April 2 TBR .ca domain name drop

Here are some of the better (or interesting) .ca domains dropping in this week's TBR, April 2.

atlanticrealestate.ca
batmobile.ca
bestbody.ca
binky.ca
canada3000.ca
canada-health.ca
cartown.ca
chewing.ca
ecotrail.ca
ecotrails.ca
euu.ca
exo.ca
expire.ca
facades.ca
fallen.ca
fishingpro.ca
gravelpit.ca
green-homes.ca
headmaster.ca
hemosol.ca
hfv.ca
home-renovation.ca
homicides.ca
ihc.ca
jxs.ca
kdw.ca
mns.ca
netscout.ca
newloans.ca
nibblers.ca
nrp.mb.ca
onlinejokes.ca
oursong.ca
pacificrealestate.ca
payone.ca
qsy.ca
realestatealberta.ca
reserves.ca
resumehelp.ca
virtualplanet.ca
v-p.ca
zhz.ca

North.ca and ICQ.ca sell at auction

North.ca and ICQ.ca are two names that dropped last week and were caught by Pool. The auctions for these names ended today. They sold for:

North.ca $2701

ICQ.ca $3400

MyID.ca to run exclusive .ca domain auctions

Got an email today from MyID.ca saying they are going to start running .ca auctions in April. I think this could be good for .ca and give it more exposure. Here is part of the email they sent out.

After significant development and testing, MyID.ca will start very soon running periodic auctions dedicated exclusively to .ca domains. Our first auction will take place on April 15 and you are invited to submit your domains for consideration of inclusion and to be part of the very rewarding promotional effort for this auction.

There will be a serious advertising and marketing effort accompanying the launch of this event and significant opportunities for early participants to not only get great exposure to their .ca domains but also cash in on letting other interested parties be aware of this dedicated .ca auction.

You are getting early bird notification and we wholeheartedly believe that the first group of .ca domain owners and webmasters that will be part of the auction have the highest likelihood of reaping very serious rewards for many years to come.

If you are interested in learning more about the new auction, its benefits for you, the marketing involved, and details with respect to how you can submit your domains for! consideration for inclusion, and how you can seriously benefit from it through promotion, please contact us immediately

990,000 .ca domain names registered

As of today, March 27, there are 990,000 .ca domain names registered. That means we have less than 10,000 registrations to go before there are 1 million registered.

In yesterday's TBR .ca drop, a number of nice .ca domains ended up at Pool and are now in auction. Some of the top ones are north.ca, icq.ca, hen.ca, and protocol.ca. North and ICQ have each broken the $1,000 mark, it will be interesting to see how they end up.

I especially like north.ca, it can be used for so many things in a country known as the Great White North.

Banks.ca sells for $41,000 at Pool

Drop catcher Pool sold Banks.ca today for $41,000 after catching it in the weekly .ca TBR last week. The domain was sold in an auction style format. Apparently, the winning bidder was prepared to go up to $112,000 to win this name, but this is unverified.

This might be the highest ever reported .ca sale, and the sale may garner some mainstream media attention. Sales like this help create an awareness of the value of generic .ca domain names. There are rumours other .ca domain names have sold for high 5 figure, and 6 figure amounts, but if so those sales were never made public.

Two of the next highest .ca sales ever occurred in 2006. These were:

savings.ca $36,050 (2006)

cruise.ca $33,363 (2006)

Of interest, banks.com is a functioning website and publicly traded company.

Banks.com is a leading financial services portal containing a unique breadth and depth of products and services. Banks.com provides access to thousands of pages of current financial content, including: articles, stock quotes, audio, video, blogs and much more. Our site contains information and products on a variety of topics such as Banking, Stocks & Bonds, Taxes, Mortgages, Personal Finance, Credit Cards, Insurance and Retirement Planning.

We have yet to see what the new owner of banks.ca will do with this domain, but creating a similar site to banks.com that deals with Canadian banking might be a good idea.

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Namespro - Register .ca domains at Namespro.ca Click here to register .ca domains

Jogger.ca up for auction at Afternic

Jogger.ca has been put up for auction at Afternic. It's a nice generic domain to market to running enthusiasts in Canada.

The domain Jogger.com recently sold for $25,201 at NameJet.com

The auction link for jogger.ca is here:

http://www.afternic.com/name.php?domain=jogger.ca

The highest bid is currently only $250.

