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.
ccTLDs offer incredible opportunities for domain name investors to get involved with domain markets all over the world. While there is no doubt that .com is still the undisputed king of TLDs sales like Credit.fr for over $850,000 it is clear that ccTLDs have a bright future! However it can be easy to become overwhelmed by ccTLDs and with the high price-tag some of the extensions carry it is important to understand the market before jumping in!
Below is a list I’ve compiled to help new investors get started with ccTLD Investing. I’m not going to recommend you spend thousands of dollars or buy one really expensive domain. Instead I’ll show you how to carefully build-up a portfolio of domain investments, rather than a collection of ccTLDs!
1) Look before you leap. Start by learning about the ccTLD market – there is no single blog post that can teach you about every market. Pick a market and learn all about it. Want to invest in India? There are forums like InForum.in and ccTLDs.com where you can ask questions and get answers from people either living in the country or investing in the particular extension.
2) Understand liquidity. There are some markets that might be good a few years from now and others that are already great right now. Before you buy a ccTLD make sure you can find some documented sales and that those prices are aligned with your expectations. You can use a site like DNJournal.com to look at recent sales – scroll to the bottom and look specifically at ccTLD sales. If you can’t find a single instance of your ccTLD selling – this might not be the time to buy.
3) Use A Registrar That is ccTLD Friendly. Make sure you pick a registrar that makes it easy to register and manage ccTLDs. Moniker is a great option and has most of the top ccTLDs available for registration.
4) Use Regional Targeting In the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You can see what kind of search volume your keywords have in the country the domain is targeting by selecting the language and country you would like the keyword tool to return results for. Thus you can look-up search volume for an English word in England or a Germany word in Germany. This will not only help you determine potential organic search traffic but can also help you understand how much the domain name might be worth to someone living in that country!
5) Invest In What You Know. Of course Warren Buffet’s advice still rings true – if there is a particular country or part of the world you are familiar with this might be the best market to get started with. Of course make sure you are dealing with a country or region that has an existing Domain market. If you know the popular words, activities, cities, etc. you could have a nice edge in a the market!
