If A .US Domain At Best Is Only Worth 1% of a .Com and 25% Of A .CA Why Bother?
I’m sure this will piss off a whole group of folks who invest in .US domains, but looking through the Snapnames.com .US domain auction closing tomorrow , July 8th at 3:15pm, I couldn’t help but notice that Slots.Us is at auction with a reserve of $58,830 or roughly 1% of what the .com just sold for, or just over 25% of what Slots.ca just sold for.
Candy.US is another domain for sale in this auction with a reserve price of just over $14K.
We all know the Domain King sold Candy.com for $3M, making the .US domain available for just 1/2 of 1% of the .com price.
And neither slots.us or candy.us may sell.
So when your looking at other lower priced .US domains, what exactly is the upside?
The fact that an identical .Ca domain sold for 4x what the owner of Slots.Us would be happy selling his domain for says a lot about the extension especially considering the population of the United States is about 10X more than Canada.
It’s certainly not a “new” extension and if it couldn’t make it in the universe of competing with 21 TLD’s and a less than 200 ccTLD’s how it is going to bloom once there are 500 TLD’s and 200 ccTLD’s?
So for all of you .US investors tell me what is upside to this extension?
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Ehow uses the .us to point tragic to their .com. In regards to spamming, I don’t see how listing a few domain names qualify as spamming. One commentor requested others to list their .us domains.
Essentially, the discussion is on the .us extension. As of right now, the .us seems to generate interest on Sedo. They consistently move .us domains. I prefer to disregard the .us, and don’t plan to acquire the extension no matter what the domain name is available.
The .com always sells for much higher than its worth. It is the preferred brand. Slots.com is only worth $5 million to the company that acquired the domain. I’m sure a few others would have paid a similar amount.
Even the .org domains such as blackjack and poker have sold for large amounts. A company purchased the .info version of coupons to forward traffic to their coupon website. Every company has their own strategy as to how they want to advertise their product and services.
YOU CANNOT go by what was or whatever! A domin is worth what the EYES and MIND of the beholder wants it to be. For instance I think slots.us is worth MUCH more then $58,000!!! If I needed a slots domain and had was a decent sized company personally I would pay $250,000 or more for this! SO PEOPLE STOP this BS about this domain sold for this and that which make this worth that and this! BS! I say to the DOMAIN INVESTOR WORLD stops treating yourself like a CHEAP BIMB! Raise the stakes EVERYONE should and the value will increase! As long as we still have YOYO fools selling for pocket change we will face this NONSENSE!
“premature evaluator” , lol !!
Looks like flights.us has a bid at $12,270.
I would expect some of the others to shoot up in the last few minutes..
I think the comments about DEVELOPMENT are right on the money.
If this was the .com that would be a million dollar domain – and most names like that will never come on the market.
Obviously type-ins are a lot lower than the dot-coms, but as standalone names for developed sites, I still think the best dot-US domains seem far more impressive than multipleword dot-coms, and far more credible than other alternative extensions such as .biz
Hoping to sneak in at the last minute for one I have my eye on..
Gah, I was keeping an eye on vegashotels.us but it’s shot up over a grand in the last few minutes. Good luck to whoever ends up with it.
vegashotels was a good one. I had a bid in for debtconsolidation but it went over my limit. Best of luck to the winners!
Neustar leads in security, so it might be nice to own a handful .us/.biz just in case .com/.net goes belly up, due to Verisign’s destructive greed.
In my humble opinion, .US has been flatlining for the last 3/4 years.
You can measure it by the level of interest by domainers on all the main forums and by the availability of two word combination names available.
Even .TV has overtaken .US if the yardstick to measure this by would be unavailable .tvs VS available .US.
I own a number of good keyword .US names. Never had an offer in the last four years on any of them. Not a peep.
