An Australian financial products entrepreneur has set the record for a .net.au domain name purchase, snapping up creditcard.net.au for over $18,000, just months after purchasing creditcard.net for $138,000.
The reveal of the sale comes during a significant week for the domain name industry, with top-level domain applications set to open later this week.
It also comes after a prominent year for the domain name industry, with a number of local records being broken as the value for domains continues to rise.
Pacific Octane chief executive James Wester sold the domain to Pixel Capital founding director Roland Bleyer, who operates financial products aggregators creditcard.com.au and creditworld.com.au, under the Credit Card Network brand.
Bleyer purchased the creditcard.net domain for $138,000 in September, and at the time, told SmartCompany the company was looking at moving into the American market.
This .net.au sale was made around the same time, but was not disclosed.
James Wester said this morning the sale is only the beginning, as domains will continue to rise in price.
“They’re going to keep rising. Just as 20 or 30 years ago, when every Australian had to open up the Yellow Pages to find what they were looking for, the Yellow Pages made a lot of money and kept raising the price.”
“The industry is changing now, the online space is changing, and these are becoming more valuable.”
Wester also points to the sheer number of internet-enabled devices that allow more people to browse wherever they are, which can raise the value of certain domains.
“If you look at the total number of users that are growing every single year, you have more people jumping online with iPads, tablets, phones. We’re probably going to see a significant explosion in domain name value.”
There were certainly a number of key domain sales last year, including investmentproperty.com.au, which sold for $125,000, along with hardware.com.au and electricity.com.au.
“This is a record for a .net.au sale.”
Meanwhile, top-level domain name applications are set to open later this week. These domains replace the “.com” or “.com.au” suffix with a brand name, such as Apple or Microsoft.
The registration process, which is being managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, will kick off this week. But smaller companies may be kept out of the process – registration will cost upwards of $US180,000.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
