Com vs cc-TLD (Com.au) from an Investment Point of View

Many domainers around the traps love to repeat the old mantra ‘Com is King, Com is King’ whilst counting their portfolios of 3 and 4 word .com domains.

The point that so many miss is that, from an investment point of view, it doesn’t matter which extension is the most valuable. It’s the growth that matters.

Sure .com is the most well known and valuable extension for a domain name. For a typical domain name, a .com domain could be worth 20 – 50 times the equivalent value of a .com.au BUT .com isn’t going anywhere.

Controversial statement, but I believe from an investment point of view .com is exhausted. It is impossible to register anything half decent in .com so potential registrants are forced to look at the aftermarket or at other options.

Increasingly, they look to their own cc-TLD. After all, the vast majority of any businesses in any country are ‘local’ – they don’t necessarily want to appeal to people in overseas countries so a g-TLD just isn’t necessary. Let’s consider the following example:

John Smith in Australia is looking to launch a website for his new mortgage broking business. He needs to buy a domain name.

He looks at .com – sees mortgagebroking.com for sale at $200K, mortage-brokers.com for sale at $50K, australianmortgages.com for sale at $45K.

He looks at .com.au – sees mortgagesaustralia.com.au for sale at $4K, mortgagebroking.com.au for sale at $15K, mortgage-brokers.com.au for sale at $800 and ausmortgages.com.au available to register at $25 for 2 years.

What would you do? Repeat this scenario around the world thousands of times a day and people stop registering .com & the demand flows into the cc-TLD.

Please note, that Netfleet does not condone the registration of domains for the sole purpose of resale as this contravenes auDA policy.


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