Why do 2 and 3 character domains sell for a lot, is there a hidden-value in them i'm missing?

rare and long term investment

usually letters and numbers are high but mix of them and 3 char aren't so high these days

So 2 and 3 char domains will always hold their original value (possibly more?).

What would you say a standard 2 and 3 char domain would be worth?

yes they will hold and GO up :)

depends if it was XX or X# or #X
letter-letter or letter-number or number-letter

I see thanks for the info bashar.

Late last year you could have bought 2 char .net domains for a few hundred dollars. Now 2 chars go for close to a thousand dollars and higher. Same thing with 3 letter .nets. Last year they were low xx but now you can't get them for less than $150.

Originally posted by gkitching
Why do 2 and 3 character domains sell for a lot, is there a hidden-value in them i'm missing?

All 2-character and 3-letter com/net/org domains are taken, so there's some inherent value to them.

Originally posted by ToastyX
All 2-character and 3-letter com/net/org domains are taken, so there's some inherent value to them.

additionally all .biz, .us and .info domains are registered also!

Factor that into supply and demand of these limited domains.

all .us are gone too ? wow

Originally posted by acts837
Factor that into supply and demand of these limited domains.
EXACTLY! HOWEVER, reducing supply does NOT boost demand. On the contrary, it will push up the price, and that in turns will supress demand. I have been having some reservation regarding the strategy of *influencing* (or TRYING to influence) the prices of pre-owned domains by buying up the inventory. It may work for 3-leter CNO and to a lesser extent .biz, .info or even .us; but for 3-character's? I don't think so. Some people have learnt their lessons the hard way with 4-letter .com's before. The bottom line is: why would anybody on earth want a domain name like that? The math just doesn't add up.

I agree about the 4 letter and 3 char. But for all the others I think they are pretty solid. Yes Bashar, less than a week ago there were 1700 .us 3 letters. Not anymore.

wow that was fast, seems someone is following elequa's style by getting the 4200 biz/info names in one day :D

Yep, it's often known as domain squatting. Soon as someone needs a 3 letter domain for something (not sure what that would be!), they'll have to pay a premium for it. The price goes up because there's no other way to get it.

the ICANN agreement that placed all one and two letter domains in "reserved" status does not allow for transfers of those domains. so i'm not sure how you could sell one without being very covert about it (and as the buyer, risking having it pulled from you if - or more likely when - ICANN discovered the transfer).

Originally posted by datapimp.com
the ICANN agreement that placed all one and two letter domains in "reserved" status does not allow for transfers of those domains. so i'm not sure how you could sell one without being very covert about it (and as the buyer, risking having it pulled from you if - or more likely when - ICANN discovered the transfer).

That is not correct. These domains are being bought and sold everyday. If they ever expire then they are done but until then I have bought, sold, and renewed these domains and will continue to do so.

Originally posted by acts837
That is not correct. These domains are being bought and sold everyday. If they ever expire then they are done but until then I have bought, sold, and renewed these domains and will continue to do so. two letter com, net and orgs? (not letter/number combinations like h5.net n6.net and q6.net) they are hardly being sold every day. the list of active one and two letter com, net and orgs is very short.

and anyway, the fact that one may be sold here and there doesn't negate the fact that the ICANN agreement forbids it. like i said, you'd have to do it covertly, and i wouldn't like my odds as a buyer, that's all.

Originally posted by datapimp.com
they are hardly being sold every day.

Maybe not everyday but they "do" get sold and traded. The world/internet is a large place.

Originally posted by gkitching
So 2 and 3 char domains will always hold their original value (possibly more?).



not a chance, they are likely to fluctuate just like any other type of domain, just ask the people who registered all the 3 character .com's during the boom, large quantities were later dropped and not registered again until recently.

As a general comment I would say there is very little demand for 3 letter/number combinations in all extensions and 3 letter combo's in .net/.org/.biz/.info and even many 3 letter .com's are unlikely to get much interest from endusers. At the moment the market is mainly being driven be speculation.

Originally posted by acts837
The world/internet is a large place. and the world of one and two letter domains is a very small place.

agree with acts837 on the point above, there is no icann prohibition of reselling one and two character names.

Originally posted by snoop
agree with acts837 on the point above, there is no icann prohibition of reselling one and two character names. okay, according to former ICANN Vice President Louis Touton, "...transfers are consistent with the grandfathering policy."

so i am on crack.

but i could have sworn i read that on the ICANN site way back when. oh well, mea culpa.

Any idea why ICANN will not allow the registration of 2char letter-letter domains after they expire? Doesn't make too much sense for me

my understanding is 2 char .com/.net still drop, only .org are reserved after expiring and that is a decision made by the registry not icann.

Originally posted by snoop
my understanding is 2 char .com/.net still drop, only .org are reserved after expiring and that is a decision made by the registry not icann. no, it is an ICANN decision. it is not up to the registrar. ICANN has given the one and two letter domains "reserved" status, which means after they expire they are no longer available for registration (you might have noticed when .us, .biz and .info became commercially available no one or two character registrations were allowed).

the reason the decision was made (some time ago) was to 'protect' world wide country codes...so you couldn't register uk.com, etc.

as for one-letter domains, in 1993 Jon Postel registered all the available single-character names to reserve them for use in the public interest (he managed to register all but six out of 144 possible in .com, .edu, .net, and .org).

d'oh! double posted...

reserved for country code as they say..

all registrars doesn't allow 2 letters and since .org moved from verisign to PIR they reserved the 2 letter/char too

imagine verisign also reserves 2 let/char com/net ? :D

Originally posted by datapimp.com
.
.
.
as for one-letter domains, in 1993 Jon Postel registered all the available single-character names to reserve them for use in the public interest (he managed to register all but six out of 144 possible in .com, .edu, .net, and .org).


