Why I’m betting the farm on ccTLDs - Why country-code domains have value and what they should mean to your domain business.
January 27, 2009 by Rick Latona
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,
What are your thoughts on .asia domains?
Also, what about the ccTLD’s of smaller countries like .bz (Belize). Are there ccTLD’s of these small countries you would stay away from?
.Asia could turn into something but at the moment it doesn’t have my attention.
Smaller country names are great to hand register but don’t expect to cash in on them in the wholesale market.
[...] Re: Rick Latona Loves ccTLDs I suppose a link to the article would help: Why I’m betting the farm on ccTLDs - Why country-code domains have value and what they should … [...]
yeh, being australian, it sucks that amazon doesnt have an “amazon.com.au”
What do you feel are the major cultural/population factors related to the future success of a ccTLD?
I personally think that a young, democratic population with a desire to ’suceed; will lead to the strong adaptation of a country’s TLD.
I think that .India and .Mx(ico) fit this bill.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Very wise words Rick,
Glad to see that there are others out there that can see this as it is smack bang in front of everyone but knowone seems to get it.
After travelling the globe for the past 7 months I can say for sure that ccTLD’s dominate the advertising / marketing in the countries I visited and .com was a distant second.
My focus is on India and am picking up great unregistered generic domains every day.
Here are some examples of a few of the domains I have hand registered
in the past month or so -
remoteserver.in & remoteservers.in
cameratripod.in & cameratripods.in
endoscope.in & endoscopes.in
labelprinter.in & labelprinters.in
mediaserver.in & mediaservers.in
hdcamcorder.in & hdcamcorders.in
remotebackup.in & remotebackups.in
Also with GoDaddy now dealing with Indian ccTLD’s that has to be a wake up call I would say.
But hey if everyone wants to leave all the ccTLD’s to us then I wont complain!
Regards
Ed
OzDomainer
Do you think its better to invest in english word. cctld or their own language?
I pretty much agree with you rick, .com.au and .co.uk are both stronger than .com in their respective countries.
The trouble for me comes when i try to develop these things - the search numbers for a product - just within the uk or australia - are often really small. you often get bigger numbers on crazily obscure products in .com ( good for most countries and everywhere), than pretty major products for just in the UK, say.
So - my heart says yes, but the numbers still hold me back. for this reason i’d rather have a strong .net, .org, or even .info or .biz than a .co.uk.
@mellow You should definitely invest in country specific language when you register or buy ccTLD. DO NOT buy English keywords (unless it is .co.uk or .eu of course). And unless the word is “sport” or “pr”, which is used also outside English speaking countries. In Poland wakacje.pl (holidays) would be worth 50x more than holidays.pl. And just for comparison there are 1,3 mln .pl domains (74%), 175 thousand .eu names (10%) and “only” 155 thousand .com domains (9%). Net, info, org and biz accounts for 125 thousand names (7%).
Hello Rick,
I believe in .eu names too! My .eu premium name: EvenBetter.eu
The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member states. Since its origin, the EU has established a single economic market across the territory of all its members. Currently, a single currency is in use between the 16 members of the eurozone. 170 of the top 500 largest corporations measured by revenue (Fortune Global 500) have their headquarters in the EU.
I like .de domain names. My premium names: TheCredit.de, TheMarkteing.de, TheBig.de
Germany is the largest national economy in Europe. Germany is the world’s top exporter with $1.133 trillion exported in 2006 (Eurozone countries are included) and generates a trade surplus of €165 billion.
Best regards from Germany,
Sergej
I was recently in Romania for two weeks and I literally didn’t see a single advertisement for .com, it was all for the .ro extension. Blew me away. Great post Rick
lol where did you get that stat of 155,000 .com domains, i think I know people who own that many .com domains.
Good post, and I think you’re right about the .eu and the path of the European Union … the economic bands that tie will lead more to the political bands. With the Czech Republic currently hosting the EU presidency, and each nation having a chance to share it, it will become politically correct for more online companies using the .eu extension. Of course … I’ve been wrong many times; but good post, Rick.
Are you at all fond of .cc for Cocos Islands? I have never liked them much but I did purchase one off of the forums becuase the keyword was perfect for me, but generally I stay away form them - although I have seen 1 take a number position in Google.com which I was plenty surprised about.
Really wise words Rick.
I believe in .eu names too!
Best regards from Germany,
Sergej
[...] Latona wrote a compelling post about why domain investors should consider attending the TRAFFIC show in Amsterdam. He and I [...]
The stats regarding number of .com domains in Poland can be found at webhosting.info - it is not the best source but give some idea.. And yep - .com names are not too popular in Poland.
P.S I like .eu names as well, even most people don’t believe in them.
