Domain parking is one method of earning money from domaining. It’s sweet in that it involves comparatively little work compared with developing a website or selling domains, yet can provide a good income. It scales incredibly well, allowing you to profit from thousands of domains, whereas realistically no one could ever develop that many domains. Despite this, many newcomers to domaining have a lot of misconceptions about domain parking. To help, this article covers some of the basics of domain parking.

“What is Domain Parking?”
Domain parking is pretty simple, really. You let a parking company display ads on your domain. The parking company normally has a contract with Google or Yahoo! to use their ad feeds. A visitor to your domain clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays Google or Yahoo!; Google or Yahoo! pay a share of the revenue to the parking company, who pays a share of the revenue to you.

“How Do I Park My Domains?”
After your buy or register a domain, you will need to register with a parking company (and eventually it makes sense to register with several parking companies if you are serious about domain parking). The parking company will tell you how to use their service. Normally, this is through changing your name servers. The parking company will also give you options to target the ads that appear on your domain, for instance, by setting a keyword for the ads.

“How Do I Get Traffic To My Parked Domains?”
Aaaah. Finally, we’ve run into the catch. Parking companies strictly prohibit you from doing anything that would increase traffic to your domain. Sending traffic to a parked page (for instance, through advertising, link building, etc.) is against all parking companies terms of service. The logic behind this is that Google and Yahoo are trying to get their ads in places where they don’t already control the traffic – not recycling traffic that already exists.

Parking is for domains that have pre-existing traffic (normally through direct navigation). This normally means generic dot com’s and generic ccTLDs, typos, and domains that were once websites.

The key to success in making money from parking is owning domains that get natural traffic. Without the traffic, there is, well nothing. Parking isn’t about getting traffic to domains – it is about monetizing pre-existing traffic. To make money from parking, you need to research buying domains that already have traffic (by using various tools available, such as Alexa, Google external tool, etc).

Tip: If a domain doesn’t get traffic, there is no sense in parking it. In fact, I would generally recommend against it, as parking a domain can increase the chances of a UDRP happening if the wrong ads appear on your domain.

“What parking companies are there?”
Domain parking is a very competitive industry, so there are a lot of choices available for you to park your domains. Here is a list of the main parking companies (in no particular order):

1. Parked.

2. TrafficZ.

3. HitFarm.

4. Sedo.

5. NameDrive.

6. DomainSponsor.

7. Fabulous.

8. DomainSpa.

9. 19 Parking.

10. WhyPark.

11. Active Audience.

12. SmartName.

13. Bodis.

14. Skenzo.

15. Domain Embarking.

16. Sendori.

17. DotZup.

18. Revenue Direct.

19. GoDaddy.

20. ParkQuick.

21. GoldKey.

22. Park Logic.

23. iMonetize.

24. Parking Panel.

25. Parking Dots.

“How do you choose a parking company?”
Yes, that list above is somewhat overwhelming. The best way to do this is through trial and error. For someone just starting out, learning the ropes, and with only a few domains, Sedo may be the place to start parking. Park your domains there for a couple of weeks to get a baseline for performance. Then, you can play around with keywords and altering layouts to see if you can increase revenue. After that, you can move your domains around to other parking companies to compare performance.

Different parking companies have different strengths. For instance, NameDrive does well for my .uk domains and I’ve heard that they are good for a lot of the European ccTLDs. Sedo is reputed to pay well on adult domains.

“How Do You Increase Parking Revenue?”
This boils down to trial and error. Look at keyword lists to find out what keywords pay best in your domain’s niche. Try different ones out to see if that makes a difference.

As well, each parking company also offers different layouts for your parked pages – different ones work best for different niches. Test them out and see what works best for your domain.

Also, move your domains to another parking company. Some parking companies perform better for some niches.

Finally, if you earn enough money from parking, you can always approach your parking company and ask for a larger revenue share.

“Is parking revenue declining?”
From everything I have seen and heard, there is a strong downward pressure on parking earnings. To a certain extent, you can offset this by aggressively testing and moving your parked domains to better layouts and to parking companies that convert more effectively, as well as negotiating higher revenue shares.

A lot of people seem to think that parking revenues are declining because the parking companies are getting greedier. While everyone wants to earn more money, myself included, I think that the parking industry is far too competitive for this too happen. People can — and do — switch parking companies all the time. There are simply too many alternatives available for any parking company to start getting too greedy.

Rather, the revenue downturn is likely due to other factors, such as Google and Yahoo! paying out smaller shares to the parking companies, the general bad economy, and the fact that advertisers can now opt out of advertising on parked pages.

“Is Domain Parking Evil?”
There is a lot of commentary in the blogosphere about domain parkers being evil, useless, lowlifes. Actually, come to think of it, there is a lot of commentary in the blogosphere about domainers being evil, useless, lowlifes. However, even many domainers claim that parked domains are useless and the general public does not like them.

My developed websites get a 5 to 10% click through rate on the ads and my parked pages get a 50% plus click through rate. From that, it seems to me that people are finding what they are looking for on parked pages.

The fact of the matter is – the traffic is already coming to the parked pages. You have a choice of showing your visitors nothing, or parking the domain and giving your visitors what they are looking for. How that can be evil is beyond me.