The name x.com was registered by an Internet user
> >sometime before 1993 when Jon Postel registered all the available
> >single-character names to reserve them for use in the public
> >interest. (He managed to register all but six out of 144 possible
> >in .com, .edu, .net, and .org.)


does thismean IANA taken back all single letter names from john postel?

Originally posted by Bashar
does thismean IANA taken back all single letter names from john postel? they didn't take them, he gave them.

for free?

why is that ? :confused:

Originally posted by Bashar
for free? why is that ? he registered them in the public interest - which i assume means he registered them to keep them out of the hands of businesses.

you have to remember what it was like in 1993...domain registration was free. there were only a handful of http hosts on the internet. different, different times.

well domains was chargable back in 93 it was free back in 87
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/contrib/potluck/Net-Services/net-directory/domain-info/domain-info.txt

not sure how he managed to register them all at one point without paying

Some of the ocuntry level TLD's allow 2 letter domains.
.gs .vg .ms .tc are some, but .nu and .ac don't allow it.

some even allow single letter too :)

Yes I believe .gg do.

Originally posted by Bashar
well domains was chargable back in 93 it was free back in 87
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/contrib/potluck/Net-Services/net-directory/domain-info/domain-info.txt

not sure how he managed to register them all at one point without paying

damm parrents. i could have done that if i was alive then :@

Originally posted by datapimp.com
no, it is an ICANN decision. it is not up to the registrar. ICANN has given the one and two letter domains "reserved" status, which means after they expire they are no longer available for registration (you might have noticed when .us, .biz and .info became commercially available no one or two character registrations were allowed).



if this argument was correct zg.com would not have dropped last year, you have confused several different concepts here but I will summarize in saying you are wrong.

Originally posted by GordonH
Yes I believe .gg do.

most old ccTLDs does i have single digit under .am
same goes for .bz .st etc..
but now they charge 1,000+ for single letters and even 10,000 at some !

Originally posted by snoop
if this argument was correct zg.com would not have dropped last year, you have confused several different concepts here but I will summarize in saying you are wrong. i haven't confused different concepts, they are all part of the same agreement. two letter domains are now "initially reserved." (see the link below)

as for zg.com, the ICANN Schedule of Reserved Names (http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/unsponsored/registry-agmt-appk-26apr01.htm) says;

"The reservation of a two-character label string shall be released to the extent that the Registry Operator reaches agreement with the government and country-code manager, or the ISO 3166 maintenance agency, whichever appropriate."

which means the registrar would have to reach an agreement with the government of the country represented by the two letter domain before they could allow it to be registered. since there is not a country represented by "zg," there was nothing in the ICANN agreement to prevent Network Solutions from allowing zg.com to be registered.

its ok to re-register 2 letter .com and .net only for .org biz info and .name its reserved.

so many 2 letter .nets dropped last year like me.net bq.net and a handfull of 2 char .nets too :)

Originally posted by Bashar
well domains was chargable back in 93...not sure how he managed to register them all at one point without paying i can assure you that there was no charge to register domain names until late 1995. i know because i registered two domains myself before there was a fee. it was a difficult process. there weren't any domain registration web sites (as we know them) at the time.

the web didn't start as a commercial venture. it didn't occur to anyone to charge money for domain name registration because they weren't seen as commodities like they are now.

so in september of 1995, Network Solutions started charging $100 for registrations (minimum 2 years at $50 per). and everyone who had registered a com net or org domain for free got a bill from internic for $100 when their renewals came due (internic also handled registrations for more than 240 country-code domains at the time, but the $100 fee only applied to com, net and org). understandably, many domains were allowed to expire at that time.

it wasn't until april of 1999 that Network Solutions finally had competition from the first five new registrars: AOL, France Telecomm, CORE, Melbourne IT and register.com.

maybe it ws 95 then not 93, my bad :)

Originally posted by Bashar
so many 2 letter .nets dropped last year like me.net bq.net again, two domains without corresponding two character country codes. so the rule doesn't apply.

what are you trying to say any 2 letter domain that has country code and drops after 26th april 2001 can't be re-regitered ?

thats great ..

If someone has a good 2 character SLD like xy.tld (no digits), would it be better to sell this domain or would it make sense to create a sub-registry for domains like domain.xy.tld?
- fips

depeds on the combo really, if u check centralnic tehy are selling sub domains and doing good because they have amazing names and stand for countries, but for xy there is no such ccTLD for xy, but might be nice shortcut for example someone.xy.tld like some free services s5.com etc.. in the old days

are there any big players other than centralnic making money out of subdomain registries?

not that i'm aware of

some are giving for free like eu.org

what do you think Bashar, could there be a market outside of centralnic?

they seems to be doing good, do you think other domain owners would be interested in promoting their own registries too?

i can recommend .eu.org, it's free and it works good. Only mailsupport is really bad...

There are a few subdomain companys, in austria for example there's a company which bought info.at and biz.at , they're know doing good business in selling those subdomains lilke mycompany.info.at - although they are expensive.

fips, as i said it depends on the domain itself

try opening a thread at domain name appraisals and see, if your domain match some country code could be good somehow.

Originally posted by Bashar
what are you trying to say any 2 letter domain that has country code and drops after 26th april 2001 can't be re-regitered ? unless the registrar can reach an agreement with the country the two letter combination is assigned to, that is correct. and such an agreement would be unlikely.

but you never know. many of the smaller countries and territories sell their tld rights (.tv and .fm for example), so it isn't impossible. just improbable (and expensive).