Epik announces its acquisition and planned integration of DNForum (1.Viewing)

The million dollar sales have already started with hush.ca.

Personally I have turned down a number of 100k+ offers. Patience is the key, just like real estate those who are patient will be rewarded.

Well, this wasn’t publicly disclosed but nonetheless that sale was a bit unique since there was a business already running under that domain. Similar to purple.ca, it wouldn’t be as simple to acquire because of the existing business. There are many costs and headaches from having to switch your business to another domain. Even purple.com didn’t fetch 1M.

I think moving your .CA domains for 1M+ may be similar to a lottery ticket. You might get lucky but I wouldn’t be purchasing hundreds or thousands of domains hoping they can sell for that amount.

theinvestor said:

This is definitely a discussion to be had but as .CA owners we seem to think that business cannot operate if the .CA domain is not owned. There are so many Canadian businesses that still operate without a .CA website. They are just doing fine with a .COM website. This is why thinking that we can get these million dollar sales here in Canada is not realistic. It’s a shame because I don’t want to see people get burned when they get good offers. Just because a company is worth billions it doesn’t mean they’re going to pay a million bucks for a .CA.

I would like to know the percentage of businesses that own .com and .ca how many are actually using them as a separate website? I see so many being simply redirected. A lot which i see have the same website but change pricing to Canadian. Something that many Canadian businesses are doing that do not own a .CA website. They simply use your IP address to change what you see on their .com website.

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I agree. I think for most businesses that own the .com, the .ca is an afterthought, and I tend to agree. Many .com sites that also operate in Canada just use IP/Geolocation to serve up the relevant page (ie: website.com/ca/). There are also SEO benefits to using one domain, versus two or more. I think that sales like hush.ca are outliers more than the norm.

Easier to spend a million bucks when you know you can’t get the .com; I guess the .CA was more attainable for them. Very unique situation but to think that the owner of .com will pay for 1M for .ca is very wishful thinking. It hasn’t happened for me, but hope it does start happening in the future.

theinvestor said:

I would like to know the percentage of businesses that own .com and .ca how many are actually using them as a separate website? I see so many being simply redirected. A lot which i see have the same website but change pricing to Canadian. Something that many Canadian businesses are doing that do not own a .CA website. They simply use your IP address to change what you see on their .com website.

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Canadian Tire owns both Triangle.ca and Triangle.com, and only uses the .COM to forward to the .CA.

Sobeys owns both Voila.ca and Voila.com, and only uses the .COM to forward to the .CA.

Scotiabank owns both Tangerine.ca and Tangerine.com, and only uses the .COM to forward to the .CA.

And those are all relatively new domain acquisitions made by these big companies, where they obviously wanted both the .com and .ca, but made the deliberate choice to operate under the .CA.

Companies like TD and RBC will most certainly stick with their .COMs, probably since its been like that forever, but perhaps there's a new trend where Canadian companies want to operate under the .CA more than ever. Even RBC, 20+ years later, finally made the decision to buy RBC.ca.

I completely forgot dnforum.com still existed.

Please correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t tangerine, voila and CT only operating in Canada? I think it wouldn’t make sense for them to be running their website on a .com. They were smart enough to own both though but redirect to .CA since they’re in Canada only.

There are thousands of examples where the .CA is redirecting to the .COM.

You're not wrong, they do only operate in Canada, but I was mostly referring to "why would a company buy the .CA for a million dollars if they already own the .COM", and the importance of .CAs to companies in general.

In the examples above, I doubt they paid a million for any of the domains mentioned but since they ultimately chose to go with the .CA over the .COM (when they had the choice) it seems clear the .CA was more important to them and therefore I think it's possible they were willing to pay the same amount (or more) for the .CA than the .COM. It obviously depends on the seller too, as most of us Canadians don't hold out for a million dollars.

In any event, I agree it's tough to get top dollar for .CA domains and would love to see members here (or anyone) blaze the trail and make it a semi-common occurrence. Perhaps wishful thinking, but the world is changing quick, so who knows.

First off [notify]Esdiel[/notify] I must say I love the conversation. I guess where I was going with it was that these companies that chose .CA for the sole reason that they didn’t want any confusion with operating on the .COM since they are purely Canadian companies. When it comes to banks they would never direct their .com to .ca for that reason. They want to make sure there is no confusion that they do operate outside of Canada.

I just don’t want people to assume or be under some type of illusion that you are able to get million dollar .CA sales easily. I’d like to pass on some of my experience in which it’s nearly impossible these days. Companies are smart sometimes too smart for their own good but yet they can’t seem to get past the perception of .com vs .ca. I’ve had some nice sales but none that ever amounted to 1M+ in .CA. So when/if that day comes I definitely will be making sure we get that reported. It only helps us all in the long run. The majority of sales happening are not being reported but it’s not a coincidence there are no reported million dollar sales. It’s most likely because they are very few and far between. I just don’t think they’re happening.