Idn's to break up internet?

[rawkinrich]

I can see the massive possibiles for the Chinese/Japanese market, but can you shed more light on Portuguese, Spanish, French etc?

Do you think that these languages will be just as popular?

[Rubber Duck]

Well my initial analysis and investment strategy has been based on the assumption that IDN would not have much of a role in these languages.

However, the evidence is to the contrary, there is a healthy market developing in German IDN. The analysis for German is no different for Portuguese, Spanish or French, except that is a more developed internet market and generally more affluent than the markets for these languages. Having said that the potential size of the market places for Spanish and Portuguese is certainly a lot bigger, and as some terms are apparently common to both then this makes them even more valuable.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[britishbulldog]

What i do not understand why was sex,poker,casino and other good domains were selling so cheap on ebay ? is it because there are that many idns in various languages noone know what its very confusing and i think that where the money is in these countries is those who are taught english,those who cant cant aford to feed themselves never mind a computer especially in the poorer countries.

The english language is taught in most foreign schools and it will not change for the forseeble future ! think what you like its fact and i would prefer to own poker.com in english rather than the indian version.

[rawkinrich]

I think its because people want to make a quick dollar, rather than keeping on to them for future investments. Or it could be the punycode IDN, which I believe is not supported anymore?

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by britishbulldog

What i do not understand why was sex,poker,casino and other good domains were selling so cheap on ebay ? is it because there are that many idns in various languages noone know what its very confusing and i think that where the money is in these countries is those who are taught english,those who cant cant aford to feed themselves never mind a computer especially in the poorer countries.

The english language is taught in most foreign schools and it will not change for the forseeble future ! think what you like its fact and i would prefer to own poker.com in english rather than the indian version.

This is as touchring has pointed out all about marketing. You need to segment the market and evaluate the viability of each segment.

The Chinese market in pure number terms is much greater than the US. but the level of disposable income is also much lower. The US market is therefore more valuable. This situation, however, is changing rapidly with a rapid rise in living standards in China. The importance of grabbing market share in an emerging market is also a factor. If you can establish market leadership early then the payback will come later.

English is widely understood, but it is not the primary means of communication in many key markets. Many Japanese understand English but online where possible most use Japanese. The same holds true for most other areas where English is widely spoken but is not the primary medium for commercial exchange.

Yes, I agree that I would love Poker.com. That is not to say that its equivalents either in IDN or ccTLDs are worthless. If you can still pick them up for reg fee, the chances are you would make a very substantial return on your investment. Your chances of owning Poker.com are virtually nil, the price you would have to pay huge and the risk of not getting a return on your investment substantial.

The cleverest play in my opinion in the poker sector is 888.com. This is a succesful brand in the West and it significance is easily understood throughout the Far East, and you don't need to use any characters that won't be universal.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

Originally Posted by rawkinrich

I think its because people want to make a quick dollar, rather than keeping on to them for future investments. Or it could be the punycode IDN, which I believe is not supported anymore?

You seem to be a little confused. All IDN are now in punycode.

Yes, there are too types of operator here and some with a mix strategy. You can either buy to sell or invest for longer-term returns from traffic, when it materialises in commercial volumes.

The secondary market is only just getting established. If you want to sell quickly, as with many conventional domains even dot com, then you need to set the price very low.

I don't frankly believe that this strategy is the way to go. Yes domains are selling, many are frankly worthless, as in my view that have no real market application and may even be deleted because they are in mixed scripts, which can no longer be registered due to phishing concerns. Those that are valuable are being sold far too cheaply in relation to their potential value. Having said that some domainers are turning over domains, so that they can use the money to expand their portfolios even further. A lot depends on you resources and your ability to replace sold names with names of equivalent value.

I am actually just letting a lot of domains drop. I am trying to keep a lid on the size of my portfolio at least until it becomes self-sustaining. Good new opportunities are being registered, whilst fair to poor opportunities are being let go. Nobody can afford to buy and hold everything. In my view it better to let less interesting investments drop than to sell off the family silver to finance them.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[rawkinrich]

Originally Posted by dwrixon

You seem to be a little confused. All IDN are now in punycode.

My apologies, what is the older style IDN that punycode taken over from? I noticed a lot of the dropping which cannot be converted by Sedo's IDN convertor.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by britishbulldog

What i do not understand why was sex,poker,casino and other good domains were selling so cheap on ebay ? is it because there are that many idns in various languages noone know what its very confusing and i think that where the money is in these countries is those who are taught english,those who cant cant aford to feed themselves never mind a computer especially in the poorer countries.