So to answer Mikes question whats the upside to owning a .US – the answer is that there is very little downside available. So the only way is up…baby…
well im happy with what i picked up. I think the .us ccTLD is a sleeping giant. I only have a few but with the ones i do are very short and brandable. If its a domain hack, then even better for branding. Sadly americans see the .com as the US TLD.
@James Barclay – Flatlining for 3/4 years? No.
Between Feb 2009 and July 2010, the .US address has added 338,764 new registrations. That is a 24.4% increase in less than 1.5 years. To the contrary, .US is gaining in adoption.
Here are the official results of the Snapnames.com Auction of .US domains:
Total: $42,127
flights.us $11,770.00
airlinetickets.us $3,600.00
creditreports.us $3,600.00
psychics.us $2,915.00
gadgets.us $2,050.00
dayspas.us $1,756.00
debtconsolidation.us $1,600.00
vegashotels.us $1,551.00
therapists.us $1,280.00
personalloans.us $1,265.00
detox.us $1,230.00
carpenter.us $1,180.00
now.us $1,050.00
upgrade.us $890.00
recalls.us $605.00
scooters.us $600.00
luxuryhotels.us $590.00
surveillance.us $590.00
eagle.us $480.00
abs.us $400.00
giant.us $375.00
amo.us $325.00
login.us $325.00
collegeeducation.us $300.00
flushots.us $300.00
heatingandair.us $300.00
seat.us $300.00
spamblocker.us $300.00
weightlosspills.us $300.00
wirelessprinters.us $300.00
Neither Slots.US or Candy.US sold
Whats the point of reposting some of the lower ones when domainers are trying to sell them for a decent price?
Shahram
These are the actual selling prices of the domains from this auction.
Not sure what you are talking about “reposting some of the lower ones”
I know. Its just that your site has good SEO. I hate it when youre trying to sell a domain and someone shows you a post of the auctioned amount. So i can see posting the sold amount for the Higher priced domains. As for the ones 1k and under really dont need to be mentioned.
Shahram
This info came from Moniker, it is official and it will be released by them shortly to all news sources
To add insult to injury the domain Webcam.us sold today on Sedo.com for $1,500 while the .com sold for $1M over a year ago.
As i said not sure what the upside is on these domains, but with limited resources to go around not sure this is the best place to invest
http://sedo.com/auction/auction_history.php?language=us&auction_id=102902&tracked=&partnerid=26309&language=us
I agree! Do NOT invest in .us — just let all your .us domain names expire. Thank you!
@sharam – why would you hate official results being published? The market has spoken and the market is what it is.
If you try and sell a domain, instead of trying to cover up the market value and to an extent – pull the wool over the eyes of a potential buyer – try selling them on the potential of the extension, rather than its existing value.
I dont consider auction results fair market value. Savvy Buyers know where to look and the first to invest. I dont mind official results being published if they sold for a much greater market value. What would strike your interest more? a Domain i sold for $500 or a domain that went for 15k?
@MHB – “not sure what the upside is on these domains”
Mike, I can hardly believe what I’m reading. You seem to have chosen to take a very narrow view for a guy that I thought had a broad view on opportunity and domain market evolution. Sadly for me, your post and position is decidedly anti .US. I never had you in the .com “purist” category.
Is it .US (in particular) that you don’t like, or all the non-com extensions? If it’s just .US in particular, how do you justify being such an advocate for .me at the exclusion of other more successful tld’s?
I agree with Shahram, Americans see .com as the U.S. country code.
I think the mistake many domainers are making is looking at things from a domainer point of view. You must look at things from a consumer point of view because they are the ones who will ultimately decide the success of an extension.
The extensions I feel are worthless are .us, .tel, .travel and .aero. The extensions I feel will be losing ground are .org and .net. These last two extensions are good for reselling purposes because they do carry higher resell prices than most extensions.
The .com extension in my view is the 800 pound guerilla. But it too is losing ground abroad to country codes. It will remain the 800 pound guerilla in America.
