# Hello World, eh?



## Bob Hawkes__ (Jan 3, 2021)

... or I guess Hello DN.ca  :lol: 

See many familiar faces or usernames, but those who do not know me I am a retired scientist who has a hobby in domain investing and like to analyze interesting questions, and write at too great a length, probably.  :-/ 

I have a few questions / ideas wondering about:
1.  Any suggestions for a particular .ca specific analysis people would like to see?
2.  What is your outlook for 2021 in .ca? (I know other threads already discussed that some)
3.  Do you think there is interest in some sort of online Canadian domain name show or forum, with the idea being mainly to reach those outside the domain world (i.e. business startup owners, business news media, educators, etc.)?
4.   I know a few here are also active on TheDomainSocial. Any thoughts on, not often but now and then, have Canadian only online get together.

Hope all is well with everyone, and that you have a great 2021!

Bob


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## jaydub__ (Jan 3, 2021)

Very few write with the insight, humility and researched knowledge that you do.
Great to see you here Bob! *THUMBSUP*

..and Happy 2021 to you as well!


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## MapleDots__ (Jan 3, 2021)

Hello Bob

Nice to finally see you in our neck of the woods, I was hoping you would join and give us a few ideas.

TheDomainSocial.com looks like an interesting site, I have not visited it before and I recognize quite a few people.

Bob, I noticed you did not link to the site, we do not have a lot of rules here so you do not have to worry about linking. We are all for free speech and expression.

I am looking forward to interacting with you here.  *DRINK*


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## DomainRecap (Jan 3, 2021)

I just knew you were a scientist... a MAD scientist!

Welcome to the club, ask Pops for a chocolate shake, and both Jughead and Reggie should be by a bit later.


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## Nafti (Jan 3, 2021)

Great to see you here Bob. 

I’m very much looking forward to your write-ups and just your genuine presence here.


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## Bob Hawkes__ (Jan 3, 2021)

MapleDots said:
			
		

> Hello Bob
> 
> Nice to finally see you in our neck of the woods, I was hoping you would join and give us a few ideas.
> 
> ...



Thanks for welcome.  I will get a more active presence going soon.

Re the Social, although started by Michael Cyger, it is now run by a Canadian, Arif /Ategy. He does not, I think, invest in .ca, and not sure iff he is yet on here. He has done an  awesome job with it - just raised $12k in a charity auction. I was possibly meaning to see if now and then a Canadian only thing might be done there, or someone with a business Zoom account do a similar thing. I would not want to see it too often, but now and then to get to know Canadian faces would be nice.

Take care everyone,

Bob


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## RedRider (Jan 3, 2021)

Welcome Bob  @=


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## rlm__ (Jan 3, 2021)

Welcome Bob, great to see you here.  Looking forward to your insights.


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## Esdiel (Jan 3, 2021)

Welcome Bob! Great to see you here.

I would be interested in an analysis comparing .CA with other ccTLDs, including other popular ccTLDs that don't have a country-presence requirement... and what we could expect (particularly with the number .CA registrations) if CIRA ever dropped the Canadian presence requirement and opened it up to the world.


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## MapleMark__ (Jan 3, 2021)

Hi Bob,

I am relatively new to the domaining business and i only know a couple of things, but you seem like you know what your talking about, and you seem like a very knowledgeable person when it come to domaining.   

I look forward to seeing what you have to say and I hope you can give me some tips along the way.


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## FM__ (Jan 4, 2021)

Hi Bob, welcome.

I try to join The Domain Social whenever I can, it's usually fun and interesting.


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## Bob Hawkes__ (Jan 9, 2021)

Yes, definitely interesting topic to compare .ca to an extension in a somewhat similar country, e.g. economy and population, but without a restricted country code TLD to see how sales and registrations and use compares. Thank you for the suggestion. Anyone have a suggestion with respect to a good comparable country?
Bob


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## rlm__ (Jan 10, 2021)

Bob Hawkes said:
			
		

> Anyone have a suggestion with respect to a good comparable country?



.UK is probably a decent comparison and is unrestricted.


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## aactive (Jan 10, 2021)

rlm said:
			
		

> .UK is probably a decent comparison and is unrestricted.



Maybe more like Australia...closer in population and also a restricted ctld.


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## Esdiel (Jan 10, 2021)

The examples mentioned above are good but would the .com.au and .co.uk options complicate things? One is also restricted whereas the other isn't.

Germany's .DE might be a good comparison as a popular unrestricted ccTLD. Their population is around twice the size as ours but that can be taken into account.


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## rlm__ (Jan 11, 2021)

So, I put together a little table of stats on the most popular ccTLDs as of 2020.  It started as a way to see what would be the best ccTLD to compare against .CA, but I figured I'd just add these other easily found stats (population & sales).  Unfortunately the list of ccTLD data wasn't longer.

ccTLD registration stats are from CIRA & Verisign: https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/index.xhtml
2020 populations from Wikipedia.
2020 sales data from Namebio.

When sorted by total registrations, .CA isn't top 10, but close.

When sorted by Registrations per Person, .CA is 4th of those examined, but tops amongst restricted ccTLDs.

When sorted by Avg Reported Sales Price, .CA is tops overall.

So the unrestricted .NL, .DE and .UK have much higher registrations per person, but lower average resale prices.

