The whole domain industry seems to be finally getting excited about Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). Even the American domainers are evidently testing the waters.

We had the chatter, the hype, the forums and the conference, so now what’s next?

I’m very pleased to hear that the TRAFFIC ccTLD went very well. Unfortunately I had other business commitments elsewhere in Europe and wasn’t able to fit TRAFFIC ccTLD in.

From what I have read so far on DN Journal it seem to have went very well and even surpassed expectations.

One of the reasons why I wanted to attended the ccTLD conference was to hear first-hand about the various restrictions and residency requirements that some registries seem to have for ccTLD. It would have also been good to chit-chat to the respective registry representatives and even local investors to get a clear idea as to the types of domains that are likely to do well on the domain aftermarket.

Analysis of ccTLDs
The ccTLDs do have tons of potential. The end-user markets are quite strong. If domainers get the right types of domains they could be laughing all the way to the bank.

Whereas a significant amount of the .com domains are parked or registered by speculators, I believe the majority of all registered ccTLDs are owned by end-users. Europeans like to use their own ccTLD.  One of the reasons for this is that while the .com version of their desired domain may be already taken, the ccTLD version is normally still available for registration.

Also, using the ccTLD is better for local search, branding and building trust amongst their local clientele.

Investing In ccTLDs
There are some ccTLDs that have loads of potential. And at the moment, that is all that they have got, potential. This is due to the fact that there are still loads of unregistered premium domain names for some ccTLDs. So the end-user still has a choice of top quality unregistered premium domains, and as a result, may be unwilling to spare the cash to invest in an aftermarket domain name.

Some ccTLDs are currently only attractive to long-term investors. It will take time, and even faith/risk-taking for the full aftermarket sales machinery to kick in for quite a few ccTLDs.

The only ccTLDs that will do well immediately on the aftermarket are those that monetize well, and those where the amount of unregistered premium domains are extremely limited.

If the ccTLD does well with domain parking, then there will be an immediate and active domainer-to-domainer sales market. If there are very few unregistered premium domains and the internet penetration in that particular country is quite high, then the domain aftermarket sales to end-users will be very strong.

My ccTLD Investment Strategies
Personally, I currently own my fair share of ccTLDs. I also owned hundreds of domains in various ccTLDs up until late last year. Most were sold, while some were dropped.

This recession has highlighted quite a few risks in my buy and hold domaining strategy. Given that barely any business sector was spared, I had to take various measures across my businesses in order for them to remain profitable.

When companies face economic uncertainties they take quite a few measures, most of which are tied to cutting costs. These costs are often related staff costs, and quite often the end result will be redundancies. The other popular measure taken by businesses is re-organisation. This often includes selling or shutting down certain aspects of a business.

With my domaining business, this re-organisation and shut down process will involve my buy-and hold investments. I am switching my business to a buy-and-flip model and limiting the number of long term buy-and-hold investments.

With that being said, this means that I won’t invest in the majority of ccTLDs until the aftermarket for those ccTLDs become extremely active. Of course the profit margins will be absolutely minimal, as all the great premium domains would have been registered by the buy-and-hold investors.

Diversity is key for the success of any businesses. I will keep a mixture of both long and short-term investments. However, I will reserve the long-term ccTLD investments only for the ultra-premium domains.

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I am very happy that our sponsors are highly respectable companies run by individuals of high integrity. This means that I can write an honest article from my heart.

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Today I want to highlight the services of InForum.in.

InForum.in is a domain forum that is wholly dedicated to the discussion and promotion of the Indian Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).

If you are actively following domain blogs and forums, you would inevitably noticed an upsurge in the interest of ccTLDs over the past few months. Notably, the emergence of the $3000-A-Day Domainer, the planned TRAFFC show in Amsterdam in June that will be dedicated solely to ccTLDs and of course, the recent launch of ccTLDs.com.

As I have cited in a previous post, some domainers have known the potential of ccTLDs some time now. However it is only now that we are about to see some real and steady cash flow being directed at ccTLDs.

Jeff who runs InForum.in not only saw the potential in ccTLDs a long time ago, but he was very proactive by starting a domain forum dedicated to one of the ccTLDs that had some real potential.

Whereas ccTLDs.com creates forums for all major ccTLDs, InForum.in focuses on just the Indian ccTLD. I have always cited the Indian ccTLD as one of the non-dot COM TLDs that had huge potential. I live in the United Kingdom but yet, at one point had more domains in the Indian TLD than I had in dot CO.UK.

At one point I had over 250 domains in the .IN and .CO.IN domain extensions. Here in the UK, I have quite a few Indian friends and have for a long time realised that the Indian economy is set to boom like no other.