Although I believe country codes are the best choice overall for coutries around the world, I feel that the U.S. is in a unique situation. We were the first country to use the internet; the .com extension is deeply ingrained in the psyche of Americans.
I want you all to look at the following website:
http://www.DailyDomains.com
Look at the total number of domains registered under each extension. You can clearly see that with 88 million domains registered, .com is the undisputed winner. If you look at .net and .org and .info, things get deceptive. This is because .com, .net and .org came out 16 years before .info. having said that, .info is exploding in growth compared to .net and .org.
Finally lets look at .biz and .us. These two extensions came out 6 months after .info (September 2001) and as you can see they are faring very poorly companred to the .info extension. From January 1, 2010 to July 1, 2010, 1.1 million additional .info domains were registered. Don’t shoot me, the messanger, look for yourself.
The .us extension is worthless.
Shahram,
You are basically saying you are a lowballer so you can flip the domain for a huge profit.
You’d rather he pay top dollar and sell for a slim margin? I don’t think we should be ashamed of what we paid for a domain nor do I think it should have any bearing on the price we charge.
Mike here is a future vision of the internet, which will continue to grow, independent of .com or new commercial gTLDs.
http://bytelevel.com/map/images/ccTLD_1000_shadow.jpg.
Dot-com is still sold out, internet is still growing, and not everyone knows a Rick or Monte:)
Also seems to me the more TLDs there are, the more .US makes sense for those in the US, not the other way around.
Max
I’m negative on the .US extension.
You ask how can I be bullish on .Me while negative on .US.
Several reasons.
.Me is less than 2 years old.
The jury is out.
Not enough time has passed to see where it will go so it has potential.
Of course its a new extension and it could ultimately flop, but that’s more of a risk reward question.
.US has been out for a LONG time and has not enjoyed success either in the domain aftermarket nor in saturation of use.
.Me is less of a ccTLD, and more of a hack, which is a whole different ballgame.
“a broad view on opportunity and domain market evolution”
I can have this and still not like .US
People, The .us is low laid due to US adopt .com as there ccTLD. But, if you think how the web is transforming the ccTLD will rule later. At that time .us will be sold for more than .com.
I bet on it and my advise to the .US owners is to hold them. It is a long term investment!
Have fun . . .
The answer to all of this is actually pretty straight-forward.
For names like Slots or Poker or Forex or other category killing, one or two word .com generics with keywords relevant to highly lucrative affiliate programs- that probably get a shitload of type-in traffic- it’s not hard to understand why those names bring those prices. Because they earn. A lot. Obviously, .us names don’t get type-ins.
Ya know, ‘domainers’, for whatever savviness they might posses, are often times some of the most hilariously clueless monkeys I’ve ever encountered. They own these domain names, but in so many cases, don’t understand shit about how the internet works, how websites work, how search engines work, how people are apt to consume online, etc… All of these factors and many, many more are immensely relevant to the discussions they have (or try to have), yet they focus on only the shallowest and most ephemeral dynamics, usually related to the domain name alone and ignoring everything else… It’s like discussing a new car but only talking about the knobs on the radio.
My interest in .us comes from development and how it performs in search, period. I’ve been using them for a while, had fantastic success with them. I don’t care what ‘domainers’ think about them. In the year 2010, ‘domainers’ are only relevant to each other anyway. If you were focusing on domains in 1995, you were way ahead of the curve. If you’re focusing on domains in 2010, you’re watching the pack from behind as they rapidly disappear over the horizon.
If my developed .us names stop performing- if they’re disadvantaged in the engines and people stop clicking, buying or whatever- I’ll be sure to report back. In the meantime, I wouldn’t mind- at all- if they’re left alone by ‘domainers’.
