German IDN subforum

[touchring]

I think this should be added, considering that German idns got more traffic (real click through), and has an active secondary market.

Here's some of my mini-city .com revenue, these are not drops, newly registered and had no previous website!

Jyväskylä.com 53 7 13.21% €0.04 €0.25
Lüdenscheid.com 17 5 29.41% €0.05 €0.25
Rüsselsheim.com 4 2 50.00% €0.07 €0.13

[Olney]

Ok this is acceptable I can start making new forums...

[touchring]

Jyväskylä 60 8 13.33% €0.04 €0.28
Lüdenscheid 17 5 29.41% €0.05 €0.25
Rüsselsheim 4 2 50.00% €0.07 €0.13
électromén... 6 1 16.67% €0.10 €0.10

Going strong, my electromenager, on Sedo for the 4/5th day. Really puts my .us domains to shame. :-(

[Timm]

Jyväskylä 60 8 13.33% €0.04 €0.28
Lüdenscheid 17 5 29.41% €0.05 €0.25
Rüsselsheim 4 2 50.00% €0.07 €0.13
électromén... 6 1 16.67% €0.10 €0.10

Going strong, my electromenager, on Sedo for the 4/5th day. Really puts my .us domains to shame. :-(

Hi touchring,

being the first german in this board it's my duty to help you out here :)

Jyväskylä
électromén

..are no german cities nor german words. the first sounds and looks scandinavian (denmark, sweden, norway or finland), the second might be french, but i guess this word doesnt exist at all.

the other two - Rüsselsheim and Lüdenscheid are correctly spelled german cities.
but watch out, the city administrations have a right to own their names, even under .com.

[touchring]

Thanks. You are correct, Jyväskylä is city in Finland, and électromén... got truncated by Sedo, it's actually électroménager.

.COM Places, cities, countries are legitimate domains unless used for ill purposes like redirecting to porn, spyware, etc. Korea.com was sold for $5 million only recently to a private company as a commercial portal. For cTLD, the administration may claim any name, like what is happening to swiss.ch.

btw, do you know the meaning of Liebeserklärung.com? Online translator says "Declaration of love". I guess there's no english equivalent of that word?

[Timm]

btw, do you know the meaning of Liebeserklärung.com? Online translator says "Declaration of love". I guess there's no english equivalent of that word?


"declaration of love" is the correct translation, which i also get from my printed dictionary. but i dont see any commercial use in that name. also plural "liebeserklärungEN" would be better for a website which lists such declarations of love.

I just checked the following options:

liebeserklärung.de TAKEN
liebeserklärungen.de TAKEN
liebeserklärung.com TAKEN
liebeserklärungen.com FREE
liebeserklaerung.de TAKEN
liebeserklaerungen.de TAKEN
liebeserklaerung.com TAKEN
liebeserklaerungen.com TAKEN

..so it wont be a too bad investment ;)

[touchring]

Thks for suggesting timm, you saved my Liebeserklärung.com from being really useless - without the plural form. :-)

There's no english equivalent for this word, but i think there's a chinese equivalent - 示爱 - translates directly to "express love".

[webplanet]

Hi,

you can also find some nice German IDN-Domains in my portfolio, please take a look at: http://www.sedo.de/search/searchresult.php3?showuser=webplanet7777

Best Regards,
Jens

[DeTep]

Feel free to offer me all your german IDN.
I buy and register german IDN very often and would love to hear from anyone who has an inventory of german keys.

regards,
DeTep

[Olney]

You know I never realized we were getting this international....

Thanks guys for sharing your knowledge & welcome to IDN Forums....

[DeTep]

same interests; connects people :p
I like this forum.

regards,
Dan

[touchring]

Jyväskylä 60 8 13.33% €0.04 €0.28
Lüdenscheid 17 5 29.41% €0.05 €0.25
Rüsselsheim 4 2 50.00% €0.07 €0.13
électromén... 6 1 16.67% €0.10 €0.10

Going strong, my electromenager, on Sedo for the 4/5th day. Really puts my .us domains to shame. :-(

3 days later:

jyväskylä 65 8 12.31% €0.04 €0.28
lüdenscheid 21 5 23.81% €0.05 €0.25
rüsselsheim 7 4 57.14% €0.07 €0.26
électromén... 13 2 15.38% €0.08 €0.15

All had more pageviews, and rüsselsheim and électromén... had extra clicks - this proves that even pure European .COM generics (non-trademarks or typo) can produce traffic and revenue.

[kenne]

the other two - Rüsselsheim and Lüdenscheid are correctly spelled german cities.
but watch out, the city administrations have a right to own their names, even under .com.


Hi Timm,
Could you explain a little bit about this right for city governments to own names under .com? Is it under Icann or some special european law?

