Why I’m betting the farm on ccTLDs - Why country-code domains have value and what they should mean to your domain business.

I’d like to open by insulting you, if you don’t mind. I’ll try to make up for it later if you stick with me. I think it’s foolish and bad business to ignore ccTLDs. Any responsible business person should know this one fundamental rule: To grow your business you need to either take market share from the market leaders or expand your market.

ccTLDs are a way to expand your market. I am in no way suggesting that you should ignore .com names but you should consider it your responsibility to understand where you can expand whether you are ready for it or not.

A ccTLD is a .com for the country in question, but not only in the obvious ways. There’s more to it. The names I’m talking about here are names that are making money now and are worth money now. There is no guessing work. I’m not a profit because the future is here and I’m stating what should seem as obvious today.

I have no faith and wouldn’t place my bets on .mobi, .info, .tel or any of the other common gTLDs. Don’t lump me in with those believers or mistake the points that I’m about to drive home as an endorsement of those extensions. I would lump in with the gTLDs the branded ccTLDs that attempt global reach. .TV names do nothing for me, neither do .me names. Now let’s get to the meat of the article.

A name like usedboats.co.uk is usedboats.com for The United Kingdom. What are the odds that someone in Wales would buy a used Master Craft from someone in Los Angeles? Not good. On the subject of shipping, there is a reason why eBay and Amazon have specific sites for specific countries. It’s not just boats that are unreasonable to ship.

Then of course there are the billing and language issues. You get the point so I won’t beat it into you.

A contrarian would point out that much like a .com could be mobile where you wouldn’t need a .mobi name a .com could also be globalized for local languages, billing and shipping. That’s true but it’s also been proven that consumers in these countries do gravitate to their local extensions more and more. They see them in the streets. The signs are littered with them.

There are still more pluses which make ccTLDs more than worthwhile which you can’t do with the .com equivalent.

There’s the search engine element. It’s been proven time and again that Google gives preference to ccTLDs when searches are performed at Google’s own ccTLDs. Go to google.co.uk, google.de, google.jp, etc and test me on that one.There’s traffic and revenue to be had if you work it. I’d be willing to place another wager that I can have boxing.com.ph get more traffic from the Paquiao crazed Filipinos than Boxing.com gets; given some time to work on it.

All of what I’ve mentioned still hasn’t touched on the best part. They make money! Time and again I find myself able to hand-register names that are profitable from day-one. It’s because of these points that I’ve mentioned that this is so.

Do a little bit of math which will open your mind. Look at how many .com names are registered then compare that number with the few hundred thousand .mx names that are registered. Isn’t it now reasonable to think that there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of more names worth registering down there? With a hundred million Mexicans predominately under the age of 30 I think the answer is obvious.

Since you guys are going to ask anyway I’ll go ahead and comment on the two extensions that are harder to predict are .us and .eu names.

.us names have never held a special place in my heart as I feel in the United States the citizens expect a .com. I’d rather market a site with a .net name here than a .us. However, I do see them as having some value much further into the future as the world gets more savvy on the naming system, which it will. I won’t buy .us names though because long-term to me means 2-5 years. With a .us name you would need to wait closer to 20 years to see any real significant value and I expect to be sitting on the beach in .mx by that time and nowhere near a computer (yeah right).

Now comes .eu. This extension is much harder to predict. For one thing, it isn’t technically a ccTLD but to me it is. As an amateur historian I can’t help but compare the European Union to the early period of the United States. When my home country was first formed, the 13 colonies which became states were much more like countries than anything else. New York had an army, The Carolinas had armies, etc. These were self governing nations in every sense. The federal government had very little power. It was over a period of many years where each incoming administration slowly chipped away at the rights of the individual states and lead to what is now the all-powerful federal government of the United States of America. It is my belief that the same will happen in the European Union but much faster. Everything happens faster now than it did before. *editor’s note - count yourself lucky I kept that rant as short as I did. In short, I believe in .eu names. I don’t currently have a portfolio of them worth bragging about but this will change quickly. The European Union is nearly the same size in both populace and economy as the United States; so concentrating on it as well is effectively doubling the size of your market. It would be foolish to ignore it.

