GM: I am a modest domain portfolio owner, counting less than 1,000 domains, and all IDNs – and I find that my parking revenue easily pays for my renewals. So I thought I would reach out to ParkingCrew, a parking company, to find out if it’s just me.

GM: Thank you Nico for agreeing to share some statistics with us; for those that don’t know you, what position do you hold at ParkingCrew?
NZ: You’re more than welcome. Glad you took the time to interview me. I am one of the founders and currently serve as CEO of Team Internet, the company behind ParkingCrew.

GM: How many domains do you have under management at ParkingCrew?
NZ: We have just over 9.4 million domains with us.

GM: What percentage of those are IDN?
NZ: Just over 1% are IDN, we have approx 95,000 IDNs using our system

GM: How would you compare average traffic levels of ASCII domains vs IDN ?
NZ: Only taking into account domains that actually had traffic during the timespan measured; an average IDN had 120.6% the traffic of an average ASCII

GM: Why is that do you think?
NZ: We have a lot of really long-tail ASCII domains on our system, while the average IDN seems to be prime keywords.

GM: What is the highest click you have paid out for an IDN?
NZ: $44.63 is the highest and it originated from Japan

GM: What is the highest recorded daily revenue for a single IDN?
NZ: $502.76 and it was a Japanese domain

GM: Can you narrow down the type of domain that generated the above?
NZ: Insurance sector

GM: After dot com, what is the next best performing extension?
NZ: That would be .DE although there is some bias here as our home market is Germany and that is our second strongest market after the US

GM: Thank you again Nico for your time

My advice: I’ve tested many of the Parking providers, and the conclusion I came to is there’s something about ParkingCrew and Japanese language domains in particular that produces exceptional results.  If you already park your Japanese domains there you know what I’m talking about.

Here’s a non-affiliate link

Disclaimer: I do park my Japanese domains with ParkingCrew.  This is not a paid for or sponsored blog post. ParkingCrew has no affiliation with IDNBlog.

JPRS was selected as a sole candidate to manage .日本 in October 2010. After that, JPRS has long been waiting for the acknowledgement from the government. It seems that they are still in their internal process in deciding to issue a support (endorsement) letter for JPRS.

Yes, it is still expected, though I believe we (JPRS) have to reconsider the service specification and the market movement since new gTLDs (including IDNs) will be emerging before .日本.

Verisign applied for 12 IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) transliterations of .COM, but it was Verisign’s Hebrew application that stood out.

Verisign applied for: קוֹם. (punycode: xn--hdb9cza1b).
Some natives hoped for a Verisign application for: קום. (punycode: xn--9dbq2a).

While both קוֹם and קום are correct Hebrew transliterations of “.COM”, Verisign’s application includes a dot (a Hebrew vowel) over the middle letter (a “vav”).

On the Internet, it is common for Hebrew words to be written without Hebrew vowels (known as nikudot). Verisign applied for only one of two variants. Verisign’s string includes a vowel. However, it is unclear whether Verisign will obtain the rights to קום (the commonly used voweless string) as well, and where the traffic will go if someone types in (Site).קום instead of (Site).קוֹם.

Me Want IDNs This April.

*A very successful Russian IDN.RF (.РФ) launch with over 900,000 registrations in year one.

*More reported parking revenue (with specific names as examples) here.

*More examples of profitable developed IDN sites here.

*A spike in reported IDN sales prices here.

*A gTLD launch around the corner with many reported IDN applications, and assurances from Verisign that they intend to pursue aliasing of IDN.com to IDN.com-in-IDN per DNW here.

*An IDN ccTLD Fast Track program, which exposed many native communities to the existence and value of IDNs.

Opportunities abound in our new fixed price IDNTools.com marketplace that was just launched. Many top 50 terms, such as “Flowers, Doctors, Hotels, Games” are listed at historically low fixed prices. Here’s why you should take a serious look at investing in IDNs from the newly launched marketplace:

*Pricing. The prices are similar to what one would be paying in the mid-1990s for category killer English domains. Read here about Scott Day’s $3,000 investment in Watermelon.com in 1996, and how you can turn back the clock and replicate this strategy with foreign language domains, which are in an early growth stage but have the same type-in and SEO value as English domains.

*Growth. IDN sales continue to increase see here and here for IDN sales data.

*Type-In Success. The reason some started investing in IDNs later than most was confusion over how IDNs actually get typed in. Foreign keyboards make it easy and natural to toggle between foreign characters and .COM, which leads to tremendous type-in traffic. There is also likely to be “aliasing” where the owner of com.שמן will automatically own קום.שמן.

*Development Success. IDN development success has also been well documented with statistics and earnings stats been made publicly available.


Never say you were too late for the opportunity to invest in domains because here it is.

IDNTools.com still includes a set of free tools for the serious domain investor, such as the leading punycode converter and sales statistics, but we expect to grow the fixed price marketplace component of the site, which will add greater liquidity and accessibility to the IDN market.