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.
Many people see the ccTLD market as confusing – how could anyone understand all these different domain markets all over the world?
Well the answer is – they can’t! There is no way you can expect to be in expert in all ccTLDs – but I can tell you this – you’re an expert in at least one and that’s the easiest place to start!
So what ccTLD are you already an expert in? That’s easy – the ccTLD associated with the country you currently live in! For me that was .US and my great experience with the .US market caused me to expand into the over twenty markets I’m invested in today!
Now to go a level deeper. Suppose you, like me, live in the US so you want to get started with .US. Now let’s go a step further – what city do you live in? Suppose you live in Berkeley, California (my hometown) - well then maybe you’d want to start looking at some domains like BerkeleyRestaurants.us or BerkeleyHiking.us – pick a particular area that you have fresh content ready to go based on your own experiences.
Start small and buy 5-10 domains in the ccTLD of your home country focused on the part of the country you are the most familiar with. Just think – now every time you go to a restaurant – you’ll have new content for one of your sites!
The same applies for any other ccTLD – if you live in Germany, start with .de – if you live in South Africa – start with .co.za – like Warren Buffet says – invest in what you know!
Once you get comfortable with one ccTLD you can start expanding to others using the same approach. I got started with .co.in and .in through having a number of Indian friends all who watched Cricket constantly. They told me how popular cricket was in India and I started buying Indian domains that had to do with cricket. Before I knew it I was getting direct type- in traffic on a number of my domains – but it took understanding some information about the country or region first.
Suppose every year you take a vacation to France and stay in a particular city. Well now you can start investing in .FR because France would be the country you know the most about next to the country you live in.
That’s it – while this may seem a a bit oversimplified it’s amazing how many people hold-back on investing in ccTLDs simply because they don’t know where to start. Once you’re started I think you’ll find that ccTLDs represent a great way to expand your portfolio and invest in the Global Domaining Market!
Are you developing out any IDNs yet
DEVELOPING IDNs:
The hardest thing, for me anyhow, about developing idn website(s), is the translation.
I basically pay double for original content for a writer. What you take for granted with your native language, well good luck with foreign content.
And then during the design stage, when you have your design and give the okay before coding, well you better be right about the words and key phrases on the site.
Google and Babble translations of terms and words only goes so far. You should find a local neighborhood speaker to verify the word or phrase.
Also, on foreign sites you may need/want the English version as well…so extra work and expense.
It can be a real cluster fuc*.
You can get deeper into seo as well…do you want/need hosting in the part of the world where the site will appear? Does that help with Google juice? Your site on a local server? Do you trust your seo work to the same person or cobble your own with a translator?
What is the population of the language you are buying? Is it one country with 30 million folks or it is Arabic with over 300+ million that flows through out the world? So look at population and speakers/writers of the language.
Also, use your trusty Google keyword search to check how many exact type-ins it gets…just like you do with other domains.
Can you understand the emails you receive from your site? Can you answer them? Are you missing out on sales or advertising possibilities?
These are all examples of my problems so far with developing idns.
Paul
As a U.S. based searcher, I would be reluctant to click on a “.fr” domain or any other unfamiliar extension. Would a searcher in France instantly hit the back button when they see a “.fr” site developed in English? I am just being honest, but it seems like a dilemma unless you are a multilingual developer.
.fr in English is a bad idea. The best option is local language with local cctld. If you register English in .de or Russian in .us is waste of money because the market is very small.
Great article. I own many different ccTLD’s. Dot US, Dot DE, and Dot Fm are the best ones now!!!!
Thanks for the question! Right now I do not develop IDNs – my focus is ccTLDs with development projects focused on .us, .in, and .co.in where English is the best language to use.
I’ll be doing some IDN experiments this year but I’ll be focusing on developing only IDN.IDNs since I think these will be getting the best traffic.
Moin Moin (as we say here in Hamburg/Germany),
“Invest in what you know” thats right! And if you don’t know the foreign language, what’s the problem hiring a native speaker? Every language has its traps, so it’s very easy to commit a blunder.
@Paul
I dont know how much or less you pay your writer, here in good old Germany the price per word varies from 1,5 to 50 Eurocent ($0.02 to $0.65) and of course depends on what sort of articles the people are writing. And whether they are writer (people who learned writing and live from writing), students or housewives.
Ahoi!
Dietmar
sorry for my bad english