Lots of people living outside the UK think they know all about the UK. They have seen TV programmes made by the BBC and that movie about the spy with Mike Myers in it. However, British English is different to versions of English spoken in other countries. So, if you want to invest in domains for the UK market you need an understanding of how things work in the UK.

Lets start at the beginning. The UK is a large modern economy which is usually ranked around 4th or 5th in most lists of the worlds most wealthiest economies. Around 60 million people live in the UK, of which around 51 million live in England, the largest of the four countries that make up the UK. (The others being Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland)

The principal language in the UK is English. This fact makes it an attractive choice for US domainers who wish to venture into buying ccTLDs.

In theory, there are three country codes to choose from:-

.co.uk (usage is similar to .com)
.org.uk (usage is similar to .org) and
.me.uk

In reality, only .co.uk has widespread appeal (value) within the domain name market. Originally, .org.uk domains were intended for not-for-profit organisations and .me.uk is for personal websites. It is rare, but not unheard of for .org.uk or .me.uk domains to be used for commercial websites. However, .org.uk and .me.uk domains are valued at a fraction of equivalent .co.uk domains and usually should be avoided. The only exception, perhaps is if they are being purchased for their search engine optimisation purposes, as I am advised that Google does not favour any one the three extensions over the other two in terms of search engine rankings.

The big problem for many speakers of US English when trying to invest in UK ccTLDs is that a.) words are spelt differently in the UK compared with the US, b.) some things have different names in the US and UK, c.) cultural, social and economic differences between the UK and other countries may also be relevant.

What this means is that although British English and American English have many similarities they differ in many ways as well. This means that those looking to move into UK ccTLDs need to have some appreciation of the UK language and culture if they are to have any hope of maximising their profits in this area.

Cruises.co.uk £560,000 ($1,099,798)
Phones.co.uk £175,000 ($344,710)
FreeCreditReport.co.uk $300,000
4×4.co.uk £38,500 ($75,360)
FreeCreditReports.co.uk $70,000
BusinessNetwork.co.uk £21,500 ($41,000)
LegalJobs.co.uk £20,000 ($39,392)
GiftIdeas.co.uk $37,950
KGB.co.uk £18,000 ($35,600)
Glow.co.uk £20,010 ($31,015)
Flirting.co.uk €18,000 [euro] ($26,240)
DiscountTravel €16,000 [euro] ($23,633)
Searchers.co.uk £10,000 ($20,520)
ClassicCars.co.uk £10,100 ($19,897)
PetrolPrices.co.uk £8,600 ($17,028)

Some good sales over the $100,000 mark. Its also worth comparing these sales with domain sales during 2007.

Here are a few domain name related links to explore over the holiday period.

To start off here is one for people interested in geo domains. This is an interesting story of how geodomains are being used in the US online dating industry. Next, Predictive Domaining outlines the risks to Geo-domains, in an interesting article that covers many of the likely risks.

Now I’ve been visiting DNJournal.com for years but rarely ventured further than their domain sales listings and occasionally their headline article. Recently I noticed that they have a section called “The Lowdown”, that I had not noticed before. The Lowdown section is worth visiting as it contains lots of news articles about the domain name industry you don’t find elsewhere.

Here are two interesting articles from the Online Journalism Review website. They are slightly out of date but have plenty to offer domainers. the first is a 2006 article City dot-coms still waiting to strike it rich, which will be of particluar interest to anyone wanting to understand Geodomains.   This article from OJR, How to make money on your news content website, is aimed at journalists, but has lots to offer domain developers.

Happy reading!

Frequently, people try to put together some sort of league table of factors and there is even a list of ‘factors’ on this site.

Inevitably, there will be some argument about the relative rank of each factor. And every so often someone will add in “but of course a domain is only worth what someone will pay you for it!”.

Its not that this is a bad approach and these factors are important. The problem is that there  is something missing from the great debate about what a domain should sell for. There is one factor that is often ignored in the debate.  Its a factor that is rarely mentioned. This factor can make a big, big difference in the price a domain sells for, but is rarely discussed.

That factor is this -

the price you can sell a domain name for will be influenced by your ability to negotiate the best price possible for a domain name.

Think about that for a moment…………..

In January 2008, top domainer and industry expert Rick Schwartz negotiated the sale of iReport.com, a domain possibly worth “four or five figures” for a jaw dropping $750,000.
Or read how a UK based entrepreneur entered into negotiations that led to him rejecting a $57,000 profit.

And remember negotiation skills apply just as much to selling as they do to buying.

There are perhaps three areas that domainers need to have some familiarity with in order to negotiate confidently.

1.) Domainers need to be aware of general market prices of domains and the markets for different types of domains e.g. four letter domains, geodomains, forum domains, generics and so on

2.) They also need to be aware of the future potential of the area / industry to which the domain relates

3.) Domainers need to develop an appreciation of sales and negotiation skills and tactics – others will use them and you need to be aware of what people will throw at you

The need to exploit the full potential from a domain means that the price a domain sells for is influenced by how the various valuation factors stack up and (almost more importantly) the negotiating ability of the parties involved.

