IDN Talk

I really liked the simple style of this blog, but unfortunately I can’t stick with it. It’s pretty bad in it’s structure. So hopefully later today I can & find a new Theme for the IDN Talk Blog.

DN Local changed it’s forum platform this week to make it easier for them to expand on the site. SMF is a pretty strong community supported board so I’m sure they will bring their users plenty of unique options while using the site. One of the Admins has made sure that the site gets SEO friendly URLs to make sure plenty of content is available to IDN investors to read.

So good luck guys with the new format.

If you are not familiar with DN Local it’s an IDN Forum community originally started as Got IDN

dnlocal.com 

I looked at the number of dot jp registrations on the Japan registry page. http://jpinfo.jp/stats/domains.html There are about 500,000 dot jp registrations of which 122718 are IDN (日本語ドメイン) domains. Already about 1/4 of dot jp registrations are IDN domains. I have a feeling that by this time next year the number will be between one third & half.

Most of the new registrations are various Japanese companies & even the registries themselves grabbing up the valuable domains before the common person realizes IDNs can be used. I know that many probably think that non Japanese own most of the IDN dot jps but that’s not true. I think we represent less than 5 to 7% combined. Japanese companies like Recruit, Pia, Daiwa, Sony, & other private companies that have 50 to hundreds of the best Japanese commercial terms each.

There are also quite a few Japanese individuals who are collectors. Some of them collect only certain types of IDN domains in jp. I saw one guy who only registered single character kanji domains. The way I saw his collection was he beat me to a drop I wanted.

Here’s a good one
素敵な日本語ドメイン名.jp

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.

If you want to know more about IDN Domains please go to IDNForums.com

A few opinions on why Microsoft held back auto updates for Japan.

Whether we like it or not there may be some valid reasons why Microsoft withheld auto updates for Japan.

1. Ecommerce sites did not check for compatibility.
I believe this holds more weight than anyone can imagine. There are many companies that truthfully were not aware to check their sites in IE7. Since it’s the main browser used compatibility is a big issue.

2. Live.co.jp isn’t IDN Compatible yet.
Live (Formally MSN) is the only one of the big 3 search engines that isn’t 100% IDN compatible. IDN domains show up in the search results but they show up as Punycode. How can you promote a new feature like IDN compatibility with the browser if search results don’t show up right?

3. Make money by having Yahoo advertise it first.
The Yahoo Japan portal is one of the most used sites in Japan. Letting Yahoo Japan do a Yahoo version of the browser is a good tie up for both companies.

4. More testing of the browser actually needs to be done.
There maybe certain security issues with the bowser that apply to certain languages. Not all language scripts are the same.

5. Microsoft Japan wasn’t ready to market it
I know that an autoupdate is just that automatic, you don’t need to market it. I think maybe the MS Japan crew might want to market it to make sure users get a better experience using it.

Anyway these are just a few of my opinions on what might be valid reasons for a delay.

Rick Schwartz might be the King for IDNers (IDN Domain inverstors) too.

As far as we know the Domain king Rick Schwartz might not even own one single IDN Domain but whether he knows it or not his words are the greatest inspiration to those who invest in IDN Domains.

These are various quotes that I got from DN Journal from Articles with Rick Schwartz the Domain King.

Quotes from
http://www.dnjournal.com/columns/cover020204.htm

He was one of the very first people to see that domains had the same potential in cyberspace that real estate had in the real world. He took that initial $1800 nest egg and started plowing the money into domain names even though his friends questioned his sanity for doing so. In hindsight it is amazing that everyone else missed what Schwartz saw. Schwartz said, “I think it was just too simple. It’s like not seeing the forest for the trees. When I think that I competed with 6 billion other people that had the same opportunity, at the same time and they all missed it…well that gives me fuel to do even more. It is the ultimate satisfaction!”