# money.eu
# geld.eu (DE)
# pieniadze.eu (PL)
IMO the local language targetting is the biggest step, and IDNs have to be included in this conversation. In some instances that we have seen IDNs actually receivi\e more traffic than their ASCII equivalent. However in other instances they receive little to no traffic and may never.
What people have to keep in mind is that every country is completely independent of one anther and must be viewed as such when investing. It really must be taken on a case by case basis, and the appropriate research has to be done, because traditional US domaining mindset doesnt work an will most likely cost investors money.
HI Rick,
Which registrar do you use for .com.mx? Thanks.
@Michael Neu - you are 100% right - ccTLD market is totally different from US market. You have to look at each market and make separate research (different language, habits, people, culture etc.) For the people from US it will be hard to change their thinking but it is doable.
And IDNs are there as well. I have 1000+ .pl IDNs and full bunch of them is earning for the renewal, so I see bright future in IDNs as well.
yep each ccTLD is its own economy so to speak, while the generics in english speaking countries are good, there are also some more local uses of words, like cellphones vs mobiles. Honestly the best way is to have someone from that country who knows the industry and knows whats big and whats not to provide information on whats best to invest in or develop.
I’d strongly endorse@Andre wrote as a ‘caveat emptor’ to the apparent ease of registering generics in ccTLDs even where English is dominant in URLs.
I see many one-word generic .hk domains listed for sale at Sedo that show a lack of understanding of the subtly different usage of common English words by local Chinese.
rick,
what type of domain names can i invest in 2009 because of world economic problem.
While I do not focus on them myself, I agree that I come increasingly across people who bet on ccTLDs.
At the DN conference (sponsored by Sedo and MailClub) in Paris earlier this week, some speakers pointed to interesting dimensions, e.g.:
- TRUST potentially generated by ccTLDs for users in their geographical area, feeling that they will find something relevant.
- POTENTIAL OF REGIONAL SEARCH TOOLS - indeed, if search tools focusing on one geographical area develop, this would also probably boost ccTLDs.
Most agreed about the potential of ccTLDs anyway.
Regarding .eu, opinions seem to be quite diverse - moreover, there are indications that the reactions toward .eu can actually vary quite markedly from one European country to another.
But before embarking on ccTLDs, one should be well-informed about language issues too - there are sometimes big mistakes done by people with DNs in languages others than theirs…
Great article, although I believe that .US domains have as much potential in the future as some of the other ccTLDs that are being discussed here. As people in other parts of the world become more accustomed to using ccTLDs then there is a good chance that they might also prefer to go to .US sites if they are searching for something in the United States. People in Europe, India, or China might visit .US domains out of habit and eventually Companies in the US are going to have to pay attention to this traffic. IMO
Rick, i’ll be searching for your RickLatona.com commercial ad during the superbowl…hope i see it…
I sat patiently on the day .eu was available to all and never got 1 name i wanted (i was not going for business.eu/money.eu and the likes) all general keywords, not to popular and a week or so later they were avaialable for some reason unknown to me or anyone i’ve asked
which put me off for good.
Where .us has made me more money than any other extension (i sold a .com in 2006 which enabled me financially to register over 400 .us names and buy 20 on the aftermarket)
Including.
Mold.us
Contractor.us
Certified.us
and others close to the quality posted.
with the profit from .us names i currently reinvest it all 100% back into .us names.
And hand registering .us names seems to be wroking ok so far,
some names i got for Reg Fee
SecurityNetwork.us
Hazardous.us
FloridaSecurity.us
CaliforniaSecurity.us
NewYorkSecurity.us
WilmingtonRealEstate.us
MovingQuotes.us
GolfRules.us
IndustrialChemicals.us
FixedrateMortgage.us
and 100’s more like it.
to be nice (and i mean it in a nice way) i’m glad you and others like you (Established/Succesfull/Rich) dont wish to invest in .us at this time. makes it easier for us little guys.
And i had a few .in which i hate to say i let expire without my knowledge, some nice computer/internet terms. and good 3 letter names.
But i have not ventured into other cctld’s yet,
I live in Asia, and have been aware of this trend since before I started domaining (all of 6 months ago.) But I can’t undestand all the .cn or .jp domains being offered for sale that use English words. I just don’t get it. Unless there is a sizable English-speaking population, 99% of English will not be understood. And the 1% that is understood may have acquired a totally different meaning.
For example, “smart” is used in Japan. Except it means “slender.”
“Intelli” sort of means intelligence, but with the negative connotation of being booksmart and not much fun.
I would think that Google insight might be of some use in finding keywords.
But, surely the safest way around not knowing the lingo is to buy LLL domains. Doesn’t matter what the language is then!