The ad campaign (TV, outdoor and print) focuses on the theme of “I am”, as in I am who I am because of everyone. You can see the ads I am talking about on this description of the campaign, here.

There are billboards all over the UK advertising Orange and urging people to “search online for “I am” “, instead of asking them to visit Orange’s website at Orange.com.(In fact the website is not mentioned at all).

This form of navigation is fairly new. I call it ’search phrase navigation’. It has important implications for the use of domain names in marketing, which I touch on later in this article. Now, I have covered this topic on this blog in May this year and at the time speculated about the threat this form of marketing held for domain names. In that article -’Keywords are back and this time its serious‘ – I wrote about a few Japanese firms that were using this form of search phrase navigation, however, this is the first time I have seen it in the UK.

The way it works is that a company chooses a phrase, not necessarily one that that relates directly to their business, and builds a marketing campaign around the phrase. The company website is then optimized so that it ranks well in search engines for that phrase. Customers are urged to enter the phrase in the search box of their favourite search engine, instead of the URL of the company website. If all goes well a search using this phrase will then bring up a list of websites with the company site at the top.

With this form of navigation you don’t need a memorable or category killing domain name. (You only need a memorable phrase.) In the case of Orange your search takes you to a very ordinary sounding – www.i-am-everyone.co.uk.

The lack of reasonably priced generic domain names is encouraging companies to look for other ways of getting their message out there. While generic domains rule the address bar they don’t necessarily rule when it comes to searching.

Having said all this, generic domain name holders do not need to give up, quite yet. I understand that, at the time of writing, if you type in the phrase “I am” into Google, Orange does not appear in the first page of Google’s natural search results – yet!

It might be best to start with some definitions. GeoDomains fall into two categories:-

Pure geodomains – for example Seattle.com, London.com and Birmingham.co.uk

Geo generics – for example SeattlePlumbers.com, LondonDentists.com and BirminghamBars.co.uk

I would like to discuss Geogeneric domains at a later date. So, the rest of this article concerns pure geo domains.

It is not hard to see the value in pure geo domains. The business model is, on the face of it, fairly straightforward. If people are typing the geodomain of a large city, say Ontario, its quite clear they want information about that city. If someone types the word ‘Seattle vacations’ into Google and the results include say, Seattle.com or Seattle.us or even Seattle.info then you know they are likely to look at these three as a priority.

Perhaps the most important thing domainers need to know about GeoDomains is that all the best ones have gone and are in the hands of domainers/ end users. So, you are going to pay decent money to get your hands on the best ones! (This week DNJournal.com reported that LasVegas.asia sold for $30,000 and VisitPanamaCityBeach.com for $25,000.) By best ones I mean pure domains that are the names of towns, cities, counties and regions of any significance.

Dot com geodomains are highly sought after. Place names with the related country codes are also highly prized, examples of which include Boston.us and London.co.uk. Many of the most highly prized pure geo dot com domains are in the hands of three players who between them own hundreds of the biggest city names in the world. These are:-

Boulevards New Media  owned by Dan Pulcrano (e.g. Seattle.com, Los Angeles.com)

Castello Cities Internet Network Inc owned by David and Michael Castello (e.g. LongBeach.com, Nashville.com)

Geo Domain New Media owned by Skip Hoagland (Atlanta.com, MyrtleBeach.com)

The rest are owned by mainstream media organisations, domainers and a wide variety of internet entrepreneurs.

There are various approaches to the development of these domains. Some go for a basic consistent approach when developing out their domains while others go for more of a complex ‘visitor guide’ approach perhaps with more interactive elements such as small ads, job vacancies and, occasionally, a small amount of visitor generated content. Some have news and perhaps employ journalists. Some seem to be for local residents while others are aimed at tourists and business visitors.

Domainers interested in finding out more about geodomains could start their research at the geodomain website owners trade association website AssociatedCities.com. Here you will find links to the association’s 110 members sites. Mostly, but not exclusively, these sites relate to towns and cities in the US. There are also a great many UK geodomains that are well developed and certainly worth a look – Glasgow.com, LondonTown.com and Manchester.com are my favourites.

There is an interesting article about Skip Hoagland of Geo Domain New Media in DNJournal.com, this week, that is worth reading. Skip together with Steven Morales have built up a series of Geo domain related websites:-

GeoDomainer.com (social networking site)
GeoDomain.com (a premium geo domain auction site)
GeoDomains.com (a media company)
GeoBusiness.com (business tools/ services for the geo industry)
GeoAuction.com (an auction site)

Steve also writes the GeoDomainers blog SimplyGeo.com, which is a well produced and well written information source. Finally, there are two dedicated geo domain name discusion forums SimplyGeo.net  and GeoOwners.com. Both have potential and are definitely worth a visit.

What do you think of geoDomains? Do you own any geo domains or any geo generic domain names? What does the future hold for such domains? Have ‘ordinary’ domainers missed the boat or are there hidden gems still out there waiting to be found?

Why not share your thoughts below.