Dynadot

analysis .UK Buyers Have Overpaid

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Individuals who purchased recently released .uk domain names from auction have overpaid. They will either lose money or brake even, the probability of turning a profit is at around zero.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
We are domain investors and we know domains and extensions, so we automatically assume other people and business pay attention to this.
The problem is that many domainers approach extensions outside .COM using .COM valuation rules and expectations. This can result in a very limited view of the dynamics in these extensions. What makes .UK different is that its natural competition is from within the .UK ccTLD rather than outside (.COM etc).

The sad reality is that probably most people and businesses in the UK are probably not even putting this together. They have a website and a domain and they give it no other thought.
That's where the argument over switching costs arises. A .co.uk owner has a site and an e-mail address(es). If they have a business site then they've probably invested in business cards, logos etc. They may have built a brand and their customers know that brand. Switching to the shorter form will have hidden costs.

In a few years when .uk becomes more prevalent they will see the light and wonder if their .co.uk is available as a shorter .uk. They will be surprised to see a domain investor own it and at that time the haggling will begin.
If it is a generic name, that argument may be OK. However, Nominet has its own dispute resolution process. ( https://www.nominet.uk/domain-support/uk-domain-disputes/ )

Regards...jmcc
 
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The values of .co.uk and .ca have actually declined. That is what I mean by not doing well.

They are not declining for me increasing more for co.uk at least :xf.smile:
 
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inked dotuk - sold for less than 400 quid. That is a bargain imo and will be worth much more in time if the UK does adopt .uk over co.uk.
 
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I pulled out of investing into the .uk in the "last minute" I rather stop sticking my nose into a market I don't know much about. I also personally believe there is not much space for profit, unless you brought at reg fee and sell to another domainer. How come so many .co.uk owners never claimed all the decent .uk domains? There must be a reason.
 
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I pulled out of investing into the .uk in the "last minute" I rather stop sticking my nose into a market I don't know much about. I also personally believe there is not much space for profit, unless you brought at reg fee and sell to another domainer. How come so many .co.uk owners never claimed all the decent .uk domains? There must be a reason.


At reg fee or at a small purchase price.
 
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.co.uk market has been depressed since the consultation over the .uk extension over 5 years ago. I never supported the introduction of .uk and don't think it was handled well by Nominet. But prices now being attained for .uk domains are fairly modest compared to the drop in .co.uk values over the past 5 years. It seems to me that most domain investors in the UK are warming to the .uk extension and there is a chance to pick up some really nice domains at modest prices. I think prices will hold up, and .uk domains will get developed, and newer businesses are already using the .uk.
 
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.co.uk market has been depressed since the consultation over the .uk extension over 5 years ago. I never supported the introduction of .uk and don't think it was handled well by Nominet.
The confusion and changing regulations damaged it. It was going to be priced at a multiple of .co.uk domain names. Then the admin contact thing and acceptance of postboxes as valid addresses caused more problems. I ran a survey on all 01 July 2019 .UK domain names to see how they are being used. I should have some stats over the weekend. There were only 2M active .UK domain names and the rest had no nameservers and were not in the zone.

Was watching BoJo being made PM yesterday and one of the large protest banners used a .UK domain name. There does seem to be some usage but that land grab by some registrars to protect their registrant's .co.uk etc hasn't helped.

Just thinking about the way that Brexit is being dealt with, the .UK could actually be the right subdomain at the right time for those in favour. It would take a bit of marketing though and Nominet would have to be strictly apolitical.

Regards...jmcc
 
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I see some value here.

Previously I was down on .co.uk or whatever it is now.

I checked my parking earnings and was surprised to see a few co.uk's there. Not a dead cat! These prices are certainly not exorbitant.
 
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The resale market for .uk is tiny. The purchase prices at auction were quite high.

You say the market is tiny but it looks like there are plenty of people willing to pay premium prices for these domains. What is it that you think will happen between now (when the domains we (re-)sold), and when the domains are again resold, that will suddenly decrease the current demand and drive the current prices down?

