Selling to China

People in Europe, the USA, Japan and elsewhere are starting to awaken to the fact that China is an economic powerhouse. Not only are incomes per capita rising, but more & more Chinese rich people are shopping the world.

Remember: just 1% of China is about 14,000,000 people.

Remember also that it's not essential to rename your company or to put your online activities wholly in Chinese. You can tap into this key market by providing gateways to the savvy Chinese consumer and opinion leaders, and follow-up later with a bigger presence.

Buy a few IDN domains and link them to your overseas website. A generic name supplements your company name, as books.com and book.com funnels customers to Barnes & Noble booksellers, who also use domains bn.com and barnesandnoble.com Sadly I don't own 书.com or 本.com ("books" in Chinese / Japanese) but I do own such names as 食料.com (food) and 子.com (child).

Many Chinese wine sophisticates and quality restaurants are looking to stock their cellars; some would like to buy whole vineyards. Perhaps they could find your business via champagnebrand.com or 赤霞珠干红.com (CabernetSauvignon). Now's the time to plan -- enjoy your future with China.

Billion Brains brand

Domain names are often compared to real estate, but I daresay we gain entry to the mind. A key word or an easily recalled phrase with already a spot in the brain makes a great domain. We can buy one character Chinese & Japanese .com domains that two billion children hand practice writing, often hundreds of times.

Wonderful domains already reside in each brain. My domains colonize real estate in each mind. Highly valuable branding, and certainly a great avenue for marketing & business development.

買

원

子

lividly

Going GONE

Interested in buying a domain name? Don't squander unique opportunity.

Each year around the world, millions of new businesses are formed. Most seek dynamic domain names, and many now seek more than one name. Generic descriptive names supply authority while channeling added online business. The generic name supplements your company name, as books.com and book.com funnels customers to Barnes & Noble booksellers, who also use domains bn.com and barnesandnoble.com

If you're watching a domain name, buy it.

To win control of a unique resource, you must pay more than anyone else in the world. By definition. Comparative statistics mean little. And there may be only one perfect name for you. Consider cost vs. value over months & many years. Your great domain name is a tireless worker. Your domain is a 24-7 always-smiling staffmember. In my opinion, a decent business hoping for effective online positioning should prepare the cost of a small truck: US$30,000 still now buys a great domain. Own a mobile business asset that can increase in value. Do not delay.

As a possible buyer window-shopping a unique item, expect no warning. When a name's sold, it leaves the market - perhaps forever. You're suddenly shut out - permanently.

New Domain Sales Platform

Functions & dimensions I'd like in a domain sales platform: (unranked)

Interested people & potential purchasers can register to "watch" the domain auction. They are notified if price rises, and/or at 30 minutes before auction closes, the amount of top bid.
Auction extends 10 minutes if there are bids within the final period (auction ends only when no bids for final 10 minutes).
Auction house reliably handles pre-screening of bidders
Payment and escrow are reliable, easy, and integrated with sales platform

Investment Domains

Last week the two-character domain KK.com sold for US$2.4 million to a buyer from China (link). Other huge domain sales include IG.com (sold a few months ago for US$4.7 million) and FB.com sold for US$8.5 million.

These transactions are not purchasing systems developed on the websites - these domains attracted buyers aiming at redevelopment. In other words, the names are highly-attractive billboard space.

Some 20 years ago, each multi-million dollar name changed hands at below US$50.

Now, as more of our world comes online, the pace of change grows. China is building its muscle, and single-character .com domains are likely to become success stories.

Chinese firms are developing, and tens of millions of people form new venture business (just 1% of China is 13 million people). Further, the rest of the world wants to sell to China, Japan, and other Asian consumers.

Only a few thousand single-character international domain names exist for .com development. Each of these has elegance and already space in the minds of billions. I can see development where $15,000 investments are worth $500,000 in five years. Very nice valuable nest eggs for retirement...

Here are a few good domain possibilities.
If you're an existing business: Buy 'em Now !
If you're a new service: Buy 'em Now !
Now you can Buy into 2 Billion Brains...

蛸.com Octopus

隣.com Neighbor

血.com Blood

疾.com Disease

蔥.com Scallion

岸.com Beach

請.com Invitation

etc...

Own a Door to History

Just a few years ago, the Soviet Union, USSR, was a powerful nation. Until the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s, top US intelligence and major news around the world claimed the Soviet Union was hugely vigorous, mighty, growing and supremely powerful. Perhaps the USA was more powerful, but this story employed millions of people & generated trillions of US$ in military spending & business. Nearly 300 million people lived in the Soviet Union.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) abbreviated to USSR (СССР) or the Soviet Union (Сове́тский Сою́з)

Collapse was cruel.

