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.

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