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build a list of as many UK domainers as possible and other domainers who are interested in .uk ccTLD domains.

(I also follow a few of the well known domainers from the US like Sahar Sarid and Rick Schwartz who so generously share their thoughts and tips on their blogs when they don’t need to.)

DomainingUK is a great way to keep in touch and to learn more about whats happening in the .UK niche.

If you are a UK domainer or a domainer interested in the UK domain space please Follow Me on Twitter.

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.

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!

A post on Rick’s Blog really got me thinking. Rick shares his thoughts about the value of generic dot coms. Read all about it here………

Next, do you have a bobblehead? Elliot’s Blog has an interesting interview with Warren Royal, owner and developer of Bobbleheads.com.

There are lots of interesting domaining articles on SelfMadeMinds.com. Scott’s latest post about obtaining domains from dissolved companies is the must read article of the week.

Two useful blogs for domainers who are developing or thinking about developing forum domains, or who are wanting to add forums to their sites. Community Spark is a blog by community development expert Martin Reed. Angela Connor’s blog provides a great deal of information relevant to online community management. Both are excellent sources of advice for domainers who want to build successful websites that include an online forum community.

Finally, in July I wrote about the great work that Steve Morales was doing in promoting the Geodomain name sector of the domain name industry.  He was involved in the SimplyGeo.net forum, the SimplyGeo blog and a geodomains social networking site. The forum and social networking site seems largely abandoned at present and the last post on the blog was on the 3rd October. This is a shame. I enjoyed Steve’s blog and enjoyed participating on the social networking site. I hope he gives it another try. If anyone knows what happened and if there are any plans start things up again please share what you know below.

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!

The first two will help developer domainers who want to build out their domain name portfolio, and the third is an up and coming discussion of the domain name industry.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett is one of only a handful of books on blogging that tackles the issue of people wanting to make a living from blogging. Topics covered include, handling technical issues, examining different ways your blog can earn income, evaluate your blog’s success, keep content fresh and interesting and using a blog to generate income indirectly. Darren and Chris are both professional bloggers and Darren has played an important role in promoting different techniques for making money from blogging through his massively successful site Problogger.net. 

Online forums can play an important part in developing and adding value to a website. Forums help build site content and that content can help improve a sites position in the search engine rankings. As a consequence many sites include a forum in addition to information pages, article pages etc. Many sites simply contain stand alone forums and although online forums are not always big money makers, successful, popular forums can occupy an important place in their niche and position their owners as experts in that niche. Thats why I thought Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards by Patrick O’Keefe would be of interest to developing domainers. However, this book is not about making money from forums. It is about creating quality, popular forums that people want to join and participate in – what you do with the traffic generated by the forum is up to you. Overall, there is plenty here for new and more experienced forum owners and the topics covered include developing communities, forum promotion, managing moderators, dealing with problems and there is a very brief section on forum monetization.  

The third book I found is an overview of the domain name industry. It is about time domaining hit the mainstream press and The Domain Game – How People Get Rich From Internet Domain Names may possibly have a massive impact on the domain name market. As yet the book is unavailable but should be on the market shortly. So all we can do at the moment is read up about the book on its website, TheDomainGame.org. The Domain Game, written by Wall Street Journal reporter David Kesmodel  ‘chronicles the exploits of the world’s leading domain investors’. It also explains how people can get involved in domaining.   Whether it teaches seasoned domainers anything they do not know already, remains to be seen. However, if the book becomes popular it is likely to impact greatly on people’s perceptions of domaining and what domainers do, hopefully in a positive way.

I have not bought these books yet, but they are definitely on my list of books to buy when time allows. ProBlogger and Managing Online Forums are both available from Amazon in the US and UK. The Domain Game should be available from Amazon in these countries in the next few months.

The site I found searches for domaining videos from YouTube and locates them on one easy to navigate website. The website is called Domain Name Industry Videos and can be found on DomainTube.co.uk.

If you have ever looked a domaining videos on YouTube you will see that they vary in quality. Some domaining videos are little more that adverts for products you can buy, but there is a lot of interesting material to view.

Why not have a look and see what you think. Is DomainTube any good? I liked it, did you? Why not leave your comment below.

I know that a lot of domainers are developers as well so the more advice we can get the better.

However, I think you will be glad I introduced you to The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper). He is a US based rapper whose songs include a number relating to internet marketing and web design.

The videos are very well done and theres lots to learn, so certainly worth looking at! Here are a few to get you started………

Link Building 101 Rap

Conversion Closing Rap

Social Media Addiction Rap

Did you find this as interesting as I did? Tell us what you think below and check out the rest of The SEO Rappers videos on YouTube…………