As well, parked pages provide more choice to consumers – they can choose from several companies offering what they want, versus just one company if a website were there.

In real life (is there such a thing?) people pay good money for publications like Autotrader, which are not much more than a bunch of ads. Is Autotrader evil? I certainly never heard anyone make that claim. Claiming that putting a version of that online makes it evil smacks of jealousy to me, more than anything else.

“What does the future of domain parking hold?”
It is really hard to say, and any statements would be highly speculative. There is no doubt that changes are going to happen with domain parking. When the changes do occur, they will likely happen fast. A prominent domainer with a knack for predicting the future is rumored to have said: “Personally I would expect Google to pull the plug on the domain channel in it’s current form and I would expect that to happen at anytime.”

Most, if not all, facets of domaining are high risk, potentially high reward, and domain parking is no different. I think that the key to being successful with domain parking is to choose domains that have the largest amounts of type in traffic (well, that and obviously buy the domains for a good price). If you do that, you will weather favorably any changes that happen to domain parking. The fact of the matter is that regardless of what happens to domain parking, your targetted traffic will still be there. That traffic is valuable and won’t go to waste – new ways will spring up to monetize it.

In addition, domain auctions can be lucrative for auctioneers, so recently there has been an explosion of auctions competing with each other for domainers’ attention, domains and pocketbook. In this article, I provide a list of the main domain auctions that are held. As the market is quickly changing, I will keep this list updated over time.

There are three main types of auctions: live, online and auctions for expired domain names. The live auctions are usually tied in with a domain or other industry conference, and the domains auctioned are usually of the highest quality (and prices!). The online auctions are run in a manner that most people are probably aware of – similar to eBay. Finally, expired domain name auctions are in a category of their own as they sell previously owned domains that were not renewed – and nowadays, often pre-release domains.

Here’s a good list of auctions to get you started:

Continuous Domain Auctions

There are a number of venues where online auctions for domains run continuously around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These include:

1. Sedo – Sedo probably provides the best and largest variety of continuous online domain auctions. You can view a list of all the auctions they have running here. If you’re an auction junkie, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the auctions. Buying on Sedo is simple – just create an account and place a bid. To sell via auction a domain you have listed at Sedo, you normally need an offer on your domain. It is generally considered appropriate (by domainers although not by Sedo) to ask someone to place the initial offer, provided that person does intend to go through with the offer if accepted. As well, on rare occasions Sedo reps will allow a domain to be sent to auction without any offers. Sedo occasionally runs online auctions as well, such as their recent Geodomain auction, so keep your eyes peeled for this as well.

2. Afternic – Afternic also offers a large number of auctions, though not as many as Sedo. You can find a list of all their active auctions here or simply subscribe to their feed. To buy domains on Afternic, you need to purchase a membership, the cost of which is currently $1 per year. If you wish to sell domains on Afternic, you must purchase a membership that costs $19.95 per year. Like on Sedo, if you receive an offer on a domain, you can push it to auction. Afternic also recently started offering auctions for expired names, which I discuss below.

3. TDNam – Run by Godaddy, there are always lots of active auctions here. There is a lot of overpriced crap, and some real jewels buried here. If you have the patience to sort through a lot of listings, you can get some good deals. The auctions that are closing soon can be found here. Anyone can buy. To sell a domain name, you need to become a member for $4.99 per year. There are then a variety of fees depending on what options you choose for your auction.

4. eBay – Yes, eBay. Not exactly a prestigious domain market and one where you probably need to be the most cautious. That being said, if you are involved in the purchase or sale of low value domains, 3 character domains, 4 letters domains, etc., eBay has a thriving market. You can find a list of all the domain auctions here. That’s a lot of domains to keep track of, so you may wish to simply watch the most popular domain auctions. Set up a free account to buy or sell a domain. To sell a domain, you must list if for sale. There is an insertion fee and a fee based on the final sale price of the domain. You can see eBay’s list of fees here. Selling your domain at a 7-day auction is probably best. You’ll also want to ensure your auction ends at a convenient time for West Coasters, East Coasters and Europeans – I’d say 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. is probably best. Sorry to people living Down Under – I just don’t know how to accomodate you as well.

5. Domain Forums – There are a number of domain forums that allow members to auction off their domains in whatever format the seller chooses. This is probably the quickest way to sell a domain, but likely where you will get the lowest price (there are exceptions to this – e.g. LLL.com seem to sell well here). Obviously, a good place for bargain hunters, but caveat emptor – make sure to deal with reputable members or use an escrow service to close the transaction. Probably the most active sales forum is at DN Forum, although you need to become a member to buy and sell. Namepros and Domainstate also offer a place to auction your domains. There are a number of niche domain market places, like Acorn Domains for .uk domains. A number of webmaster forums also offer the opportunity to buy and sell domains, such as v7n, DigitalPoint, etc., but these are generally not as effective as the main focus of the forum is not domaining. A special note of caution goes out about Sitepoint. Although it is a great place to buy and sell websites, I don’t recommend it for domains. There is no feedback system, so people can serially rip off others with no consequences. Comments that a seller may be selling a domain they don’t own get deleted. There are also a lot of people who go around randomly bidding on auctions with no intention of paying. Combined with a hands off attitude of the moderators of the forum, it is really not worth the hassle for domainers.

