(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.

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.

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.