wales. and .wales

[Ian King]

I've been running a local town website in Wales since 2000 and last year I bought several "wales." domain names (wales.xyz, wales.guru, wales.photography, wales.photos, wales.zone etc.) Some I was planning to sell and others to make into small sites.

As I didn't really have the money to get all these, I didn't renew some, including wales.webcam, wales.camera, wales.graphics, wales.camp, wales.farm, but tried to keep the most popular ones. So those were a waste of money.

This year I secured about twenty ".wales" domains and ended up getting some nice ones, including music.wales, sports.wales, health.wales, shop.wales, shops.wales, website.wales. I think the .wales domains would be good for Google searches as I think it’s one of only three suffixes that are a country in full, ".africa" being the only other one I can think of (not including ".cymru" (Welsh for Wales), and I have music.cymru too).

Now I have more domains than I know what to do with and need to make some money in revenue or by selling a few. I tried a SEDO holding page, but that got very little. So at the moment, I have the top ones with basic pages and others linked to my town website (now dolgellau.wales with Google ads). I also have most listed for sale on SEDO at their recommended price (some for more). However, none are making anything.

I wondered if anyone knows the best way to make a little money on them and if you think I was right in buying them or dropping the ones I did.

Oh, and here's another question; What's more valuable; wales.photography or photography.wales?

…Ian

 

[accelerator]

Do Welsh people prefer to use .cymru or .wales? Are they two completely different registries or are they related in some way?

The way to make money is to take the names with the best potential, and build them into proper sites, where you charge people money for advertising on them. So, charge people for banner ads, or charge them for listings.

In terms of making money from selling domains, my view would be that .wales and .cymru are very small and specialised markets, so your expectations have to be adjusted accordingly. I think some of them may have potential, but the difference between a .com and .cymru/.wales is substantial in terms of potential buyers and resale value, in that the .com is way ahead.

The key is to build high quality sites.

 

[Ian King]

.wales is outselling .cymru 2-1 at the moment. I would think that .cymru would be more for businesses within wales and welsh language versions, whereas .wales is more tourism etc. A lot of people are buying both versions of their business name though (and perhaps having a different language for each).

I understand what you are saying, but it's just the time to build up the sites and finding material to fill it.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[katherine]

Two extensions for one nation is too much imo. Why should you have to choose between .wales and .cymru ?

Sure, you can develop them but I think you will struggle to resell them otherwise. Make up your mind

 

[Ian King]

Thanks for your message. I'll try and make up my mind, although I've never been good at that.