NNNNN.com Bought Out and Drops Falling

[rkbdomain]

NNNNN.com's have been all registered since the beginning of October and the average daily drops have fallen from around 54.8 drops per day before the buyout to 46.2 after the buyout, and only 40.1 so far in December.

 

[FX]

are these worth anything? I have around 20 coming up for renewal no bad Chinese numbers mostly all 8's

whats the going prices of these?

 

[rkbdomain]

Check out the nnnnndomains blog for auction results from 4.cn, there's been a lot of sales this year (mostly numbers with repeating digits, but you can find random numbers selling as well) so you can see what prices are like.

 

[HcDomains]

are these worth anything? I have around 20 coming up for renewal no bad Chinese numbers mostly all 8's

whats the going prices of these?

For 5N.coms, the price are very varied for each name depends on it has some special meaning in Chinese or not. It is impossible to answer your question unless know exactly what is your domains

 

[rkbdomain]

I recently checked registration data on 500 random NNNNN.com's. Since the last time I checked in August of 2011, the percentage of these domains registered for just one year has dropped from 31% to 20% (around 31k to 20k). This increase in multi-year registration has coincided with the buyout sticking.

That is a huge drop, showing that recent registrants have been renewing their domains at higher rates than usual. On the nnnnndomains blog I speculate as to reasons for this, but I think in particular the buyout sticking is encouraging recent registrants to renew, the existence of 4.cn as a place to buy and sell numerics, and the recent sale of 41186.com for $16,000 probably helps as well, along with other factors.

 

[WORDSWORTH]

Interesting to see they are all bought out. Is anyone here currently making good returns on these?

I sold a fair few of these for reasonable returns during and after the last buyout, but just don't see average to poor NNNNN.com domains as being very liquid or profitable at the moment - unless someone can prove me wrong!

Just wondering what NNNNN'ers think of my last one which I consider to be above average and a fairly easy $20 - $30+ sell to resellers (I won't be selling for that amount though):

28382.com

I bought it because it's a US Zip Code with detailed city-data.com stats, is attractive (a palindrome), has repeat lucky 8's and no unlucky 4's.

 

[rkbdomain]

Price right now is still relatively low for random numbers on 4.cn, you will see $10-$30 for auctions of these. I don't think it has reached the point where they are liquid and can be sold regardless of the number like NNNN.nets or LLLL.coms. But then again I haven't tried. I don't have a qq account and don't speak Chinese, maybe you can quickly sell the domains for around reg fee in certain forums in China.

I am holding my portfolio now, it gets decent traffic while I wait for prices to rise. I have also seen a lot of bidding on some numbers following the big 41186.com sale in the last few months. I've sold a few but am generally holding because I think the market is likely to be much better for sellers a year from now than it is right now, given registration trends and the buyout sticking.

I was wrong the last time, the previous buyout didn't stick. So don't necessarily follow me on this one. But that said, I think there are big differences between the last buyout and this one.

The last one was done in a month by western domainers (myself included) buying 20k domains in one fell swoop following the LLLL craze, and the LLLL craze began to crash right afterwards, as did the US real estate market (think zip code interest plummetting...) so wasn't the best timing.

Now the buyout is based on steady registration trends among Chinese domainers (who actually use the domains) over the last three years, and I think it is much stronger and sustainable. The "float" for these domains is tiny. Marchex owns about 40%. About 10% are already developed sites. That leaves only around 50,000 domains, and many of these have been registered for multiple years, some for over a decade.

It is just not easy to get your hands on NNNNN's these days (I know this first hand, as I am getting killed in the dropcatching battles by Chinese domainers recently!). Whereas a year ago I was able to catch nice domains without much difficulty.

 

[WORDSWORTH]

Don't worry. I knew that the former buyout didn't hold. I was buying during and after (mostly palindromes, other novelty numbers and Zip Codes) and sold all but three domains before it failed.

Out of interest, as you seem to be a major player, how many are you holding? How well are you able to monetize the traffic?

 

[rkbdomain]

I have over 600 right now. The traffic is decent, probably make back 20-30% of reg fees.

 

[ssamriga]

I lost money the last time these were bought out, dropped the few I had bought for high $xx. Maybe this time it is different...

 

[rkbdomain]

I lost money the last time these were bought out, dropped the few I had bought for high $xx. Maybe this time it is different...

It's hard to tell what's going to happen. The bearish case is that there really is little market interest in purchasing random numbers right now. I ran a test auction recently at Ebay and 10 NNNNN's that had been registered for a year and didn't expire until 5/13 went for only $39... That alone suggests interest is really low in these domains right now.

On the other hand, the drops are getting picked up and people are renewing their domains. In terms of big sales, 41186 sold recently for $16,000, and there have been other $1k+ sales, not to mention a number of six digit (!) domains have sold for five figures. If the reseller market ever does pick up for five digit domains beyond the slow but steady pace at 4.cn (probably 20-40 a month on average), prices should explode given how small the supply is. There is only 1 NNNNN for every 4.5 LLLL, and there look to be a lot fewer drops of NNNNN's in 2012.

I am going to give it another year with my domains and then let go of the ones that don't get much traffic and aren't that great numbers. I thought last year was the year prices would finally rise but I was wrong. The buyout happened but not to the point where people are willing to pay above reg fee and backorder all the drops. The drops get picked up but there's not a fight over them (although there is for the nicer numbers).