To be certain, buying some category-killing one-word .us name is going to be nigh impossible to rank for, without a ten year soak and an epic marketing budget, but for other phrases? Well, I’m getting too close to teaching the monkeys about fire, so I’ll just shut up now…
Oh, and let me just caveat to the above- .us is not .com, nor will it ever be. There isn’t an undeveloped .us name I own that I wouldn’t instantly trade for those same keywords in .com… however, if you believe search engines will remain relevant in the years to come, well, again… I’ll just shut up now. You all think whatever you want and pat yourself on the back for earning nickels and dimes with parked .com names while I earn fives and tens with developed ccTLDs.
We’ve all seen this movie before.
A bunch of .US “investors” sit on their a$$es all day long “talking their book”, posting on every domain blog/forum WHILE they WAIT for OTHER deep pocketed end users to spend heavily marketing to make it a success & to ‘lift all boats’ in .US…and in turn their 100 .US “portfolio.
I think it’s safe to say that the typical heavy .US “investor” is a johnny-cum-lately get-rich-quick type with a net worth of < $10,000.
Then when they make a 4 fig sale they brag about the awesome ROI %…neglecting to mention the other 99% that never get inquiries. Not a sniff.
The sad thing is if & when any .US site becomes wildly popular the owners then decide they need to acquire the .COM…which defeats the object of the exercise.
Now, where were the pikers on this board to pay $58,000 for slots.us or ???
Yup, all talk & no money. They've decided with their wallets.
As is usual, nearly every .US "investor" is a SELLER who has tons of inventory to sell (you lot will all have received recent email spam from certain large .US owners wanting to "let things go").
As for those .US domainer BUYERS they are pikers, wanting to pay less than < $500 for TOP KEYWORDS.
All talk, no action
Once the industry finally evloves beyond Wholesale Domainer Auctions at Wholesale Domainer Prices and large cap end users become commonplace, the country codes should start lining up right behind .com.
It stands to reason that .US will wind up in the upper ranks of that hierarchy.
It’s long term …we may all have gray hair by then.
LS
For a domain investor I don’t think .us will ever be a .ca much less a . Com
The Future:
.COM
.DE
.CN
.US
.UK
.CA
http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/
Place Your Bets. Prepare To Hold.
How about the new 500 extensions coming
Slots.com and Candy.com were both extreme end user sales. You can’t compare end user sales to reseller value. These domains also showed minimal traffic at the time of sale*. That is a stiff price to pay for a brand and minimal traffic.
.US is a value play. It brings top tier keywords into the price range of many buyers. Most buyers are much smaller and can’t afford millions for a domain. It is a good bang for the buck option.
I feel many domainers who only operate at the highest end of the market do not fully understand the demand for keywords at lower levels in the current market.
As far as the new extensions go – this is not some 5th tier gTLD. This is the ccTLD of the richest country on Earth. I like the long term potential because of that.
There is money to be made in the current .US market for premium keywords and premium keywords in solid ccTLD will always have demand. It is all about ROI.
* From Compete
Candy.com – 6/2009 – 5,713 hits
Slots.com – 4/2010 – 12,188 (Had been 5K – 8K before a ramp up to the sale)
The new 500 extensions coming …Bells & Whistles.
Economic global power of countries will determine outcome.
Country codes will categorize Internet.
@MHB – Mike, saturation of use is a subjective term. It is not a .com world. Other tld’s have established a position on the net and .US is definitely in that pack.
You are ignoring .US growth (the stats I posted refute the stagnation claim). This is the type of organic growth that demonstrates growing success with the tld. .US is utilized and has an imprint. The jury is in. It’s not a speculation play.
Comparing .me with .US is not even do-able. .me is an obscure domain if ever & nowhere near the relevance of the .US space. Neither of these extensions have peaked.
@John A – comparing .US to .INFO or other gTLDs simply by looking at # of registrations is an invalid comparison. Not only is .US restricted, it’s almost exclusively going to be used in an english speaking country. If you add just the languages spoken in Europe (for languages where .info makes sense anyway), you should expect to see .INFO registrations at very high multiples of .US. That doesn’t diminish the value of .US or increase the value of .INFO. It just is what it is.
