It is not a secret that there are many sales going in private with any real estate (digital and others) and it is simply not reported; or at least why should it be reported? In the case of domain names this is also true.
Every day, thousands of queries are made on the .ae whois database by people in search of good and generic names, or simply “domaining”. Some of these searches, especially those in the area of specific interest end up as sales and transfer of ownership.
Most of these are obviously done in private and this why would anyone case to report these, and remember that we are taking about a cctld that is perhaps not known to everyone.
I managed to lookup some of those sales through colleagues in the industry and friends, and I was extremely surprised by the closing values them! If you have read my previous post about the sale of tv.ae for US$8000, then it is just a small percentage of the value compared to what some other unreported domains went for.
To disclose some of those domains and their approximate sale prices (approximate because the owners hassled to reveal the real once!)
Let’s look at a bunch of domain names like 11.ae, 22.ae, 33.ae, 888.ae and many other numerical domains went all for over 5,000 AED (US$ 1,366). You might ask a question why the heck numerical domains! So do we! The reason apparently is that as many might know about the local passion for “cool numbers” for mobile sim cards, car plates and now for the domain names! In fact some of those domains were listed on Arabic forums and sold there aswell. Here is a mentality that my local friend shared with me:
Imagine you get a car plate number 777, and your mobile number also contains 777 and now you can have a domain name as 777.ae (who cares what I will use it for or even how to use it!) Believe it or not that is exactly what is happening here.
So get your thoughts straight and start getting some of those cools names before its too late! I am off to do the same.