Agree completely, Rick. About time somebody saw it this way.
Best from Cabo,
- Sergio
i think .me is good one aswell
but .asia will high vaue closer to .com next years t come as alot of countries there covers .asia and prices are rising abit by time very good +.eu and .us
One of the reasons that country code domains may hold great potential is politics. Governments, by their very nature want to control things that go on within their borders. They can’t really control .com. But, they can control their own country code.
The real world has psychical borders. The Internet will increasingly have virtual borders. Those virtual borders will be country codes. These will be national assets that governments can regulate, protect, monitor (and tax, of course) .
But, there is another aspect of CCtlds. That aspect is categorization. Country code domains help categorize the web. They can give you an idea of who you’re dealing with or buying from. Age-wise, the Internet is just a kid. And, that “kid” is approaching puberty. That’s when the growth spurt hits. That growth spurt is going to bring such astronomical numbers of users and websites online that it will Massively Dwarf what is out there now. It’s going to be much harder to find specific stuff simply because there is so much more stuff out there.
One example is China (.cn).
Shameless plug: I have refrigerators.cn in the Domainfest Silent which ends this afternoon. The aftermarket for .cn and .us and many other CCtlds is just beginning. One reason is that these country codes don’t have high usage…Yet. But, they will. Many people will say that’s just wishful thinking. Truth is, it’s a little of both.
But, just look at the numbers and the potential commercialization. For .us, the economy is in the shitter now. But, that won’t last forever. There is huge potential for .us to become the go to domain when it comes to future ecommerce.
And, back to China. Well, many say they are all dirt poor and therefore hold very little potential for ecommerce. But, that won’t last forever either. Sooner or later, many of them will have the money to start buying the things in life that the rest of the world takes for granted. And they will have a lot of catching up to do. As for their numbers. It is staggering. If China ever wants to take over the world…maybe they will just surround us.
No one can predict the future. But, country code domainers are placing their bets well in advance, in the hope of being ready for the incomprehensible growth explosion that the Internet is going to see. The only question is…When?
Rick , Agree with you fully.
I am from India and with an experience of working in three regions in US , ASIA and Europe.
In India at present .COM is dominating fully. The second place goes to .in than .net or .info or .org. etc… Most of the indian youth who are less than 30 yrs age bet on .in domains than .com domains, offcourse i am one of them. I holds a portfolio of 200+ .in domains most of them are three letter ones or key words. At the same time i also holds few .com /.net /.org /.info domains , but in comparison the traffic i am getting for the .in domains is superb.
The traffic i am getting for these domains is tremendous its giving an impression for me to invest all my earnings into this (offcourse i am planning for that), I dont know about other country CCTLDs , but I am sure in india .in will rocks.
Cheers
There’s no denying ccTLDs work great in every country as they promote that country and increase the namespace etc, so it shouldn’t take the US 20 years to use its name more online, IMHO.
[...] right now are going to be laughing all the way to the bank when the market catches up. People like Rick Latona, and this next guy who is making $3k/day parking ccTLDs that were bought at reg [...]
>>>>It is my belief that the same will happen in the European Union but much faster.
Are you serious?
Probably is time you take a break and get a 3-month trip to EU ok?
Great Article….Rick. Gives Domainers like me great HOPE and Believe in Domains… Just like the Big Domain Boys who saw the Potential, Possibilities, and Profits in .com, I personally feel that TLD domainers are in the same position with.co.uk, .in, .de domains. Now that the interest has grown wide it will grow vertically and deep in specific countries as its being witnessed worldwide to build their local economies.
Moreover, I believe that owning a premium TLD is a very smart strategy rather than owning just an OK .COM. I own some .in , .de, and .co.uk domains.
Shiv, I am looking to connect with other like-minded .in domainers…How many.in domains do you own.
MY TLD Domains:
Gasolineprices.co.uk
Acnewash.co.uk
BollywoodConcerts.co.uk
RealestateForeclosure.co.uk
VacationGetaways.co.uk
DiscountPackages.co.uk
Type2Diabetes.de
Sinus.in
Webincome.in
Funnyads.in
TopwebMasters.co.uk
This post is for Ed, or anyone else (feel free to comment).
Ed, I read your post how you are registering:
mediaserver.in & mediaservers.in
hdcamcorder.in & hdcamcorders.in
remotebackup.in & remotebackups.in
My question is why are you registering indian domains with english words? I could be wrong on this but if a person is registering any domain in another country wouldn’t you use the native language for the domains?
In reply to your question David,
English IS the main language used by Business & Government in India.
Although there are many different languages after Hindi & English I am going after English as that is what most .co.in & .in registrations are.