While I like and invest in .INFO, the other thing to consider is that it’s the cheapest extension which is what “spammers” look for and having watched .INFO and .US drops for over a year, I can tell you that .INFO certainly has more than it’s fair share of nefarious registrations.
@Aggro – it’s funny, but your description of .US “investors” sounds a lot like what people said of .COM “investors” not that many years ago. There are multiple reasons why “investors” didn’t open their wallets to the tune of $50k+ yesterday for a single domain, and that’s because with that same $50k they could have bought every one of the other 29 names that sold for less than that one name was asking for. It’s a matter of effective use of principal and not a game to show who can spend the most money on a single domain. Will we get to the point where slots.us sells for more than $50k? I honestly think we will be there sooner than you think, but I for one am happy with the results of the auction yesterday.
Andrew Douglas:
Nice try but no cigar! Of the 6.6 million .info’s registered, more than 53% are registered in North America not Europe. Having said that, you still have 3.3 million domain names registered under .info versus 1.7 .us domains.
You stated that .info’s are the cheapest domain names to buy but what you failed to mention is that these same domain names have an 80% renewal rate at the regular price. You can find this information at the top of page #10 of the Afilias annual report:
http://www.info.info/webfm_send/99.
This report also points out that you have a higher percentage of spammers using .com extensions than .info’s.
I think a lot of .us investors were late to the game and are living in their own world.
Firstly,
MHB is expressing an opinion, a judgement call on the extension – there is nothing personal or point scoring by calling an ext as not worth investing in. Why are the .us crowd so defensive?
It reminds me of when I use to be really defensive about .TV (which I believe today proves me right that it is on an upward trajectory) and would get involved in heated debate about .tv and would not listen to any criticism.
There is nothing wrong with an opinion. The fact that MHB “has good SEO” should not mean that he cannot give an honest evaluation of his take on .US.
Its like telling the news stations to keep quiet about all the Toyota recalls cause it is causing problems for the Toyota car dealers to sell their inventory…..
@Greg Slaughterbeck
Thank you! Just landed CaymanIslands.US and CaymenIslands.US!
It will be some time before I am able to do any development or build-out, but these domains are now on the long list.
I don’t know too many .us folk who are ‘defensive’ about .us. You just find that there are people who are using it, or making money off it and can’t help but laugh at the consistency of the lame polemics thrown out there by a bunch of people who don’t have the slightest clue what they’re talking about…
So much of ‘domaining’ has become about tired, old dogmas that no longer apply. You learn in investing that when people start saying the paradigm is busted and the old rules no longer apply, they’re on the precipice of being shown otherwise… You learn in tech that people who cling to the past are destined to become a relic of it.
To be certain, pure-play domaining was a time-sensitive affair and those who got in early and got in big won in grand fashion. They do enjoy a fantastic position and a big, big advantage, however, the sands are shifting in a lot of ways and needless to say, a lot of people with firmly entrenched positions refuse (or, don’t want to) see it. It happens in every area of interest; things change, people who succeed using one method are eventually left behind because they use methods that used to work in evolved situations that are different…
My interest is how does light-to-mid-scale developed ccTLDs fit into an evolving search landscape… How do those domains allow me to filter my published content for certain keywords, topics and people… I couldn’t care less how Davey-Domainer has done with reselling .us names on SEDO.
Like I said… If I stop running black with developed .us, I’ll be the first to say. Otherwise, less said better.
For people who are buying .us domain names, holding them and doing nothing with them, I have no idea what to say to them or how they’re performing. To be honest, I don’t know what to say to people who own .com names and do that, either. Not my game.
Meh, I had an error in the above post… I did a semi-edit and forgot to complete it… This should read like this.
“It happens in every area of interest; things change, people who succeed using one method are eventually left behind because they continue to use methods that no longer work in situations that have evolved…”
Sorry. Grammatical OCD.