The english language is taught in most foreign schools and it will not change for the forseeble future ! think what you like its fact and i would prefer to own poker.com in english rather than the indian version.

A lot of IDN domains on sale on ebay or afternic are junk. Many are symbols like smiley, or special characters of some foriegn language used by a very limited a number people (low OVT), or which are not commonly used - i.e. not the main alphabet - and real IDN investors buy them only for novelty sake. Recently, i also saw quite a few people selling Vietnamese characters, that might be mistakened as european.

The sex.net or pc.com that is for sale on Ebay are not entirely latin - there are some special characters - it's either the 'e' or 's' or 'p' - that looks exactly the same as the latin 'e', 's', and 'p'. I dunno if these will appreciate in the future - other than using to impress friends.

Whatever it is, these people selling junk would probably also have registered real generic domains that they are keeping for themselves.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by rawkinrich

My apologies, what is the older style IDN that punycode taken over from? I noticed a lot of the dropping which cannot be converted by Sedo's IDN convertor.

The older style IDN on the Verisign testbed are referred to by Verisign as RACE and start bq--. These are now obscelete, but it should have been possilble to convert.

I picked up a lot as drops when the test bed ended and Network Solutions rather inexplicably dropped IDN.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[touchring]

Originally Posted by dwrixon

The older style IDN on the Verisign testbed are referred to by Verisign as RACE and start bq--. These are now obscelete, but it should have been possilble to convert.

I picked up a lot as drops when the test bed ended and Network Solutions rather inexplicably dropped IDN.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

So the guys that registered the jewels like credit card, loans, etc, in Japanese, they registered during the testbed period, and then convert to punycode?

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by touchring

So the guys that registered the jewels like credit card, loans, etc, in Japanese, they registered during the testbed period, and then convert to punycode?

Yes, I believe that the smart ones will have but many who registered with Network Solutions will have let them drop even though they could have transferred them. If you look at some of the better names they were created in 2000.

Extract for "Tokyo.com"

"xn--1lqs71d.com" is registered with whois.opensrs.net:

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 14-Feb-2005.
Record expires on 16-Mar-2006.
Record created on 16-Nov-2000.


Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[none]

The english language is taught in most foreign schools and it will not change for the forseeble future ! think what you like its fact and i would prefer to own poker.com in english rather than the indian version.

poker.com in english is extremely valuable because of the massive monetization opportunity in the states, u.k. and parts of europe. Such doesn't exist in India or China... yet. When the monetization opportunity does happen, it may not be a variation of Texas Hold 'em, as gambling games such as 大二 (Big 2) and 麻将 (mahjong) are much more popular.

大二.com and 麻将.com are already spoken for by some lucky domainer. I wish I had been earlier!

[britishbulldog]

Thanks dave,touchring and vtrader for putting me straight,i think i will have to stick with the english domains as this idn business has gone straight over my head,but good luck and lets hope you strike it lucky !

Oh i must agree with 888.com that was smart and very well planned forward thinking !

[jazzpetals]

I'm with you bulldog, this idn stuff makes my head spin...no matter which converter I try, I cannot seem to get anything to convert

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by jazzpetals

I'm with you bulldog, this idn stuff makes my head spin...no matter which converter I try, I cannot seem to get anything to convert

If you have the local characters you want to register in Unicode, all you need to do is to paste them into the "Enter a Domain Name" box at Domainsite.com and it will convert it to Unicode for registration. The mechanics of doing this are very simple, the only real problem lies with generating characters that are meaningful and have value. The resources for this are very numerous indeed. For further info on this just visit IDNForums.com.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[touchring]

Originally Posted by jazzpetals

I'm with you bulldog, this idn stuff makes my head spin...no matter which converter I try, I cannot seem to get anything to convert

That's why i wanted to help domainers kickstart (overcome the whitebox fear barrier) by selling japanese cities for cheap.

It is inevitable that IDNs will gradually reduce (relative) end-user demand for some types of dot com domains, in particular 4 and 3 digit number domains used by Asians, abc123.co.kr, abc123.jp, etc, so any smart domainer will start looking into diversification.

For example, say hotel123.jp might be worth $800 without idns in 4 year's time, but because of idns, it might only be worth reg value, because people can register Japanese versions that do not have the 123 number in it.

In the first place, Asians use numbers in domains because they are more comfortable with numbers than abc. They would rather use real names if given a choice - who would want to spend extra $$$$$ advertising the number in addition to the website name?