March 26 .ca TBR names dropping

Here are some of the better names dropping this Wednesday in the .ca TBR:

assumptions.ca
bases.ca
b-e.ca
cellphonecanada.ca
congratulate.ca

egear.ca
findcash.ca
fishingblog.ca
hen.ca
indiablog.ca

jya.ca
kwm.ca
lisette.ca
loopholes.ca
mdw.ca

north.ca
twister.ca
vpt.ca
w-n.ca
yuh.ca

Those are the ones that stood out for me by having a quick scan of the list. The best of the lot is north.ca in my opinion.

Here is a link to the full list if you want to check yourself:

http://ro.cira.ca/tbrlist_p?datet=2008/03/26


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March 19 .ca TBR drops

Don't know how I missed so many good names, but there were some nice .ca domains in today's drop. These names were brought to my attention at dnforum.com:

banks.ca

treehouse.ca

bahamas.ca

october.ca

testosterone.ca

I always wonder when I see names like this drop, how did the previous owners not renew them? Did they forget, or not get the renewal email? Did they drop them on purpose? These names at auction will go for hundreds or thousands (banks.ca) of dollars, most likely.

Sibername usually posts a list of all the results, I'll add to this list if I see any more good ones.

CIRA promotes One Million .ca domain names

In what I think is a nice move, CIRA, the overseer of Canada's .ca domain name space, has put up a site to celebrate the upcoming one millionth .ca domain name registration.

They have a counter on the page to show what the number is currently at, and profiles of .ca domain name owners.

There are .ca facts, trivia, and a link to registrars so you can register a .ca domain.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) today launches its campaign to celebrate the registration of one million dot-ca domain names with the unveiling of a campaign website at www.onemilliondomains.ca

CIRA expects to reach the one million milestone in early April 2008 after passing 750,000 registrations just 18 months prior in October 2006. The campaign showcases the growth of dot-ca domain names, dot-ca websites and the Canadians behind them.

Here is a link to the site:

http://onemilliondomains.ca/


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Top .ca sales of past week

There was only one .ca domain sale mentioned in the weekly dnjournal domain sale report last night.

Occasions.ca $1,050

An unconfirmed sale was posted in dnforum for tantalum.ca for $500. The interesting thing about this sale was that the seller only registered the name in February of this year, marketed it to mining companies, and found a buyer in March. Tantalum is a metal so I'm sure the mining company is happy to own this domain. Doesn't look like the domain has officially changed owners yet though.

Interestingly, the top overall domain sold in the report was a country code domain, Casino.de for 400,000 Euros (about $625,000 US). .de is Germany's domain extension.

It also appears that pp.ca and oo.ca sold in the past two weeks. The sale was not reported in dnjournal, but the seller had been asking $20,000+ for the two names as a package.

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On another note, today is the TBR drop for .ca names. I had a quick scan of the list and didn't see anything that blew me away. There are some LLL.ca domains and some one and two worder's, but nothing in the premium range. I didn't do a detailed check of the list, so I might have missed something. We'll see after the TBR drop.

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Countdown to 1 million .ca Domains

The countdown to 1 million .ca domains continues!

Two weeks ago, there were 978,776 .ca domains registered, today that number is about to hit 986,000 domains.

The average growth rate has been about 516 domains registered per day over the last two weeks.

At that rate, there is only about 27 days left until we hit 1 million.

In similar news, I just read that Spain's country code extension (.es) just passed the 900,000 mark in total registrations. They expect to hit 1 million names sometime in May.

CIRA at Vancouver Massive Tech Show April 1

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) will have a booth at the Massive Technology Show, April 1, 2008 at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre. CIRA is responsible for overseeing the .ca domain extension in Canada.

This will be a good chance for them to promote the .ca brand to lots of tech savvy companies and individuals. Also, the 1 millionth .ca registration should be happening right around then, which should help them create some buzz.

What is Massive?

http://www.massivetechshow.com

The Massive Technology Show is a three-part, interactive event that showcases technology for business. In one action packed day, Massive connects business professionals with high tech companies, giving them a chance to learn about technology in a user friendly environment. At the Massive Technology Show executives will increase their knowledge on a wide range of technology solutions for corporate communications, system infrastructure, product usability, and other critical business activities.

Yellow Pages owns most postal code LNL.ca domains

I learn something new about .ca domains all the time.

A poster at dnforum started a thread about LNL.ca, and revealed that Yellow Pages owns 1,530 LNL.ca domains that are the first three characters of postal codes in Canada. For example, H8Y.ca or V1L.ca. They bought most of these domains on Dec. 22, 2005 and continue to hold them.

The poster also stated that at that time in 2005, there were 1,630 total LNL postal codes, there are probably more today. The balance of the LNL.ca that Yellow Pages doesn't own are held by others.

I tried a few of these domains and they re-direct to ypg.ca, a Yellow Pages start page for English/French.