Live Auctions

These are probably the best auctions to buy or sell premium domains at a wholesale level. Generally, all of the heavy hitters in the domain industry attend these auctions prepared to buy. These auctions are normally held in conjunction with a major domain or other industry conference.

Buying a domain at a live auction requires a bit of preparation. Many bidders go to the conference and attend the auction in person, with all the attendant conference fees, travel preparations, and so on. Most of the live auctions now allow telephone or online bidding, but often require payment of a fee for the permission to bid, plus prior arrangements to set up your bidding.

Selling a domain at a live auction also requires a bit of preparation. Generally several weeks or even months in advance, the organization running the auction will put out a call for domains to sell. They are then swamped with domainers submitting their domains. If you thought going through expired domain lists was a long and tedious process, then pity the poor people who have to go through the list of domains submitted. They weed through all of the domains and choose the best ones to put up for auction. “Best” in this scenario often includes a judgment of the domain’s reserve – a good domain might be rejected if the auction company believe that the seller wants a reserve that’s too high. How you should set your reserve is a topic worthy of a post in its own right (hopefully coming soon!) Read carefully the contract that the auction company requires you to sign – often there are important limitations such as giving them the exclusive right to sell your domain for a period of time before and after the auction. Fees are usually 10% to 20% of the sales price of the domain.

Live domain auctions include:

6. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. – T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is the granddaddy of all the domain conferences and live auctions. They now run several events per year. One is just fininshing today – T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West Las Vegas. Upcoming events in 2008 include Orlando from May 20 to 24, New York City from September 23 to 26, and the first one in Australia, on November 18. You can keep up to date with these auctions and conferences at their official website (which sadly doesn’t even rank in Google for its own official name). Auctions are run in conjunction with Moniker and Snapnames (both owned by Oversee). After the live auction, there is generally a “silent” auction – an online auction for the remaining names and any names that did not sell at the live auction.

7. Domain Rountable – An annual domain conference that will be held this year from April 18 to 21 in San Francisco. The live auction will be held on the last day. You can find out more about this auction at their website. The auction is run by Domaintools. A bit more of a mixed bag of domains in their auctions than T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Good bargains on cheaper names are available, but there also seems to be a lot of bad domains chosen as well.

8. Domainfest – A newer but very vibrant domain conference. They held a successful live auction in conjunction with their conference in January of this year in Hollywood that actually received much positive coverage in the mainstream media. As of this writing, the next conference date hasn’t yet been announced, but you can keep track of this at their official website.

9. Moniker – Although they run the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auction, Moniker are really in a category of their own, pioneering the running of niche domain auctions. I have previously covered their geo domain auction. They also run live adult domain auctions, casino affiliate auctions, affiliate marketer auctions, dating domain auctions, auctions at webmaster conferences, and more. If you have a specific domaining niche you’re interested in, a Moniker live auction may be the best choice for you. You can keep up with all of their auctions here.

10. NameBuyers – A newcomer to the field, this company made waves in November by holding a live auction at the same time and in the same city as the Florida T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show. I don’t really know much about this outfit as they are so new, but you can keep up with them at their website. They seem to specialize in lower quality domains than the typical live auctions, which may be of interest to people on more modest budgets.

Online Auctions

There is no need to travel to another city to participate in a domain auction – you can do so, from the comfort of your home, wearing pyjamas and eating popcorn. There are now enough online auction events spread throughout the year to keep any domain junkie happy. They are really simple to participate in – just create an account and bid! Selling your domain usually involves a procedure similar to selling your domain in a live auction (discussed above) and in fact, many domains that are submitted to live auctions but aren’t premium enough get sent to an online auction.

11. GreatDomains – Actually a part of Sedo, GreatDomains runs a week long auction of premium domains every month. They normally have an extremely good selection of domains. One of their auctions just started a couple hours ago and you can find it here.

12. DomainTools – I’m not sure whether to recommend these auctions, as the company has made a number of recent moves that are not really in domainers’ best interests. Also, the auctions have had lacklustre results and the company sometimes seems to fly by the seat of its pants, changing dates, rules, and commissions as they go along. That being said, they’ve got some great technology behind their auction system and are fighting hard for their share of the auction pie. If you are selling a domain, just be sure to know what the rules are and set an appropriate reserve. Their next auction in on February 29, 2008.

13. GoDaddy – GoDaddy is jumping in the online auction market with their series of Signature Domain Auctions. The first one was a flop – not many domains, low quality domains, very high reserves – all the ingredients for failure. However, Godaddy has listened to criticisms from the domain world and even hired a prominent domainer, Adam Dicker, as a VP. Given their resources and willingness to make it work, their future auctions may well be worthwhile.

14. Snapnames – Better known for its expiring domains auctions (see below) Snapnames also auctions off other domains as well. Selling names through them is a somewhat complicated process, which involves transferring your domain to their designated registrar first so that sales may be completed quickly. You can find detailed instructions on how to sell your names there. With a lot of buyers and a lot of sellers, the Snapnames marketplace works very well, and is good for domains of pretty much any level of quality.