Of course all of this is based on limited sales data which will always be the biggest problem in these kinds of comparisons.

Discuss.


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## Spex (Jan 11, 2021)

Great info [notify]rlm[/notify]

Surprised by the average sale of the .CA. Always assumed .DE was the gold standard for a non-repurposed ccTLD sales but cool to see a few (including ours) ahead of them


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## domains (Jan 11, 2021)

I would have guessed .DE as well, you see a lot of those sales in the weekly report.


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## Esdiel (Jan 11, 2021)

Thanks for putting this together [notify]rlm[/notify]. Awesome work!

Does the number of registrations (and average sales price) for a domain like .uk include the other .uk variables, like .co.uk, me.uk, org.uk, uk.com, uk.net (all of which have sales history on namebio)? I'm also not sure if they restrict domains the same way CIRA does for existing conflicting domains. Something tells me they don't, or not exactly. I remember when they prepared for the launch of the .uk they gave priority to owners of other variables to reserve them first before a certain date (and if they didn't they became free for anyone to register). 

A bit more info about this in this image below, including other variables of the extension I didn't mention above:





I will have more comments and things to share soon. We might want to make this subject it's own topic in another forum, as I can see us building on the work that RLM has done.

For example: it would be interesting to see how these ccTLDs compare in growth since they were introduced. According to CIRA, the .CA outperformed the others in terms of growth in 2020:


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## Esdiel (Jan 11, 2021)

[notify]Spex[/notify]
[notify]domains[/notify]

.DE does indeed make the weekly sales reports more often than the .CA, but the .DE extension had 607 reported sales in 2020, whereas the .CA only had 37 reported sales in 2020.

The high number of .DE sales brings down the average sales price, whereas we only seem to report big (but few) .CA sales, hence the high average.

Check out the top ten 2020 sales for each:


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## Spex (Jan 11, 2021)

Thanks [notify]Esdiel[/notify], wasn't thinking about the # of reported sales when I made my comment.

More .DE reported sales would definitely bring down their average


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## rlm__ (Jan 11, 2021)

Esdiel said:
			
		

> Does the number of registrations (and average sales price) for a domain like .uk include the other .uk variables, like .co.uk, me.uk, org.uk, uk.com, uk.net (all of which have sales history on namebio)



The # of registrations were from https://www.nominet.uk/news/reports-statistics/uk-register-statistics-2020/
That would include any true .UK domains (including uk, co.uk, org.uk, me.uk, etc) as governed by Nominet, the UK equivalent of CIRA.  This does not include uk.com which is not a .UK domain name.

Namebio sales data included all of them as well.  Note that I looked at 2020 sales data only.

And yes, Nominet did reserve .UK domains for holders of conflicting domains.  However, if they weren't registered within a couple years, they were released to anyone.  .UK opening up was a little different than .CA since .UK was never opened up until recently, whereas CIRA opened up .CA from the beginning (except for conflicting domains).  So .CA have been a trickle of registrations over 20 years, .UK was a massive sunrise and landrush.   However, by now, I'd say the differences no longer matter too much.


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## JoeN (Jan 13, 2021)

Welcome aboard, [notify]Bob Hawkes[/notify]!  I'm not sure that a Canadian domain forum could be complete without you.

Really enjoying the analysis and ideas posted above.  Would love to read more in-depth articles on how .ca compares with other ccTLDs.


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## DomainTrader (Jan 14, 2021)

Great info but the # of ca sales skews the numbers I believe 




			
				rlm said:
			
		

> So, I put together a little table of stats on the most popular ccTLDs as of 2020.  It started as a way to see what would be the best ccTLD to compare against .CA, but I figured I'd just add these other easily found stats (population & sales).  Unfortunately the list of ccTLD data wasn't longer.
> 
> ccTLD registration stats are from CIRA & Verisign: https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/index.xhtml
> 2020 populations from Wikipedia.
> ...


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## DomainTrader (Jan 14, 2021)

HI Bob 
Nice to meet you 
I wanted to comment briefly of on bullet point # 2 and just say that after close to two weeks of 2021, I can't wait for 2022




			
				Bob Hawkes said:
			
		

> ... or I guess Hello DN.ca  :lol:
> 
> See many familiar faces or usernames, but those who do not know me I am a retired scientist who has a hobby in domain investing and like to analyze interesting questions, and write at too great a length, probably.  :-/
> 
> ...


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## MapleDots__ (Tuesday at 11:30 AM)

Welcome @Bob Hawkes to verified status

Interesting profile for sure, one of the more prolific domainers I've gotten to know over the years.

Bob is also our 12th board member thus finishing this process.
From here on no additional board members can be added unless there is a vote admitting them.

It starts the process of making this a self ruled community where senior influential domainers are in charge of setting the policies and procedures.

I will be posting more about this in the boardroom soon.


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## silentg__ (Tuesday at 11:31 AM)

Welcome to DN.ca @Bob Hawkes 
Nice to see you here. 🙏


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## Bob Hawkes__ (Tuesday at 11:35 AM)

Thanks for the welcome! Nice to see how active DN.ca has become.
-Bob


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## RedRider (Tuesday at 3:30 PM)

Bob Hawkes said:


> Thanks for the welcome! Nice to see how active DN.ca has become.
> -Bob



Can't wait to see what articles you've got cooked up


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