millions of county code keyword domain names waiting to be registered
So there is all this buzz about country code specific domain names as of late, in other words; keyword ccTLD domains and all the potential they may have. It's true.. They do have a lot of potential once developed, as do any other keyword domain name and they do receive some natural/organic type in traffic as well. But why is there such a "land rush" all of the sudden for them? Why is the spotlight suddenly on international domain names?! Is there really a great opportunity here to invest in and then wake up a year or two later much richer without doing nothing? That is the type of stuff that is floating out there.. It's all hype though for the most part unfortunately... Let me explain why.
The ccTLD domains have been around forever. They are nothing new!! But the spotlight is on them this year.. Big time! Rick Latona is organizing a big conference in a few month's down in Amsterdam which is dedicated to ccTLD's. They are everywhere! Wow... Ok, so lets begin with this... So there is this website setup by some guy / company who call themselves the $3000 a day domainer where they claim to reveal a big time domain investing secret which involves ccTLD domain names and monetization via domain parking.
On their website they display a screenshot where there are approximately 200,000 unique visitors daily generated from their ccTLD domain portfolio that converts to about $3,000 in domain name parking revenues. It's a nice number, sure... But I have no idea who is behind the site and I am skeptical as is everybody else I am sure. A screenshot like that can be put together within 15 minutes in adobe photoshop. All you need is a calculator and some beginner photoshop skills. So is it real or is it fake??
Anyways, for a moment lets assume it is real... So he is making $3,000 per day on average from how many domains... 5,000 domains?? 20,000 domains??! 100,000 domains?? You know, ccTLD domains are very expensive. Most of them cost like $30 or $40 on average and some $50, $70 and over $100 as well. So really, how much is he making in pure profit? Of course he doesn't reveal anything like that... Funny. So don't believe the hype. I went ahead and sent over an e-mail to the address that is on the website and did get a response. It came from a guy in Texas. Not somebody in a ccTLD country. How ironic, eh?
Me: "How are you going to make money from people signing up for your newsletter.. Are you going to advise us to register ccTLD's through your registrar or something? <http: //
www.firstbeatmedia.com/ portfolio.html> looks nice btw. I like the developed sites."
His reply: "We have released a bunch of free instructional videos along with the emails. Soon we will be releasing our CCTLD Price Guide for free which will list all the best registrars for each extension in our opinion. Later we plan to launch some subscription based products to teach our tricks and methods for CCTLD investing."
So as I suspected... Indeed they will be making money by suggesting to those who believe them and who want to buy in to register certain ccTLD's where they recommend since they are pro's at this stuff. They will either collect a commission or something like that. You know how these things work. So anyways, all of the good ccTLD's have already been mined and scanned for many years. There aren't really any good generic keyword domain names that receive type in traffic available for registration fee. So, what they are essentially suggesting in their series of videos is to go after typos. That is the whole point of this ccTLD investment movement.
You see, dot com and dot net and dot org domains is a pretty dry field these days. Those gTLD's have been mined, tasted and scanned for many many years. There is nothing good left. So naturally people are looking to jump on something new and they are actually believing that ccTLD is where the new money is thanks to the $3000 a day domainer hype. Can't blame them... Everybody wants the easy money. But I suspect that most investors into this type of stuff will get burned. First of all, you need to be able to be very good with the research of the types of domains you decide register because ccTLD's are very expensive compared to com/net/org, usually minimum 5x to 10x.
The second problem is that that international traffic doesn't convert well. It usually pays pennies per click and has really poor click through rates. Single digit click through rates, such as 5% or so... Now, even if you do manage to pool in all this traffic... Will you be able to actually pull in a profit? Will you be able to even cover the registration fees? It's really tricky and not as easy as it sounds. You can invest thousands of dollars in a few dozen ccTLD domains and you won't even make $100 per year off of them. Don't believe the hype.
I've dealt with international traffic over the years and know what I am talking about when it comes to this stuff. It goes back to early 2004 when I would play the drops and go after 3 char .com/.net domains and would always bump into Yun Ye over at Pool.com or eNom.com auctions. The other big players weren't in on these auctions but Yun Ye was each and every time. BuyDomains.com wasn't and neither was Frank Schilling. So why was Yun Ye so aggressive?? Well, because they received a lot of traffic. All of those domains had another thing going for them, aside from being short 3 char domains... They were high trafficked expired chinese websites.
If you visit the Alexa.com top 100 chinese websites even today you will see that there is quiet a few of websites there that contain numbers and weird naming structure such as 163.com or ku6.com kaixin001.com it168.com etc... You get what I am saying. I stumbled onto this discovery of chinese high traffic names totally by accident but I did pursue it further with a lot of research. Basically, I picked up as many expired chinese high traffic domains that I could for less than $60 per name on average as well as come up with my own misspellings of sites which were hand registered for $7 each. I parked them with some of the Google powered feeds which indeed did pay for international traffic back then and I made out with a lot of money in pure profits almost instantly with each and every investment.
Unfortunately this didn't last so long.. Not even a year if I recall, the traffic got blocked on either the parking providers system or Google's end. I had millions of korean, chinese and other asian visitors to my domain names but nowhere to monetize it. I let most of them expire... I didn't lose any money on them though because they would turn profitable within a few days. They all received a ton of traffic. Really. But there was very limited opportunities for monetization of that traffic so unfortunately once the parking said "no, we don't want it" or "we can't help you with asian traffic" the whole operation fell apart. It's all good though.. Was good while it lasted. Can't complain.
So there is all this hype about ccTLD's being the next big thing and that the traffic is actually worth something and can be monetized, etc.. As it is being suggested by the $3000 daily domainer and so on and so on. But come on, this is nothing new. Be smart and don't fall into the trap. It's really not as easy as it sounds. You can lose out on a lot of money with a lot of these ccTLD's. I have burned through many thousands of dollars on certain ccTLD's which I experimented with. My research indicated one thing but the actual traffic and results were totally different. I'd generate some of the most common typos of the most popular sites in the world according to Alexa top sites rankings and would hope that I can make a bit of profit if I buy a few dozen or 100 domains.. Lottery style, naturally you get more winners and better chances at scoring big if you are going to make a lot of plays.
Let me tell you... Sometimes it failed miserably on many of the ccTLD's I tried and I didn't even make back 1/100 of the investment. On some European ccTLD domains I did make money, but you have to understand that all ccTLD's are different. There is hundreds of them. Don't believe that just because somebody is making a killing on .de or .ru domains you too can do it on some third world country ccTLD domains. No! you can't!! You will get burned. So be smart with this ccTLD investments if you are serious about it and do a whole lot of research. That is the key.
Go with what you see with your own two eyes. Not what somebody shows you or tells you. Start small.. With a few experiments... Investigate... Double check.. Triple check... Compare notes with your friends and others who are doing the same thing. If it does work out in your favor and it clears, bravo! Keep going at it. Gotta be realistic though. There isn't any easy money in domaining. Not in any ccTLD or any part of the industry. All the good stuff was had... The crap, of course still there.. Waiting for somebody to scoop up. Dealing with ccTLD's is very complicated and tricky. There are a lot of restrictions and the costs are high... Very risky business. You better know what you are doing if you are going to get involved with it. If you are a rookie domainer, you need to stay out.. If you are a veteran... You can give it a try.
