Tina Dam is a hero. She passionately lives and breathes IDNs. As Senior Director of IDNs at ICANN she has spearheaded the ccTLD Fast Track Process and has tirelessly spoken in favor of IDNs. Tina has persuasively advocated for IDN usage in order to open up the Internet to speakers of all languages. Also noteworthy is that she has reached out to domain investors at IDNForums in the past to directly answer questions about IDNs and she continues to make herself accessible to domain investors and to the general public, which is rare for someone of her stature. Please find below a number of challenging questions that are excerpted from a broader interview with Tina Dam. Enjoy.

Q: In light of forthcoming IDN.IDN names, do you still foresee IDN.com as having a large role in the global Internet?

Tina Dam: It would not be appropriate of me to compare the IDN ccTLDs with the IDN.com registrations. This is entirely a user preference and decision [as to] what works well for them.

Q: You previously said that each country will decide for itself about “[a]liasing or copying everything in the ccTLD zone to the IDN ccTLD zone”. Hypothetically, if Verisign was awarded various IDN ccTLDs, would Verisign similarly get to decide for itself if it can alias everything in the .com TLD zone to various IDN ccTLD zones?

TD: Please note that the gTLD Program is still under development and it is not possible to determine whether anything will change in the future as it is finalized. However, the status quo is as you [are] stating.

Q: How do you view the IDN investors who read this blog?

TD: Same way as other users. Did you have anything specific in mind?

Q: Specifically, many think of domainers categorically in a negative way as typosquatters or just plain squatters. Do you feel that ICANN is aware of the tens of thousands of domain investors who add value to the Internet by working hard to mass develop internet businesses legally and ethically? Moreover, does ICANN give specific attention to the needs of this constituency given that rough estimates approximate 25% to 33% of all domains are owned by domain investors?

TD: Yes I find that ICANN is aware of the fact that many individuals as well as businesses are actively working hard to develop sites and promote information etc. We are also aware of domainers such as typo squatters etc as you mention. However, I personally do not know the readers from the IDNBlog.com well enough to know what portion is one or another category (if we can call it that). If any individuals are interested in participating more actively in for example policy development etc, I would refer them to the ALAC, which is the constituency for end-users that wish to participate more directly in the ICANN activities. There are other constituencies for businesses, registrars, registries etc if these fit better.

Q: How can readers of IDNBlog promote awareness of IDNs?

TD: Ahh this is a good question. I think using the registrations for good purposes that makes sense to the various communities. And off course sharing your experience with others globally and in the ICANN forums.

Here are the top 5 reasons why domain investors stay away from IDNs, and the rebuttals to each:

1. A native would never type an IDN in foreign characters and then .com in Roman characters. IDN.com will be worthless as you don’t have foreign characters on both sides of the dot.

Not true. Dot com is a global brand, Japanese IDN.com for instance is seen as popular and Westernized. Moreover, foreign keyboards make it easy to switch between foreign and Roman characters.

2. Much of the value in IDNs is based on unwarraned speculation that .com’s will be aliased to .IDNs.

Ever since 2005, Verisign has been talking about aliasing IDN.com to IDN.IDN and ICANN’s current hands-off position appears to give registrars license to alias very soon.

3. IDNers have been talking about the next big thing since 2006. Aren’t IDNs the next .mobi?

Absolutely not. There is no need for .mobi as one could just as easily do mobile.mydomain.com. IDNs are not replacable and truly serve a need in communities who value their native languages and who want to use them. Also the ccTLD fast track process has begun this November paving the way for IDN.IDN and IDN.com. The time is now.

4. I don’t know the market or the language and I think I should stick to what I know.

Listen. No one here was born knowing about domains. Learn. Educate yourself. Hiring a translator or finding an autotranslator service isn’t too difficult.

5. I can’t type the foreign characters, I don’t have a foreign keyboard.

Almost no serious IDNer is using a foreign keyboard. Instead just take an English word, translate, copy and paste. Punycode versions of foreign names make it easy to do whois checks and obtain all relevant stats regarding potential purchases.

Got milk ads can be funny, especially in Spanish. Latinos couldn’t stop laughing when the ads came on where “Got Milk” was translated as “are you lactating?” (¿Tiene leche?)

The humor was unintentional.  And the Milk Board has smartened up since the unfortunate “¿Tiene leche?” campaign was released years ago.

