Domaining.org.uk

I thought now would be a good time to highlight a few of the most interesting posts that I have seen over the past month…………..

Perhaps the most important event this month was ICANN’s decison to relax the rules about naming domain name extensions. Now anyone with enough cash can buy their own domain extension. So we could easily see new top level domains like .sex, .london and .eBay. Is this a disaster waiting to happen or will this open up the pool of available domains. See what expert domainer Elliot Silver has to say on this development  and see what other people are saying about ICANN’s decision in this post on TheDomains.com blog.  

Meanwhile, the Self Made Minds blog has a post that offers some tips for domainers thinking of leasing rather than selling their domains. Once you have read this, read this post about domain leasing agreements and then look at leaseadomain.co.uk/. This is all very early in the development of this market, and I would recommend that you get yourself a good lawyer before taking the plunge in this highly speculative area. This is one area novice domainers should avoid completely.

Next, here is a short introduction in how to use the Wordpress blogging platform to build sites that actually look like sites, rather than blogs. This will be especially useful for domainers who want to develop domains into minisites, for example.

Many domainers are taking their best domains and developing them into fully fledged websites. These new internet entrepreneurs have learned how they can make a decent income by either selling their domain with its established website for good money or by developing their domains and enjoying good regular incomes. I like reading about successful internet entrepreneurs and this article How I Built A Six Figure Internet Income about the income potential of blogs, from the Financial Hack blog, is quite inspiring.

Finally, this post about domain name appraisals on the Domain Junkie blog is well worth reading. It compares domain name appraisals from Moniker and Sedo and recommends obtaining appraisals from two trusted sources before negotiating a price for a domain.

Towards the end of 2007 all four letter .com domain names were registered. Four letter dot com domain names (sometimes written as LLLL.com) are now selling at a minimum price of $40.00 and a great many sell for much, much more. I would expect these prices to increase modestly, but steadily, over the course of this year. 

So, how long will it be before all LLLL.co.uk domains are registered?

That question is hard to answer but there are a number of market drivers that mean, to me, that four letter .co.uk domain names may sell out relatively quickly. Importantly, domainers who missed the opportunity to make profits with LLLL.com domains are chasing other opportunities such as LLLL.net and LLLL.org domains and it looks like they are next to sell out. After that it could be LLLL.co.uk s turn.

There are also plenty of brandable four letter .co.uk domains left and they are steadily being bought up as the available pool of decent domain names generally gets ever smaller.

Clearly, four letter domains with less popular letters such as Q,V,X,Y and Z are likely to be the last to be sold. However, many domains names with such letters are already developed into fully fledged websites.

Here are a few developed sites I found where at least one of the four letters is Q,V,X,Y or Z:-

QXYZ.co.uk  is an international technology firm

ZXZX.co.uk is a programmers personal website

VWD.co.uk (only 3 letters, though) is a lottery syndicate website

TOXI.co.uk is a developers portfolio website

VISN.co.uk is the website of Vision Internet

These were found with just a brief random search around the net, and I would have found far more if I’d searched for longer. 

Could it be that within say 12 to 18 months all .co.uk domains will be registered? In my own personal view I think we could see them all registered within 18 months although many domainers disagree. Then we will see prices moving slowly upwards, although it is unlikely that these rises will be massive.

So what do you think. Do you think UK LLLL.co.uk domains will be fully registered soon? Do you think they will never sell out? Are you buying four letter .uk short domains? Tell us what you think, below.