Thanks,

[touchring]

Just like anyone is free to advertise the name of a country or city on paid advertisement or on his store without first acquiring the consent or paying "trademark" fees to the country/city administration, no government or city should forcefully "hijack" or take your .com or .net domain from you.

http://www.whois.sc/news/2003-04/zealand-domain.html

The New Zealand government has come under fire for spending $1 million of tax-payers money on buying the domain NewZealand.com from previous owners Virtual Countries. That's one million New Zealand dollars, but it still equates to a healthy £350,000.

The figure only came to light this week following an angry parliamentary question by MP Rodney Hide. However, tourism minister Mark Burton thinks it's a good deal and has some facts to back it up: "There is no question that this domain will provide an invaluable portal for commercial entry into New Zealand for those interested in tourism, commerce, and industry," he told Parliament.

Here comes the justification: "The South African government offered Virtual Countries $10 million for SouthAfrica.com. It has also been reported that Korea.com was sold for $5 million to True Net, Korea's largest Internet service provider." That's alright then.

Except what Mr Burton didn't mention of course was that the $1m price tag included a premium because the government had already tried to take the domain by force at domain arbitrator WIPO - and was actually found guilty of domain hijacking.

[kenne]

" Of course, things will be different in the future. No doubt embarrassed by not being able to accommodate out the most powerful person in its arbitration system, WIPO has now suggested numerous comical changes to the domain rules including, guess what, that countries would be given precedence over country-named domains. Those rules are currently being argued over in ICANN but despite the force of logic, they will most likely go through. "

Interesting article. Anywhere I can read more on?

Thanks!

[touchring]

" Of course, things will be different in the future. No doubt embarrassed by not being able to accommodate out the most powerful person in its arbitration system, WIPO has now suggested numerous comical changes to the domain rules including, guess what, that countries would be given precedence over country-named domains. Those rules are currently being argued over in ICANN but despite the force of logic, they will most likely go through. "

Interesting article. Anywhere I can read more on?

Thanks!

The matter isn't as simple as that, people have paid millions to tens of million dollars for country domains, and there must be at least 200 USA cities, and another 10,000 cities world wide in private hands, some developed websites and even businesses listed on the stock exchange. The most prominent is China.com, listed on Nasdaq.

[kenne]

I agree that people should not be worried about it. I'm just hoping there would be some details...

[coconut]

The New Zealand government has come under fire for spending $1 million of tax-payers money on buying the domain NewZealand.com from previous owners Virtual Countries. That's one million New Zealand dollars, but it still equates to a healthy £350,000.

The figure only came to light this week following an angry parliamentary question by MP Rodney Hide.
Actually the figure came to light earlier than the parliament debate...some time after the legal losses in the bid for newzealand.com, I was whoising this domain name and I noticed a recent change of ownership to a New Zealand government entity (from the previous Virtual Countries Inc. ownership).

I passed this info on to an astute reporter friend at Television New Zealand, along with some background info on domain names, and she investigated it and broke the news in a scoop on TVNZ.

IMO that was money well-spent for New Zealand, which now has an excellent website at newzealand.com (to which they also direct their country-reserved domain newzealand.travel to).

[touchring]

Actually the figure came to light earlier than the parliament debate...some time after the legal losses in the bid for newzealand.com, I was whoising this domain name and I noticed a recent change of ownership to a New Zealand government entity (from the previous Virtual Countries Inc. ownership).

I passed this info on to an astute reporter friend at Television New Zealand, along with some background info on domain names, and she investigated it and broke the news in a scoop on TVNZ.

Definitely, i see no reason why NZ government will want to announce they paid a million for newzealand.com.

[gammascalper]

Actually the figure came to light earlier than the parliament debate...some time after the legal losses in the bid for newzealand.com, I was whoising this domain name and I noticed a recent change of ownership to a New Zealand government entity (from the previous Virtual Countries Inc. ownership).

I passed this info on to an astute reporter friend at Television New Zealand, along with some background info on domain names, and she investigated it and broke the news in a scoop on TVNZ.

IMO that was money well-spent for New Zealand, which now has an excellent website at newzealand.com (to which they also direct their country-reserved domain newzealand.travel to).

Yes, agreed... $1mm for a country domain such as that?! That would be considered a sweet-heart deal now.

[coconut]

The article says: "Except what Mr Burton didn't mention of course was that the $1m price tag included a premium because the government had already tried to take the domain by force at domain arbitrator WIPO - and was actually found guilty of domain hijacking."

My understanding is that the New Zealand government spent a total of about US$500K for newzealand.com (which at the time was about NZ$1 million) and that amount paid for the purchase from Virtual Coutries plus the earlier legal costs, so there wasn't a premium over the NZ$1 million as suggested in the article.

The article says: "Except what Mr Burton didn't mention of course was that the $1m price tag included a premium because the government had already tried to take the domain by force at domain arbitrator WIPO - and was actually found guilty of domain hijacking."

My understanding is that the New Zealand government spent a total of about US$500K for newzealand.com (which at the time was about NZ$1 million) and that amount was for the domain purchase from Virtual Coutries plus the earlier legal costs, so there wasn't a premium over the NZ$1 million as suggested in the article.