15. Sibername – It’s new and small, but shows a lot of promise – Canada’s first premium domain auction platform. It runs in conjunction with the weekly TBR auction. The auctions still need a lot of promotion, so if you are submitting a name for sale, be sure to set an appropriate reserve. A great auction if you are looking for a good .ca domain. To bid, you’ll need an account at Sibername. To submit a name for auction, simply submit an email to them.

Expired Domain Auctions

In this market, you are bidding on domains that have expired or are about to expire. While the quality of domains available through these auctions is gradually going downhill as people and registrars realize the incredible value of domains, there are still many good domains available. I’m not sure that it’s possible to pick up any bargains at these auctions, but there are still a number of reasonable deals if you do your research properly.

One new development in this market is pre-expiry domains. These deal with domains that are in the expiry period but haven’t yet droppped. Registars have exclusive deals for where there pre-expiring domains go, so each company will have different names available.

You will want to register with all of the below companies as each one will have a different selection of pre-release domains and each one manages to catch a good share of dropping domains.

16. Pool – Pool is a lean, mean, drop catching machine. They always catch many of the best drops and if you’re serious about expired domains, you must pre-order them at Pool. Unfortunately, service is bad and the registrars to which they transfer the domains you win often have even worse service.

17. NameJet – A new entrant in the market, their competitive advantage is their exclusive partnership with Network Solutions as well as several other large registrars. As Network Solutions was orginally the monopoly registar and in the past has been the registrar of choice for large corporations, the names they have dropping are often the best. I’ve never had an email that I sent them answered – go figure. Sign up for their pre-release and pending delete auctions at NameJet.

18. Snapnames – In my opinion, Snapnames is the best of the expired domain auction companies. Their customer service is great and their bidding process is the most transparent of all the auction companies. They do well with drop catching and as discussed above, are also branching into online and live auctions. Go to their website, sign up and place your orders.

19. Afternic – A newer entrant into the expiring domain market. As discussed above, there is a modest membership fee for participating. You can see their auctions here.

20. Tucows – Tucows offers auctions for pre-release domains that are registered under the Tucows umbrella. As they are a large company, they have a good selection of names available. You can find their auction system here. They offer it as a white label service that other companies can use – for instance the popular e3internet company offers this service

Coming Soon

21. Bido – Bido is set to launch on February 29, 2008. They offer a number of unique features, including only one domain being auctioned each day, a low commission rate of 8%, and educational information about the domains being offered. The company is backed by people of integrity and substance in the industry, including Sahar Sarid of Recall Media Group and Ron Jackson of DN Journal fame. I’ll write more about this company once it launches and I can try out their services.

I’m sure in the year ahead, there will be many changes to domain auction companies – mergers, new entrants and probably unforeseen developments. These competitive conditions should combine to make domain auctions an even more attractive option for domainers. Happy bidding and good luck with your sales!

When it comes to making money in domaining, there are many strategies. But if you are looking to capitalize on one strategy that holds a lot of potential, you should check out IDNs. Although you may never be as successful as Schilling, the timing for getting into IDNs is good.

What is an IDN?

IDN stands for “International Domain Name.” The normal domains that you are used to using are all written with the standard ASCII characters with which we are familiar – the letters A to Z, the numbers 0 to 9, and the hyphen. That works well for English, but the fact is that even though English is the language of international commerce, the native tongue of most of the world is not English. Even in many European languages, there are characters that aren’t used in English such as � � � � � � � � � � � � � �. Moving further afield, Russian and other East European languages use a Cyrillic alphabet. Then, of course, languages like Chinese and Japanese use characters with which we aren’t even familiar. And some languages – such as Arabic and Hebrew – are further complicated by the fact that people write them right to left.

To deal with all of these languages, a system has developed to translate foreign characters into standard ASCII characters via an algorithm known as Punycode. These characters are then preceded by the prefix “xn--”. This process can of course be reversed, and the name can be recoded.

The driving idea behind IDNs is that people want to use their own language on the internet, even if they know English. The basic investment concept behind IDNs is that as more and more people in non-English countries take to the internet, and as browsers support IDNs better, IDNs will be adopted more and more. It’s time to get in early before the widespread adoption of IDNs, while the prices are still cheap.

Here are some tips, tools and techniques so that you can get started investing in international domain names. I have also interviewed David Wrixon, one of the world’s most knowledgeable IDN experts, who has shared some of his wisdom.

Tips

1. IDNs are a conservative investment.

Unlike many types of domains that are claimed to have a lot of potential (*cough* dotmobi *cough*), an investment in IDNs is actually quite conservative. Even if you are a died in the wool dot-commer you can get into buying IDN dot coms. Instead of buying domains like cars.com or similar premium domains, you are buying domains like cars.com in Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. The only difference is that the IDN cars.com are a lot cheaper and have more appreciation potential as IDN use is still in its infancy.

2. Have It Your Way

Just like in the Burger King commercial, people want to have it their way. English is certainly the international language and to a large extent, the language of the internet. That being said, even people who can speak English fluently as a second language generally prefer to use their own language whenever possible. By using IDNs, companies are able to make their domains meaningful and memorable in their local languages.

3. English Speakers Can Get Involved

Don’t know any languages other than English? Although that certainly makes things more difficult, it is not an absolute barrier to getting started in IDNs. There are lots of free online dictionaries available for all languages. As well, many websites offer basic instruction as to how words are used in a particular language. Finally, many of the tools that you normally use in domaining can help you with IDNs. You can do things like check the Overture value of the word on the relevant country’s Overture tool, see how many results get returned in a Google search, use Google image search, see how many Google Adword results exists, and the like. As well, there are many native speakers around in forums who are more than willing to help.

