Sep
26
Russian IDN Sochi.com (Сочи.com) Banks $21,555
September 26, 2008
The Russian IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) Сочи.com sold recently for a whopping $21,555. The auction took place on IDN forum IDNChannel.
With all the auctions and sales that took place this week, this one took place at a normal forum auction and sold for well over what other ASCII domains at the other auctions did.
It was a surprise really for me to see an inital bid placed of $12,000 when I first saw the auction and would have never expected it to go $20,000+. The buyer, 261275, then made an extremely valid point:
They will invest 12 Billion $ for the olympics in that city, got to be worth something
Sochi is a Russian city with a population of 328,809, and they are planning on hosting the 2014 Olympic Games. Upon doing further research, it seems like the city is a fabulous tourist attraction and I’ve already considered visiting on my (hopefully) Euro trip next year.
ChickenRecipes.com sold on the live auction for 19k.
I’m Feeling Lucky.
I think I would be feeling lucky as well. I have a couple Russian IDNs and their traffic has been on the rise; as for IDN investing in general? Well, I haven’t really written up a post about that yet, but if the potential for IDNs isn’t exactly seen by now, there is a problem. IDNs are the gateway for people that speak and use other languages to finally have the opportunity to snatch domains using their own language and actually relate to it. As a brand, I think IDNs are the real-deal. I’ve done the whole LLLL.com thing and trying to buy fresh-reg’d domains, but nothing has amounted to what some of my IDNs have went through in the last 2 years. Getting on this subject requires a post of its own… hopefully I will get one up soon.
Great sale, and congratulations to the seller and buyer! Best of luck! Hope some of my geos do as well in the future!
Comments
1 Comment so far
I got a feeling we’re gonna see more and more such domain auction in the near future. IDN is slowly getting it’s break and the community is finally accepting the IDN fact which is a good sign.
Let’s see in the new round of gTLD, what IDN TLD will appear.