Lumps of gold as big as bowling balls, just lying around...

[Edwin]

Ok, I can see the "downside rationale"... right now this minute, only between about 1-15% of the "target" market for IDN domains can actually type them into a browser and get them to resolve, depending on the country and the market penetration of Firefox and other IDN-enabled browsers.

But on the other hand...

If you're currently registering highly speculative "brandable" .com (or far worse, non-.com names) and other names that will never pay for themselves through generated traffic, and your ONLY chance of seeing a dime for your efforts is getting "lucky" enough to have somebody spontaneously need that domain, then why not focus on IDN generics instead? If you're somebody looking for the "next wave" now that the hyper-competitive .com drops have killed that market for you, what about IDN generics.

At the beginning of the year, I had 5 IDN names. Now I have 511. All are 100% generic, category/niche defining names. For example, I have the precise, correct Japanese-language equivalents of: bonds, gift voucher, memory card, server, modem, biotech, diesel, teddy bear, yacht and many, many more... all in .com, all for regfee.

Even though I've been in Japan for 10 years (which certainly helps!) I can't even read, let alone write, some of the above!

So how do I find them?

1. Use the local version of Yahoo! (and other directory sites) to build a list of possible keywords by cutting and pasting categories and subcategories.
- Start at the top of the directory, and copy all the category titles (equivalent of "Business", "Computers", "Travel" etc.) into a text file
- Click on one of the categories, and copy all the subcat titles
- Click on one of the subcats, and copy all the sub-sub cats [you're probably low enough in the directory hierarchy now, but you might want to go deeper]
- Go back up, do the next subcat. Repeat until you've done all of them.
- Go back up, do the next category. Repeat until you've done all of them.
- Move on to the next local directory and repeat the above
It's painful at first, but you quickly get used to it and you can cut your time per sub-sub-category down to a few seconds each and build up keyword lists with thousands of entries fairly quickly.

BONUS TIP #1: A bit of Microsoft Word trickery can clean the list right up. For example, search " " (space) and replace it with "^p" to make sure each keyword ends up on a new line. You can search for "1" and replace with "" (nothing), "2", "3" etc. plus "(" and ")" to get rid of the entry counts in brackets after each subcategory. Basically, no more than 5 minutes of playing with search-and-replace can give you a clean list of thousands of keywords.

BONUS TIP #2: Yahoo! uses ENGLISH to label the directories in many of the local language Yahoo!s. So if you want a rough idea of what you're looking at, keep an eye on the URL in the address bar.

2. Use a Unicode to Punycode tool to turn your keywords into their Punycode equivalent

3. Use a bulk Whois checker to check the availability of the ".com" (and .net if you're interested) version of each keyword

4. Use Overture's keyword and bid tools (see sticky post at the top of this forum), trial searches on Google, online dictionaries etc. to check that the domain you've found is A) popular B) generic C) commercially useful.

You can learn to do all the above with just a few hours of effort. Basically, there are so many opportunities left in IDN that if you find a domain you're not sure about... boom, move on to the next one!

Doesn't have to be Japanese either. Most European languages are being vigorously mined, but there's lots left further afield in Russian, Chinese and other languages that are "stranger" to the English-speaker's eye...

BTW, always assume that locals can speak, read and write their own language as well as (or better that) you can write English. So while an expression may be an unreadable mess to you, if ALL the signs are good (Overture scores, translation, large number of Google references etc.) then it probably is the real thing!

[Leading Names]

Interesting.

I would be interested to know if your PPC revenue covers the renewal fees?

- Rob

[mark]

if you are not in sales, you should be. nice sales pitch.

[Edwin]

No, nowhere close. IDNs generally get few if any typeins... yet. My best domain gets about 2 visitors a day.

When thinking about the IDN market, ask yourself the following 3 questions:-
A) Do I believe that folks in non-English-speaking markets, who may know only a few words of English, would be more comfortable using the Web in their own language?
B) Do I believe that Microsoft can get it together in the next few years and get IE7 widely distributed (IE7 will have built-in IDN support)?
C) Can I afford to wait until B) comes true?

If you answered "yes" to all the above, then the IDN market is for you. If you can't afford to wait for years, then clearly not, since you're almost certainly going to be out of pocket a number of renewal fees before your IDN portfolio turns cash positive.

Oh, and focus only on generics. Imagine receiving and having to defend against C&Ds for trademarked domains when you can't actually read the language of the domain... or the C&D!

[none]

Originally Posted by Leading Names

Interesting.

I would be interested to know if your PPC revenue covers the renewal fees?

- Rob

Top tier russian domains cover renewal fees and then some, due to the marginally higher firefox penetration and some sort of cultural(?) awareness to type characters in the URL bar.

Edwin covered the basics of IDN mining, but here's a tip that'll save you a week of time: forget about the top 100 terms, or even top 300 terms in english. Whether they translate culturally or not, they're taken in whatever language you decide to start in.

Most people just starting the game will start by checking "loans", "mortgage", "sex", "gifts", "shopping", "hotels", even "basketball" or "tennis" (ahem) etc. Forget those. Start somewhere like... "water" or "chairs" or good two-word terms like "mineral water".