Don't make the mistake of thinking that because India has 16 times as many people as the UK that there is 16 times the demand. UK has the same GDP as India, meaning people make 16 times as much money there. There are way more businesses and people who can afford premium prices on domains, so to me that sounds like a larger market for domains like these, hence the higher price.
 
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The .UK as it was in the survey of 01 July 2019 .UK domain names (2,105,158)

Content: 2.02%
No content: 42.45%
Templated content: 10.52% (PPC, sales, affiliates)
Redirects: 13.68%
No Site Response: 31.32%

There are 23 different categories of usage in this survey so I've simplified it a bit. Most of the matched domain name redirects are rediirecting to .co.uk as one would expect.

Regards...jmcc
 
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IMHO:

1. .com rules unless you're a UK-based business, but I would still prefer .com to .co.uk/.uk personally.

2. .uk was a vast money-making exercise in extortion by Nominet and cost many UK domainers their businesses and livelihoods.

3. The ROR releases generated a huge FOMO.

Another excellent UK sales checker:

https://seemly.co.uk/domains/prices
 
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Lol idk thats why i asked
I have a bunch and on 4.cn as well. I think you definately need to be a Chinese speaker to crack those numbers. Lucky numbers alone don't seem to work.
 
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I have a bunch and on 4.cn as well. I think you definately need to be a Chinese speaker to crack those numbers. Lucky numbers alone don't seem to work.
All i know is they dont like 0 &4 and double and triple numbers are the bomb
 
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The .UK as it was in the survey of 01 July 2019 .UK domain names (2,105,158)

Content: 2.02%
No content: 42.45%
Templated content: 10.52% (PPC, sales, affiliates)
Redirects: 13.68%
No Site Response: 31.32%

There are 23 different categories of usage in this survey so I've simplified it a bit. Most of the matched domain name redirects are rediirecting to .co.uk as one would expect.

Regards...jmcc

Are you sure all of those are redirecting to .co.uk? I ask this because a person or script analyzing .UK domains may well have forgotten not to include the websites that are forcing redirects to the WWW subdomain, which is standard practice these days. 13% seems pretty high to me otherwise.

Most of the names in question are not "brands" but simply keywords, and it's unlikely someone with webserver.co.uk is also going to need to spend a premium on webserver.uk, since Webserver is not a company name.

I would be interested to see examples of businesses that redirect their .uk domains to .co.uk.
 
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Are you sure all of those are redirecting to .co.uk? I ask this because a person or script analyzing .UK domains may well have forgotten not to include the websites that are forcing redirects to the WWW subdomain. 13% seems pretty high to me.
The top 10 matched (same domain name stub in other TLDs) redirects 8.89% are:
.co.uk 167,249 (7.94%)
.com 12,869
.org.uk 3,977
.org 546
.net 505
.eu 382
.me.uk 320
.de 277
.co 207
.nl 176

The external TLD redirects which don't match the domain names in other TLDs: 19,388 (0.93%)

The internal (same site) redirects are at 0.84%

The HTTPS redirects (the site redirects to the HTTPS version) are at 1.54%.

The same zone redirects are at 1.12%

Unclassified redirects are at 0.36%.

The .CO.UK subdomain is the most used subdomain in the ccTLD. This pattern of brand protection redirects is exactly what would be expected with a newly launched TLD or subdomain targeting the same market.

Most of the names in question are not "brands" but simply keywords, and it's unlikely someone with webserver.co.uk is also going to need to spend a premium on webserver.uk, since Webserver is not a company name.
The .UK domain names are quite diverse and though there are generic domain names in the set, many are not generic. This is a survey of all 2,105,428 .UK domain names and their websites. There were 3,605,478 .UK domain names registered but 1,500,050 were not in the zonefile as they had no nameservers.

I would be interested to see examples of businesses that redirect their .uk domains to .co.uk.
That would require surveying the non .UK domain names and their websites. That's approximately 9.24 million domain names.

Regards...jmcc
 
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I would be interested to see examples of businesses that redirect their .uk domains to .co.uk.

Here's one https://hsbc.uk

Doh it seems that this doesn't work, it only works if you type hsbc.uk into chrome and press enter.
 
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