.me

what’s happening with the .me’s

So it’s been a month since the .me domain name extension was launched publicly.

Straight away, it was clear this was going to be a red hot domain and i, myself had to back track instantly on my initial ‘it’s another .eu’ attitude.

I ended up buying 5 at $40 a pop. All pretty strong, keyword domains - the safest bet in any extension. The .me auctions are still going on however… check out some of these figures…

toyota.me sold for $90,000 - that’s insane… surely toyota can just whip that domain from the owner under trademark law? - there must be some sort of loophole which prevents them from doing so otherwise only an idiot would pay $90k for a trademarked name.

Similar story with skoda.me - sold for $20k. With this sort of cash floating around it’s very difficult to see things slowing down online.

It makes you wonder what the guys buying these domains are thinking… are they simply taking a gamble? Do they know anything about domain names? Is it simply a case of protecting brand images?

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.me sells for $3605

Yip, that’s right… lastminute.me has sold for $3605 believe it or not, fresh out of the packet in an auction.

I’ve been surprised by the interest in .me’s - they’re 4th in the pecking order in my view - behind .com .net and .org. That’s how highly i’d rate them. But still, i never expected them to be snapped up like there’s no tomorrow.

People are buying .me’s which aren’t even taken in .net or .org format? WTF? It seems the .me has some sort ‘x factor’ appeal because it’s probably the only freely available extension which can be blended in to the name of the site.

Anyway, i’ve bagged three more since my last post, which means i’m owner of;

• Taxed.me
• Rejected.me
• Sacked.me
• Landmark.me
• sweet16.me

As a measure of how strong a domain is, you can go by a few things… number of search results, price similar domains have sold for, whether the name is available or taken in other extensions, how brandable it is…

ALL of my domains are already registered with these existing extensions; .com .net . org. info .us .mobi

‘Rejected’, ‘landmark’ and ’sweet16′ have also been registered with a .biz and .name. They’re all the major freely available extensions.

The keywords combined return a total of 154m results in google;

• taxed - 11m
• rejected - 58m
• sacked - 7m
• sweet 16 - 24m
• landmark - 54m

Based on all of that rejected.me is by far my strongest domain name, coupled with the fact that the .me can be blended in to the site name.

I could turn it in to a sort of social network…. sean.rejected.me, mary.rejected.me etc… or even xfactor.rejected.me, bigbrother.rejected.me….. there’s definitely potential there and all it takes is some clever thinking.

I’m glad i bought in to the hype now… i wasn’t sure whether to buy any .me’s or not…. i quickly seen the demand for them and made a u-turn very early on to start hunting. 5 domains and $200 later, i’m reasonably confident the better domains are all gone, you’ll really have to work hard to find a diamond in the rough. Meaningful 4 letter words are gone, as are all the brandable verbs.

Registering names with 2/3 words in them is a gamble at this stage… they’ll have to be developed in order to make any decent return, whereas one word domains will pretty much sell themselves. It’ll be another year or so probably until we’ll see the true value of a .me

i got so.me domains

Some of you may be aware that the new .me domain name extension was unleashed yesterday. Possibly the ‘best’ extension launched in recent times… certainly better than .eu or .name

Like everyone else, i was frantically trying to grab ‘premium’ or quality domains… things like;

• youlove.me
• eat.me
• bite.me
• upti.me
• downti.me

Basically a combination of cracked and dictionary word .me’s - anything that was half decent. Dot com will always be no.1, there’s no doubt about it. I always buy .com, however you can’t pass up an opportunity to get quality dictionary / keyword domains in ANY extension. Anyway, taken, taken, taken… i was shocked at how many domains had actually been registered so early on.

Unless i could formulate a sentence/statement/question out of it, i promised myself i’d stick to dictionary words. All the good cracked domains had been snapped up, there were a few dodgy ones like runover.me which were available but that was stretching it a bit, domains are $40 a pop to register ($20/year must register for minimum 2 years).

So i tried my hand at dictionary words but that i could also play with using the .me extension. I ended up with;

• sacked.me
• landmark.me

Sacked.me is a decent name, obviously could be turned in to a business/employers/employee type site or perhaps a funny ’sacked stories’ site… it has potential.

Landmark.me i already have an idea for, and i’ve been searching for a related ‘landmark’ type .com name for quite some time so i’m pretty pleased with it as it perfectly describes what the site will be about.

Out of the two, sacked.me is probably worth more as more can be done with it, plus it’s relatively short.

Will i develop sites under a .me extension? Yes. There’s plenty of people who won’t and will just squat on the domain. I won’t buy a name though unless i have some sort of a plan or it - whether the plans ever get carried out is another matter, but all my domains are registered in good faith.

There’s guys that have spent literally thousands on .me extensions - all hoping to flip them at some stage for big money…. these guys are a bit like property sharks. But unless you have a site to boot, a .me domain is worth nothing undeveloped unless it’s a really premium name.

Although .com will remain top dog, the .me option you would assume would be for personal sites, but i’d imagine most developed sites will be using the .me as part of the site name or integrated in to it. That’s pretty much what i’ve done.

Any of you guys brave enough to gamble on a $40 .me? I’d love to hear what domains you managed to get, if any! There’s still time, it’s early days and all it takes is a bit of creative thinking GoDaddy are the biggest .me seller, there’s not many others i know of selling .me’s just yet.