A lot of British call-centres are outsourced to India, and a lot of IT firms in India provide key services to some of the wealthiest countries. English is widely spoken in India as well. This makes it a sensible approach to invest in domains with English words in the Indian TLD.

InForum.in is the place to learn everything you need to learn about the Indian ccTLD. Jeff also tracks and maintains a list of all known Indian ccTLD domain sales. There are some great Indian ccTLDs deals out there. I would suggest that you get in on the action quick by visiting and joining InForum.in to learn everything you need to learn about the Indian ccTLD and then start making investments in this ccTLD.

Jeff does a lot to maintain and promote InForum.in, so you are guaranteed to find fresh and relevant content, discussions and even great domain deals!

InForum.in is sponsoring a $150 cash prize, with payment via Paypal in our Blockbuster Domaining Contest. Click here to visit InForum.in.

Our Blockbuster Domaining Contest gives entrants a chance to win over $17,000 in cash and prizes. Entry is absolutely free, and anyone can enter. The contest ends Monday, April 6th 2009. Read details of our Blockbuster Domaining Contest here.

There has been a recent significant increase in the interest for Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLD’s) in the past few weeks.

A lot of blogs have been featuring the pros and cons of ccTLD’s. This was inevitable, as we have had 2 recent significant developments concerning ccTLD’s, with Godaddy and its reseller sites now offering .IN domain registrations, and the announcement of the first European Traffic domain conference being dedicated to ccTLD’s.

Living in a country outside of the United States, where dot COM is not necessarily king, I had understood the value and importance of ccTLD’s from the very moment I entered the domain space. The ccTLD’s have not gained new fame or any sort of elevated status. It is simply just a case that domainers, who are mostly Americans, are now taking notice of ccTLD’s.

I can assume that living in America, one would not necessarily have the chance to fully appreciate the value and significance of ccTLD’s. The dot COM is truly the king in America. Even when America’s very own dot US ccTLD was launched, it struggled to pick up steam.

So just how valuable are ccTLD’s? We have seen sizeable domain transactions in the past involving ccTLD’s. So this is not an unexplored market. As a matter of fact, four of the top ten reported domain sales transactions for 2008 were ccTLD’s. These were:

Kredit.de - $1,169,175
Cruises.co.uk - $1,099,798
Casino.de - $$620,060
Jobs.ca - $600,000
(Source: DNJournal)

ccTLD’s have been reaping some quite success over the years. However, I have one significant problem with ccTLD’s – the language and cultural barriers.

The ccTLD is the domain extension assigned to a particular country. Here are a few examples:

.CO.UK - United Kingdom (England, Wales and Scotland)
.IN/.CO.IN - India
.CO.JP - Japan
.DE - Germany
.ES - Spain
.CN - China
.CA - Canada
.US - United States of America
.PL - Poland
.FR - France

Here in the United Kingdom, selecting dot CO.UK domains for investment or branding/development purposes is not difficult (if you have a clue about quality domain names – 90% still don’t). The United Kingdom speaks English, and would brand the dot CO.UK domain extension in the same way American s would brand the dot COM. There is however a slight spelling difference with words ending with “sation” or “zation”. Americans would spell “organisation” while the British spell “organization”.

Also Americans say “airplanes”, the British say “Aeroplanes”.

These are the only significant domaining differences that I can readily identify with the dot COM and dot CO.UK usages, in terms of language and culture.

However, with other countries, it is a whole different ball game. For one, almost all other countries, except for those that were once under the control of the British (British Commonwealth), speak a different language.

Here in the United Kingdom, different cities or regions have different accents. The difference in accent can be mind-blowing! However in some countries like India, different cities or regions speak completely different languages; so much that some people living in the same country may not understand or be able to communicate with each other.

Do you see where am going with this?

If you don’t understand the local culture or speak the local language, how do you identify gems in the ccTLD markets?

Another key point that I would like to make is not to make the mistake of registering just any English word in any TLD. For quite some time, some years ago, there was this belief that if you owned a domain name (in any extension, but more so dot COM) that was a dictionary word, the domain name would have a very high value. I registered thousands of one-word dictionary/English domain names in extensions such as .BIZ, .CC, WS etc., only to realise later that they were not so valuable. I did manage to sell quite a few, but ended dropping them by the shit loads.

This is the mistake and revelation that guided me to start eBusinessDomains.com. Regardless of the many nonsensical theories about what makes a domain name valuable, there is only one simply theory that stands out from the crowd. I call it the Universal Domain Valuation Method. The domain name must be COMMERCIAL.

