December 28th, 2009 
admin
.mobi took off and then fell off. Does it have a future?
Sore subject?
Let’s talk about .mobi for a few minutes.
.mobi is the extention for the mobile web. There was a “gold rush”
3 years ago, and many premium .mobi domains sold for upper 5 and even 6 figures.
We have one of those: www.JOKES.mobi
Our Jokes.mobi site receives between 600 and 1000 page views every day. Additionally, Jokes.mobi has 8500 pages indexed in Google.
This is great considering 99% of the public left .mobi for dead 2 years ago.
Still, this extention is in constant debate on whether or not the premium buyers threw their money away, or if they invested in something with a future.
I’ve always felt the best opportunity is one that you create for yourself, and we decided to take a small risk with Jokes.mobi.
After development, we have 100s of pages on our site, the site is a Page Rank 4, and the page views are pretty solid for a “dead” extention.
Curious as to how other “premium” .mobi’s were doing, I pulled the list of top .mobi sales and checked the progress of a sample of 10:
(no particular order)
1. Casino.mobi
Developed. Looks nice. Current owner has $xxx,xxx invested in the domain.
2. Tickets.mobi
Developed. Seems to function well.
3. Games.mobi
Developed. Getting some traction. Alexa in the top 1 million.
4. News.mobi
Developed – kindof. Has a layout but no updated content. High dollar, six-figure investment.
5. Dating.mobi
Developed. Looks nice. The domain was reported as sold for mid-high 5 figures.
6. Stocks.mobi
Parked. Not even a live site with a stock ticker. $70,000 purchase price.
7. Videos.mobi
Forwards to VuClip.com
8. Photos.mobi
Developed. Place to upload and store photos for mobile use. Mid 5 figure domain when purchased.
9. Ringtones.mobi
Developed. Partnered with Ringtone.mobi. Place to buy ringtones. Not sure how often the site is updated. Ringtones.mobi was a 6 figure purchase.
10. RealEstate.mobi
Parked. Un-developed.
Of the 10 randomly sampled .mobi domains, 6 appear to be fully working and developed, while the other 4 are either parked or semi developed.
This is a decent ratio, as many premium .com domains owned by domainers remain parked or non-developed.
Does .mobi have a future? Did it’s time pass or will it grow as more people are trading in their desktops for the mobile web?
I believe that simple .mobi sites like ours (which is a text-only site — quick to view and move on) and horoscope.mobi and stocks.mobi have a place.
Those sites that load quickly, have minimal or NO graphics, offer something quick like a joke, a stock ticker, or a horoscope, may just hold their value if users continue to use the service.
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Posted in
Famous brands using .mobi: http://mobisite.org/famousbrands.html
Great Post, Aron. We should see more and more .MOBI domains developped over 2010. Weather or not the general public will catch or not is another story and only time will tell. Much will have to do with the next generation of smartphones and the mobile internet functions within them.
I really need to develop some of mine:
- Spas.mobi
- Apparel.mobi
- Tables.mobi
Yep, I guess the point of the post was to see if anyone is even “trying” to move forward with their .mobi domains, or if everyone has considered .mobi to be a loss.
It seems people are at least trying to make something of the domains – which is good.
Development is tricky — and it’s really not a simple “throw on a page of content and sit back” procedure.
I use a site builder to quickly build webpages for regular internet. I wish there was an easy site builder for mobile sites. The ones I’ve used work ok, but not super user friendly yet.
Aron, that is very good going indeed and kudos to you for getting a princely amount of page views per day from your developed premium mobi.
I just checked the stats out of interest and I am getting around 60,000 page views a day on my dot mobi, (which by the way, is not a premium) so its entirely possible to make good money from your dot mobi domains.
2010 will be an important year for those that own dot mobi’s, and especially for those who have developed and stuck through the jibes and mockery that has followed from some quarters of the industry, to push on through.
I wish you all the very best for 2010 and a very Happy New Year