How much is a Chinese domain name worth? In April last year, Google, the world's most well-known search engine company, spent US$1 million to "redeeme" the squatted "Google.cn" (Google China), setting a record for the highest transaction price for a Chinese domain name. The "sky-high" transaction of "Google.cn" has made many investors see the huge value and return space of Chinese domain names. The reporter found through the quotations of Chinese domain names on various domestic trading websites that the current first-round quotations for Chinese top-level domain names in the secondary market generally range from 10,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan, and some high-priced varieties exceed 100,000 yuan. According to the reporter's rough statistics, more than 80% of the Chinese domain names "for sale" on the secondary market are related to well-known companies, brands, and products.
When the reporter checked the domain name registration website, he found that the Chinese domain names of many well-known companies in our province have been registered, including "Hongdou.cn", "Jincheng.China", "Yuruun.cn" ", "Suning. China", "Dongheng. China", etc. However, to the reporter's surprise, most well-known manufacturers said they "know nothing" about it.
For companies with well-known trademarks, the cost of maintaining intangible assets is already very high. Once the corresponding Chinese domain name is preemptively registered, companies must pay a considerable price to regain it. The person in charge of Nanjing Lansha Information Technology Co., Ltd., which has been engaged in domain name registration for a long time, revealed that if a company hopes to regain the squatted Chinese domain name through legal or arbitration channels, the arbitration and appraisal fees will cost at least tens of thousands of yuan. However, There is no guarantee of winning the lawsuit, and repurchase is often a realistic way for these companies to use their own Chinese domain names on the Internet.
It is understood that the current unified quotation for Chinese domain name registration fees by major domestic domain name registrars is 280 yuan per domain name per year. Even if it is calculated based on the usual one-time registration of 5 years, the registration cost is only 1,400 yuan. In this sense, registrants can easily obtain "income" of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands as soon as they change hands. Compared with the investment, it can be described as "a profit of one hundred thousand". Currently, most domain name registrars can register Chinese and CN domain names for individual agents, and squatters known as "cornworms" only need to pay a small agency fee for this. People familiar with the matter told reporters that since it has become difficult to dig out domain names with investment potential in the ".com" domain name, most "cornworms" have begun to turn to the rich "treasures" in Chinese domain names. “Data shows that if the current Chinese top-level domain name is not renewed or deleted for other reasons, it will be registered by ‘cornworms’ within 4 minutes on average.”
As for the investment craze in Chinese domain name squatting, Professor Xu Lizhen, director of the Computer Application Technology Research Office of Southeast University, believes that investing in Chinese domain name squatting is not a guaranteed profit, and the best way to invest is through creativity. He believes that whether the registered domain name truly has industry characteristics and whether new technologies will replace the current domain name system in a few years may affect the return on domain name investment.
This expert said that the behavior of squatting on Google is only a case. Real domain name investment relies on the discovery of valuable names. In fact, few transactions that occur are realized by squatting on other people’s domain names. . From a practical point of view, there are certain risks in preemptively registering the domain names of famous companies. With the improvement of relevant systems, squatters may even pay huge compensation for this. Therefore, the feasible way to invest in domain names should still be marketing based on independent creativity. "Investors who have successfully registered Chinese domain names of famous companies can actively help the brand promote its products and image, and seek to negotiate transfers with the company based on the increasing number of visits."