Q&A: How John Tziviskos Earns $22,000/Year From Greek IDNs

John Tziviskos is a veteran domain investor, with one of the top premium portfolios of Greek IDNs. Recently in response to posts here and on Acro.net, John showed me his proof of revenue from the last year. I was impressed that a number of John’s top Greek IDNs netted a total profit of $22,000, and thought that many other IDN investors could benefit from a Q&A.



Q: How are you able to earn $22,000/yr. off your IDNs while my parked names only produce a fistful of change and dollar bills?

A: After my first year in the IDN investing business I came to realize that the much speculated ‘traffic tsunami’ would take a long time to happen and it wouldn’t be a tsunami either. It would be a natural progression of increasing traffic spread over years.

So I decided to experiment with developing a few of my domains which were good generics but were receiving little or no traffic. Naturally, I started with Greek IDNs since Hellenic is my native language.

In time I realized that Google gave a little extra weight to the Greek domains which seems logical, plus the Greek surfers took to IDNs in a positive way, even though they were presented with a half-finished product. (i.e. only the punycode shows on the address bar, the surfer needs to switch from Greek to English in order to append the tld to navigate directly, etc. )

Checking my stats I found that repeat visitors were navigating to the site/s typing the ‘GreekWord’ and switching to ‘.com’

Thus, I realized that in order to earn something from my idns while waiting for them to become ‘fully IDN’ (IDNtld plus functioning IDN email), they would have to be developed, since parking earnings were pitiful – excluding Cyrillic domains which, due to Opera were receiving great amount of type-in traffic.

So, that’s what I did and here we are.

Q: Based on the screenshots you sent me, you earned approximately $22,000 from just a few Greek IDNs last year, correct?

A: Correct. These are seven developed websites with a couple in various stages of development.

Q: Let’s start with the backstory. How did you first learn about IDNs?

A: I believe it was in the summer of 2005. While visiting Greece, I heard a news brief on the radio, mentioning the availability of Greek Alphabet second level domains in Dot GR. I loved the idea of owning a few good keywords, but it wasn’t until later that year that I seriously started looking into it. I eventually found my way to IDNForums where I learned the most about IDNs, mainly due to the culturally diversified members of the forum, and the helpful nature they displayed.

Q: How long have you been investing in IDNs?

A: Since early 2006. My first IDN was registered in February 1st of that year.

Q: What are your favorite languages to invest in and why?

A: Greek would be my first choice naturally, since I speak the language and can easily develop a domain without having to rely on others’ services. Russian (which I’ve learned to read due to my involvement in IDNs), is my preferred choice for investment and eventual development.

Generally, I love Cyrillic both for it’s resemblance to the Greek Alphabet and, most importantly, for the type-in traffic that Cyrillic domains currently afford the investor. I believe Russians (as will the Chinese) will be very quick to take on the IDNs (we recently witnessed the sensational showing of .рф), especially when they figure out they can get the darn things in .ком. Arabic is another favorite of mine.

I believe owning a top Arabic term in .com or .net puts one in a very strategic position since Arabic is spoken in so many countries by so many diverse groups of people. One has to be very careful with Arabic due to peculiarities of the script (accentuation, two words not always possible to join together) and the chance that, any term like ‘flower’ or ‘car rental’ may not be the same in Egypt as in Saudi Arabia and so on.

Japanese due to the wealth of the country and Chinese due to sheer size of the population and economic growth momentum.

German (if you can pry a good deal out of German domainers’ hands). German end-users mean business and they have shown their love for IDNs.

I like most Northern European countries mainly for development since there’s a plethora of affiliate programs available for many of them, plus the high CPC rates.

For new investors, Russian Japanese and Chinese would be the best to hold for resale purposes, as I believe these will be the regions to embrace IDNs ahead of the pack, and fuel the after-market.

Q: How do you decide what names to buy?

A: Ever since I started focusing instead of shotgun-reggin’ just about any decent word I found in any language, I now strictly go either for top terms, or domains that I can possibly someday develop, which may also fit in my current development direction.

Q: What types of sites have you developed? Do you prefer online entertainment sites (i.e. videos and games), lead generation, product based sites or others?

A: I’ve tried my hand developing various types of IDN sites and I tend to prefer the online entertainment type of site for the following reasons.

1. Zero or next to zero cost to produce content.
2. Audience engagement. Watching video, playing games, listening to music, reading jokes, looking at funny pictures…
3. Active audience participation. More free content generation for your site.
4. Almost hands-free once you get things rolling.

Q: What are some of the advantages to buying an IDN in a language that you speak, and which is spoken where you live?

