The following is a guest post written by Morgan Linton. Morgan is the President of Linton Investments, a Los Angeles-based Domain Investment Firm. Morgan runs a ccTLD Brokerage Newsletter and is the publisher of ccTLD Investors magazine. Morgan writes about his adventures in Domain Investing on his blog – MorganLinton.com.
How to learn more about any ccTLD Market
I always suggest that new ccTLD investors focus on a market they know and are comfortable with. If you live in the US then .us is a logical choice, if you live in France, start with .fr. Once you’ve mastered your market you can take the strategies that have worked for you and apply them to other markets. The issue is – how well do you know markets outside of your own?
In some cases you may vacation in the same place every year – let’s say you visit Amsterdam and tour the museums every summer, then .NL might be the next ccTLD you want to look at. Sure – you can invest in just about any ccTLD under the sun, but you have a unique advantage when you know more about the market.
Now let’s suppose you want to get started in another market that you aren’t familiar with at all. Suppose you’ve heard great things about .ca ccTLD but you’ve never been to Canada. The first step is to head on over to Google – but instead of just typing Google.com – this time enter Google.ca. Now do a few searches as you normally would and take a look at what sites appear on the first page of Google.
Now is where the detective work comes in. You want to really put your thinking cap on and start analyzing a few search queries and understand some of the features of top-ranking sites in the country you’re looking at. Pay attention to the advertisers on the side – is it local or global advertising? Who are the advertisers and do they have great domains or could you sell them a great domain?
Once you’ve done a bit of searching and feel a bit more at home on Google.ca then you’re ready to head-over to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and take your research a step further. Now start typing-in some of the keywords you’re looking at buying, i.e. if you want to buy sailboat.mx – take a look at the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and find-out how many people are searching for the world “sailboat” in English on Google in Mexico.
As you learn more about other countries you might find that search queries that are wildly-popular in the US might have little or no traffic in another country. For example the term “holiday” is used to describe a “vacation” in Europe and many other parts of the world. Thus – while “vacation” may be the most popular term in the US during the summer – “holiday” may take the cake in other parts of the world.
By better understanding both the search results and search volume in the country you’re looking to invest in you can pick better domains that will most likely appeal more to people in the local market. You should also use tools like Namebio.com and DNJournal.com to better understand past sales in the given market.
So break-out your favorite Sherlock Holmes hat and get ready to learn about another part of the world – there’s opportunities in just about every market – so what are you waiting for?
Partial knowledge is a dangerous thing.
I’ll stick to my own small corner of the world, unless I can get a top 100 keyword in any other ccTLD.
Though even there, top 100 english keyword might be a bad idea unless the country in question has a large bank of english speakers.
@Samit – you should definitely be looking at the top keywords in the native language. You can do this directly in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Thus for Mexico I wouldn’t pick the top English words but instead the top Spanish words, for France I would pick the top French words.
If you can find .fr’s that have thousands of exact-match searches and a high CPC you know there’s a market there!
A lot of people still aren’t comfortable with ccTLD Investing, which I think leaves a lot of great opportunities still on the table!
I agree with the opportunities bit, as you know I went w/ cctlds way back in 2007, when it wasn’t yet ‘fashionable’, can’t complain.
Invest in what you know. I agree that close to home is best IF there is a market for the terms. Think of the businesses in the country of the TLD that can actually use the keyword domain or advertise on it.
To avoid wasting your time researching keyword and domain availabilty, FIRST look to see if you can even own/register domains in that ccTLD as a non-resident of that country. The example given in this article is misleading IMO because Canada (.ca) has residency requirements for domain registrants. If you are a US resident, legitimately registering .ca names is not possible as far as I know. Setting up a shell corp or presence will take some additional investment. Using bogus whois record information is playing with fire and not worth the effort/risk with so many other legitimate opportunities out there.
Along with the obvious com/net/org and for some people good geos and keywords in info/mobi/tv, ccTLDs do provide some good opportunities. For the best results sticking to your own language is best. Language usage and dialect nuances can make seemingly good keywords in another language near worthless in practical terms. With a domain in your own language you know what it means in common usage today can always develop the name if you don’t sell it if that was your original intent.
I did not know that about .ca.
I am surprised that people rushed to register co.in when India specific extensions were available few years back and when .in finally opens up, people are tired to register as the cost per domain was 12 dollars.
Costs have now dropped to 3 dollars per domain and a billion people country with predominant English speaking crowd and the only country after China in the world now with more than 5% GDP is being neglected by domainers.
The recent 3G mobile auctions fetched to the government US $14 billion and the Wimax/LTE auctions which just concluded fetched close to $9 billion.
India is now at a critical inflection point in terms of mobile and internet usage and soon mobiles penetration would cross 800 million (from the present 500 million, every second Indian now owns a mobile) and broadband 250 million.
Qualcomm also won few slots for its broadband access in India.
Need I say more!(early bird catches the million dollar doma.in)
Here’s a tip: as new gtld come online, some will be about US states, like .nj, .ny, .ut, and the likes. We don’t know what will happen but .la, .mn, .pa and .al already correspond to a US state. At least the city.la or city.mn are worth it, and possible loans, flowers, travel, realestate and other local services.
A lot of people still aren’t comfortable with ccTLD Investing, which I think leaves a lot of great opportunities still on the table!
To avoid wasting your time researching keyword and domain availabilty, FIRST look to see if you can even own/register domains in that ccTLD as a non-resident of that country.
By better understanding both the search results and search volume in the country you’re looking to invest in you can pick better domains that will most likely appeal more to people in the local market. You should also use tools like Namebio.com and DNJournal.com to better understand past sales in the given market.