4. Browser Support for IDNs

One thing that has held up the adoption of IDNs across the globe is the fact that in most countries virtually everyone uses Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Up until the release of IE7, Internet Explorer did not have support for IDNs. Now that IE7 has been released, it is gradually being updated on computers across the globe, which is expected to spur an increased use of IDNs. IE7 resolves IDNs to punycode (an xn-- domain) by default unless you have added the language to your list of languages in language preferences, in which case the IDN will resolve to the native characters.

Firefox supports IDNs by default. Firefox displays IDNs in punycode unless the registry of the domain�s TLD has posted a policy on what characters it permits and how it handles homographs – similar looking characters from different character sets or scripts. You can see their policy and the whitelisted TLDs here. You will note that .com and .net are not on their whitelist. Not cool. Fortunately, outside English speaking countries, which is where IDN is primarily aimed at, Firefox does not have widespread adoption.

Opera resolves all IDNs to native character sets even when entered in punycode form. It’s a good browser, but not many people use it.

5. All I See Are Boxes

You should talk to your ophthalmologist about getting a stronger prescription for your glasses! Seriously, if you are looking at an IDN domain and all you see are boxes, you need to install international language support on IE7. To do this, go to start –> control panel –> regional and language options –> language tab –> click the boxes to install the character sets you want. After that, you will need to re-boot your computer.

Techniques

6. Most popular IDN Languages

If you are new to IDNs, it is best to try to specialize in one or two languages. If you already know the basics of a foreign language, that may be a good one to choose. Chinese and Russian are generally considered languages with a lot of IDN potential, because of their large populations and the so far comparatively low internet penetration in those countries. Japanese may also yield significant benefits given the country’s wealth and technology savvy.

I personally also like European language IDNs, such as French and Spanish. This is because the languages and cultures are easier to understand and the use of a few IDN characters is not really a big switch for people in these countries. I also like them because the words “.com” and “.net” make sense in those languages. As well, German IDNs already have a pretty strong record of good sales.

However, the general thought in the IDN community is that people in those countries really don’t need IDNs as much, and are quite used to seeing their words written without the appropriate accents on the letters. For instance, writing the letter “e” is fine, even though it should be “�”. Therefore, the adoption of IDNs in those languages is not as pressing as in languages that use a non-latin alphabet.

7. Monetizing Traffic

As for parking, the company that seems to offer the best support for IDNs is NameDrive. NameDrive returns ads in every language around the world, and you can input keywords in non-Latin characters. As well, related searches are logged in all character sets. Sedo also offers IDN parking.

For other monetization opportunities, check out IDN Affiliates, which provides a directory of foreign language affiliate programs.

8. TLD availablility

By now, most of the gTLDs offer IDNs. You can get IDNs in any language for .com and .net. .Org, .info and .biz support support a large variety of IDNs, but not all languages. That being said, I recommend sticking to .com and for very strong keywords, .net. Given the somewhat speculative nature of IDNs, there is no need to add a second speculative element – namely a weak TLD – to the mix.

IDNs are also available in most of the relevant ccTLDs – .cn, .jp, .de and so forth. Many countries have strong nationalistic tendencies for using their own ccTLDs, so some good opportunities exist here.

9. IDN.IDN

One of the largest wildcards on the horizon for IDN investors is the possible introduction of what is known as IDN.IDN. So far, we have been talking about the letters on the “left of the dot” being in a non-English language. But what about the letters on the “right of the dot”? Just as it’s awkward for a native Chinese speaker to type “cars” into their browser, it is also awkward to type “.com.” Right now, ICANN is testing the possibility of using IDN TLDs. What impact this will have on the IDN market is hard to predict. That being said, given the slow speed at which ICANN moves, even if ICANN approves the use of IDN.IDN, it could well be 2 or 3 years before this is introduced in practice. As well, the branding of .com is incredibly strong and likely would remain strong despite the availability of IDN.IDN.

10. Show Me The Money

Although most of the reason to invest in IDNs is future potential, there have already been a number of notable sales of IDNs, including the sale of st�dtereisen.de (city travel) for $104,325. To find a fairly comprehensive list of public IDN sales, you should check out the IDN Sales website.

Resource Websites

11. Forums

The IDN world is moving quickly. The best way to keep up to date is to join and participate in a forum dedicated to IDNs, as most of the traditional domainer forums tend to neglect this topic. Traditionally, the recommended forum is IDN Forums. However, the absence of the administrator in recent months has caused the forum to decline somewhat. There is still good archival material. A newer forum that is starting to take off is DN Local. Both forums are well worth joining. I’ve found the level of discussion there quite high and there tends to be a very collegial atmosphere.

12. Conversion Tools

One thing you will need when dealing with IDNs is that ability to translate words into the punycode equivalent and back again. Verisign has a good IDN conversion tool.

13. IDN News

You can keep up with the latest developments from ICANN concerning the implementation of IDN on their feed. This is particularly important for monitoring the development of IDN.IDN.

