analysis .UK Buyers Have Overpaid

[Business Brands]

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.

 

[Business Brands]

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.

 

[jmcc]

.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

 

[Sam1234]

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.

 

[jmcc]

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

 

[aZooZa]

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

 

[Dosebuy]

Why is this? Can you please expand?

 

[NickB]

considering accountancy.co.uk does not resolve, I think the owner of the .uk is gonna struggle to sell unless it is an end user purchase.....

 

[NickB]

I

DomainNameBroker.com is full of valuable insight.


That's a bargain if you aim to create a business out of it. As a blanket statement to say "Individuals who purchased recently released .uk domain names from auction have overpaid." is bs.

I did say unless it was an end user sale....no blanket statement was made for accountancy.uk by myself....

 

[Business Brands]

Check namebio.com

 

[Business Brands]

You need to become more realistic.

Limited demand, not only supply.

 

[Business Brands]

Single dictionary word domains at what acuisition cost?

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Single dictionary word domains at what acuisition cost?

Exactly. Which is why your initial statement is bs

 

[MapleDots]

That's a bargain if you aim to create a business out of it.

I could not agree with you more, it's a bargain basement price for a single word .uk.

OMG imagine building a business on it an in ten years saying you bought the domain for only 3,500

Hell you basically bought your business identity for the price of a few newspaper ads.

@DomainNameBroker.com I have to say I am a bit surprised you cannot see it as an opportune time to get in on the action.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

It's interesting how many people appear have found interest in the .UK namespace now since the RoR. I see it as a good thing.

The big holders are still the big holders because they all snagged their .UK names to match their large .co.uk holdings, most brands got their .UK names so not much of an effect there and there's a nice healthy amount of people invested in the .UK namespace which I would argue wasn't there before, as also eluded to how you mention that there was a huge spike in tag holders leading up to the .
big releases.

Looking at that sedo list I think personally that most of the lll .uks in that list don't reflect the .co.uk prices. I haven't seen many lll.co.uks with decent letters go for that low.

Interested to know your thoughts.

 

[NickB]

The equivalent to our National Enquirer
https://www.mirror.co.uk/

Seriously though Boris Johnson does not sound like he is too stable either.
The UK is a union of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

That being the key, a union so hopefully that will continue regardless of the leader that is elected.

We don't need a Union, let the Scots run free like Nicola Sturgeon and 44.7% Scots (probably more now) want.

We can take the annual £20 + billion grant back and use it elsewhere, not likely to happen but it should. Fed up with listening to the constant moaning about it (and Brexit)

Northern Ireland give back to Ireland or vice versa
Wales - who cares?

 

[MapleDots]

Well, for all domains in questions the following is true:
1) corresponding .co.uk exists
2) the owner of .co.uk did not bother to acquire .uk even though he had a priority right to

Now, I am wondering how many endusers in .uk will develop the .uk if they do not own .co.uk as a pair, and also pay premium price for .uk? At least initially they will just deliver free traffic to competing .co.uk

I'm going to play devil's advocate here....

We are domain investors and we know domains and extensions, so we automatically assume other people and business pay attention to this. 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.

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.

 

[xynames]

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

 

[jamesosix]

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.

 

[NigelD]

.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.

 

[domainer111]

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.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

What about the chinese number game also?

They seem to be useless. Where do they sell?

 

[The Durfer]

They seem to be useless. Where do they sell?

Lol idk thats why i asked

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

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.

 

[Sam1234]

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.