I've never seen Yellow Pages advertise any LNL.ca, you would think they have plans to eventually roll out some promotion to let people know they can enter the LNL.ca of an area they're searching within to find local information. I don't know how well that would work, postal codes don't often come up in everyday conversation, and if they do usually the full 6 character combination is used. But if YP puts their marketing muscle behind this type of promotion, they could get us used to searching this way.

This reminds me of a company, Marchex, in the US. Marchex owns most US postal codes in .com and .net, which are five numbers (unlike Canada, which uses letter/number combinations for postal codes). They have developped these postal code domains into local search portals. Enter a postal code of an area you're interested in, add the .com, and you're there.

I think if Canada had only numbers in postal codes this concept would interest me more. The letter/number combos just don't seem natural to use. The I and 1, and zero and O, and 5 and S can also lead to lots of typos, and hard to read combinations.

BCE.com on auction at Sedo

Just saw that the domain bce.com is on auction at Sedo, currently just under $10,000 US with 6 days to go.

The reason this domain caught my attention, other than the fact it is a valuable LLL.com, is that BCE is also the acronym for a large telco company in Canada (Bell Canada Enterprises). Most Canadians would probably think that BCE owns bce.com, but that probably isn't the case (I haven't looked into it, but if they owned the domain they likely wouldn't be auctioning it off on Sedo). I know that BCE uses bce.ca, so the .com probably gets a lot of mis-directed traffic.

The BCE company is a huge business that is about to be purchased by a group of companies in a $52 billion takeover. The buyers include the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and a number of US equity groups.

It wouldn't surprised me if the company got in on the bidding for this domain.

About BCE:

BCE is Canada's largest communications company. Through its 28 million customer connections, BCE provides the most comprehensive and innovative suite of communication services to residential and business customers in Canada. Under the Bell brand, BCE provides consumers with simple solutions to all their communications needs, including telephone services, wireless, high-speed Internet, digital television and voice over IP.

Internet Media - Slowdown but not a Collapse

Here is an interesting interview posted on Yahoo regarding the downtown in the economy and it's effect on online media.

Henry Blodget of Tech Ticker interviews John Battelle, the CEO of Federated Media. Batelle makes an interesting point that the downturn of 2001-2002 was driven by technology, and this time the downturn is driven by other factors. Today, I think people enjoy using the internet so much, and that is where advertisers will still be able to reach them despite what happens in the economy.

As the economy softens, we're all wondering how hard the advertising market, especially online media, will be hit. During the 2001-2002 tech downturn, advertising fell by a whopping 15 percent. But John Battelle, Federated Media CEO, tells me this time around, the Internet media will experience a slowdown in growth - but not a wipeout.

Top .CA sales of past week

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

.CA domains dropping March 12 TBR

Every Wednesday at 2pm EST, CIRA releases dropped .ca domains back into the marketplace. You can apply with most registrars to try and grab some of these dropped names. Pool and Sibername are two registrars who usually have good luck in 'catching' these names.

There are 2,863 .ca domains dropping on March 12.

Some of the better names dropping this week include:

arrivals.ca
atmcard.ca
atmcards.ca

beirut.ca
billpay.ca
blurt.ca

bops.ca
calgarywireless.ca
cashparking.ca

chico.ca
cxp.ca
dmy.ca

domainnamescanada.ca
ecarbon.ca
egm.ca

fuss.ca
guh.ca
hck.ca

tjx.ca
tugs.ca
javier.ca

odt.ca
nonifruit.ca
nodes.ca

newparts.ca
ndv.ca
lotteryworld.ca

ybm.ca
yck.ca
zia.ca

There don't seem to be any super premium names dropping, but there are a few nice words, and some LLL.ca which always seem to get taken.

This is what I found from my quick scan, there might be some gems I missed.

Check the full list at:

http://ro.cira.ca/tbrlist_p?datet=2008/03/12


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Worth Linking to - Verisign DN Industry Brief

Every quarter throughout the year Verisign releases their Domain Name Industry Brief, which gives you the Current state of the domain name industry, including up-to-date trends in new registrations, renewals, market shares and growth opportunities.

It's a great read for domainers, and gives you an idea of how the domain business is growing throughout the world.

Some of the highlights of the last report, which covers the last quarter of 2007, are:

- A total of 153 Million domain names are registered throughout the world, which includes all TLD's

- Country code domains (e.g.: .ca, .us, .de) had a 33% increase in registrations year over year

- 12.2 million domain names regged in last three months of 2007

- .de (Germany) has the most registrations of country code domains, followed by .cn (China) and .uk (England).

- .ca doesn't make it into the top ten for country code domain registrations. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Italy and Switzerland have more domains registered in their respective country codes. (.ca almost has one million registrations, to put it in perspective).