14. Registrars

The most popular registrar among IDNers is Dynadot, which offers an extensive range of IDNs. Moniker and Godaddy also offer IDNs in .com and .net.

Interview with David Wrixon

One of the best known experts in the IDN community is David Wrixon (known to many by his forum handle “Rubber Duck”, sometimes affectionately shortened to “RD”). David took time out of his busy schedule to speak with me about IDNs. Here is what he had to say:

1. Please provide a brief biography so that my readers know who you are.

I am/was an impoverished Civil Structural Engineer from the UK. As we are now reaching a stage in IDN development when our need to sell domains from stock to function is effectively coming to an end, I therefore have no intention of trying to create a personality cult. Indeed, I may yet disappear into complete seclusion. You may simply call me Rubber Duck or RD as I am known to most IDNers.

2. How did you get into domaining? How did you get into investing in IDNs?

I was trying to set up a website for my structural engineering business. The name I really wanted was stolen away from me by Buydomains, even though I had the Snapnames option. That led me to want to find out more. I never did get the name, and the business is now being run down. The site was a success in its own terms, but it takes a bit more than Google SERP to make it in that kind of business. But having got good traffic from a dot biz generic, I was convinced about the value of Generic Keywords.

I tried to make it in the ASCII World but believed I got in too late. However, it would appear that I could been another FS, if I had known what I was doing. I failed to appreciate the importance of the dot com extension, and settled for dot net. That was a major strategic error. That in part was the attraction of IDN. A vast untapped pool of dot coms, although we did pick up some dot net along the way.

I saw a punycode domain sell on Sedo. I need somebody to explain what they were, which my friend Domainguru duly did. I realised I could get free online translation for Chinese, and the rest is as they say “History”.

3. What do you believe are the advantages of investing in IDNs?

Three things really. ROI, ROI and ROI.

4. What are the risks of investing in IDNs?

As with ASCII one major risk is buying rubbish, although this can be avoided. Evaluate the name before you buy. We did this largely buy searching the terms on Google, although many of the languages we bought didn’t even get indexed until after we had invested. Google images can be very telling and Google Trends is also very useful. Also look for Adsense. Commercial terms have adsense in most languages.

The biggest risk in domaining is coming second. That applies to IDN just as it always did to ASCII.

5. How well do you think investors in IDNs will do compared to investors following more traditional domain investment strategies (say, for instance, those followed by Frank Schilling or Sahar Sarid)? Why?

There are IDN investors out there that will make Frank Schilling look like an amateur. I suspect, however, I am not one of them. Sahar seems like a nice guy, but he will never be Andrew or Laura Snow.

6. How does someone who only speaks English get started in investing in IDNs?

Same way as I did I guess. I am not a linguist.

7. What impact do you think the introduction of IDN.IDN domains will have on current IDN investments? Do you think it makes sense for domainers to wait until IDN.IDN is finalized before investing in IDN domains? Why / why not?

IDN.IDN is essential for Right to Left scripts. Their introduction will bring publicity and clarity and will start to spur the market. They will bring new opportunities in some ccTLDs. They will not, however, fundamentally change the market. The real opportunities now lie mainly in the secondary market. There is growing appreciation of this even amongst established ASCII players. 2008 will develop into a bun fight, but I will for the most part be sitting on the sidelines.

8. What kind of traffic do IDN domains receive? What kind of income? Are there any trends? Are there any parking programs specifically aimed at IDN domains?

Trend is very steeply up. It is a bit like asking an astronaut for his altitude just as he clears the tower. At least wait until the bloody booster rockets fire!

9. In which languages would you recommend investing in IDNs? Why?

It is really all down to market potential. Demographic and economics will dictate a lot of this. Some markets are more developed than others. Japanese may be one of the front runners, but it will not compete longer-term with Chinese, Arabic, Russian or Hindi. I have been successful by investing where belief had yet to materialise. Look for potential rather proven traffic.

10. Are there particular segments of the IDN market that you expect to perform better than other (e.g. geo domains, etc)? Why?

I expect brandables to under perform. We may sell those of in about 5 years time. Mind you we will be looking for a million bucks per name and even a lot more, in some cases. That is if domains are still priced in dollars.

11. Is it still possible to hand register IDN domains profitably?

It is getting tough. Yes, you can. It depends on your benchmark for success. FS never really made it big doing a lot of hand regging. If you are a late comer this is going to prove a fairly lame strategy on the whole.

12. IDNs are often said to be a “long term investment.” Would it make sense to wait a few years to invest in IDNs until it looks like they are about to take off?

A long-term investment is simply a short-term investment that turns sour. This really should not have taken this long. Its delay has largely been down to the ineptitude of ICANN and Microsoft. The last couple of years have been tough, but the worst is over now. The initial land grabs occurred 7 years ago. If this doesn’t fly this time, then it is never going to. It is simply an idea, whose time has come. Those that are waiting have the wrong end of the telescope against the eye.

13. Do IDNs in non-dot com gTLDs have much value?

Good dot Net, yes. Other than that probably not.

14. What do you think of ICANN’s performance in advancing IDNs?

Poor, but then what did you expect?