There’s not enough meaningful .com’s to go around, and that’s getting worse because new names are always needed.
At the same time, ccTLDs are just getting started.
.US is the ccTLD for the USA.
The fact that it has been overlooked due to .com success is a very good thing if you think domain growth will outstrip .com growth. Currently .com trends down (not enough good product) and ccTLDs trend up (the net meets geography and gets local). Also .US has been amongst the fastest growing ccTLDs in recent years I think.
When there are 500 TLDs, meaningful letters are even more important. .US means USA, and thats a pretty good anchor.
This TLD continues to ripen, IMHO.
.us is useless, Americans assume that .com essentially belongs to USA.
If you had a .la, .mn, .al, .ma or another cctld that matches a US state then you can make a better argument.
I agree that many people think .com is mainly a U.S. tld which is wrong. (as we all know.)
However, all of the prime words in .com are taken and require a major capital investment. Whereas, the same term in .us is a lot less and probably just as effective for a small business user.
Does the local sub shop need to have a prime .com domain?
(.ie, SubShop ,com) Probably not.
If they can get their tradename in .com that would be great.
(.ie, MikesSubShop ,com)
But, it would serve them just as well to own
SubShop ,us or SubShop ,biz .
And, a lot less cost than owning the prime .com
Naturally, if they are a national or global sub shop then they
need to own Subs ,com or SubShop ,com . (and MikesSubs ,com)
But, at that point, they are a mulit-million/billion dollar company
so they should be willing to pay for the prime real estate.
Does a one store retailer need to be on prime strip on Michigan Ave. (Chicago), 5th Ave. (NYC), or Rodeo Dr. (LA)?
Couldn’t Mike’s Dollar Store be on a less prime piece of real estate?
Hi @LS Morgan, it’s interesting, what you said. Would you email me, so I ask you about your .us domains? Louise [at] TaskDomains .com
This discussion has got me excited about LowSodiumDiet.us, and LowSodium.us, which I registered and want to develop a no salt empire. Out of weedy, hyphenated .coms and .nets, wasn’t sure which to move forward on.
Mike, not sure if any has brought this up (only read through the first several comments yet) but it seems like theres another way to look. could be that .us is a good buy right now. the guy who picked up WebCam.us for $1.5 k, whose to say he will not be laughing to the bank in 2-3 years if/when he flips it for $25k. Maybe the next person to pick it up will flip it for $100k another 2-3 years after that. there is your upside right there. its a question of whether it will happen. but based on the comparative price to other TLDs alone does not seem like a great yardstick for evaluating whether an extension is ‘alive or dead’. the fact that they are selling so low could simply mean that they are undervalued right now. just like a stock. you really need to look at a lot of other indicators imho, like the fundamentals, otherwise your liable to be following the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ and that is not always good
Rather than focus on exactly how .US has been performing in the aftermarket, let’s take a look at the “big picture”.
Take a look at Ron’s DNjournal.com sales charts.
Some years ago, I believe those weekly sales charts were listed in this order:
1. The DN Journal Top 20
2. Global Contenders Top 20
3. Country Code Top 20
Country Code domains sales started increasing so much, the order of the charts was changed.
Now, Country Code Top 20 is the second category.
It is also increasingly common to see country code domains listed in the top category: The DN Journal Top 20
Take a look at this weeks report. There are 9 country codes sales in the Top 40 chart: http://dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm
So, I guess you could say …
The British are coming!
So are the Germans.
So are the Chinese.
So are the Canadians.
And, so on.
Yeah, .US has been Draggin’ Ass for too many years. But, there is no logical reason that the country code of the United States shouldn’t Eventually catch up to the rest of the pack. Even though it sure feels like it’s never gonna’ happen.
So is there any way on SEDO or anywhere to view a list of all .us domains for sale or auction?
estibot’s domain sales history is probably the best there is, but understand that many sales go unreported – especially in the 3 figure range.