A: First and foremost, you avoid registering duds. Secondly, living in the country or by visiting often, you are privy to lingo or emerging keywords that your competition abroad will most likely bypass if they’re only using a dictionary as their source. You can be aware of user typing patterns or surfing habits simply by watching people at internet cafes, talking with acquaitances and so forth. Lastly, you can easily produce or supervise the creation of your content.

Q: In terms of your $22,000, I understand that you showed me proof of your revenue in confidence as you do not want to invite competition into your niche. However, what can you reveal about any of your sites, or the development and monetization strategies you used which others should emulate?

A: Like I mentioned above I have focused on entertainment sites for their simplicity of operation, which are in most part free sites that encourage user participation and to some extent user content creation.

Greeks, [largely] don’t really feel comfortable purchasing products on the net using credit cards. Paypal is almost unknown to most Greek surfers.

The easiest thing I found to sell, besides gambling, is cellphone downloadable stuff. Screensavers, java games, ringtones, subscription services to music or soccer scores or…you get the idea. All that pertains to entertainment related products, and there are affiliate offers providing products as the above to almost every country in the world. Cellphone usage is very high in Greece, and people have become accustomed to buying stuff and charging it on their phone bill.

The main monetization method of my sites is Adsense though. I really do not want to be so dependent on Adsense and in that regard, I’m always trying new affiliates through Linkwise.gr (a Greek affiliate network) and zanox.de (a worldwide affiliate network) while searching for new ones.

I use WordPress to run most of my sites and Google does indeed love it. (Yandex likes it as well). It’s relatively easy to learn and most hosting providers have a two click installation for it. There are so many plug-ins available that will enhance and/or automate your site to the extent you want.

I initially start the sites with no ads anywhere, and when I feel there is enough content and plenty of return visitors, I gradually start placing ads where I see fit.

I haven’t used any paid advertising to drive traffic to any of these sites. I will interlink them, especially if they’re related. I will redirect related IDNs or ‘Greeklish’ domains to the main site if I have them.

Q: In a recent post of mine, I echoed Acro’s post in part saying that Greek IDNs are not as valuable as other language IDNs. Would you agree or disagree and why? Would it be easier or harder to earn $xx,xxx from a Russian or Japanese IDN?

A: Technically, you’re correct. Just as Acro partly is in his post regarding the use of Greek by Greeks on the net.

Domain investing as I understand it, can be a multi-faceted excercise. It is more so for IDNs because we are really depending on the idiosyncrasies of people in regions of the world we are not familiar with. We are not sure how each and every country or region will adopt IDNs, the timelines involved, or how local end-users will react to the scenario of a ‘foreigner’ trying to sell them a word of their ‘own’ language. The attitude in many cultures, especially around the Mediterranean is, they would rather register ‘a-long-hyphenated-domain-no-ne-can-remember.whatever-cctld’ before they give you 1,000 bucks for your weightloss.com

We can only project (based on historic ASCII experience) so far. But we can’t bring the ASCII paradigm to fit the whole IDN experience. It’s unknown territory for the most part.

So, based on population size, current and future economic growth projection, Greek IDNs are a non-player at the moment. I would say dump them too unless you plan to develop. But, they’re definitely not worthless as my friend Acro likes to think – especially if you have a top keyword and place some decent content on it, because most Search Engines will eventually float you to the top.

Based on current CPC or traffic levels, they’re down the list but not that far down.

And, yes, it would be easier to earn $xx,xxx from a Japanese or Russian developed IDN, just on potential traffic volume alone, assuming you can ‘dance’ with Yahoo Japan or Yandex.

Q: What resources would you recommend to newbies who just want to start buying IDNs?

A: The first requisite stop and study room is IDNForums.com There’s a great wealth of information stored there; sporting patience and common sense will pay you dividends.

IDNTools.com has a variety of IDN related tools and information for the newcomer as well as the seasoned investor.

This blog which has become the authority in most matters IDN, in additions to a couple of mainstream blogs such as Domain Name Wire and Domain Incite which provide IDN related info and commentary on occasion.

Q: What are your thoughts on IDN.COM vs. IDN.ccTLD?

A: Generally speaking, I believe over time IDN.com will prevail as the favored destination. Let us not forget though that IDN.cctld serves a local purpose which, coupled with cultural or regional preferences will simply suffice for the small businessman.

In addition, various important IDN cctlds are already out of the gates while .com is waiting on the sidelines, which makes the IDN.com investor naturally frustrated and anxious. Instead, we can study the recent developments of these IDN.cctlds and learn a lot about regional preferences so we can plan accordingly.

For instance, there are several patterns emerging if you follow the recent .рф registrations. I’ll just leave it at that.

Q: Thank you for your time.

A: Thank you for your patience and continuing effort in bringing IDNs to the spotlight.