.com.au, .au?

Domain names are limited by Australian law

Thanks Lamtran, yes I am aware. I am an Australian living in Australia and looking to buy for resale in the Australian market.

The .au TLD has less regulations than the .com.au

.com.au is more popular and better recognize in Australia, therefore it should be prioritized over the .au.

But if you can get both then get both for the following reasons:

1. Securing your brand: Prevent someone from taking the .au and competing with you.
2. Email security: A client might send a confidential email to [email protected] instead of [email protected] (or vice versa). Make sure no one else gets it!
3. Redirect type-in traffic: People who type in "yoursite.au" into the browser will be redirected to yoursite.com.au
4. Shorten your shared links: Youtube.com uses youtu.be/blah/blah for their shared links. This is to save characters on and encourage people to share links on e.g. Twitter where character count is extremely limited.
5. Domains are cheap: A .au domain costs $8.56/year, that's less than a lunch. Don't cheap out, or you might regret it.

The .com.au market is a tough one. I have sold I think 3 .com.au names in 20 years.
2 were names I had a list of potential end-users ready before I reggged the names.
The 3rd was a name I got to develop with a friend and the plan fell though, about 2 years later I got a 2k offer on the name and sold it. All the names were tech/cloud related names.

.au names are not used in Oz at all, unless it's just for brand protection.

Don't just register name because you like it, make sure there are end-users out there.

I have had acclaim.com.au up for sale for a few years now. I have also acquired acclaim.au to sell with it.

My initial thoughts that ACCLAIM is a great premium single word domain to build a brand & it would sell no problem.

Tried the parking thing with no success. I am toying with the idea of listing it on Flippa.

In all I’d say .com.au isn’t an extension that you can sell easily!

You may as well list it everywhere? Sedo, GD, Afternic etc, the more exposure the better for .com.au names, you may as well list in any Oz marketplaces like as well, like Netfleet

I would also think about end users who may be interested like Edu.au, acclaimsoftware, acclaimparks, acclaimrewards, acclaimwindows, acclaimIT, acclaimawards, acclaimwealth,

Good luck

In my view .com.au is king and I wouldn't be investing in .au domains that aren't ultra-premium i.e. single dictionary term that have a commercial appeal. Of course, one can get lucky with a sale, but from what I understand, the release of .au has been a flop for auDA.

I can also attest that the aftermarket for quality .com.au domains is strong and I have sold dozens of .com.au's at decent prices. I recently build Brandzilla (brandzilla.com.au) to showcase premium .com.au domains, ultra-premium .au's, and relevant .com's, .io's, and .orgs (which I think are the most relevant extensions to Australians), with professionally designed logos and descriptions (think brandbucket.com for Australians).

We have over 3,000 names listed and quickly growing. If any of you are interested in listing on Brandzilla, we are taking indications of interest on our waitlist and will soon start accepting new listings.