IDNBlog Exclusive: Ed Russell and Steve Karnas

IDNBlog recently had the chance to sit down with Ed Russell, the President of NameDrive along with Steve Karnas, the Co-Founder of Wixi. They explain their bullishness on IDNs, their particular enthusiasm for Japanese IDNs, and their new parking platform, which is tailor-made for Japanese IDN owners.

Q: What is your role at NameDrive?

ND: My name is Ed Russell, and I’m the President of NameDrive.

WIXI: My name is Steve Karnas, and I’m the Co-Founder and Principal of Wixi.

Q: How have you been involved with the WIXI parking platform, and why does it excite you?

ND: WIXI and ND have been working behind the scenes since early last year taking NameDrive’s award-winning parking platform and tweaking it specifically for the Japanese market. While we have always put a lot of our focus on international and IDN traffic, the unlimited potential of Japanese traffic and the many years of experience WIXI has in this market allowed us to put together probably the most ideal single country solution thus far. WIXI is a market leader in Japan, and their know-how combined with our technology means the sky’s the limit.

Q: Why did you pick Japanese IDNs as the focus of your new platform? What makes those domains particularly lucrative? Why did you see this as an opportunity?

ND: Japan has a population of about 127 million people and is the world’s second largest economy. Internet penetration is very high and the PPC’s across the board are some of the highest in the world. However, when compared to the traditional “big” domain markets out there, Japan is an afterthought. While we do see a barrier to entry in .JP domain registration prices, we see a great opportunity with the much more reasonably priced .JP IDNs.

WIXI: Japan is a major economy and a major consumer market but in our several years of domain experience in the Japanese market, we have seen the size of the overall domain market and the use of online business lag behind what you would expect for an economy the size of Japan’s. However, lately we have seen a noticeable increase in the use of domains, particularly that of .JPs, and .JP IDNs. The use of the local .JP extension has long been as popular in Japan as that of gTLDs. And now, IDNs are gaining in stature quite quickly due to the fact that they have been effectively promoted by the .JP registry, they are fully usable in browsers and, most of all, Japanese are asserting their preference to use their own language and writing system whenever possible. For these reasons, we see a big opportunity in IDNs.

In many ways we see the Japanese market as somewhat of a sleeping giant, particularly with regard to IDNs. There was a minimal amount of education and understanding in the market compared with that of the west, and there was minimal interest. Now that IDNs are fully usable and now that Japanese domain owners understand the value of the properties that they own and the traffic that they are receiving, we feel that the market is ready to realize its potential. The new WIXI parking system, using ND’s parking technology, will open the market in Japan.

Q: How will parking Japanese domains at WIXI be different than traditional parking at NameDrive, Sedo or elsewhere?

WIXI: Using the WIXI platform will allow customers to receive full local, knowledgeable support. Japanese-speaking customers, for the first time, will receive a system and customer support in their own language. Japanese and foreign customers in Japan will be able to have their domains parked with optimization, ad targeting and templates focused on the Japanese market and with payouts denominated in Japanese Yen. This is not available from anyone else anywhere in the world.

Q: Will a Google or Yahoo feed be used for ads?

ND: We’ll provide a variety of revenue streams to maximize every view and every click, as we do with all of our traffic.

Q: Can you divulge the revenue share that domainers will receive?

ND: The revenue share system will be unchanged from the current revenue share system, and we always endeavor to pay some of the fairest revenue shares in the business.

Q: Approximately how many templates are there to choose from?

WIXI: We are localizing the parking experience as much as possible and a big part of that will be the development of templates designed with Japanese traffic in mind. Already, customers have all of the existing NameDrive template combinations to choose from with header and template names in Japanese. Templates unique to the Japanese system will be introduced shortly.

Q: Do current NameDrive customers have to sign up separately for WIXI? How can a current customer most easily use WIXI?

WIXI: All current NameDrive customers already in Japan have automatically received a WIXI account and have been notified of this. All that they need to do is login with their login information on http://park.wixi.jp and they can manage their account directly going forward. New customers wishing to sign up for a WIXI account can do so easily by going to http://park.wixi.jp and choosing to create a new account.

Q: Does NameDrive see other similar localized IDN parking platforms in its future? Would an exclusively Chinese or Russian parking platform be next in line?

ND: Absolutely. NameDrive was first to offer IDN support, and we’re committed to IDNs in all markets. We believe in localized solutions for markets both big and small. Alongside English, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Japanese interfaces, we’ll soon be releasing localized interfaces in several Eastern European languages. We’re always looking at new markets, and China and Russia are certainly on our radar. It’s not just a matter of simply translating our website into a local language however, we like to make sure that we have the right local staff and partners in place to ensure the same NameDrive experience you’d expect in English or any other supported language. Be on the lookout for a couple more new languages to be supported before the end of the year.