- .com and .net renewal rates are steady over the years, at around 75%. This means that people are renewing, on average, three quarters of their .com and .net domains, and letting the other quarter expire.


The March Verisign Domain Brief just came out, you should keep this link saved on your desktop to check for the report every quarter.

http://www.verisign.com/Resources/Naming_Services_Resources/Domain_Name_Industry_Brief/



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Kevin Ham makes another mainstream media cover

It seems like Kevin Ham can't keep himself off the cover of mainstream media publications. Today, Ham is on the cover of the Province newspaper, one of Vancouver, BC, Canada's daily papers.

The title on the cover is "BC's DOT-COM MOGULS", and Ham is profiled in a story inside along with two other Vancouver-based internet entrepreneurs. They call them "three BC whiz kids who've struck it rich on the internet".

The story on Kevin Ham has a few errors or inaccuracies, but isn't too bad. The cover calls him the 'Typo Tycoon', which has some truth to it given his association with .cm domains and Agora. The inside profile shows a cover of him on Business 2.0 magazine from last year. They estimate his portfolio at 300,000 domains worth 300 Million. It says that he has "bought" domains ending in .cm, but we know he just has a traffic arrangement with the Cameroon government for .cm domains. They mention two domains Ham owns, god.com and satan.com. They label Ham a mystery man, media shy, and apparently he didn't return calls to the Province for the story.

The other two who were profiled are John Chow and Markus Frind.

Chow runs a blog at JohnChow.com about making money, and posts to it about 3 times per day. His blog has a readership of about 26,000 people, and he earns roughly $30,000 per month through advertising and affiliate links. He is 42 years old and also runs TechZone.com

Markus Frind is the one person owner of PlenyofFish.com, a free online dating site. He is only 29 years old and started his site in 2003. His site runs almost on autopilot, he has just one assistant to help answer emails. His site is one of the top dating sites and has almost 700,000 members. Frind earns 5 to 10 million per year from advertising and affiliate links to other dating sites.

As a domainer, what struck me the most about this article is that two of the three people are making 6 to 7 figure incomes with just ONE website. The lesson here may be to take one idea and put your time and effort into that, as opposed to just accumulating many domains and spreading yourself thin. Anyone can build a good content site about SOME subject, like your local real estate, local restaurants/dining, a blog about a subject you like, etc.

I find if you start a blog about a subject you genuinely have an interest in, it's easier to post daily and stay engaged in your topic (like I feel about my own blog). In fact, I'm going to visit JohnChow.com and see how he does it!

Also, I think they could have doubled or tripled the number of BC internet moguls in the article, from BC domainer's alone. If not more.

Link to Province article:
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=6ea70f26-747a-45b2-a111-671de5b398d8&k=44884

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What's in a .CA name?

A .ca domain name was recently spotted in Afternic auction, sitting at about $140. What is the domain?

TheresaRodrigues.ca

It looks like this domain was used for a PC candidate in the 2006 national election, Theresa Rodrigues. From the CTV bio site for candidates, it says:

Theresa Rodrigues is the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) candidate in the Ontario riding of Davenport. She was also the Party’s candidate during the 2004 Federal election.

Fluent in Portuguese, Theresa has a history of assisting new immigrants to settle in Canada. Previously she has worked as a settlement officer and coordinator of language instruction, and has carried out other services for new immigrants

Theresa and her family have lived in Toronto’s west end for many years. She and her husband Victor have five children and six grandchildren.

How did her name end up at Afternic and who is bidding for it? Hard to say, especially since she didn't win her riding, only getting 10.8% of the vote. Perhaps she is running in the next election, which could come at any time, and wants her name back.

Top .ca sales of past week

There were two .ca sales reported at dnjournal this week in the country code extensions. These domains were:

Calories.ca - $5,300

CanadianPersonals.ca - $3,101

The biggest sale in country code extensions was InternetBusiness.co.uk which went for $14,883

I'm sure there were other .ca sales that didn't make the cutoff, and so weren't reported by dnjournal.

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Namespro - Register .ca domains at Namespro.ca Click here to register .ca domains

978,776 .CA domains registered

The countdown to 1 million .ca domains continues!

Two weeks ago, there were 970,000 .ca domains registered, today that number is at 978,776 domains.

The average growth rate has been about 626 domains registered per day over the last two weeks.

At that rate, there is only about 34 days left until we hit 1 million.

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more LL.ca

Another LL.ca has been put up for sale at DNForum.com, this time it's PP.ca

That makes three of these domains offered for sale at dnforum in recent days. The others were OO.ca and ZZ.ca