October is winding down and there are two full months left in 2020. When we look at reported country code domain name sales, they have already surpassed 2019 and 2018 full year sales.
2020 sales are 6,344 sales for $10.5 million vs 2019 full year sales of 6,249 sales for $10.5 million.
The country codes fueling the sales are the usual suspects. .Co.uk, .de, .co, .io and .ai.
.Co.uk has had a strong 2020 doubling 2019 sales in dollar volume. .Co dollar volumes have matched 2019 already, but the average sales price is down.
| Extension | 2020 $ volume | 2019 $volume | 2020 #of sales | 2019 #of sales |
| .Co.uk | $1.2 million | $527,300 | 153 | 132 |
| .Co | $1.1 million | $1.1 million | 814 | 438 |
| .io | $1.1 million | $905,000 | 1,019 | 857 |
| .De | $2 million | $2 million | 470 | 458 |
| .Ai | $952,000 | $1.2 million | 1,253 | 2,202 |
Data courtesy of Namebio
ccTLD’s have better registrant protections than the new gTLD’s
If you make your name valuable through effort and investment, the new gTLD registry can take any amount of of the value you created by upping the price to renew your domain.
I think it depends on the country.
There are some shady countries (dictatorships) that have sub-contracted out their name to dubious 3rd parties. (I’m looking at you, Gabon / .ga).
That’s why I’ve focused on the DEMOCRACIES, with ultra-premium names like Guatemala.GT, Monterrey.MX (Mexico’s 2nd largest city by GDP), and MGM.AL (represents Alabama’s capital city of Montgomery — its short-form brand and airport code, but technically Albania.)
For my geographic domain names related to dictatorships, e.g., Dodoma.com (capital of Tanzania) or NewAlamein.com (the new tourism city / summer capital of Egypt), I’ve stayed SAFE in the “.com” where the local gov’ts can’t touch me. Tanzania in particular has some INSANE laws regarding the internet.
Tanzania doesn’t sell the “.tz” anyway, and I won’t buy 3rd-level domains like “.co.tz” or “.com.mx”. They’re still used locally but have no long-term future and little intuitive value.
Your cctld’s are worthless from an investment perspective unless they are .me, .tv, or .co
Thank you for that mentality, “I put blinders on my eyes and limit myself to the rules I heard someone say on an online bulletin board somewhere.”
If more domainers were aware of the possibilities, I might never have acquired Monterrey.MX, Guatemala.GT, or MGM.AL.
By the way, if you look at recent lists of domain sales, the ccTLDs are second only to .com — far ahead of all the other domains.
Most of the ccTLDs listed are not those three.