Goals for .Club in China This Year

Last week, Allegravita and the .Club registry announced that the two companies would continue to work together to continue creating inroads in the Chinese market in 2016. It seems that .Club has found success with its plans to bring .Club domain names to China, and I would imagine that the team at Allegravita has been helpful in this endeavor.

I always find it interesting to see what a company has planned for the new year as well as the goals it wishes to accomplish. I asked Simon Cousins from Allegravita and Jeff Sass and Colin Campbell from the .Club registry if they would be willing to share their goals for .Club in China in 2016. I think you will find it interesting, especially Colin’s comments about domain name values.

Simon Cousins had this to say:

From Allegravita perspective, the coolest thing about .CLUB in China as of Feb 1st, 2016, is that the TLD is totally, completely established in the most influential echelons of the Chinese domaining and domain registrar community. Where-ever .CLUB goes in China, the .CLUB execs are sincerely, warmly welcomed and .CLUB domains have become a universally hot property.

Look at Aliyun (China’s largest registrar) today for example: .CLUB is in the 3rd position of the home page drop down. Oh, on the subject of Aliyun, I attached a fun pic of Colin (and yours truly) helping Aliyun to celebrate Alibaba’s 16th birthday in Beijing a few months ago. Few have seen this happy snap 🙂

.CLUB has achieved its excellent position in the Chinese market through an equal combination of (a) a highly relevant string, (b) hard, passionate work by the registry execs and support team, and (c) partnering smartly and well.

Jeff Sass had this to say:

Not unlike the the projections I shared with you before, I think the big goal in China this year is of course to get our MIIT approval (which is pretty far along in the process). Then, with MIIT approval in hand, while continuing to grow our relationships and stature within the Domain Investor community in China, we’re excited to expand our reach to the many small businesses and Entrepreneurs in China who can leverage and benefit from a .CLUB domain.

The word “CLUB” in English is widely used in China, and we expect to see many great .CLUB sites hosted and promoted in China. We’ll continue to have some China specific domain name auctions, as we had in 2015, and we look forward to expanding and deepening our distribution channels with our current and some new registrar partners in China.

While we’ve spent a lot of time and money developing the .CLUB brand in China over the past two years, China is a very unique market and having a strong partner such as Allegravita, with deep knowledge and experience doing business in China, has been, and continues to be, a great asset for us.

Colin Campbell had this to say:

I think its very interesting that demand from China is so strong for .CLUB and a few other new TLDs. It is very different than in the west where entrepreneurs and brands seem to pay top dollar for brandable domains. In contrast investors in China are driving the market. The domains that are in shortest supply are the ones that have the highest values. For instance, a 1 character letter is worth almost 10x a two character letter, and a 3 character letter 10 x. Its all about scarcity.

That being said a number of other new domain extensions have tried to emulate .CLUB and have failed to create much excitement. Recent auctions demonstrate this with 5.CLUB selling for 58K and 8.link selling for 14.5K. I was actually one of the two final bidders for 8.link at the NamesCon auction as I thought the name was selling two cheap. Once .LINK launches big in China 8.LINK will have a dramatic rise in value.

What makes .CLUB or .WANG better than other new extensions in China: 1) They are short 2) They have a lot of presence with the registrars selling thousands or even hundreds of thousands of names 3) They do have some meaning or recognition in the Chinese market.

Hope that adds a some color.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

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