The kid from California used good old common sense to trump all of those corporate guys with their advanced degrees combined. “They blew it…that’s the short of it, Schwartz said. “They failed to recognize the single biggest bonanza since the gold rush over 100 years ago. They failed to recognize it was time sensitive so they had no sense of urgency to act.”

Schwartz on the other hand did recognize there was no time to waste and it led to many a sleepless night. “This was a unique opportunity in time that I knew would never come again,” he said. “I only slept when I could go on no longer, or my hands would hurt too much, or I collapsed on the computer! I understood I did not have the luxury of time and I KNEW I was missing domains by SECONDS!”

The entire article sums up how most of us feel. We are using common sense above anything else.
IDNs are domains in character sets native to the market. Back in 2005 I was hand regging domains that were searched over 200,000 times a month in commercial markets. Today you’re lucky to find these kinds of domains.

So we feel many will blow it. They will put rumored stereotypes about foreign markets above anything that makes sense, or research that I or others have done & released already.

It’s simple to us
Japanese Users: Japanese keyword Domains + Targeted Japanese Ads = Conversions
English Speaking Users: English Domains + English Advertising = Conversions.

What is so hard to understand?

The last quote made me sit hitting the browser to make sure I got

ダイヤモンド.jp (Diamond)

It won’t be until T.R.A.F.F.I.C. goes to New York that I see myself trying to attend so until then I’ll just study the guys words that he built his empire on.

Let’s examine the biggest general myths about IDN Domains.
This only relates to the Japanese market.

1. IDN Domains are a security risk because of phishing.
I’ve heard more people write this line without ever saying how it would apply to all markets. I think most of them don’t even realize what it means. It’s actually easier for people to get duped because any domain is not in their native language. Also there is less chance of phishing to even occur if the domain is just in Japanese. You could have mixed languages in dot com registrations but you can’t now. & with jp registrations you can only register Japanese or English characters.

2. If the person goes overseas they won’t be able to access their own company site.
First I’ll ask “Did you ever hear of a laptop?” If a Japanese person goes overseas & can’t type in Japanese for a URL how do you expect them to answer emails? Not in English. Also think about the target market for a company with a Japanese IDN Domain. Do you really think it’s to show overseas investors? Or is it to launch campaigns for the average Japanese consumer?

3. Everyone in the world is used to using English
This is a huge stereotype. I think this misconception just makes us Americans assume everyone in the world wants to suffer through trying to learn English just to communicate to us. There is a difference between English being cool to look at & something being functional. A domain should be functional for the company. Bringing conversions for it’s average target user.

4. Overseas Traffic is worthless.
This is all relative. Again you have to think of conversions.
If I have an EnglishJobeSite.com & the site is in English with English based ads for jobs in the U.S. You can bet that traffic to the site from Asia will not not bring conversions.
Now think about it in the reverse.
A Japanese career related IDN Domain. 転職情報.jp (Job/Employment Info)
The domain is in Japanese. The ads will be in Japanese. The conversions for this domain will be on target. Japanese looking for jobs.

If you go to the OVT bid tool for Japan
http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/?Keywords=&mkt=jp

You’ll se there are 102 Advertisers competing for this keyword.
The top 10 ranging from ¥604($5.10) to ¥992 ($8.39)
So in other words US traffic is actually worthless for Japan so it’s all relative.

5. Japanese characters can kanji can have more than one pronunciation.
Doesn’t this apply to English also? There’s homonyms like brake & break, stake & steak, Don & Dawn, Eight & Ate. No language is any different but do you really think still using a foreign language is better?

6. A Japanese person’s name can be written with different kanji characters.
This is true but do you see people’s personal names on DNJournal’s Top List weekly? Also it’s no different when a Japanese person is calling a service to order something over the phone & has to say what the kanji is. That’s why on applications in Japan they have your name & furigana (The way it is pronounced in hiragana). The main reason we invested in IDN domains is to get generic commercial terms. If you have a radio ad for your restaurant & sports bar, & you say your URL is www.steak.com & your users type in stake.com, the problem is your users, not your domain. A Japanese person will always be able to write in the write Japanese characters best.

