I find it amusing to see eBay auctions of .com.au domain names with price tags in the millions of dollars. Today I saw “paris hiltons party” .com.au listed for $5,000,000 (Buy Now). Now I’ve always been a firm believer that “worth” or “value” is only what someone else is willing to pay. However, if someone (stupid) paid $5 million for a domain name like that, does it mean it’s valued at that price? Certainly not. I guess if it went to auction and at least two people were bidding to that price, then maybe. You could always assume that some other stupid person was willing to pay that much, so its “worth” it.

A domain name’s sale price, especially .com.au, is extremely hard to evaluate. There are lots of methods and key indicators the industry uses to value a domain name, such as length (characters), extension (.com.au not .net.au), number of words, hyphenations, spelling, plural/singular, common words, search engine counts, branding ability and so on. There’s also precedent or past sales, this is one of the biggest factors for appraisal of anything, unfortunately, there’s not a lot of data on Australian domain name sales.

I was recently present at TRAFFIC Down Under, for the Aftermarket.com and Rick Latona domain name auctions. I’ve recorded some data that may help you to appraise your domain name. If you have a .com.au domain name for sale, or would like some help with appraisal, I am happy to discuss it with you. The following names (Aftermarket Auction) sold in USD, at the time of the auction the AUD was at 64 US cents.

Hunting.com.au sold for $1,500
JobListings.com.au was passed in with a reserve of $3,000
Undergraduate.com.au sold for $1,600
Camp.com.au sold for $2,600
Jackets.com.au sold for $3,000
Barbecuing.com.au sold for $500
Essays.com.au sold for $1,600
SurfingLessons.com.au sold for $2,200
Shout.com.au sold for $1,000
Rules.com.au sold for $700
Toons.com.au sold for $500
Jeweller.com.au sold for $9,200
Athletic.com.au was passed in with a reserve of $2,000
Knit.com.au sold for $700
Laughter.com.au was passed in with a reserve of $2,000
MensClothing sold for $4,000
CDs.com.au sold for $2,000
Branding.com.au sold for $2,500
Authentication.com.au sold for $500
Pollution.com.au sold for $3,000
Enter.com.au was passed in with a reserve of $2,000
Plans.com.au sold for $2,700
Parasailing.com.au sold for $1,700
DirtBiking.com.au sold for $500
JetSkiing.com.au sold for $2,000
Bake.com.au sold for $800
Broadcasting.com.au sold for $2,000
Up.com.au sold for $2,700

The following names (Rick Latona Auction) sold in USD, at the time of the auction the AUD was at 64 US cents.

Adopt.com.au sold for $400
CampSites.com.au sold for $1,300
CharterAirplane.com.au sold for $2,750
Friend.com.au sold for $3,000
History.com.au sold for $8,500
Instuments.com.au sold for $2,200
Snowboards.com.au sold for $6,000

I intended to post some more commentary about these sales, but it’s dinner time.

Everything sold in a retail environment includes a “mark up”, the term is used to describe the difference between the cost of producing the product and the “juice” the retailer charges for the product.

Mark up often varies from store to store, but why? One assumes it is simply because businesses want to make more money. However, price variation occurs due to other factors such as distance, local area marketing, supply and demand etc.

Purchasing a computer in regional parts of Australia is likely to cost you more than in the city. However, purchasing fresh fruit is most likely priced the opposite. These price fluctuations are due to variables such as adding the cost of distribution and general supply and demand.

When it comes to purchasing “electrons” or something in the digital world, you might ask; “Why do prices at one domain name registrar have mark up more than 20 times that of another?”.

Well, in the digital world it comes down to things like marketing spend (recovering the cost to acquire you as a customer), customer service (helping you costs money, they want that money back), technology (some registrars software is substantially better than others, it probably cost them more to produce). Even with all that considered, you will quickly realise that the highest priced registrars probably just want the PROFIT.

The Australian domain name registrars mark up the price of com.au domain names anywhere from $5.40 to an amazing $117.45!

According to AusRegistry, Australia’s official wholesale domain name provider, there are currently 25 .auDA accredited registrars.

The Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA) charges a fee of $4.95 with every com.au registration. The wholesaler, AusRegistry charges $17.60 per com.au domain, making the wholesale rate of a com.au domain name $22.55.

These prices vary for the different .au products, as per below:

Below is a table of the auDA accredited registrars and the current retail prices. As you can see, Intaserve.com is currently the cheapest com.au registrar in Australia. This list is produced in alphabetical order, is representative of the minimum 2 year registration term and includes GST. NameScout Corporation is incorporated in Barbados and does not charge GST.