Russian Domain Name is on the rise. As discussed in a previous article, Ru domain name celebrated its 1,000,000 domain name in April, 2008. It seems that it will have taken only a year to hop to the 2,000,000 mark. It is early days yet, but we can confirm that 1,800,000 domain names has been registered within Ru zone. That’s a very sharp rise. It seems that the global credit crunch is not affecting Russia.

The EU Domain Name has spent the crisis. Back in May 2008 it lost 100,000 of its registered names but during the rest of the year it has actually added hundreds of thousands to their “portfolio”. Now EU regitry stands at whopping 3,000,000 mark making it the 4th most popular domain name in Europe (after De, UK and Nl of Germany, Britain and Netherlands respectively) and the 9th worldwide. There was a moment when it seemed that European Domain name is doomed, however, it has shown the potential at last. It is expected that May 2009 will see another 100,000 or more domains dropped but it won’t affect EU position drastically.

Green industry is the shaker! In the early 90s, if somebody told you the environmental domain names would be the next big thing, you would laugh at the guy. Now it is true. Global warming and ecology, maybe a hype, but it is a very popular hype. Yahoo has listed the term “global warming” in the top 10 most popular keywords of 2008. Can you imagine that Global Warming is more popular than Miley Cyrus… LOL. Yesterday, the nice and simple SolarEnergy.com was sold for whopping $1.65 million. Solar Egergy is a multi-billion industry – that’s why it’s no wonder that the domain name has reached such a great price.

ME Goes to Hollywood. Several newly released premium ME domain names will find their new owners at the forthcoming Domainfest in Hollywood. feed.me, contact.me, alert.me, read.me and save.me are all expected to hit the $20,000 mark at least. And then there is a hefty $1,000 participation fee just to get to the auction. However, all the big domain figures will be there in Hollywood event running from 27 to 30 January 2009.

Sedo has released the Tops and Flops of 2008 in domain industry. Much of it is just a blah-blah but still it is a very good read. It is advertising domain parking but the truth (well, that’s my truth) is that domain parking will not make you dirty rich. Especially if you weren’t around in the 90s, when all the good domain names went. As you will see, the average domain name price sold on SEDO is just over $2,300. It tells you that it is possible to make money on domain names but it gets more and more difficult to make BIG money. It all depends on your ideas and the volume. Sell one domain name and you can buy some butter, sell 10, and it can provide you with a comfortable living.