Uncle Hang, real name is XiaoHang Shen, a very successful investor in China who owns lots of premium domains. He is the co-founder of jinpai.com, the first video domain auction platform.
DN.com: First of all, could you share with us how you started domaining?
Uncle Hang: It was in the year of 1999. I noticed our competitor, a large pallet manufacturing company, was using the domain, pallet.online.sh.cn. Then I found out pallet.com.cn was available for registeration. I spent $75 (￥500 CNY) to register this domain, after realizing how significant domain names are in forming brand influence of a company. At that time, the renewal fee was ￥500 CNY per year. One thing you should know, the per square meter prices in Shanghai was around low four figure CNY fee. Thus, at that time, investing in domain names really required a strong will to take risks.
I did not register many domains back then. Most of them were for my own companies. At the same time, I saw the news that business.com was sold for $7,500,000 USD. Then I started domaining for real. I bought tuopan.com(tuopan means pallet ) for $50 USD and wood.cn for ￥20,000 CNY. Besides, I started browsing domain forums, reading and learning posts and domain veterans’ words and ideas, such as Mike Cai, Michael Yao, etc..
DN.com: Could you share with us several domains you own/owned?
Uncle Hang: Plenty! Actually I am not willing to let go of any domain names that I ever owned. For example, juzi.com (juzi means orange in English), which was bought for ￥105,000 in an auction through 4.cn, taozi.com (taozi means peach ), wenju.com (wenju means stationery), 717.com, 1717.com, 181.com, 129.com, lv.cn, pk.cn, dj.cn, av.com, bao.com, yao.com and more.
DN.com: It seems that you like AV.com a lot, why?
Uncle Hang: Yes. I guess it is because of high sales made by sex.com and porn.com. Industries involving these are really cash cow business. And I think I was lucky to have acquired AV.com from such a big company(Yahoo).
DN.com: What kind of domains are your major investment types? Could you tell us rough data of how you allocate your money in domaining?
Uncle Hang: I mainly invest in numeric domains and short letter domains. I think LLL.com and LLLL.com/.cn domains are promising. As for the rough data, I have 60% of letter domains, known as chips, 20% of numeric domains, and 20% of pinyin domains. I barely invest in new gTLDs. I love premium numeric domains, five or six number domains with nice patterns are acceptable.
DN.com: You have been in domain industry for so long, is there any interesting, touching or life changing stories?
Uncle Hang: Yes. There is one life-changing thing, where my career took a turn. In 2013, 4.cn hosted a conference in Qiandao Lake and John Xu called me. If not for that phone call, I don’t think I would come back to this industry again. And then, I happened to catch up the time when CNNIC released lots of premium domains. At the end of 2013, I switched from traditional industry to Internet industry, that is, domaining. I think most people in domain industry are quite honest and easy to deal with. And switching from traditional industry to Internet is the trend of times.
You may read the complete interview here
DN.com: First of all, could you share with us how you started domaining?
Uncle Hang: It was in the year of 1999. I noticed our competitor, a large pallet manufacturing company, was using the domain, pallet.online.sh.cn. Then I found out pallet.com.cn was available for registeration. I spent $75 (￥500 CNY) to register this domain, after realizing how significant domain names are in forming brand influence of a company. At that time, the renewal fee was ￥500 CNY per year. One thing you should know, the per square meter prices in Shanghai was around low four figure CNY fee. Thus, at that time, investing in domain names really required a strong will to take risks.
I did not register many domains back then. Most of them were for my own companies. At the same time, I saw the news that business.com was sold for $7,500,000 USD. Then I started domaining for real. I bought tuopan.com(tuopan means pallet ) for $50 USD and wood.cn for ￥20,000 CNY. Besides, I started browsing domain forums, reading and learning posts and domain veterans’ words and ideas, such as Mike Cai, Michael Yao, etc..
DN.com: Could you share with us several domains you own/owned?
Uncle Hang: Plenty! Actually I am not willing to let go of any domain names that I ever owned. For example, juzi.com (juzi means orange in English), which was bought for ￥105,000 in an auction through 4.cn, taozi.com (taozi means peach ), wenju.com (wenju means stationery), 717.com, 1717.com, 181.com, 129.com, lv.cn, pk.cn, dj.cn, av.com, bao.com, yao.com and more.
DN.com: It seems that you like AV.com a lot, why?
Uncle Hang: Yes. I guess it is because of high sales made by sex.com and porn.com. Industries involving these are really cash cow business. And I think I was lucky to have acquired AV.com from such a big company(Yahoo).
DN.com: What kind of domains are your major investment types? Could you tell us rough data of how you allocate your money in domaining?
Uncle Hang: I mainly invest in numeric domains and short letter domains. I think LLL.com and LLLL.com/.cn domains are promising. As for the rough data, I have 60% of letter domains, known as chips, 20% of numeric domains, and 20% of pinyin domains. I barely invest in new gTLDs. I love premium numeric domains, five or six number domains with nice patterns are acceptable.
DN.com: You have been in domain industry for so long, is there any interesting, touching or life changing stories?
Uncle Hang: Yes. There is one life-changing thing, where my career took a turn. In 2013, 4.cn hosted a conference in Qiandao Lake and John Xu called me. If not for that phone call, I don’t think I would come back to this industry again. And then, I happened to catch up the time when CNNIC released lots of premium domains. At the end of 2013, I switched from traditional industry to Internet industry, that is, domaining. I think most people in domain industry are quite honest and easy to deal with. And switching from traditional industry to Internet is the trend of times.
You may read the complete interview here