The bullish scenario is in the re-registration numbers and general Chinese internet growth. They use these domains (at much higher levels than LLLL.com's are used actually) and many of the top Chinese sites are numerics, including NNNNN.com's. As for registration, about 50 NNNNN.com domains expired on average per day in March. In April only 12 expired per day on average. That is a huge drop coming in supply when those domains drop. The buyout is holding firm now with 40-50 drops/day. But with only 12 drops/day coming in the next month or so, buying may get very crowded.

And this kind of tightening of supply feeds on itself, encouraging undecided registrants to renew rather than drop. With the price of average (not great, not terrible) NNN.com's over $10k and average NNNN.com's over $1k, there is a real potential for NNNNN.com prices to explode up. But there's no telling when that will happen, it could be years off still.

 

[rkbdomain]

For those who are interested, here are the percentage of NNNNN.com domains expiring by month (using a randomized dataset that has 20% of the NNNNN.com's)

March, 2012 1.5%
April, 2012 0.4%
May, 2012 3.0%
June, 2012 3.9%
July, 2012 4.7%
August, 2012 4.1%
September, 2012 4.2%
October, 2012 4.1%
November, 2012 3.5%
December, 2012 3.3%
January, 2013 4.5%
February, 2013 8.4%
March, 2013 4.2%
April, 2013 5.7%
May, 2013 3.1%
June, 2013 1.3%
July, 2013 1.1%
August, 2013 1.2%
September, 2013 1.1%
October, 2013 0.7%
November, 2013 32.7%
December, 2013 0.5%
2014+ 3.0%

Marchex's domains currently have the November, 2013 expiration date. That's why there's such a big chunk there. If current re-registration trends continue, May, 2012 will probably end up looking like April, 2012 (i.e., the vast majority of expiring domains will get renewed). Yesterday my dataset had 18 domains set to expire on 5/7/12. All but three were renewed for another year.

 

[rkbdomain]

Update on re-registration using the dataset (which has a random selection of 20% of NNNNN.com's).

On May 7th 18 domains were expiring, 17 were renewed (we had noted above that three expired, two of those were actually renewed after a day). On May 8th, 26 domains were expiring, 19 were renewed. On May 9th, 28 domains were expiring, 19 were renewed. On May 10th, 20 domains were expiring, 17 were renewed. Overall, this is a last-minute renewal rate of 78.26%.

Of course, this only counts renewals in the few days before expiration, many holders had already renewed their domains.

Correction: For the first ten days of May now a total of 376 domains have been renewed, whereas 43 expired (had originally erroneously counted some new registrations as renewals). This is a renewal rate of 89.74% so far for May.

 

[DnEbook]

Better off buying ONE nnnn/com

 

[martiinko]

domainloops

Stats
currently 39 available NNNNN.com
126 to be dropped in couple days

(you can setup the expiration alerts and get email whenever any domain fitting the pattern drops)

 

[rkbdomain]

Stats
currently 39 available NNNNN.com
126 to be dropped in couple days

(you can setup the expiration alerts and get email whenever any domain fitting the pattern drops)

Wow, very nice! I was showing 30 available, must be 9 I'm missing somewhere... I'll check out Domain Loops.

 

[martiinko]

Wow, very nice! I was showing 30 available, must be 9 I'm missing somewhere... I'll check out Domain Loops.

Hmm... the number has changed 48 available currently.

 

[martiinko]

from 4xxxx up

Currently 37 NNNNN.com available.
134 pending
.

 

[rkbdomain]

Update on re-registration using the dataset (which has a random selection of 20% of NNNNN.com's).

On May 7th 18 domains were expiring, 17 were renewed (we had noted above that three expired, two of those were actually renewed after a day). On May 8th, 26 domains were expiring, 19 were renewed. On May 9th, 28 domains were expiring, 19 were renewed. On May 10th, 20 domains were expiring, 17 were renewed. Overall, this is a last-minute renewal rate of 78.26%.

Of course, this only counts renewals in the few days before expiration, many holders had already renewed their domains.

Correction: For the first ten days of May now a total of 376 domains have been renewed, whereas 43 expired (had originally erroneously counted some new registrations as renewals). This is a renewal rate of 89.74% so far for May.

After further playing around with the dataset, this original analysis turned out to be incorrect. Expiring domains in April turned out to be about the same as in March. There are around .01% of NNNNN.com's currently available, and it looks like it will stay around here/bought out for the foreseeable future, but the massive increase in re-registration has not happened yet.

What is happening is a decent chunk of 1-year registrations are being renewed, but not enough to significantly bring down the number of average daily drops.

 

[martiinko]

After further playing around with the dataset, this original analysis turned out to be incorrect. Expiring domains in April turned out to be about the same as in March. There are around .01% of NNNNN.com's currently available, and it looks like it will stay around here/bought out for the foreseeable future, but the massive increase in re-registration has not happened yet.

What is happening is a decent chunk of 1-year registrations are being renewed, but not enough to significantly bring down the number of average daily drops.

Exact numbers are...
Drop rate is around 5-10/day - Mostly with fours as 4 is considered unlucky in Chinese culture.
Some good ones still available...
Availability right now: 0.086%

...