The moral of the story, if you are spending a lot of money on a translated word or phrase, whether for an IDN or ad campaign, it is worth doing your diligence and hiring a native translator.

(Image courtesy of the Phoenician and Flickr)

Goal setting involves a combination of predicting the future and creating it.  Where will I be, and where will the world be in 5 years, if all continues along the same trajectory?  Given the predicted result, what changes should I make in the here and now?

All signs are pointing towards an internationalized Internet.  ICANN’s forthcoming release of IDN.IDNs is a game changer that will boost the visibility and value of all IDNs.  In 5 years, $800 IDNs may easily be worth $40,000.  For those seasoned veterans sitting on the sidelines and looking at your watches as you hold large IDN portfolios, remember that you can change and speed up the course of history.  Step out of the shadows, educate others, go to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and you can be a catalyst for IDN awareness.  Ultimately, your actions can only expedite the increase in IDN values.  One last preachy point, there is plenty of opportunity in the IDN space so you should stop fearing that others will swarm in before you get yours.

With IDN.IDN releases just around the corner, now is also a good time to consider what you will hold out for, and to what extent you will liquidate part of your portfolio and diversify in both IDN.coms and new IDN.IDNs, which is the course of action I recommend.

Lastly, if you are like many IDN porfolio owners I know, your last question will be will you even want to retire or will you get bored?  When the time comes, I would recommend that you look into Arizona vacation homes like the above (the Phoenician is a personal favorite).  Premature?  Maybe.  But you need something to keep you going when sorting through IDNTools droplists.

QR Codes are quick response bar codes such as the one above and can be found in the corner of Japanese advertisements instead of domain names.  If you are equipped with a camera phone that has the right software, by taking a snapshot of the code you are quickly directed to a URL.  This technology, made possible by the Japanese company Denso-Wave in 1994, has been long seen as a threat to domain names.  After all, the technology creates a fast way to redirect to a webpage without knowing the URL.  They are plastered everywhere in Japan while domain names are harder to find.  Moreover, they are easy to create through free QR Code websites.  The code above would point you to IDNBlog.com when scanned, and it took under a minute to make.

However, QR Codes are not memorable or brandable and therefore they have no advertising value except for the moment that you are in front of a relevant ad containing such a code.  In countries such as Japan, QR Codes have become an interim solution for a population unfamiliar with English words and domain names, while the populace has not yet adjusted to the existence of IDNs.

Domains cannot be replaced easily as they are an essential part of the Internet’s infrastructure.  However, such stopgap methods of advertising is a sign of a foreign population’s yearning to avoid English domains and find an alternative that speaks to them … enter IDNs.

Market inefficiencies are a great thing.  After all, that is what creates a deal is, isn’t it?  If everyone knew that the price of a certain domain was $20k nobody can make a huge profit off of the buy, right?  Well the beauty of domains is that as of now, there is no formula and many domainers price their wares too high, while others are offering bargain basement prices.  Without the use of heavy-duty research tools, it is not always easy for the pro to differentiate the great domains from the solid domains.  I’ll try to give you a glimpse of my valuation methods below.

Most domain pros have regrettable stories of their large and silly purchases during their newbie days.   Personally, I avoided the pitfalls of buying Web 2.0 sounding brandable names (i.e. – I was able to talk myself out of buying FlyingLambs(.)com).  These names are worthless but fun.

Instead, I immediately gravitated towards generic product names since I felt that was where the money was and is.  Sales like Rick Schwartz’s sale of Candy.com to a candy company for over $3 million continues to further my belief in generic product names.

Though I focused on the right niche, it took me a while to understand two of the main drivers of domain value:

1. Brandability (how short, clear, reputable,  generic and memorable is your domain), and

2. Traffic (measured by type-in traffic and search traffic for your keyword term).

*When acquiring domains, my first tool of choice is the free Adword Keyword Tool by Google, which tells you approximately how many searches there are a month for a name.  A classic newbie mistake is to value the name based on search results, which shows you the number of competitor pages and not the number of interested searching customers.

*Second, I do a search using Google images.  This is especially helpful when buying IDNs to verify your translation and the context of your search term.

*Lastly, for IDNs, IDNTools.com offers the best free Bulk Punycode Converter on the market in addition to some other tools.

