Wills.ca – Do you have a will?

As many of you know, domain name WILLS.ca is for sale at Pool.com auction. Less than 24 hours left until the end of the auction, and last time I checked there are no bids placed. The main reason why any of the bids weren’t placed is a hefty price tag. The reserve price of the auction is at $20,000, and the buyer will be expected to pay at least $22,400 including tax. Is it a good deal? There is no obvious answer to this question.

Wills.ca is a premium, generic domain name. It clearly describes the product, and anybody who visits the site knows ahead of time what they expect to find. I went to few of the local lawyer’s offices in Vancouver with the purpose of finding out how much it will cost to “create a will”.  The prices ranged from $350 to $450 dollars for simple cases. You should note though, that if you own a business it might cost significantly more to prepare a will, and even more if your business is not easily understandable by most of the people. For instance if you are a domainer with a large portfolio of names, it will take more time for a lawyer to draw all necessary documents to describe your business and how the will should be enforced in case something happens to you.

In conclusion I must say, that in most cases there is only once a chance to acquire for businesses that one domain name that it so generic and premium for them. Once cars.com, loans.com, homes.com get sold and developed, there is no way to buy these names anymore, because they turn from domain names to an operating businesses. In contrast, Canadian namespace is so immature, and so poorly developed that all the .com names that I mentioned above, are not even developed in .ca, they are simply parked. It might be a good chance for one of the law firms to buy WILLS.ca domain name, but seeing so many premium .ca domains left undeveloped, I think we are at the stage where Canadian companies still don’t understand the value of premium generic domains. I won’t be surprised to see WILLS.ca unsold.

March 9, 2011 – TBR session results overview

Not that many valuable domain names dropped today, and picking first was especially important. BareMetal.com outplayed everyone, and chose arguably the best name from the pack – PCP.ca. We wrote a little bit about this name in the morning. Domain name PCP.ca was registered in 1996, and stands for PanCanadian Petroleum, this is one of the oldest domain names ever to drop during TBR session.

Sibername.com had a good showing, as always, with iStore.ca (2), TheWorkplace.ca (5),CosmeticDentist.ca (6), BeaconHill.ca (8), PokerHand.ca (9), andPokerHands.ca (20). It’s extraordinary to see guys from Sibername to have such a good results week after week.

Picking first is always important. The winners today were BareMetal.com and Sibername.com – BareMetal.com for picking first, and Sibername for making 7 selections from the top 20 for their cleints.

My personal favorites for today’s TBR session were ChineseRestaurant.ca (17, Burmac Business Systems Ltd.)PokerHands.ca (20, Sibername), FishStore.ca (28, MyId.ca), and  Grille.ca (76, Pool.com).

Full March 9,2011 TBR session results [ PDF file/New Tab ] In total 220 domain names were registered, out of 3,454 domain names that dropped that day.

February 23, 2011 – TBR session results overview

The last TBR run on February 23rd didn’t have many great names, but it had some generics, and many domain names with development potential. Usual winners such as Pool.com and Sibername.com didn’t perform very well, and Rebel.com picked the first one. Rebel.com chose GCE.ca, Pool.com was second picking BioChemical.ca. The real winner of this session though turned out to be MyID.ca making 4 picks out of the first 10 domains to drop. MyID picked up OnlineCreditCard.ca (3), CashStop.ca (4), Kelp.ca (9), and RAN.ca (10). Ran.ca was one of the most popular domain names during the pre-order at various registrars. Even though Sibername didn’t perform very well, they picked one of the best domain names to drop – Shelter.ca (6). The name that I liked the most – Watermelons.ca – was chosen by BareMetal.com (5)

Here are the first 20 results. In total 223 domain names were registered out of the 4131 that dropped.

Did You Know?

I really like this video that recently went viral and has more than 13 million views on YouTube

It ends with the open question: “so what does it all mean?”, which I want to rephrase into “what does it all mean for domainers?”