Hi from IoM

[craine]

Hi there - I registered some time ago when I was a much more active domainer, and surprisingly I only seem to have been here and posted once, so I though I should probably change that and say a belated "Hello"

Apart from that I have some non .uk domains worth selling, but as I need a 10 post-count to advertise in that category, I thought it'd be a good reason to meet some domainers closer to home.

I'm from the Isle of Man so have been trading mainly .im domains lately. As the space has been growing in recent years I'd be interested in hearing from people who have some good, generic or brandable domains in that space.

Also with the recent vTLD reveal at Icann, I was wondering what people here think the impact will be on domaining (especially under ccTLD's like .uk) in the future?

 

[fish]

You registered a month before me but I beat you hands down on post count welcome !

I've only bought 3 .im domains, two related to fish/ing which I sold about 2/3/4? years ago and a more recent buy which was cheapholidays (for sale!)

Like many things, if you have enough resources (leadership / finance / staff) you can make a success of things however the playing field becomes a bit more bumpy when your talking about domain extensions + SEO (& that's another topic that many on here like to pontificate )

Good luck in selling your's, I don't buy many these days but happy to have a nosey.

fish

 

[willbon]

Welcome....

I use to live on the Island... miss it terribly...

I think the .im has some difficulties in that even though many UK co's are based there, their market is still the UK, so a .im is irrelevant to their sales side ... however perhaps having the .im somewhere is a necessity to show that the business is Manx based....

Hope you're stocking up on 'space travel' related domains! ;-)

 

[namealot]

Hi there - I registered some time ago when I was a much more active domainer, and surprisingly I only seem to have been here and posted once, so I though I should probably change that and say a belated "Hello"

Apart from that I have some non .uk domains worth selling, but as I need a 10 post-count to advertise in that category, I thought it'd be a good reason to meet some domainers closer to home.

I'm from the Isle of Man so have been trading mainly .im domains lately. As the space has been growing in recent years I'd be interested in hearing from people who have some good, generic or brandable domains in that space.

Also with the recent vTLD reveal at Icann, I was wondering what people here think the impact will be on domaining (especially under ccTLD's like .uk) in the future?

Had a few im mainly names etc sold some but prices were low “xx to xxx “(but a profit is a profit) that was a few years ago didn't think there was a market for them were is it just on the Isle ?

Wasn’t aware any .im have become “brands” in there own right? can't see any would either?
With vanity cctlds etc seams in and sell quick whilst the bands still playing works..? Occasionally the odd one or two are kept but they normally get dropped after a few years

 

[Edwin]

Also with the recent vTLD reveal at Icann, I was wondering what people here think the impact will be on domaining (especially under ccTLD's like .uk) in the future?

I assume you're talking about the new GTLDs that are in the pipeline...

I believe the change will be very positive* for the "top" extensions (.com and .co.uk) since by and large the roll-out of all these new GTLDs is going to fail. I covered the topic at length in a blog post last year, and nothing that I've seen since then has done anything to change my initial opinion...
http://www.webmastering.co.uk/uncategorized/the-new-brand-tlds-are-destined-to-fail/

(*because once the new GTLD are out there and have demonstrably failed to catch on, it will be self-evident that there really is no commercially viable alternative to .com/.co.uk)

 

[Aiden Roberts]

Welcome Back!

Love the IOM, been there many times. Used to stay in the Doric in Douglas but they knocked it down, then stayed in the Empress (I think that's what it was called) and bumped into Liam Gallagher (Oasis), he was there with Patsy Kensit filming George Best life story (name dropping).

Had a couple of .im's, solarpanels (sold) and I still have taxcalculator(for sale).

I can't really get excited about .im but I would imagine on the island they have their place. It would be interesting if you could give us a insider view of buying and selling .im's and the kind of prices decent ones fetch?

Anyway welcome back to Acorn.

Aiden

 

[sdsinc]

Welcome to Acorn

We must have around 3 .im domains in the portfolio.
I think they also use .co.uk & .co.im (earlier regs) and the local market isn't big

 

[WalkinDude]

How exactly will .uk fail? On the basis alone it's a bit less to type it's going to be a hit. People have no loyalty to .com or .co.uk whatsoever.

