Gary Males and Aaron Krawitz are veteran domain investors, who specialize in foreign domain names. They are the owners of the recently relaunched fixed-price marketplace, IDNTools. Aaron and Gary are guest authors of this piece on ElliotsBlog.
It is every domainer’s dream to own premium domains that are category killers, brandable and that drive search traffic (as measured by Google Adwords Keyword Tool). It is typical to be discouraged by the extent to which the domain market has already been tapped. The majority of those who brave on, tend to fall victim to the following traps:
1. Hand regging and buying cheap poor quality domains.
(Whydoiownthisname.com).
2. Looking for top names and repeatedly feeling priced out due to
pricing that is in the $xxx,xxx range.
3. Waiting for and investing in the next obscure ccTLD or gTLD landrush.
If these are often roadblocks that derail a domain investor from reaching success and profitability, then how should one proceed?
Find a rapidly growing, specialized niche within the world of domaining. In particular, focusing on foreign language domains in quickly maturing markets – such as Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese or Japanese domains – can be an affordable pursuit with lucrative long term prospects.
The main barriers to investing in foreign language domains, and in IDNs in particular, are:
- Ignorance. Many simply aren’t aware that the average citizen in many foreign countries types in her native language using a dual language keyboard that allows her to easily switch between her native language and English – so that typing in ××.com is not a challenge.
- Parking: The Myth that “IDNs don’t make money”. There are more than a few examples of IDN investors today making $xxx – $x,xxx per month for a single domain, just by parking. As IDN news spreads around the globe, traffic and revenue is materializing for different languages in different niches, but at different timescales – meaning there is still opportunity.
- Translation. How can you invest in a language if you don’t know it? Though Google translate and other free translation tools have vastly improved over recent years, there are unfortunately many scammers who prey on those who don’t know a language. For this reason and others, we have established a fixed price marketplace at IDNTools where you can buy from a trusted source with confidence.
- Sales. Many IDN owners aren’t selling as they are aware that the market is in its infancy. This is yet another reason that we established a fixed price marketplace at IDNTools – to create liquidity and to establish a place where someone who wants to invest in IDNs can find a quality name 24/7. In addition, we maintain a sales history chart for those who want to check IDN comps before making a purchase.
We hope that you will take the time to look at our new domain listings on IDNTools, all of which are translated and available for purchase at a fixed price. If you have any questions about IDNs or feedback on our site, feel free to reach out to us directly at sales@idnnewsletter.com