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- Jun 24, 2002
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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!
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!
