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?

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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.

With the .CO launch getting closer and closer I thought now would be a good time to review some important information about the TLD so you can make smart moves from the beginning! I am quite confident that the .CO launch this year should be one of the most impactful TLD launches in the history of the industry. While there are people lined-up on both sides of the table – when it comes to .CO there is a buzz going-on that you just can’t ignore!

So here are five things you should know about .CO – feel free to comment and add #6, #7, etc.

1) The Global Sunrise started April 26th and goes until June 10th. This is for people who have a trademark and the corresponding exact-match domain that would like to get the .CO. One important note here is that the trademark holder needs to have registered the exact-match domain before 7/30/2008.

2) Landrush runs from June 21st through July 13th and allows anyone with an interest in commercially valuable domains to apply for registration before general availability. Any domains that have two or more interested parties will go to auction and be sold to the highest bidder.

3) General Availability is July 20th and at that point .CO will be available to anyone in the world. This question comes-up a lot so it’s important to be clear here – anyone in the world can register a .CO – it is not limited to residents of Colombia in any way.

4) .CO is NOT a TLD for Typo-Squatters! The people at .CO are working very hard to create a globally-recognized and respected TLD. While many Domainers might think that .CO opens the door for new typo-domains be warned that the .CO folks will be working hard to prevent this.

5) When people in a focus-group were asked what .CO means to them the top answers were, “Company” and “Corporation” – having YourBrand.CO is a great way to represent your brand or product-category online.

Landrush starts in a little over a month and I am officially excited! .CO is coming and I think it’s going to change the Domaining world forever.

What do you think?

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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!

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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.

Let’s face it – IDNs will slowly change how people use the Internet all over the world. As more people from countries like India, China, and Brazil come online – it is no surprise that we’ll see a rather dramatic increase in people searching for things in their local language. While people certainly do search in their local language already – with tens of millions of new Internet users around the world there will be changes in how people use the Internet and search for information.

With IDNs it is possible to buy exact-match domains matching very high-volume search strings without spending the kind of money .com, .net, and .org investors do on generic keyword domains.

Just think – if you grew-up in China, speak Chinese, and are just starting to use the Internet for the first time what language will you be using – Chinese! Which means that a Chinese IDN.cn domain might be a better fit for more and more Internet users over time as they will naturally be more comfortable with a domain or website that is in their own language and the domain name itself is a great indicator of what language the website will be in.

So how will IDNs change the ccTLD Market? I think IDNs will grow the market dramatically as it creates two different way to invest in a particular domain space. Suppose I want to invest in Japanese domains – as an investor it would be smart for me to buy my keywords in both English and Japanese to capture both ends of the search market. As IDNs become more commonplace I think we’ll see more people investing in the space and thus more liquidity with IDN domains.

Since many of these IDNs will have type-in traffic right-away this also allows new investors to hand-register domains that already has a base of traffic to monetize. It’s a bit reminiscent of what early .com investors experienced – registering a domain and finding that the traffic was already there.

The ccTLD market is in its infancy and IDNs represent a new opportunity in the space and a place on the ground-floor for new domain investors looking to get involved in the Global Domain Market. So now it’s time to ask yourself – are you a Global Domain Investor? If not…now is a great time to get started!

Speak Your Mind (10)

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!

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