So when you dig into the ccTLD market, always ask yourself this question: Would the domain name be commercial in the local market? Or simply put, would the domain name be able to successfully brand a local ebusiness?

Over the past few weeks I have openly expressed my quantum of solace with a few domain extensions. I have cited my belief that 90% of domains in some extensions are just not brandable.

Apart from dot COM, the only domain extension that I would attempt to brand would be the dot TV domain extension. However, some Country-Code Yop Level Domains (ccTLD’s) have huge potential, as the Internet penetration rates of the countries are quite high.

The United Kingdom, where I live, is one such country. However, like the dot CO.UK domain extension, the United Kingdom’s ccTLD, a lot of ccTLD’s fail to succeed heavily in the domain aftermarket.

This is due to a wide range of issues including the registration and ownership of ccTLD’s being limited to people with residency/local business connections; tedious, manual and costly domain transfer processes and the risk of limited market reach for ebusinesses that are branded on ccTLD’s.

If a company’s target market does not go beyond the shores or national boundaries, then it is definitely worthwhile to brand a business using a ccTLD. Here in the UK for example, I can think of 2 building societies that run all their ebusiness and Internet banking platforms on dot CO.UK domains. These Nationwide and Halifax. Someone else, despite the enormous wealth of these companies, owns the dot COM extensions of these domains.

Nonetheless, these two companies have very dominant and successful ebusiness platforms, and would in no way loose business or customers to their dot COM counterparts.

There are countless websites that are using the dot CO.UK domain extension. Most of these website owners, often very huge multi-million/billion pound corporations, don’t even own the dot COM extensions.

What I’m trying to prove here is that not only is there great demand for ccTLD’s, but there is also widespread usage. This excites me, as I’m a great fan of branding. Perhaps if an accurate survey could be done, maybe it would reveal that more brands are build on ccTLD’s, than on the dot COM extension.

So the question is then: Why are we not seeing more ccTLD’s being brokered on the domain aftermarket?

I will answer the question, based solely on my experience with the dot CO.UK ccTLD.

The main reason is that not everyone qualifies to register and own certain ccTLD’s. You have to live in the country, have a registered business in the country, or meet some other strict criteria that are designed to ensure that you are somehow connected with that country.

I think one of the most liberated CCTLD is the dot TV. As many will tend to believe at first glance, dot TV does not really stand for television, but rather, the dot TV is the CCTLD for a not so popular country called Tuvalu.

However due to some agreement reached with Verisign, the dot TV domain extension can be registered by anyone. The dot TV has gained popularity, thanks to the worldwide usage of the TV as an acronym for television, and the influx of video content on the Internet (Youtube, etc.).

With regards to the United Kingdom’s ccTLD, there was a very tedious and costly process involved with the transfer of ownership. Even changing basic details such as your address and telephone number was often a nightmare.

Due to this, domainers like myself didn’t deal much with dot CO.UK domain extension in the domain aftermarket, unless it was a sizeable transaction.

In the past, I have received countless offers on various dot CO.UK domains. I used to just ignore these offers or reply with ridiculously high counter-offers. Some bidders would come back crying, some screaming and some would run for their lives. How I saw it was simply, “if I had to go through with the tedious and costly process, it had to be worth my time”.

Hence, despite being a UK domainer, I didn’t really invest heavily in the UK’s ccTLD. My UK ccTLD portfolio peaked at 200 domains.

I was so fed up with the UK ccTLD and its tedious and costly transfer process that I literally turned away from that side of domaining, only choosing to renew expiring domains. This caused me to miss the fact that big changes had taken place at Nominet.

Nominet, the registry that handles the dot CO.UK domain registration had seemingly listened, did their homework and had made significant steps to automate the process. There is no longer the need to sign and send forms and wait days before a domain can be transferred to a new owner.

Today, I did my first dot CO.UK domain transfer in years. I was a bit shocked to realise how simple the process had become. It is fully computerised and automated. No need to send any paperwork, speak with anyone, or even wait days for a reply. The whole process was done within minutes.

I was very impressed. I can now work with this new Nominet. I don’t know what took them this long, but they have finally caught up with the modern Internet technologies.

I will now be investing heavily in dot CO.UK domains. This is definitely now one of the domain extensions to watch. With over 65 million people living in the UK and almost every home having Internet access, this is definitely a market poised for growth.

If the potential that I see could materialise, chances are, the dot CO.UK domain extension could end up having more potential than the dot COM extension.

Before you scream at me, what I mean is that you will be able to find better dot CO.UK domain deals to buy, hold or flip, than in the dot COM space. I think I will stop writing now. Didn’t expect to write this much.