IDN Talk

I’m big into regging Japanese IDN Domains by theme. First you identify a worthwhile market. I like to look into any market that obviously has a high advertising budget. When I pick a new market I want to look for the best terms associate with it.

This time I’ll look at the online gambling market. From my point of view if Online Gambling gets banned in the US then companies with large advertising budgets will likely increase it’s interest in Japanese users. Of course not only Japan but since it’s the language I invest in it made sense to grab gambling domains before anyone else.

I also saw that I have to cater to 2 markets. The Japanese players, & the actual Casino site creators who may want better domains for the Japanese market.

First I have to identify what are the main terms in online gambling.
It’s easy to say the top 4: Casino, Poker, Pachinko, Gamble.
These terms can be in English or completely in Japanese & have good value .

I am leaning towards buying .jps for the Japanese market recently so I have to find out the next best terms in gambling. These would be the games themselves also services that cater to webmasters.

These terms would be: Poker Affiliate, Casino Affiliate, BlackJack, 21, Cards, Roulette, Bingo, Backgammon, Craps, Slots. If I just go by OVTjp (OVT Japan) scores I would not have had a second thought about buying these. OVT was low but I already know that companies would increase advertising budgets for Japan so buying these domains was an investment to get in before the popularity increases.

When I checked out the availability of these this is what I got.
I already owned ルーレット.jp (Roulette) from early in the year. I just didn’t go much further with Casino related domains.
These are what I was able to buy
Group 1
casinoaffiliate.jp
casinoaffiliates.jp
pokeraffiliate.jp
pokeraffiliates.jp
カジノアフィリエイト.jp (Casino Affiliate(s))
ポーカーアフィリエイト.jp (Poker Affiliate(s))

Group 2
ルーレット.jp (Roulette)
バックギャモン.jp (Backgammon)
ブラックジャック.jp (Blackjack)****
クラップス.jp (Craps)
ビンゴ.jp (Bingo)

Group 3
プレイポーカー.jp (Play Poker)
playpoker.jp
ネットポーカー.jp (Net Poker)
スロットゲーム.jp (Slot Games)
ラスベガス旅行.jp (Los Vegas Trip/Vacation)
ラスベガスホテル.jp (Los Vegas Hotel)

Group 1 would be domains I registered that I see could potentially be useful for a Gambling affiliate company that wants to enter with a good name for their affiliate program. I bought the jp extension because it’s widely used in Japan by most companies already.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve doubled up registrations but I think it’s important to buy all the domains users might type in. I bought the ASCII domain to satisfy the admins if they are not Japanese, I bought the IDN native Japanese version so users can use them as IDNs become popular in Japan.

Japanese only use the word Affiliate with no “s” but I’m sure that another domainer would purchase affiliates (With an “s”) because it is correct grammar in English. Casino & Poker Affiliate would be what Japanese would search for rather than “Gambling Affiliates” which would be popular in English.

Group 2 would be some of the more popular games. I owned Roulette already. I bought Bingo, Craps, & Backgammon in one shot. I had to wait a month for BlackJack to drop so I registered it as soon as it became available. Some online affiliate companies already have programs in Japanese catering specifically to these games, even though I haven’t put up pages yet.

Group 3 is where I go & registered a few Japanese that are related. The playpoker.jp was the only new reg the others are good domains but not the best in the portfolio. If anything they will provide extra backlinks to the main domains.

After registering these I plan to develop them initially. Since IDN compatible parking services aren’t serving gambling ads yet, signing up with several Casino Affiliate Programs is the best option. As the domains get indexed & age they already would have relevant text & the next owner wouldn’t have to worry about the domain getting bad results in the search engine rankings.

If I sold them I’d probably only sell group 1 as a package.
I’d like to include Group 2 in the package also but I’d be more open to selling group 2 separately.
& Group 3 would be better sold separately.

Obviously I’d like to see what kind of rankings & revenue I could get for the domains first before selling them, unless a really attractive offer came along.

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