“Premium” domain names
Domain Incite reports:
DotKiwi has put NZD 8.5 milion ($7 million) of “premium” domain names on the market in advance of the delegation of .kiwi, which it expects to happen this week.
There are 4,668 names on sale right now, ranging in price from NZD 501.50 ($410) to NZD 124,626.71 ($102,000).
The ten most expensive names are:
| hotels.kiwi | 124,626.71 NZD |
| cruises.kiwi | 83,193.27 NZD |
| clothes.kiwi | 47,248.89 NZD |
| games.kiwi | 46,212.14 NZD |
| auto.kiwi | 41,579.89 NZD |
| travel.kiwi | 39,947.41 NZD |
| dentist.kiwi | 30,000.00 NZD |
| love.kiwi | 28,728.59 NZD |
| teaching.kiwi | 26,933.29 NZD |
| blackjack.kiwi | 26,932.42 NZD |
My view is a domain name is of course worth what someone is willing to pay for it. But I do reflect that I doubt anyone in the world tries to buy books by going to books.com or books.co.nz. In fact who knows what those sites even are (turns out the former redirects to Barnes & Noble and the latter doesn’t exist). One can turn an obscure name like Amazon or Fishpond into a well known brand.
ICANN is doing the final approvals for new gTLDs at about the rate of ten a week since the first batch on 23 October. some of the new gTLDs that are operative are:
- .today
- .plumbing
- .sexy
- .tattoo
- .land
- .bike
- .singles
- .guru
It will be interesting to see which ones do well, and which ones stagnate or even fail.