I offer two domain names for the Soviet Union, in Chinese and in Japanese:

苏联.com

ソ連.com

Each is available for sale at US$25,000

(Of course) I paid even less. Both China & Japan have been important Soviet allies, enemies and rivals. The Soviet Union was a grand nation inspiring fear & awe. Amazing it's now so little valued and even largely forgotten...

"...Ozymandias, king of kings --- "

New .com Promise (Verisign)

As described in the previous posting here at abcBrand (link), the infrastructure operator for .com domains: Verisign corporation (NASDAQ: VRSN), has applied to ICANN for an additional nine (9) forms of .com in international scripts

Because .com is the most popular & valuable aggregate of domain property rights, Verisign must be careful about eroding or diluting previously-purchased rights, and could be held liable to rights holders for any breakdown in reliability or value.

The solution proposed by Verisign is partially described here (link):
http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-services/domain-name-services/value-added-products/idn-domain-names/index.xhtml

"A registrant of an IDN.com or IDN.net or registrant in one of our new IDN TLDs will have the sole right, subject to applicable rights protection mechanisms, but not be required to register the same second level name across all or any of our IDN TLDS, including .com or .net TLD as applicable."

Verisign continues with two examples (quote):

Use Case No. 1: Bob Smith already has a registration for an IDN.net second level domain name. That second level domain name will be unavailable in all of the new .net TLDs except to Bob Smith. Bob Smith may choose not to register that second level domain name in any of the new transliterations of the .net TLDs.

Use Case No. 2: John Doe does not have a registration for an IDN.com second level domain name. John Doe registers a second level domain name in our Thai transliteration of .com but in no other TLD. That second level domain name will be unavailable in all other transliterations of .com IDN TLDs and in the .com registry unless and until John Doe (and only John Doe) registers it in another .com IDN TLD or in the .com registry.

Will this proposed system work smoothly? I hope Verisign can appropriately track owners and their rights. Will it be possible later to split & transfer one or more transliterations? In other words, might we see .com held by company A, with the Japanese .コム (.com in Japanese) held by another firm?

IDN .com Power

The last post introduced why .com is more powerful than nation-specific domain names.

But the internet has many generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) changes developing. Verisign has nine applications for new .com formats in assorted languages (link). A similar format introduces three new .net forms.

Verisign also promises that when one form of .com is registered, only that registrant will have the right to register the other nine - they'll be unavailable to other potential registrants.

Again, only this first registrant has the option to purchase any or all of the other nine .com forms, but is not required to do so.

It's unclear, however: can the names be 'unpacked' later & sold separately, or what residual rights (if any) to the reserved forms can be transferred.

These forms may be preferable to using country-code cc-TLD such as .ru or .cn -- but promise to substantially raise costs for those who will supplement many .com addresses with .ком or .点看

.com

(present Western)

.ком

Cyrillic

קום.

Hebrew

كوم.

Arabic

.कॉम

Devanagari

.คอม

Thai

.コム

Katakana

.点看

Simplified Chinese

.點看

Traditional Chinese

.닷컴

Hangul

Need IDN .com

IDN, or international domain names, are non-Western characters with two alternate addresses. The "international" character(s) with the final tld string (for example, .com)
子.com
and also a Punycode string starting xn-- (plus tld string)
xn--i8s.com

In many cases, first IDN registrations are in non-Western nations, where businesses or individuals register & use country-specific TLD such as
.cn (China)
.ru (Russia)
.jp (Japan)

But this is changing quickly !
Global businesses use .com
The .com address is primarily attractive to global customers.

Let me explain why:

Characters used in China are used to a large extent also in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, etc. (and to a lesser extent in Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.) Very few in other nations enjoy using the .cn country code, nor do Chinese people want to type .jp -- but they're OK with .com

Similarly, the Cyrillic script used in Russia and in many Russian domains are often the same characters in assorted other nations: Bulgaria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine -- all use the same characters.

Why draw attention to foreignness in your activities? That final country code (cc-tld) is very often an unhappy reminder of historic injuries. Typing the final characters can feel disloyal.

Because of imperial rivalries and historical frictions, customers prefer to use their own nation's country code, or use the "neutral" .com

Any site can then redirect or point to the same content as on a national-focused page. So it's far better to prepare for global business:
Buy your IDN .com

士.com
ключ.com
нажмите.com