Foolish is what we can’t afford to be in these trying times. There’s a real opportunity here and it isn’t as speculative as you may think. The majority of ccTLDs already have value and their stock is rising fast.

Rick Latona Auctions is proud to bring you T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Atlanta, Georgia USA – January 26, 2009 – Rick Latona Auctions is proud to bring the famous T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference to Europe for the first time, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs, 2009 will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands from June 1 - June 5, 2009.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs 2009 is dedicated entirely to the discussion of country code TLDs (ccTLDs).  We understand that there are a broad group of ccTLDs in the marketplace; however, in order to meet our objectives, we are primarily interested in discussions and submissions from the following ccTLDs:

This also means that we are also looking for speakers for each of the above mentioned ccTLDs.  If you or someone you know is uniquely qualified to speak on a topic or ccTLD, you may nominate them (or yourself) here.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs 2009 will be June 1 - June 5, 2009 at the NH Grand Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam.  The Krasnapolsky is located across from the Royal Palace on Dam Square, which is one of the most recognized and important squares in Amsterdam.  After careful consideration, we have decided to limit the attendance to the first 400 registrants.  In order to guarantee that you or your company is represented, we highly recommend that you book this event as soon as possible.  Once our maximum number of admissions have been booked, the show will simply be sold out.

T.R.A.F.F.I.C ccTLDs Home Page T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs Registration Page

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs Sponsorships T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs Hotel Reservations

We would like to strongly encourage you to make the time right now to evaluate the opportunities that this conference offers to you and your company.  If your Cost-Benefit analysis explicitly or implicitly points you towards attending and/or sponsoring our conference, then we would like to suggest that you book the show, including sponsorship opportunities, admission tickets, and hotel reservations as soon as possible.

Below are some pictures from from our planned evening events: The Restaurant d’Vijff Vlieghen (top left), The West India House (top right), The Wintertuin (bottom left), and The Pure Liner (bottom right).  Click on any of the pictures for further information about each of the venues.

Please note that we are currently offering the same pricing as previous T.R.A.F.F.I.C. events.  We DO NOT GUARANTEE that this pricing will remain fixed at these levels.  If you want the price to be locked in, you must book the event now.  We must reserve the right to raise pricing for attendance at any time, without giving any notice.

The official website for T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs 2009 is at www.targetedtraffic.com/cctlds.  Here you will find further information about individual and group attendance, networking opportunities, seminars, auctions, and parties for attendees.  You will also find sponsorship opportunities for dinners, parties, exclusive corporate meeting rooms, and a large variety of other opportunities for you and your company to maximize your exposure to this targeted audience.  This is a chance to get your brand out early, visit the site for further information: www.targetedtraffic.com/cctlds!

Rick Latona Auctions would also like to encourage you to submit your premium domain names to our upcoming auctions: The Phoenix Forum, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silicon Valley, and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs 2009.  We are looking for the highest quality names that we can find for all of them!  We would like to invite you to join us as we bring our auctioneer, 2008 World Livestock National Champion Matt Lowery, back to the stage with the world’s best and brightest domainers in attendance.

Submit your premium domain names to Rick Latona Auctions by clicking here.

For more information about Rick Latona Auctions, please go to www.RickLatona.com.

For more information about T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs, please go to www.targetedtraffic.com/cctlds

About Rick Latona Auctions:

Rick Latona Auctions, aeiou.com, DigiPawn.com, and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. ccTLDs are all collectively a part of the RickLatona.com Family of Companies. We are your single source for domain aftermarket sales, acquisitions, development, and financing options and we are also proud to be the European provider for T.R.A.F.F.I.C.  Rick has been in the internet and domain industry since the mid-90s and Rick Latona Auctions is just one of several companies that he has founded during that time.

Contact:
David Clements
david@ricklatona.com
Rick Latona Auctions, LLC
1120 Arbor Gates Drive
Atlanta, GA  30324
Ph: +1.678.468.9228

Who am I and why am I here?