7. Writing the dot com at the end of an IDN is hard for Japanese.
Completely untrue guys. You actually don’t need to do much to switch over from English character set. It’s one button that is common for Japanese. Also they don’t even need to switch over when writing a dot jp. they can write without changing the encode.

8. What about trademarks?
Fact is Japanese usually have their trademarks in Japanese. Most companies have their name in Japanese because it’s … well natural.

At T.R.A.F.F.I.C. EAST 2006 Tim Schumacher was part of a session that asked how would you invest $100,000.

Shumacher adviced attendees to spread the money around. Invest in domain extensions like .eu, .co.uk, .us.

He also made a slide showing domain investment to BUY HOLD & SELL

BUY: .us & major ccTLDs, .info, .mobi, & IDNs
SELL: .biz, .ws., .cc, & .tv
HOLD: .eu, .com. & .net

I think from behind the scenes there is more interest in the IDN market. It’s not as easy to get into it like .eu, or .mobi, since investors still have to choose which languages to invest in. After that they still have to decide on extensions to go with the IDN Domains.

Things take time but I think many of us also wonder when will Sedo get the platform for us to sell the IDN domains that they are already advising clients to invests in. Perhaps it’s just latin IDNs that they are telling clients to stock up on? I’m not sure but at least they see that there is great potential in investing in IDN Domains.

Source: DNJournal 

I’ve been involved with IDNs for over a year now. I’ve seen people put out their true thoughts on which extensions will be used for IDN Domains in Japan. I’ve kept my thoughts to myself for a while about.

So the question is:

What extension do I think will be top for IDNs in Japan.

The possibilities are:

.com, .jp, .net, .tv, .ws, & .cc

If you are in the domain industry at all, or a person who has used the internet at all you can tell already that .cc, .ws, & .tv are the least likely of the 6 to be on top.

.net unfortunately automatically loses to .com it’s just the nature of the internet.

So we are left with the big two, will it be IDN.jp or IDN.com

There are quite a few things to look at

1. Price
2. Amount of registrations
3. Visability

Japanese IDNs in Japan are called 日本語ドメイン(Japanese domains). Many people may not realize but the price of a IDN.jp is pretty low compared to even a normal dot com

These are current prices from 3 different domain registries
Onamae.com:
ASCII.com 3,800円
ASCII.jp 7,940円
IDN.com 3,800円
IDN.jp 3,960円

Value-Domain.com
ASCII.com 790円
ASCII.jp 3590円
IDN.com 790円
IDN.jp 640円

21-Domain.com
ASCII.com 1,000円
ASCII.jp 3,570円
IDN.com 3,570円
IDN.jp 980円
Even though prices for dot coms might be cheap at Domain Registry services in English, Japanese use registries in Japanese mainly. These 3 represent a very large portion of where domains are registered in Japan.

Next we have amount of registrations. This is somewhat based on an educated guess. For the last year I’ve seen a few promotions for Japanese Domains all of them involved the jp extension.

As far as visability this is a tossup since there aren’t many major IDN sites yet. But you can punch in any popular keyword in Yahoo Japan Japan like 仕事 (Job)  ローン (loan) you’ll see that about 75% of the major ads come from domains with .jp or co.jp.

With this all boils down to is is this. It might be more expensive in the longrun but…
I have to admit I personally think dot jp will be more popular in Japan than IDN.coms
There are dot jps that are reserved so the dot coms are the only choices for these.

I actually own more dot coms than dot jps. I don’t think that dot coms are second rate I just must admit that jp is actually going to be a bit better.

Will I sell either for a low price?
Heck Nah!!!!

My point is just this. The jp will get more promotion initially. The average user will become familiar with jp IDN domains first I strongly believe. Dot coms will not be second rate.
Anything is possible though, there is time for people to help control the market…