I usually write about LLLL.coms on this blog — perhaps unsurprising considering the url

Occasionally other domain name segments have been covered, such as LLL.coms and LLLL.nets, but what about all the other short domains segments out there? We see short domain name investors on domain name forums investing in everything from L-L-L.coms, LLLL.coms, and 5L.coms to CC.coms and CCC.coms and their equivalents in .net and .org. I hope to open this blog up to short domains in general, rather than just focusing on LLLL.coms in the future (of course plenty of short domain content will continue to be on LLLL.coms) or just CNO, as is often pretty much all we see browsing the popular domain name forums.

This post isn’t going to be about any of the short domain name segments mentioned above, rather, it’s going to be about one of the short domain segments which for one reason or another, have been overlooked by the large majority of domainers — I’m talking about short domains in ccTLDs. Outside .com (and sometimes even including .com), it’s not uncommon to see the ccTLD as the second (or even first) choice for many businesses in some countries.

I live in Canada, so I’ll talk about my experience with .ca domains in this post… People here don’t snub a .ca domain like they might a .info… Nobody here looks at a .ca domain and says “Oh, I guess he went with domain.ca because he couldn’t afford domain.com”. It’s a very well respected domain name extension here in Canada — one that pretty much everyone can associate with being Canadian (the fact that only Canadians or those with business interests in Canada are allowed to register them likely plays a role in that). Most Canadian businesses here that use a .com domain for their main site still have a .ca domain that either redirects to their .com domain or, if they’re a multinational corporation, provides a different version of their site on the .ca domain which is targeted at their Canadian clientele.

Despite this ccTLD only being open to the 33 million or so Canadians, total .ca domain registrations as I write this post are nearing 1.2 Million. Just think about that for a sec — If we extrapolate and compare that to the USA’s 300+ Million population, we’d be looking at about 11 Million registered .ca domains if Canada were the size of the USA. You might be able to get around the restrictions on .ca domains if you have a trusted domaining contact who resides in Canada (who could “hold” the domains for you) or if you’re an incorporated business, but don’t quote me on that and make sure you check that out because being Canadian, I haven’t. CIRA is one of the stricter ccTLD registries, so if you’re not Canadian make sure you get real answers to the questions you have before considering investing in .ca domains.

The .ca registry was started in 1987 and by the end of 2000, counted but 140,000 total .ca registrations — still a pretty respectable number when you consider that Canada is a small country and that there were a whole lot less domainers and domains being registered in all extensions back then. Since responsibility for the .ca extension was transferred over to CIRA, the .ca extension has seen massive growth, reaching 1 million registered .ca domains in April 2008. In the year since then, .ca domain registrations have continued to soar, seeing just under 200,000 new .ca domains registered as I write this post.

So, why invest just in short domains? Intelligently investing in keyword ccTLD domains is certainly another option — some inspiring past sales include Jobs.ca for $600,000 and that Big .ca domain portfolio sale awhile back. Seeing as this is a blog about short domains, I’ll leave it at that and continue to talk about how to make money investing in short domains. When we read about LL.coms, we often see 2 letter domains having sold for 6 figures.. Not a whole lot of LL.coms have been reported sold for under $100k the past couple years — all of those which have sold for significantly under that have had at least one bad letter (note: we don’t see a lot of LL.coms on the market.. I’m sure prices are lower now in light of the recession which has devalued most domains, however it’s hard to put a price on a domain when little current sales data exists). On the .ca front, the story is much different.. To a Canadian, it’s pretty hard to imagine that the going rate on an LL.ca is as low as it is.. I sold a double premium, repeat letter LL.ca last year for $14k — when’s the last time you saw one of those sold in .com? Given there’s only 26 such domains, it’s not surprising that we rarely see such domains on the market, yet in .ca, a domain like that remain surprisingly affordable.

I distinctly remember the LLL.ca buyout pretty much coinciding with the LLLL.com buyout — I was having a lot of trouble at the time deciding which one I wanted to invest in (I even contemplated investing in both and still regret not doing that). Now I was fortunate to sell out of the low end LLLL.com market at the right time — since peaking in February 2008, we’ve seen LLLL.coms fall from a minimum wholesale of about $55 to about $4 per domain. When you consider the fact that LLLL.coms were bought out on November 2nd, 2007, you can see that most people having bought in pre-buyout or having bought in post-buyout, are now in the red, assuming they’ve been holding the domains and not reselling at least some of them to other domainers or endusers at a profit.

So, how have LLL.ca fared over this same timeframe? Contrary to the LLLL.com market, the LLL.ca market has actually done pretty good. We see all LLL.ca reaching $60+ today, many hitting $100+ and often far more in auctions. The .ca market doesn’t have anywhere near the kind of sales data that’s available for .com domains — this pretty much repeats itself with all ccTLDs, so it does require a bit more research to invest in than something like say LLLL.coms, where there’s plenty of evidence on where the market is at courtesy of 20,000+ reported sales over the past few years.

So this was a look at the .ca short domain name market.. I hope at least some of the visitors residing elsewhere found this interesting — maybe it gave you an idea about a different ccTLD you’d like to invest in? I’ll have to blog about some different ccTLDs in the future — short domain name investors really are missing out if they limit their short domain name investments to CNO.

Related posts:

1. Short Domain Name Liquidity and Saving for Renewals
2. The State of the Short Domain Market
3. Thoughts on Investing in Short Domains