Above all, you need to check sales lists, newsletters and other market indicators to develop a gut instinct for what names are truly premium.

Buying symbol domains is not wise unless one enjoys obscure hobbies or extremely speculative investments. For those unfamiliar with the market, you actually can own ♥.com  or §.com, which are represented by xn--g6h.com and xn--eba.com, respectively.  Unlike true IDNs which are characters of a foreign language, symbol domains are not intuitive or easy to type in any language or on any keyboard.   To the unknowing, the symbol domainer sullies the reputaion of IDNs, which by extension are thought of as being the obscure collections of marginal tech hobbyists, while in truth most serious IDNers own category-killer domains of a certain country.

Much worse than the delusional symbol registering hobbyist, is the IDN scammer.   For instance the IDN character “α” or alpha has a natural place in many greek domain names.  The scammer will instead register domαinname.com (which is not registered at the time of this post) and he will ask $100k+ for the name, hoping that someone does not notice the greek letter “α” in the midst of the name.

Just as domainers have been unfairly labelled typosquatters, cybersquatters, TM-infringers and worse; don’t leap to conclusions that IDNers are creatures motivated by obscure curiosity or scamming intentions.  Just look at the IDNTools.com IDN sales feed (link)to see what domains the majority of the IDN community is really buying.

There are many influential domainers who are uneducated about IDNs and put them down.  Why?  

1. Most influential domainers made their money by buying English .com’s and since that is what worked for them, they narrowly propose sticking to this tried and tested method.  Remember, only recently did influential domainers start to accept ccTLDs and once upon a time English .com’s were considered speculative investments.

2.  From a US-centeric approach it is hard for some  to realize that there are many non-English internet users who type and post in their own language.  The logical progression is that these foreign users will register domains in their own languages as well.

There is risk in IDNs.  Mainly in not knowing what IDN extensions could become the new .com.  But this is a risk worth monitoring, taking, and hedging by regging multiple IDN extensions.

How can you  register a great IDN:

1.  Come up with an English list of terms that you want to register in a different language. (Ex: Job.com)

2. Use Google translate (or a native translator) to translate your terms into the language you are targeting. (Ex: “Job” in Japanese is “仕事”)

3. Check that the foreign language term is accurate by doing a google images search for the translated term (Ex: 仕事) and see if it returns images that you expect.

4.  Also use the Google Adwords keyword tool to make sure that there is a large number of searches per month for your term.

5.  Next, you need to convert your foreign character domain into “punycode” which is a code recognized by the registrars.  A puny code converter (such as: http://www.idntools.com) can help you obtain the corresponding code (ex: xn--3kqvg.com).

6.  Lastly, go to your favorite registrar and type in the punycode. *Dynadot is a particularly IDN friendly registrar.

Happy hand-regging.

Copernicus believed the opposite of the masses.  When it was supposedly common knowledge that the Earth was the center of the universe, Copernicus had the guts to say that it was the Sun, and he had the research to back it.

If you missed out on the domain gold rush of the 1990s, don’t resign yourself to the common wisdom of the day that you should collect “niche” four and five word names.  There is still great opportunity.

Many countries have not yet realized the unlimited value of premium domains.  As a result, foreign language domains are often searched for, are brandable and are cheap.  Domain names that use foreign characters are called IDNs and they are the new gold rush.

Here are some ignorant reasons that lead people to avoid IDNs:

-The major players aren’t doing it: Though big name celebrity domainers aren’t registering IDNs, you can’t follow the herd and should think for yourself.  Think of any great minds and whether they listened to the prevailing logic of their time.  For the full Copernicus story, check the link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus).

-People supposedly won’t want to type a domain name in one language and the extension in another.  Guess what?  They do.

The traffic stats are there (sometimes upwards of 10,000 hits a month for a handreg).  In many cases, a .com ending is actually seen as fashionable and western.  In addition, Verisign will likely alias (or forward) .com IDN names to forthcoming IDN extensions so that owners of IDN.com will get a free corresponding IDN.IDN.

-A bunch of new .IDN extensions are coming out soon (such as .РФ) and it is too hard to predict which extension will be the leading .com equivalent.  It is true that the IDN industry will be fragmented by multiple extensions but you should hedge your bets with various extensions rather than avoid premium IDNs altogether.

-It will take some countries years to fully recognize the value of domain names.  So what?  Have patience and you will be rewarded.