, really low odds I think.

 

[geodomains]

In the last ballot of geodomains that were released, it was $825 for any you wanted and then normal reg fees for those that did not pay the premium.

I picked up heaps for normal reg fee and also spent $15k on premium domains.

I have always gone after popular holiday spots as you always have a way to monitise the domain.

The geodomains that work are usually those that live and breath in the location and can drum up local business.

So for a domainer to make money out of a geodomain it is hard, but for someone living in the area, it can be a goldmine.

Don

 

[Jamie-AU]

I'm not really sure why anyone would buying preston.com.au or balwynnorth.com.au, really low odds I think.

As Preston or Balwyn North have very little tourism or visitor appeal, I think the only people that may be interested in those domains are perhaps real estate agents.

And yes, ranking geo domains on population is really only relevant when you're outside of city metro areas. Some suburbs in Melbourne are of such a vast size that they equal or surpass that of regional cities. Just look at the Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverley - a population approaching 40,000 at the last census. That's roughly what Mildura has, and you would expect the value of Mildura.com.au would be immensely larger than GlenWaverley.com.au.

 

[payattention]

PlaceNames sell individually as well - I recently purchased LakeIllawarra.com.au from them because I live in the area and I've been watching how the LIA has built things up over the years and the current debate that is going on from moving on from commercial fishing to a tourism model.

Like Don says, being local to the area to the domain you own helps. I'm still putting together some plans for the LI domain but I've got time. I purchased this geo domain on the basis that Wollongong is going down the drain, everything is moving to Shellharbour and the lake is growing in popularity. Once the marina is built nearby, tourism should really explode.

 

[Blue Wren]

PlaceNames sell individually as well - I recently purchased LakeIllawarra.com.au from them because I live in the area and I've been watching how the LIA has built things up over the years and the current debate that is going on from moving on from commercial fishing to a tourism model.

Like Don says, being local to the area to the domain you own helps. I'm still putting together some plans for the LI domain but I've got time. I purchased this geo domain on the basis that Wollongong is going down the drain, everything is moving to Shellharbour and the lake is growing in popularity. Once the marina is built nearby, tourism should really explode.

I purchased a northern Illawarra geo from them too.