Panel Questions- TRAFFIC cctlds

Why .us not doing well and will that change?  .com is America’s extension, not the global extension.  Rick is not a .us fan.

.us adviser now in Obama administration.  .us may just need some promotion.  All the good terms are owned by speculators.

.us reserved for govt use in US until spring 2002.  Ron Jackson a big fan, because the biggest boosters are corps from outside of US & use .us to market themselves to US audience.  Eg volvo.us.  Has a portfolio of 3000 generic .us domains.  Every year has more sales, traffic not a big deal.  So that segment of his portfolio has been profitable.  Educational process is a slow one.  Those who get the good terms cheap will be rewarded in the long run.

Some discussion about how hard it is to sell domains to end users.

Rick L has had more success leasing domains than buying outright.  Easier for a marketing manager to convince co to spend four figures per month rather than 6 figures.

SEO firms generally “get it” re domains.  Good way to get to talk to people who are influencers, even if they are not the ones who will write the cheque.

How do you cold call end users without being labelled cybersquatters.  Rick L has a team of people who email and phone people all day and about 50% of the time, gets negative reaction.  Need a thick skin.  Don’t get emotional.  Rick L has used law firms to fed ex packages to ceos.

.sg – underexploited at the moment?  Edwin has about 45 .sg domains.  All get traffic.  English speaking country.  But not supposed to sell (although can transfer).  Sedo are in the process of speaking with sgnic and getting them to repeal this policy.  There are an awful lot of good stuff still available.  Need a mailbox address in Singapore.

.nz – unexploited market.  Edwin has about 170 .nz domains.  Almost all of them get small amount of traffic.  People have a lot of pride.  Lots of unregistered stuff.

Try to cut bulk deals with registries.  Eg phillipines.  $35 each or 1200 at $15 each.  Rick l also involved in .mx.  Looks for 50 million people or more.

.eu domains – how would you sell a large number quickly?  Rick L like .eu’s future value.  They are a hold.  Others are less bullish – .eu is for Americans coming to Europe.  Most Europeans don’t think of themselves as Europeans.  Edwin is negative on .eu.  The European version of .asia.  Europe is not a monolithic entity.  If you are willing to wait 10 years, .eu may be alright.  A rising tide raises all boats.