Q&A with Olney, Founder of IDNForums

Craig Nine is known by his handle, Olney. He founded IDNForums, is a Senior Search Specialist in paid search advertising, and has one of the strongest Japanese IDN portfolios.

Q: When did you buy your first IDN? Do you remember what it was?
A: I bought my first IDN Domain in August 2005. I believe it was
芸能新聞.com “Entertainment Newspaper”. At the time searches in Japan for
the term was over 500,000 queries a month (Or at the time I believed).
Until this question I forgot I owned it.

Q: How did you learn about IDNs, and what made you decide to invest in them?
A: Initially IDNs were introduced in Japan in 2001. I heard about them
& they quickly died off. I never knew why at the time. I decided to
invest in them after being reintroduced to IDNs in 2005. I had spent
my first long break from Tokyo from 2003 to 2005 studying more web
development & SEO. IDNs seems to be a great advantage for web
development.

Q: Why did you focus on Japanese IDNs?
A: I focused on Japanese IDNs because Japanese is my second language &
I’ve been around Japanese culture for 18 years now. Also I was able to
use SEO techniques I knew to find high search volume keywords. I have
one set of dot com non IDN domains that I bought over 8 years ago
where depending on the person, the name could be spelled two different
ways. I also bought the IDN later but for years of developing sites
for clients & myself I always thought there could be countless ways of
writing a Japanese term in Roman letters but there is usually 1 common
way to write something in Japanese.

Q: Do you think IDN.jp, IDN.com, ASCII.jp or ASCII.com will be most
prevalent in Japan in 10 years and why?
A: That’s easy ASCII.com they won’t just go away. In 10 years we do
know that new domain registrations will be hard to predict. It will be a younger generation of Japanese that may know nothing of Japanese domains having incompatibility issues. What I do know is that they will browse everything via their mobile phones & accessing information
through apps.

Q: What are your best IDNs?
A: My best domains are アニメ.com (Anime), 派遣.com (Temp Job), & my Japanese travel portfolio. I recently read about a company buying up domains with the same strategy I thought of. I have many of the top terms in Japanese travel in .com & .jp for cheap hotels, cheap travel, overseas hotels, plus major cities outside of Japan plus hotel. For example New York Hotel, London Hotel, Australia Hotel, Boston Hotel. I really tried to get domains in categories or sets.

Q: What are your top IDN sales?
A: I’ve actually turned down most inquiries for the last 3 years. So anything I sold that public would be documented. I think it was 髪.com for $7,000. I’ve only recently started to look through my portfolio & try to think of modern ways of creating sales, or a new platform for sales.

Q: What is the story behind IDNForums.com? Why did you create it? What were its early days like and how did it grow?
A: IDN Forums was created because it was needed at the time. I and
others who owned or had interested in IDNs needed a positive environment to test the usefulness of IDN Domains. IDN Forums grew from a number of factors, as a developer I really tried my best with SEO, link exchanges, & even though I didn’t post as much as other members I made sure that I would share knowledge that I could in terms of tool techniques, SEO, & development. Other members also were very aggressive in communicating about their IDN investments.

Q: To clear up any misleading rumors, why did you stop posting on IDNForums for a stretch of time? Many thought that you gave up on IDNs only to later rekindle your belief in their investment potential, is this true?

A: That’s a good question. Maybe at later date. The community is in good hands & they are all trying think of solutions for the average member of the site. That’s what’s important.

Q: What sites have you begun developing?
A: I’ve put up & taken down many IDN sites. Probably good examples of current development are ニューヨークシティ.jp (NewYorkCity.jp), ロサンゼルス.jp (LosAngeles.jp) I own the IDNs & ASCII versions. I might be the only one doubling up on Japanese Geo domains.

Q: What is the aim for your blog, IDNTalk.com?
A:My blog is what I feel I can give to anyone interested in IDNs. I really would like to inspire IDN investors to think about the use of IDNs so I write about development & thinking about the future.

Q: For those who only recently begun investing in IDNs what would be your recommendations?
A: I would recommend developing your domains if you can. I recommended this in 2006 & still recommend it now.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add?
A: I’m surprised by the number of readers to my blog lately. I appreciate those reading it, the comments, the reposting of what I write, & those who have contacted me.

Q: Thanks so much for your time, and of course for founding IDNForums.
A: Thank you for the opportunity & for keeping a great blog…