KZBlog

In March, I wrote about an interesting factoid that I stumbled across: only 6% of registered websites on the .kz domain actually have content. The rest appear to be held by domain traders who hope to sell them to interested parties.

For fun, I had tried to guess what .kz domains might be unoccupied and hit on Cool.kz and Welcome.kz. I puzzled over the meaning of two other reserved domains: UCB.kz and CRE.kz. Well, recently the owner of those domains, Ruslan Sadykov left a comment on that post explaining what these acronyms could mean:

UCB.KZ it’s (for example) UNICREDITBANK.KZ (Italian Financial Group, that is going to buy one of KZ banks)… or… it can be used for United Colors of Benetton

CRE.KZ – it’s a domain name (for example) to be used by Capital Real Estate… or Caspian Real Estate… and so on…

My curiosity was piqued so I contacted him and asked him a couple of questions about domain trading in Kazakhstan.

1) How did you start in the business of buying domain names?

I decided to take part in this type of business in 2005. Then, I used to work for the NURSAT company, here in Almaty, where I worked as content-manager of EXPAT.KZ website. Before that moment I’d never heard about domain business. For a long time, I never met people who could explain to me all about this business. But, one day, in 2007, I read an article about the domain panasonic.kz. After that, I found out that some domains were sold for 1 million, 2 million, even 10 million dollars… So, that’s the way I started my domain career. In 2005, I already had 10 domains, in 2006 about 15 and now I have 30 domain names for sale, and 10 more domains not for sale.

2) How much do .kz domains cost?

It depends on what kind of domain you are talking about and certainly, it depends on the market. For example, now, a simple domain name, not a trademark or service name, would cost no more than $500. Now people can still buy alternative names. For example, I own adviser.kz. So a company named Adviser, LLC could avoid buying my domain by registering adviser-services.kz But, the KZ domain market will be fully bought out in the near future. Then they will have no choice but to buy my domain name. And the price for even simple domains will be more like $2000-$3000.

3) How do you pick which domains to buy?

You know, I’m a really creative person, so, it helps me to choose (feel) what kind of domain names will bepopular in the future. But, I try not to think about any domain names that could be related to trademarks, existing company names, or such things.

Also, when I choose a domain, I watch the official register’s site to find out if that name in other domain zones is owned or free. If it’s owned, then the date of it’s creation is also very important.

For example: the domain welcome.kz. This domain name is owned in every domain zone, i.e. in .COM, .CO.UK, .ORG, .NET, .BIZ, .US, .DE, .FR, .IT, .TR, .RU, .LV, etc… And, all those domains were created between 1996 – 2000. So it’s a good signal that welcome.kz will be also be in demand.

4) How successful have you been? How many domains have you sold? Is it profitable?

At the present time, I’ve sold 3 domain names and made a total of $7350. But all those sales were in 2008! However, I knew that would be the case when I started in 2005. At that time, the KZ domain market was really weak. Internet providers services were very expensive in Kazakhstan. That has a major effect on the market.
So for example, from 2005-2006 I received less than 10 inquiries about my domains. In 2007, I recieved about 15-20 inquries and for the first half of 2008 already I’ve had more than 50 inquiries!

In time the market will get even better. I’m not going to sell my domains for a low price. It’s not hard for me to pay every year for registration. More and more, I’m thinking of not selling my domains, but instead to wait for 1-2 more years and use all 30 domains for rent, with a monthly rent cost of about $100.

5) Do you have a full-time job or is this your main source of income?

I havea degree in telecommunications and Internet-technology. I used to work for Nursat, then for Mobile-provider Company. Now, I work for an English company in Almaty. I can truly say that the domain business is like a hobby for me, like gambling. If my ingenuity is high enough, it can also make some profit for me.

6) Do you think that an Internet economy has potential in KZ?

Yes, Kazakhstan has great potential for Internet-business. But it depends on many factors like government support, IT-sector development, Internet-provider’s prices and so on. I don’t think the situation will change soon, and I don’t think that people in KZ will work full time on selling domain names, ads or creation of websites, in the near future. But I’m sure we are moving in a right direction to make the Kazakhstan Internet market (KAZNET) a little bit closer to the situation of the Russian Internet-market (RU-NET).

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And if you want to buy or rent any of those domains or other .kz sites, contact Ruslan at kazdomain@mail.ru. You can see a full domain list here.