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!

Speak Your Mind (5)

Press Release

Sedo, the leading online domain marketplace and monetization provider, today announced that it has teamed with VeriSign, the global registry operator for the .tv internet domain, to hold an exclusive auction for the entire available catalog of 115 premium .tv domain names at the standard registry renewal fee, which is a greatly reduced renewal price. Sedo has the exclusive right to offer this broad selection of highly valuable numeric, generic and geographic .tv online destinations, including Beauty.tv, Bloopers.tv, Business.tv, Cable.tv, Films.tv, Finance.tv, Home.tv, Jobs.tv, Lifestyle.tv, Real.tv, and Vacation.tv. This marks the first time that these .tv domain names have been offered in a public auction, free of high annual renewal fees. The auction begins on Sedo.com on April 1, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. EDT and ends on April 8, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. EDT.

The prevalence of television and video on the internet makes .tv a relevant and desirable extension for many companies and brands. Major broadcast networks, leading music publishers, and savvy businesses are all taking advantage of .tv domain names to create new revenue streams for their businesses. Organizations with engaging online video content are using .tv websites to engage their members in new and exciting ways. In fact, the extension has been successfully used by high profile brands such as MTV Networks and Major League Baseball to extend their reach to targeted audiences and visitors. Individuals are also creating .tv websites to get their creative voices heard.

“Descriptive and numeric domains are some of the most valuable and sought-after online destinations in the domain industry, and there are many excellent .tv choices in this auction,” said Jeremiah Johnston, chief operating officer at Sedo. “Sedo is honored to work with VeriSign to give the business community, content creators, portfolio managers, and online marketers the rare opportunity to register these .tv domain names at affordable price points.”

“VeriSign is pleased to offer these highly desired .tv domain names through auction. These web addresses have tremendous appeal, as they are industry neutral, with a great number of possible applications for each name,” said Tom Correia, VeriSign’s .tv Product Manager. “We selected Sedo, an industry leader with a large global reach, to be the auction platform for our first-ever .tv Registry auction.”

The complete list of .tv domain names available for auction at Sedo can be found at www.sedo.tv

Speak Your Mind (12)

In the midst of many debates on how successful any extension can be other than a .com, Football.tv was launched. However, it is not referring to football as we know it in the U.S., it’s referring to soccer. It is commonly known that soccer is a crucial part of culture for some countries and Football.tv aims to connect with those immersed in the sport.

The numbers are definitely in Football.tv’s favor. Consider the fact that the World Cup Series has had a little over 1 billion viewers in recent years past.  Yes, billion. Soccer is truly a universal sport and love for it spans across all continents.

It is conceivable that a .tv such as this can be abundantly successful especially with an aggressive and well planned marketing strategy. GSM, which is owned by Perform Group, holds the rights to over 15 different soccer leagues from around the world. The plan is to market the site through as many different mediums as possible to garner the maximum amount of exposure.

Currently they own the .tv domains for the word soccer in most languages with very few missing. This is an enormous marketing opportunity and can only help the chances for success as they will be able to reach millions of people from all around the world. In fact, they have invested seven figures into acquiring and developing these domain names. They have also created a brand with the logo they are currently using. This is important because regardless of the language a person speaks or script they write in, they will recognize the brand, begin to associate it with Football.tv and, most importantly, all arrive at the same destination. Think of the Nike swoosh. When we see the swoosh symbol we automatically associate it with Nike. It took a lot of money invested in marketing to achieve that global recognition and that’s what the owners of Football.tv are going to try to emulate in their own way.

I’ve said before that the .tv extension shouldn’t be easily dismissed. It tends to be associated with video, so if that is the type of content you have it will fit appropriately with the web address. Even if video isn’t the main type of content, there’s no reason to think it can’t be as successful as a .com if marketed properly and kept rich with content, which is something Football.tv is surely trying to strive for.

The site is fully loaded with content. There is news both in written and video formats about all things soccer related in addition to information about teams and individual players from every country imaginable. The site is truly a wealth of knowledge for the sport and is creating a huge value for itself.

Speak Your Mind (7)

I do!

Honestly I don’t know enough about ccTLDs so I’m glad to see that my good friend Morgan Linton of MorganLinton.com has launched a new blog, ccTLDinvestors.com. The online magazine was created to specifically discuss ccTLDs. In addition, Morgan recently released a ccTLD only newsletter, which is a great idea. If you haven’t already signed up for you should. I am very excited to see what he has in store for us!

Here is Morgan’s full press release:

IN SEARCH OF THE NEXT .COM: CCTLDINVESTORS.COM FOCUSES ON TAKING DOMAIN NAME INVESTMENTS GLOBAL
Online Magazine Targets Global Domain Name Market

LOS ANGELES, California – March 11, 2010 – Linton Investments LLC announced ccTLDInvestors.com today – an online magazine dedicated entirely to investing in ccTLDs. Country Code Top Level Domains (commonly called ccTLDs) are the extensions dedicated to a specific country online such as .co.uk (England), .ca (Canada), .in (India) and .me (Montenegro).“The market is there, we’ve already seen some huge sales this year, the problem is that there are very few resources for ccTLD Investors,” says Morgan Linton, the creator of the magazine.

The Domain Name Investing market has grown dramatically over the last few years, and with sales like Toys.com for 5.1 million dollars and Candy.com for 3.0 million dollars it is clear the market is hot. In 2009 ccTLD sales doubled making it the quickest growing segment in the Domain Investing space! With sales like Credit.fr for $851,875 and Free-SMS.de for $162,150 already this year, the ccTLD market has the potential to appreciate just like the .com, .net, and .org markets have over the last fifteen years – but at an even faster pace!

While there are ccTLD sales every week, .com continues to take the limelight in the Domain Investing world. “For some markets there is almost nowhere investors can look to find-out more information about a particular Country’s TLD,” says Linton who is passionate about giving equal focus to oftentimes overlooked countries and regions. “The idea is simple – more people around the world are using the Internet every day – in the United States .com is the focus – in Canada owning a brand means owning the corresponding .ca domain, in Germany it means owning the corresponding .de domain. ccTLDs give investors the chance to buy-into a market before it takes off!”

Markets like England’s .co.uk and Germany’s .de have already seen strong attention from investors and enjoyed excellent sale prices over the last few years. Other markets like .in and .mx are just starting to see some larger sales but have mostly stayed below the five-figure range.

Linton has put-together a team of industry experts for his magazine that will allow it to provide detailed insight into markets very few people have experience with. “Just think, at this very moment India already has more Internet users than the United States. In India, .com is not as strong as .co.in or .in but the market for buying and selling these domains has just started…just like .com did in the nineties!

ccTLDInvestors.com will be published weekly to start and gives readers the opportunity to interact directly with the writers through an online comment system making the magazine more accessible. Linton will continue to add more writers throughout the year to reach even more markets. “The idea is to make ccTLDInvestors.com the online source for information about ccTLDs – this is day one!”

Linton Investments LLC was founded in 2007 as a Domain Name Investment company. Over the last two years the company has grown their portfolio to encompass over twenty TLDs spanning the Americas, Europe, and Asia. With a strong focus on development, Linton Investments turns their domain names into search engine-optimized web properties that generate a consistent monthly income.

The company’s founder, Morgan Linton is also the author of the book – Domain Flipping: How To Profit From The Domain Name Boom as well as Producer of Domainvestors Television. Morgan runs a popular blog – MorganLinton.com where he discusses domain investing, monetization, SEO, and of course ccTLDs.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an appointment with Morgan Linton, please call 1-800-274-6440 or email Morgan@LintonInvestments.com.

Speak Your Mind (1)