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?
Within the past couple of weeks Moniker reported the sale of Slots.com for an estimated $5,500,000. I say estimated because legal and escrow fees were not calculated into the sales price. One thing that was unclear to the public is who the buyer was. This morning Bodog brand released a 