15. What sort of end user adoption of IDN domains have you seen?

There are registrations and developed sites waiting in the wings and even big US Corporations are getting in on the act. They have largely gone for dot coms or ccTLDs. The critical factor will be the in the face marketing that is needed to raise public awareness. That is coming but you cannot expect much until you have widespread browser support. That is arriving in Russia, and will soon be rolled out in the Far East. The next two months will see a sea-change.

16. What do you think needs to happen for IDNs to really take off?

It probably just needs me to go on holiday for a few weeks!

Thanks David for your insights!

As the domaining industry matures, it is becoming harder and harder for people new to the field who do not have large budgets to earn the staggering kinds of returns that people like Frank Schilling have. But for the person willing to do the necessary research, planning and investing, IDNs may prove to be very lucrative. Best of luck in your IDN investments!

Because of this, I’ve set up a custom domain search engine. The search engine is powered by Google, but the only pages it searches are pages on the list of blogs in the domainersphere, as well as some additional pages I’ve added in from non-domain blogs that are relevant to domaining.

Using the domain search engine has a few advantages over simply using Google. First, there’s no spam – only quality websites and articles that have been reviewed by a human being are included in the search index. Second, there are no ads, unlike with Google, where ads are plastered all over the right-hand side and often on top of the results. Third, the results all come from people who are dedicated to domaining – so you can be assured of their credibility. You won’t be pulling up articles written by uninformed reporters or covetous outsiders.

With the domainersphere growing at a rapid pace, there is more and more helpful information on the web that you can use. The next time you need to research something about domaining, do it the quick and easy way with the domain search engine.

To keep up with all of this, I’ve decided to create a list of all the domaining blogs that I’m aware of that are regularly updated (there are some great blogs out there that unfortunately, seem pretty much abandoned). I’m going to keep this list current, so if you know of any domaining blogs that I’ve missed that are regularly updated, please drop a note in the comments.

On to the list…

A

Acro – Rants and raves about domains, business, PPC companies and social issues.

Afternic DLS Blog – Company blog by the Afternic Domain Listing Service.

Anti-Cybersquatting Blog – Professionally written by Traverse Legal, PLC, this blog deals with legal issues surrounding cybersquatting.

Available Domain Names – Bill Eisenmann’s blog. Provides regular lists of domains that are available for registration as well as general domaining tips.

B

Bob White – Bob White’s new domain blog.

C

Circle ID – Community hub for the internet’s infrastructure and policies.

Clicks and Bits – Shawn Hartley’s blog about domaining.

Come Domain – Clasione’s blog covers the basics of the domain world.

Conceptualist – Sahar Sarid’s blog about domaining and so much more.

D

Dave Zan – Blog about domaining, with an emphasis on legal matters as they pertain to domains.

David Carter – UK based blog by domainer and internet marketer David Carter.

Dev Mobi – Blog about the development of .mobi websites.

Direct Navigation – Domain industry blog featuring a taken or available quiz.

DN Cartoons – Humorous domain cartoons.

DN Kitchen – Commentary on what’s cooking in the domain industry.

DN Underground – New blog covering the domaining industry, including topics such as avoiding scams, domain aftermarkets, flipping domains and more.

DNFER – All about Domaining from Manjula Fernando in Sri Lanka.

DNXpert – Regularly updated domain name blog.

DNZoom – The official blog of DNZoom by Bido.

Domain Bits – The blog you are reading. Well worth bookmarking and adding to your feed reader.

Domain Blog – UK focussed blog that gives you the latest news and discussion in the world of domains.

Domain Chest – New UK based domain blog.

Domain Flipper – Adventure in domain name flipping by Morgan Linton.

Domain Magnate – Michael Goldman’s domain blog, including comprehensive coverage of the NNNNN.com buyout.

Domain Marketer – Where domainers share information.

Domain Michael – Covering domain investing and monetization, including domain development.

Domain Name Dispute Blog – Professionally written by Traverse Legal, PLC, this blog deals with the legal issues surrounding domain disputes.

Domain Name News – Adam Strong and Frank Michlick present a destination to learn about the latest industry happenings.

Domain Name Wire – Andrew Allemann’s industry news source.

Domain News – Leading news source for the domain industry.

Domain News 360 – Mark Mearin’s blog about domain names and domain investing.

Domain Parking Money – Blog that reviews various parking services.

Domain Pulse – David Goldstein provides the pulse on the domain name industry.

Domain SEM – UK based blog covering domaining with a hint of search engine marketing.

Domain Soil – provides up to the minute internet updates related to domain names, web hosting, and search engine optimization.

Domain Times – Written by the Hon. Neil Brown, QC of Australia, this website deals with the issues that arise in the arbitration of domain name disputes.

Domain Tweeter – A domaining and mini site blog that features weekly lists of keyword domains available for hand registration.

Domain Week – Ryan MacDonald discusses domain acquisition, monetization, and development.

Domainer Developer – A new domainer blog about domain name developing.

Domainer’s Gazette – Domainer news, musings and odd ramblings by Peter Askew.

Domainer Income – Blog that focuses on domain name investing.

Domainer Pro – Chronicles of the domain name professional W. H. Abdelgawad.

Domainer SEO – Writes about the intersection of domaining and search engine optimization.

Domaining – Raymond Kay’s guide to buying, selling and making money from domain names.

Domaining 2.0 – Domain industry website that aggregates all the industry headlines in one place.

