IN Focus

.IN is used extensively in India for branding local presence for International companies and a lot of new initiatives or divisions of existing majors in India. It has widespread acceptability in Germany, Russia, Switzerland as well as with the Indian Expat community the world over. Also, IN is a preposition

and thus makes for amazing hacks and expands usage.

The difference between hand registration and drop?

A drop is a domain that has expired due to its previous registrant not having renewed it. Most gTLDs drops are picked up by 'drop services' for resale in the aftermarket. A hand registration is when you register a domain via a regular registrar.

Currently there are no drop services who manage .in and .co.in hence making it comparatively easier for domainers to get some of the action. Most of the drops are registered using either the Enom or Directi Reseller API which allows one to execute the order in seconds, rather than going through a comparatively lengthy checkout process.

The value of LLLL.IN and premium-letter-combo LLL.in in the future

LLLL.in that make business sense are already valuable, I assume dictionary LLLL.ins will also make sense in a couple of years. Random LLLL.in or CVCV, while popular with domainers will require a fairly large gestation period to provide exceptional ROI.

LLL.in, premium or otherwise, are now no longer available for hand registration and hence have inherent rarity value. How much this value will be is completely based on the number of possible end users and the value they are willing to attribute to a particular name.

Recent sales of LLL.in dictionary words have been between $500-$4000. For LLLL.in words between $300-$2000.

What makes a great Indian domain name?

Probably the same thing that makes any domain great - applicability to industry, brand value and metrics. Local significance is of value only when the target market is Indian.

Adapted from An exclusive interview with Samit from NamePros on Indian Domain Names

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