[Leading Names]

Originally Posted by Edwin

No, nowhere close. IDNs generally get few if any typeins... yet. My best domain gets about 2 visitors a day.

When thinking about the IDN market, ask yourself the following 3 questions:-
A) Do I believe that folks in non-English-speaking markets, who may know only a few words of English, would be more comfortable using the Web in their own language?
B) Do I believe that Microsoft can get it together in the next few years and get IE7 widely distributed (IE7 will have built-in IDN support)?
C) Can I afford to wait until B) comes true?

If you answered "yes" to all the above, then the IDN market is for you. If you can't afford to wait for years, then clearly not, since you're almost certainly going to be out of pocket a number of renewal fees before your IDN portfolio turns cash positive.

Oh, and focus only on generics. Imagine receiving and having to defend against C&Ds for trademarked domains when you can't actually read the language of the domain... or the C&D!

Thanks for the clarification.

My outlook on IDNs certainly more positive than it was a year or so ago.

I even reg'd my first IDN this week, Códigospostales.com (Postal Codes in Spanish). It's been averaging 1 unique a day since registration, I was expecting it to get more if I be honest but it should make enough to cover renewal next year.

I guess European IDNs are more lucrative for monetization purposes, and sales it would seem. Though that could all change, with time.

Anyone have any high traffic, generic IDNs?

- Rob

[Yojimbo]

This all makes sense but if I assume that the Japanese want to type in domains in their own language wouldn't they tend to use their own TLD as well ie. .jp or .cn etc. instead of .com?

[Edwin]

Not necessarily, but certainly it doesn't hurt to invest in those if they're strong generics.

Downside of .jp (don't know the .cn market) is that they cost a lot more to register and they're a bit more hassle to transfer. So if you're going to develop a large portfolio, the increased cost ($60+ vs $8) will hit hard, especially if you're thinking of a 3-5 year timeframe before IDN really hits the big leagues (90%+ local adoption) and all the renewals along the way.

[Acro]

Or better still, invest in english dictionary domains and avoid hours of research.

[Edwin]

It's taken me a total of about 25 hours to find 511 available generics and buy them all for regfee. How long would it take you to go through a dictionary and find an equivalent number of desirable available English generics?

[none]

Originally Posted by Leading Names

Thanks for the clarification.

My outlook on IDNs certainly more positive than it was a year or so ago.

I even reg'd my first IDN this week, Códigospostales.com (Postal Codes in Spanish). It's been averaging 1 unique a day since registration, I was expecting it to get more if I be honest but it should make enough to cover renewal next year.

I guess European IDNs are more lucrative for monetization purposes, and sales it would seem. Though that could all change, with time.

Anyone have any high traffic, generic IDNs?

- Rob

I have some french domains which have been very disappointing. My russian domains have far outperformed them.

Códigospostales.com receives good mkt=es ovt, but you'll always get traffic leakage to codigospostales.com.

This is not the case with the non-latin based IDN.

[DNWizardX9]

Originally Posted by Acroplex

Or better still, invest in english dictionary domains and avoid hours of research.

I'm out of the ascii market for now......... investing $7 per IDN generic word is like going to walmart and going thru the bargain bin......... a treasure that you can sell later for alot of $...

[Netego]

Some of my IDNs receive about 100 hits per day.

[Olney]

I swear Edwin
You went from nonbeliever to Deacon of the church!!!!

It's all good the porpose it to expand the market...

Glad to see you are holding it down over here too...

[stuff]

They don`t lay there around for no reason!!!

[ForumDomains]

Where do you park your IDNs?

[Bramiozo]

Originally Posted by stuff

They don`t lay there around for no reason!!!

They all had to lay around at some point :bandit: .
Why are they laying around ?
a lack of support, technical issues, spoofing --> a general lack of confidence by investors and resellers

Why are there less and less laying around ?
Support is increasing rapidly, the big players have identified the need for idn-compiance , spoofing and phishing issues are addressed and solved and idn's are getting enduser promotion.
-->confidence is increasing and the potential is crystallizing even for the most skeptical dn'ers.

Are you still here ??

[sdsinc]

Originally Posted by ForumDomains

Where do you park your IDNs?

You can park at Namderive.
But monetization is hard (lack of targetted advertising)

[Edwin]

IDNs will really come alive on the parking front when the parking providers start signing contracts with Yahoo! - in many international markets they are head and shoulders ahead of Google in terms of number of advertisers and bid prices. In other markets, Google is leading the race...

In fact, a smart parking service would make sure they had contracts with all the major PPC providers, segmenting traffic by location and language, and serving the best mix of ads for each local market.

[ForumDomains]

Originally Posted by sdsinc

You can park at Namderive.
But monetization is hard (lack of targetted advertising)

Thanks, sdsinc. But I couldn't find which languages does Namedrive support. For instance, Sedo accepts only Western European IDNs, while other like Chinese, Japanese, Russian etc. are not supported yet. Which parking service has the most complete set of languages supported?