Official Russian LL.com Countdown

[thefabfive]

With the sell out of LLLL.com and potentially LLLL.net it's a wonder that Russian LL.com (that's right 2 letter domains) are still available. There are only 1089 Russian LL.coms in existence - with only 299 currently available.

Countdown:
Feb 5, 2008 - 299
Mar 22, 2008 - 147


So, I thought I'd start this thread to get the word out. You can find a list of the currently available domains at IDNs.ws. You can find a picture of the Russian keyboard layout here.

I believe all the double premiums are taken, but there are plenty of single premium domains available. My thoughts (please note I am not a Russian speaker, but this is my opinion based on over 2 years of researching Russian domains) on premium letters are:

Premium Letters - а, б, в, г, д, е, и, к, л, м, н, о, п, р, с, т, у, ф

Fair Letters - ж, з, х, ц, ч, ш, э, ю, я, щ

Poor Letters - й, ы, ё

Not Really Letters - ъ, ь (these are actually consonant modifiers, but may work as the second letter)

Please note this is just my opinion.

 

[eharvester]

how do I buy them? lol says error

 

[thefabfive]

You can try some of the IDN-enabled registrars - Dynadot, Domainsite, Moniker, Enom.

Dynadot is usually the preferred registrar because you can delete domains within 5 days of purchase if you make mistakes or have second thoughts.

GoDaddy allows IDNs as well, but you have to use the punycode.

 

[eharvester]

I registered ащ.com did I just waste my money? lol

 

[thefabfive]

I registered ащ.com did I just waste my money? lol

I don't think so. That was actually on my list of domains to reg later. I like it because it's pronounceable.

Park it and see how it does. Many Russian LL.coms get traffic.

 

[eharvester]

thanks. I parked it. wow... it's almost like I really own a two letter .com lol are these really rare?

 

[thefabfive]

There are only 298 left out of 1089 total.

That said there are 17,576 English LLL.com and 456,976 LLLL.com. And there aren't any of these left.

With a population of Russian speakers over 200 million I think these have good potential. Many of these are also used in Ukrainian and Bulgarian.

 

[eharvester]

does that mean that one day I could sell one of these domaina for A LOT?

 

[thefabfive]

Many of us who believe in IDNs understand that people naturally prefer to speak, read, write, and surf the web in their own language.

Applying what we know about the English domain market to other languages is not much of a stretch. Time will tell.

 

[eharvester]

Interesting. You know, this was my first IDN buy. I will really hold on to this one.

 

[Fka200]

I registered ащ.com did I just waste my money? lol

I quit domaining. Are you kidding me?! I had that in my .txt file of to buy and saw this thread while sitting in class and that one had to be taken!


Ahhhhh.


Time to sit down and do some research.

 

[thefabfive]

Sorry about that Fka200. I should of warned you - I didn't realize you were interested in Russian LL.com. There are a few alternatives available that I think are pretty good though.

 

[thefabfive]

Picked up a couple more:

ущ.com
щт.com

 

[vlad74]

I took

ЗЫ.COM
ГЫ.COM
СЫ.COM
ПЫ.COM
ЧЁ.COM
БЁ.COM

 

[thefabfive]

I took

ЗЫ.COM
ГЫ.COM
СЫ.COM
ПЫ.COM
ЧЁ.COM
БЁ.COM

Nice -

СЫ.COM
ПЫ.COM
ЧЁ.COM

were on my list to register.

 

[Fka200]

Hrm, some of these have trends.

 

[thefabfive]

Many Russian LL.com do get decent traffic. CTR needs work though. But I guess that's expected with un-targeted names.

 

[-NC-]

Last available premium + fair combo's

бщ.com
кщ.com
лщ.com
мщ.com
нщ.com
ощ.com
тщ.com
фщ.com

Looks like the 'щ' is not good?

I reg'd:

еэ.com
гщ.com
вщ.com

Worth keeping? I'm thinking about dropping the 'щ' ones.

 

[Fka200]

Are there any Russian speakers who can comment? I want to pick up some but the ones I wanted and got approved by my Russian friend have been taken.

 

[thefabfive]

I agree that щ is not a premium letter, but looking at the Russian keyboard layout, it's in the position of the English 'o'. Not a bad position.

And single premiums are the best ones out there at this time. Eventually these will all go.

I think еэ.com is pretty good. The two Russian 'e' letters.

 

[nicedomains]

Where is the best place to register these? Wish I knew Russian so that I could figure out what I will try to register

 

[thefabfive]

Where is the best place to register these? How much is a .ru, no citizenship requirements right? Wish I knew Russian so that I could figure out what I will try to register

These are all .com. You can register at many of the popular registrars - Dynadot, Moniker, Enom, Domainsite, even GoDaddy.

 

[vlad74]

I speak russian.
Few Q&As:
- Is anything nice left in LL? No.
- Is it interesting for russian users? Crap that is left is not.
- Why did I buy 6 crap domains today? This one is not easy to answer. In general I do not like IDNs. However, with the LLLL buyouts, LL sounds interesting. I do not see much value in the domains I bought today except for being LL.
- Are there any acronyms possible? letter + ы usually can not be an acronym, as there are no words starting with ы. there are also no word starting with ь and ъ. there are not much words starting with щ, ч, ё.
- Pronouncibility. letter + ы, ё, э usually can be pronounced, although no one using ы after ч ок щ for expmple. You can pick for this purpose ды, лы, ны for example. чэ also possible. But please note that the prounancibilityis really strange, these are not real russian words rather strange sounds which makes a cow eating the grass

ч is pronounced as ch.
щ is pronounced something like as tsh or tsch. terrible sound, in other word. I would not take it unless you have a russian word in mind for an acronim. The few onces are i.e. щука - jackfish, щека - cheek.
I personnally do not like letter щ.

Anyway, I would call buying these remaining domains as very very high speculative. I see more value if you try to take real russian words from a dictionary and reg them. However, it is also may be questionable, because there are plans to make a IDN zone for russia - .рф, and I rather would expect google to direct visitors entering russian letters/words in address line of the browser to .рф rather than .com. Just wait 6-12 months, there will be more new abount exact implementation details of this project.

Russian (I think as well as all other) IDNs are supported by .com and .net only. .ru and .su (both russian) are not supporting IDN.

you as a nonresident/nonrussian may freely reg the .ru and .su but it is more difficult to transfer it, you need to write a letter to registrars if you want to transfer your domains to other persons. I expect the situation with a new .рф yone will be sililar, you will not be able to transfer domains electronically.

I expect national idns (i.e. russianword.рф will be more popular in Russian comparing to russianword.com).

All these makes any investment in russian IDN highly risky. Well, on the other hand, it can bring good returns


Please ask questions, if you have any, in this thread. I will try to answer them, please note however I do not always have enough time to do it. Once again regarding the remaining domains or the ones you have - everything nice was regged long time ago, now only crap is left, so please do not ask me what is better, чэ or ны

Vlad

 

[NewYorkBum]

I took

ЗЫ.COM
ГЫ.COM
СЫ.COM
ПЫ.COM
ЧЁ.COM
БЁ.COM

That is it. There is nothing interesting left. ЗЫ, is used as a slang among young russian kids/teenagers, same with ГЫ. ЧЁ is from the same rank, it's short of "What ?"
vlad74 took some decent leftovers, to the rest of you, don't waste your money. None of the others pronounceable or meaningfull.

 

[Fka200]

Very nice information. Rep added.

Was trying to see if there were any scraps.