I have grown knowing many Indian families and have contacts in India who all speak excellent English (even better than me in most cases LOL) and it is the middle class market that spends most of the time on the internet along with the under 30’s which is half of India’s population so approx 600 Million.
They also place a very high degree of importance on learning English and being educated.
There are many many misconseptions about India and not speaking English is one of the biggest. Sure many don’t and probably never will but thats another market for someone else to deal with.
There is a market there of English speaking people 3 times the size of Australia’s population and I do great here so I am happy with that.
Cheers
Ed
OzDomainer.com
I do believe cctlds will have a lot more value in the future than they have right now. Those who have money to invest during economic downtime will be very happy later. I would definitely recommend to buy .eu, .in, .mx, .pl etc.
[...] is talking about ccTLD’s lately. Find out why Rick Latona is betting a farm on ccTLD’s and read some posts, it’s all over the place but here is the most popular [...]
Salman , As mentioned earlier i own more than 200 + .in domains.
You can feel free to reach me on domainpapanet@gmail.com
David : I agree with Ed, most of the guys in india speaks very good english and you can say English is the offical language considered by Government of India and also all most all private companies.
.in is truly international domain. The number of indian internet users is around 90 million as of now , growing at a steady percentage of more than 15 % every year. 450 million of the people in india are under 30 , out of that 300 million people speaks english.
So dude i will advise you to think about investing in .in domains. .in domian is truly international.
All The best..
Cheers,
Shiva
domainpapa.net
Yes, country level extensions are the most relevent currency for local businesses in a domestic market but the .com extension takes on a greater role (and thus value) when such a business expands beyond its native border - a guy fitting radiators in Berlin has no need to appeal further afield than his truck drives in a day, but the manufacturer of the fittings needs to sell to a much wider international audience where .com is the globally recognised and respected currency.
We all recognise that some country level extensions obviously lend themselves to having a novelty value to an english reading audience (.tv .it .me .in) but these extensions would not be the ones expected by another nations local population.
The main reason that global brands need to be reflected in local ccTLDs is to comply with regional regulations, taxes and exchange rates - and to apply slightly differing marketing techniques to each territory depending on tastes and sensitivities - “When in Rome…. do as the .it does”
Yes thats true, when I want to send a flower or any gift to my friends in the UK, and I live in the US, i go to google.co.uk and search only inside UK pages or uk domains, as I want a local shipping rates and local gifts.
Rick,
Good article about ccTLD.
We own good .co.in keywords and we get many enquiries from the end users for some of the top keywords.
In terms of traffic , .co.in still gets better traffic than .in within India .
.in is more popular among Domainers and the newly launched websites in India.
There is a good reseller market for lll.in
With the introduction of windows 7 in Hindi, Hindi IDN’s (.com) would be a good speculative buy.
is LLL.ins are good ?
currently 1635 LLL.ins are available
Rick, I agree with much of what you’ve written, but don’t hold your breath on the .eu thang.
The EU won’t mirror the US - reason being that there is history here, and us Europeans like to keep out national identities; with the US it was a different story - everyone was a foreigner in a foreign land.
You should see the arguments that go on over here over Parma Ham, Cumberland Sausages etc. I know that some countries took up the Euro, but some of those wish they hadn’t….
Give me a .co.uk .de or .it over a .eu any day of the week, or even at the weekend!
Looking from Australia, for most people “.com.au” denotes a local company, “.co.uk” means a UK business and “.com” indicates a US company (rather than a global company). Interestingly, most global companies are US-based (IBM.com, Avis.com, Hertz,com) even though they operate globally. They use local domains (IBM.com.au, IBM.co.uk) for their local presence - although these URLs redirect to IBM.com subdomains
So it is an issue of local presence …
.N.
well, look for only one fact - that cctlds are no longer flights of fancy, but they do have real value. Mostly if you want to target serach engine in a specific country go for cctld. They rank better than the gtlds, but then you may aslo loose some traffic to the gtld of your domain, especially to the dot com extension
Ricki, If you clai to support cctld’s but not .us or .mobi or .us.com or .im than you are essential worst then the investors you claim are wrong! You need to accept all domains or YOU WILL BE LEFT ON the dock as teh GREAT BIG YACHT leaves you FAR behind! Think what your silly mind has you think and you will be lost in the wind over the next decade. You heard it first here from the Master Domain Master Sir!
I own http://www.genericcctlds.com and have owned cctlds for 8-9+ years. I have hundreds of cctlds in keywords. So I agree, cctlds will be the .com of the country using them. I rate them as follows:
1. .de
2. .co.uk
I think in 2-3 years, .in will start to turn around. I do not like .cn names because of policing by the chinese government tat limits what they can see. I invite you to visit and see whats on my site.