Looking to get in DNJournal’s ccTLD Top Ten?
16. Mar, 2011 
2 Comments
This is a goal that many a Domainer and domain broker have – achieve greatness by getting in DNJournal’s famous sales list, in a top ten spot of course! Now I haven’t reached this goal myself but I do pay attention to Ron’s lists and look for trends. One trend that is more apparent than ever in his latest top ten list is the focus on non-english words in the ccTLD space.
Now this makes sense and really shouldn’t be confusing to anyone, yet I still see many new ccTLD investors making the same mistake. If you’re going to buy a .MX domain, go for Spanish, .FR – pick a word or phrase in French. If anything can be learned from the recent sales in the ccTLD space it should be loud and clear – buyers are opting for names in their native language.
Given how the domain name market is changing over time it’s important to stay on-top of the current trends. These trends are often more than passing, they are indicators of what’s to come. This isn’t a new trend, in fact it’s the norm when it comes to ccTLD yet many new investors still buy tons of english ccTLDs that make no sense! Just this week I spoke to someone with some great category-killer English words in a ccTLD that they just wouldn’t sell in, the words were great but the language was wrong.
When investing in ccTLDs it is so important to be relevant, buy words and phrases that people would be looking for and if you don’t know the language, use Google Translate or find someone who can help you. In some markets it won’t be cheap, category-killer german words in .DE are expensive and for good reason! If you want to make it a coveted top ten position on DNJournal in the ccTLD space you’ll need to think outside the box and inside the country and the region you are targeting.
I hope this helps any new ccTLD Investors get started on the right foot – you have to change your thinking a bit when it comes to ccTLDs.
I had hoped our 4,000 USD sale of villa.co.za would make it but unfortunately SEDO had a .me auction ending in the same hour with the results being posted in the same week on dnjournal! Gotto wonder if that affected our auction too. Bidder1 did not even make it to the auction close even though he says he would have gone up to 6k USD! He was stuck on the beach without internet apparently! One good thing though is the winning bidder was a newcomer to the .co.za domains – his first ever .co.za. for 4k!
Hi CoZanic – congratulations on your sale! I have always been very interested in the .CO.ZA ccTLD as I’ve seen a lot of interest in it over the years. If you have experience with this extension I’d be very interested in talking more and working-together to put together an article about it on here!