Opening a browser window and forgetting which website you were going to is the modern day equivalent of forgetting why you opened the refrigerator. I don’t know about you guys but I do it multiple times per day.

I have a little system down. First, I’ll alt-tab to go back to the thing I was just looking at before, to see if it jogs my memory. Second, I’ll check my email program to see if it was something there that inspired the effort. If neither of those work I resort to staring at my screen for ten minutes until my eyes start to bleed.

Lately, my memory loss is spreading to other uses of technology. Some of you may have received this call from me already.

*ring *ring

victim, “hello?”

Me, “Um, why was I calling you?”

victim, “you tell me dumb*ss”

Me, “I’m sure it was brilliant and witty but I can’t think of what it was”

victim, “if it’s important you’ll remember, yada yada yada….”

I can’t wait to find out what new technology my minor cases of amnesia will follow. Perhaps one day I’ll forget why I’m on my roof staring at solar panels. I think they’d call that a flashback rather than alzheimers.

Daddy’s Little Girl

Two hundred years ago women didn’t even ride horses. Now, when I take my daughter to her riding lessons it’s noticeable how there are no boys there. It’s certainly a girl’s hobby these days and probably the most expensive hobby an eight year-old could have.

My daughter has been taking lessons for years and recently my wife and I bought her a horse. Now we are paying for boarding and training of said animal. The total cost is around $1000 per month. Mind you, that doesn’t include the cost of my daughter’s riding lessons. That’s just for feeding and training the horse.

None of this I mind because she is daddy’s little girl as the title suggests. Suddenly though, the plot has thickened.

Two weeks ago she comes home from school and tells me she wants to be in the horse business. She didn’t say she wanted to be a veterinarian. She said she wanted to be in the horse business. The best part was that she didn’t mean when she grew up. She was ready now. I asked my third-grader if she knew how much it would cost to start something like that and she said she already has $220 from Christmas money and piggy banks.

On that note, I decided to take her to the local Barnes and Noble to look for a book that could help. We found a book called Starting and Running a Horse Business. I told her that if she read the whole book and could prove that she understood it when I got back from travelling that I’d put up the money and we’d start a horse business.

Well, she read that book three hours a day over the last two weeks. When I talk to her she talks about effective ways to advertise and accounting techniques.

I guess my plate just got a little fuller. If I had it my way I’d start some sort of online horse exchange to live up to my part of the deal but I have a feeling she wants to actually see and ride the horses. At least land is cheap these days.

Check out my view of the Inauguration

7:00 A.M. Woke up

8:00 A.M. Left for the event

8:45 A.M Got in line

11:00 A.M. Still in line and kicked out because Pennsylvania Avenue stands between me and the security gate. Then president elect’s motorcade was coming through so if you weren’t in you weren’t getting in.

11:30 A.M Back at small rented apartment.

11:35 A.M. Sitting on the couch watching it on t.v.

Even Mariah Carey couldn’t get in. She was about 20 feet from me in the line. I tried to take a picture but couldn’t. It was so cold and packed it was really miserable.

At least I won’t get behind on emails now. At least Obama is in office and Bush is out. At least I got this watch.

Announcing my most aggressive promotion ever!

For a limited time, until I decide to stop, I’m offering extremely favorable terms to buyers of names from my newsletter. Here it is:

Only 10% down is required and the interest is only 1.25% per month.

That’s right, I’m offering 90% financing and 15% APR. The payments are also interest only so your fixed expense will be very low. If you want to buy down the principal, I’ll let you.

There’s no better deal around. Where else could you get these terms in this economy?

I’m in the market to buy an existing Registrar

I’m in the market to buy an existing registrar with customers and revenue. 

It’s the next evolution of our company. We want it for security as well as a host of other reasons that I don’t need to go into here.

The natural thing to do would be to keep it a secret that I was getting into the business. However, I’m not one for doing things the normal way and I figure I’ll get a lot more leads through this public forum.

If you or someone you know has information that can help me in this acquisition quest, let me know.