Domaining Tips – Lord Brar’s blog offers a number of domaining How-To-Guides.

Domaining UK – Blog by an UK domainer.

DomainJunkies – Rodney Blackwell’s blog discusses the ups and downs of being a domainer.

DomainTools Blog – Jay Westerdal’s take on the domain industry.

Dominik Mueller – Long time domainer Dominik Mueller’s blog.

Dot Ca Domains – Canadian based blog by Robert Borhi.

Dot Me, Of Course – Domain blog devoted to .me domains (with information about .ly domains as well).

Dot Mobi – Blog about dotMobi and mobile content.

Dot Weekly – Jamie Zoch’s blog offers domain news and domain help.

DotMobiz – Coverage of .mobi domain news, auctions and sales.

DotSauce – A domain news magazine by Mark Fulton.

E

E3 Auction – Nick Wilsdon’s domain news blog.

Electron – Joe Davidson’s blog about the internet economy.

Elliot’s Blog – Elliot Silver is a prolific blogger with lots of insightful posts.

F

FKA200 – Sammy Ashouri’s blog about domaining and the internet.

Fractional Domaining Blog – Neal Voron’s blog looking at the world of buying, selling, owning, developing, and monetizing fractional domains.

The Frager Factor – Owen Frager’s eclectic blog often covers domaining from an unique perspective.

G

Generic cctlds – Blog covering the cctld market, including .cn, .de and .in domains.

Get Domains – Domain blog discussing industry news, coupon codes and available names.

Good Url Bad Url – Aaron Goldman’s blog for URL-aholics.

Green Taxi – Blog by Conor Neu.

H

The Hot Iron – Mike Maddaloni’s blog about business and technology. Contains significant articles about domains.

I

ICANN Blog – Keep up with what ICANN is up to.

Inside Domaining – Steve Granville-Smith’s online source to the domain space – “This is your time – you were born to be a domainer.

Invest In Domains – Brad provides lots of tips about investing in domains and becoming a domainer.

I Squatted Your EU – News and discussion about the domain name industry in Europe.

Is It Me Or Is Everyone Else Stupid? – Julia Mackenzie’s musings on domain names and internet marketing.

J

Jothan Frakes’ Weblog – Director of Oversee.net’s personal blog about the domain industry

L

Logistik Labs Blog – Covers the domain industry and offers domaining tools.

LLLL.com – The authority on short and four letter domains.

M

Mister.us – Brings you news and coverage of the .us domain extension.

Modern Domainer – Source for domain related news.

Ms Domainer – New and outspoken voice in the domainersphere.

MyID.ca – Canadian auction blog.

N

Name Blog – News and sales from the domain industry in the United Kingdom.

NameBait – Baitshop for domainers of the world by Jason Barrett.

NameBio – Justin Allen explores issues relating to domain name sales, patterns and trends.

NameDrive – Blog that provides domain news updates.

Names at Work – Blog that has a strong focus on new TLDs.

Namewise Blog – Blog in both German and English.

Newfound Names – Domaining blog by Newfound Names.

NNNNN Domains – The leading blog dealing with 5N.com domains

O

Oz Domainer – The word on domain names from down under by Ed Keay-Smith.

P

Predictive Domaining – Barry Goggin’s predicts what will be valuable domain names in the future.

Q

Quad Letter Domains – A British view on the LLLL.com and other 4 letter domain markets by Richard Shorten

R

Rick Latona – Domaining blog by entrepreneur Rick Latona.

Rick’s Blog – The Domain King’s thoughts on domains, traffic, closing more sales, business and marketing.

S

Scott Fish – General internet business blog with substantial domaining content by Scott Fish.

Self Made Minds – Run by Al Carlton and Scott Jones, this blog discusses domaining and being an internet entrepreneur.

Seven Mile – The official Frank Schilling blog. Frank is one of the most successful domainers in the industry.

Simply Geo – Steven Morales’ blog about the geo domain niche.

Success Click – Stephen Douglas’ new blog about the domain industry.

Supernatural Agency – blog about Domaining, monetization strategies, search marketing and Internet entrepreneurship.

T

The Critical Post – Provides news and commentary on the domain industry.

The Domains – New blog covering the domain industry.

Tia Wood – Domain blog that presents an unique perspective.

Trend Domaining – Scott Griffes’ blog provides coverage of the latest trends that can be applied to the domain industry.

U

Unplain – John Bomhardt’s views on domaining.

Url Academy – Andy Kelly’s blog about all you need to know about domain names.

Url Kazoo – Covers domain news and domaining tips.

W

Web Publishing Blog – Andrew Johnson’s blog about the internet, with lots of articles about domaining.

WebDotGeek – Blog by Abhishek Jha, a university student in India, about the domain business and industry, and web monetization.

Whizzbang’s Blog – Michael Gilmour’s resource for domain name owners.

World’s Worst Domain – Domain blog written from an interesting angle with a lot of humor added.

4

4 Letter Noob – A blog about LLLL.com domaining.

Other

There are also a couple of industry resources that cover these blogs, but are not blogs themselves:

DN Hour – Digg style news site where you can submit and vote on stories from domain blogs.

Domaining – Presents a mashup of the latest posts from over 50 blogs

Also, not really a blog, but required reading is DN Journal.