Analogy i'd use is if BBC won the rights to premiership games, folks would drop SkySports like a hot coal. So Loans.uk vs Loans.co.uk is a straight fight between who offers the best web service and if the latter is even, fair enough Loans.co.uk will be more established, but Loans.uk looks better, and looks are everything in today's world, even in a domain name, and thus suffers no disadvantage whatsoever?

Stand to be corrected.


Welcome Craine, best of luck in all you are aiming for mate.

 

[doodlebug]

Welcome to Acorn and enjoy

 

[stellar73]

How exactly will .uk fail? On the basis alone it's a bit less to type it's going to be a hit.

If this were true .co should be more sought after than .com just because it's shorter - I think the picture is far more complicated...

Anyway, welcome to Acorn again Craine!

 

[craine]

@Edwin great post - certainly echoes some of the feelings I've got towards ".brand" names.

@willbon Yes .im is certainly a very limited market. It does make sense on island though, as I find many businesses want to distunguish themselves as local, much as British companies and subsidiaries do with co.uk - I'm intrigued to see what impact ".local", non ccTLD names will have as they're introduced, even within the UK, such as .cymru and .wales (applied for by Nominet) or .london.

@WalkinDude Certainly businesses here for the most part dropped the "co" from "co.im" in preference of a shorter look. I wonder if Nominet will ever open up registrations on the .uk second level to allow for more domains along the lines of police.uk, bl.uk etc for brands... I personally don't feel the relevance of org.uk, ltd.uk and other variants anymore as their meanings seem completely diluted... But if second level was opened up, would if will we be seeing jaguar.uk or uk.jaguar?

I'm sure co.uk will be unshakeable for years, but I wonder if the introduction of more local domains, and possibly heavy promotion of .brand domains may start to erode this dominance? It will certainly be interesting finding out! I think I agree with Edwin, that ".co.uk" and ".com" have become so indoctrinated that there will now always be a stable market for a memorable string attached to an even more memorable tld.

@namealot The largest single sale I've had in the .im space was hotel.im which fetched low £x,xxx at SEDO a couple of years ago, but I know other .im names have fetched more in the past - I think one once reached low $xx,xxx - and these tended to be subsequently developed for global markets, not local. Of course the most desirable strings like "casino" continue to be reserved... I'm holding to a few short memorable generics for now such as car.im, job.im, eat.im, ads.im etc and may develop them at some point.

Thanks for the welcome, I will be picking your collective brains when it comes to co.uk- I'm still a novice in this space!

 

[namealot]

haven’t seen many sales myself highest was mid xxxx that’s the problem with allot of domains so little info... always thought .im went well as an abbreviation to “instant message” but no one else seemed too

here's a list of the ones I knew of might help with some of yours

Hey $1,525 Dec-11
Zing $1,000 Dec-11
Bet $1,390 Oct-11
Seo $4,000 Jul-11
Bike $600 Dec-10
Hotel $3,386 Dec-10
SMS $5,500 Nov-10
Hotel $3,454 Feb-10
INT $1,000 Jan-10
CarSales $310 Oct-09
Invention $250 Oct-09
TopiX $150 Oct-09
Escort $1,000 Sep-09
World $650 Sep-09
Advertising $200 Sep-09
Oil $500 Sep-09
India $500 Sep-09
Z $1,550 Sep-09
Ash $200 Sep-09
Boys $60 Aug-09
HRM $504 Aug-09
Themes $60 Aug-09
Model $130 Jul-09
Delivery $60 Jul-09
LasVegas $360 Jul-09
Juegos $231 Jun-09
Diamond $127 Jun-09
Tel $600 Jan-09
Free $1,150 Dec-08
Computer $500 Nov-08
Lawyer $500 Oct-08
Internet $310 Aug-08
Special $267 Aug-08
Hotels $2,074 Jul-08
America $51 Jun-08
Elite $313 May-08
Home $170 Apr-08
Hot $343 Apr-08
Vacation$1,167 Mar-08
Mobile $7,000 Jan-08
Sale $1,474 Jan-08
Boobs $160 Nov-07
Gay $1,087 Oct-07
Sms $999 Sep-07
Sports $700 Sep-07
Computers$180 Sep-07
Weather $650 Jun-07
Pc $170 Jun-07
OnlineCasino $160 May-07
LOL $190 May-07
My $1,350 Apr-07
Blackjack $280 Feb-07
Otto $676 Jan-07
Palm $338 Dec-06
Max $500 Dec-06