Generic Non-English Domains

[ilanliebner]

I was reading an earlier post about the power of generic domain names. It is clear that generic domain names open up marketing opportunities, cornering a niche market. They can be key to dominating markets.

I own several generic business and investment domains in eastern European languages. My names include direct translations of investment.com, food.com, credit.com, diamonds.com and so on in several languages. Nearly all of my names are in the .com form. These names have obvious marketability and financial potential, plus they all attain google results in the millions. Yet so far I have not had great success in selling them. Why are no Hungarian jewelers yet interested in diamonds.com in their language? Does anybody have ideas on the reasons for this slowness.

1) Is it related to there being a short supply of sales routes (no major domain seller has a specific place for non-english domains)?

2) Is is related to the eastern European markets being slow to pick up on the financial advantages of the domain market? If so, is there an indication they will speed-up soon?

3) Is it perhaps related to me simply not knowing the sales routes for these domains? If so, please could someone advise me on potential routes?

Appreciated,

 

[accelerator]

Which Eastern European countries are you talking about? Domain sales will always be dictated by search volume, and this in turn is going to be dictated by internet usage rates. It may be the case that in these Eastern European countries internet usage rates, in particular broadband usage rates, are not high enough yet. Take a look at this data and you might find an answer.

 

[julian]

hi

I have punted on a few eastern european generics in the .co.uk

tanieloty.co.uk = polish for cheap flights I think

this seems to be getting around 50 uv pm not much really, I think some countries might be a bit behind, and also i wonder about the fact even though you have the hungarian word for diamonds in .com there mnight be issues with character sets, accents and umlauts missing etc and I wonder if the words translate properly to the natives..

 

[stevebrowne]

I've got some polish words (all as .co.uk) as well:

finansowy = financial
kredytysamochodowe = car loan
mieszkaniowy = housing
obywatelstwo = citizenship
pilkanozna = football
pilka-nozna = football
podrozowac = travel
poradaprawna = advice
zapraszamy = visit us!

 

[ilanliebner]

Eastern European Domains

My domains are in the languages of several countries, from Hungary and Poland to the smaller ones.

I've been checking broadband connections rates and search volumes. The best thing to do may be to hold onto some domains for a while longer before selling. The Eastern European markets are expanding and their economies improving. At the moment, Google results for the single words go anywhere up to 20 million, but these will improve as broadband rates increase and economies expand.

In terms of characters, yes, I do have some names with character problems, others without these problems.

Holding on to these names, for now, seems like the best option.

 

[ratty246]

I think they will indeed be valuable in a few years.
I own...
pociag.com - train (in polish)

 

[mat]

Ive got ruletka

Polish for roulette, plan to put a mini roulette site on it in polish and link it up to 888 polish section!

 

[jhump]

I've got a couple of Polish names - biuromatrymonialne.co.uk (literally marriage bureau aka dating agency) and pozyczka.co.uk (credit, money lending - not many type-ins but an avg ppc of £1.94 and RPM of £716 on namedrive)

 

[devolution]

One tip might be to focus on the big ethnic groups in the UK right now (and neighbouring countries). For example, I get some traffic on french-word .co.uk's.
I have England in French in .co.uk (Angleterre.co.uk) for example.

 

[DirDn]

one reason will be some of the countries are not internet savvy to the extent that internet business as got off the ground properly.

but search engines and specifically google as issues with foreign words that are not on the correct TLD for example if you own jobs.it then it will not be given the same weight as if it was on a english TLD and of course the reverse applies.

but also your keywords on .co.uk are as attractive (not) to them as walkmydog.pl would be to you if you were looking to put a english site up.

for them, their ideal domain is on their own ccTLD, also bear in mind that a lot of these countries their own TLDs are less sold out, even with .fr there are times when we register domains for french clients and its amazing they are still available, top keywords in their own language.

we are doing a site for a client at the moment and the primary search term was available to reg, and its not a tiny niche!

if you are going to invest in foreign keywords then IMHO you need to be getting it in the correct TLD