Currency Markets Impact Foreign Domainers
January 22, 5 CommentsDomainers that don’t live in the United States have often reaped the benefits of the currency market.
With world markets going up and down like a game of Donkey Kong (well actually more down than up) its having a serious impact on our cost of goods.
As of today, 1 USD = 1.52384 AUD (Australian dollar), or to flip it around, 1 AUD = 0.656154 USD. If you look at the chart, you will see that six months ago, the Australian dollar was worth US$.96.
Great For Parking
The rest of the world is making MORE money (in their local currency) as they take advantage of being paid in US$ or Euro.
Bad For Buying
The cost of bidding against US domainers has increased.
Great For Selling
While this may seem all “doom and gloom”, there is a hidden upside. If you are a non-US domainer who is selling, then now is the time to sell in US$. Why? It should be worth more in your local currency.
If you are a domainer outside the USA, please feel free to post a comment. I’d love to hear your situation.
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I live in Portugal, and for me it’s an advantage to buy domains in USD, because Euro is stronger than dollar. When it’s time to sell, i always increase the price a little to compensate the difference
Hello,
I live in Norway and it’s always been cheaper to buy my domains through GoDaddy at $7.59 incl. fees rather than using a Norwegian registrar. Until Oct 08 you would be paying 5 to 5.50 Norwegian Krones (NOK) per USD, but from October it’s been as high as 7.50 NOK per USD. That’s a 40% increase in a matter of weeks!
I found a better solution through a Swedish registrar though, so now I’m paying the equivalent of US$5.70 per domain – which is roughly 25% cheaper than GoDaddy – and actually lower than what ICANN themselves charge the registrars. How it all works out in the end is beyond me, but I enjoy it while it lasts.
Thank you for addressing this problem!
// Cato
I forgot to address the sellers point of view, and in this case it is of course GREAT to be paid in USD…:-)
I started out in this business in May 08 and basically just hand-registered domains like crazy. After a while I realized that many of these had no value what so ever – but I still managed to compile roughly 2,600 .com’s now – and I use SEDO on all of them. It generates a fraction of what I spent, and I’ve only sold 7-8 names since then. The last one in September 08.
I’ve read a zillion articles and blogs about selling domains and the concensus seems to be “sit back – relax – and pray someone contacts you and buys it before renewal is due”.
If you have any good suggestions for a newbie that already done the mistake of buying this many domains – I would certainly appreciate it greatly. I have no knowledge of development, so I’ve tried SEDO, WhyPark and DevHub without much luck.
Thank you.
Hi Cato
I suggest you use other sources, not only sedo, use forums like namepros or domainstate. Use brokers, search for a few that are very well known and respected, probably they won’t accept most of your names if they’re not good names, but they might take a few if they’re good. Some of the best i know are Stephen Douglas, Kevin Jackson, Eric Rice, Rick Latona, Andy Cumbria. There’s also a nice swedish site called missdomain, and there are a lot of other sites dedicated to acquiring and brokering domains, google it or yahoo it, search, learn, dotpound is a nice auction site too
Good luck
Thank you, Helder! I will check it out.