Liquid domain names are developing into mature tradable assets similar to stocks. The increasing demand from Chinese investors has been a driving force behind their recent growth.
ChaoMi.cc is a website that emerged to help Chinese investors stay informed with the trading activity of certain liquid domain names. It offers a plethora of statistics on the Chinese domain market, updated every 30 minutes. The website is entirely in Chinese, meaning that the translation feature built into most modern browsers will come in handy, or you can use Google Translate.
Much like a stock market ticker, the columns on ChaoMi show the latest price, price variances and changes, yesterday's highest and lowest prices for each category of domains, and the highest and lowest prices for the day before yesterday. Looking to go back further? The rightmost column has a 'Market Trends' link, which shows how prices have fluctuated over the past week with textual data and graphs, along with the domains that were sold and their respective prices. The website also provides information about the volume of transactions near the bottom of the home page. While browsing the site, keep in mind that “red” is used to indicate an increase and “green” denotes a decrease.
The Market Trends pages are also in Chinese, and Google Translate has a tougher time translating those pages. That said, the domain names themselves are shown in English letters and the prices are shown in standard numbers. By looking at the patterns of dates or prices, you can probably figure out which list is the "most recent sales" and which list is the "biggest sales this month." Use the sub-menu along the left column to jump between different categories of names.
There is a learning curve, but it's updated frequently and looks to be as transparent as NameBio or any other tool. It currently gathers its data from Chinese domain marketplaces such as 22.cn and eName, so it's not 100% representative of the market, but it's a great place to start your research and tracking of the Chinese buying sprees that we're all witnessing.
ChaoMi has been an interesting source of direct sales data from the Chinese market. The site only roughly translates into English, but I'm keen to play with its sales data. Let's dig deeper into the numbers below.
Bear in mind:
Data from Nov 18, 2015
The first few things that jumped out at me:
Data from Nov 30, 2015
A few things to note:
Data from Dec 7, 2015
It's important to mention the limitations of ChaoMi's data. While updated frequently, it only looks at a few liquid domain categories. There's no way to track elements like pronounceable names or letters that are Western premium only. It's easier to know what (if any) differences exist between the Chinese market and the Western market, and you might even be able to find a bit of arbitrage between the markets.
Bonus: Chao Mi is a term used for domain speculation (hat tip to DG).
Share your thoughts
Let us know the ways you use ChaoMi's data in the comments.
ChaoMi.cc is a website that emerged to help Chinese investors stay informed with the trading activity of certain liquid domain names. It offers a plethora of statistics on the Chinese domain market, updated every 30 minutes. The website is entirely in Chinese, meaning that the translation feature built into most modern browsers will come in handy, or you can use Google Translate.
Much like a stock market ticker, the columns on ChaoMi show the latest price, price variances and changes, yesterday's highest and lowest prices for each category of domains, and the highest and lowest prices for the day before yesterday. Looking to go back further? The rightmost column has a 'Market Trends' link, which shows how prices have fluctuated over the past week with textual data and graphs, along with the domains that were sold and their respective prices. The website also provides information about the volume of transactions near the bottom of the home page. While browsing the site, keep in mind that “red” is used to indicate an increase and “green” denotes a decrease.
The Market Trends pages are also in Chinese, and Google Translate has a tougher time translating those pages. That said, the domain names themselves are shown in English letters and the prices are shown in standard numbers. By looking at the patterns of dates or prices, you can probably figure out which list is the "most recent sales" and which list is the "biggest sales this month." Use the sub-menu along the left column to jump between different categories of names.
There is a learning curve, but it's updated frequently and looks to be as transparent as NameBio or any other tool. It currently gathers its data from Chinese domain marketplaces such as 22.cn and eName, so it's not 100% representative of the market, but it's a great place to start your research and tracking of the Chinese buying sprees that we're all witnessing.
ChaoMi has been an interesting source of direct sales data from the Chinese market. The site only roughly translates into English, but I'm keen to play with its sales data. Let's dig deeper into the numbers below.
Bear in mind:
- These images are one-time, limited looks at the sales data on the dates specified.
- I've reorganized their data into a slightly more logical format:
- The whole numbers are the average sale price for a particular domain category, not the total volume of sales.
- The percentages are calculated using the column to the left of % of .com and the respective row in the .com column.
- Example for LLL: % of .com to the right of .net is calculated as
12000 / 280000 * 100% = 4.29%
- Example for LLL: % of .com to the right of .net is calculated as
- The whole numbers are the average sale price for a particular domain category, not the total volume of sales.
- I left the prices in Chinese yuan.
- On Nov 18th, 1 USD = 6.37 CNY (divide prices by 6.37 to get the USD price)
- On Nov 30th, 1 USD = 6.39 CNY
- On Dec 7th, 1 USD = 6.40 CNY
- Useful tool: Historical Exchange Rates
- I didn't collect data on .cn or .com.cn since I haven't heard of a way for non-Chinese to register them. (Shout out in the comments if there's a way!)
- I used standard notation of domain categories:
- L represents any letter (a-z), e.g., LLL represents aaa.com to zzz.com
- N represents any number (0-9), e.g., NNN represents 000.com to 999.com
- C represents any characters, e.g., CCC represents 000.com to zzz.com including 0-0.com to z-z.com
- L represents any letter (a-z), e.g., LLL represents aaa.com to zzz.com
Data from Nov 18, 2015
The first few things that jumped out at me:
- I was floored at the premiums being offered for the non- 0 nor 4 strings. 12.6X for 3N, 3.3X for 4N, 3.8X for 5N, and 11.2X for 6N.
- What I called consonants here is 声母, or the initial consonant. I take that to mean no vowels or V's, based on the price difference. (There are plenty of folks on NamePros that know Chinese far better – please comment below if I'm mistaken.)
- I'm surprised how well CCC was doing relative to everything else.
- The classic mantra of ".net is 5% of .com" is sometimes way off. I wouldn't have called .cc as a solid #3 behind .net, though the .org is doing good as well.
Data from Nov 30, 2015
A few things to note:
- Where there are only a few sales registered through their network the prices fluctuate more dramatically (e.g. LLL.org).
- 6N's haven't yet taken off unless they lack a 0 and 4. My best guess here: there's a lot of supply when you get to six numbers, multiplied by the several TLD's ChaoMi tracks.
- .net's are averaging 8.9% of .com's, .org's are averaging about 1.1% when you take out the outlier, and .cc's are averaging 5.3% of .com's.
Data from Dec 7, 2015
It's important to mention the limitations of ChaoMi's data. While updated frequently, it only looks at a few liquid domain categories. There's no way to track elements like pronounceable names or letters that are Western premium only. It's easier to know what (if any) differences exist between the Chinese market and the Western market, and you might even be able to find a bit of arbitrage between the markets.
Bonus: Chao Mi is a term used for domain speculation (hat tip to DG).
Share your thoughts
Let us know the ways you use ChaoMi's data in the comments.
