April 2011 – Page 3 – .WS IDN Blog

IDN Buying Tip: Follow the Trends

Trends and fads come and go, and there are a number of ways that businesses and individuals can capitalize on them, domain names being one such way. The key to trends and domaining is the anticipation of a trend. For example when the iPhone first came out, those within in the technology world and those who followed the news, knew that smartphones were about to be huge. A domain like smartphones.com was a great idea and surely enough sold for $95,000 and is now owned by Samsung. Follow the few tips below for how to pick the best IDNs based off trends.

Stick to What You Know and Understand

In order to anticipate a trend you need to understand it. Don’t try to search for trends in medical devices if you have no interest in them and don’t understand the industry. If you know cars or fitness, look for trends there Things can get a little tricky for IDNs as many time your will be purchasing an IDN in a language you do not speak. To avoid this, turn your energy to global trends, like the example above, smartphones are definitely a global trend.

Use Tools

You can also do your research in a foreign language by using tools like Google Alerts of Google Trends. With Google Alerts you can set a search term and have news and blog results sent right to your inbox. You can see what terms are getting a lot of news coverage and gernerating chatter across the world and decide on a domain based off of this info.

Google Trends similarly allows you to enter a word or phrase into a search engine and see the trends for that word or phrase. The results can show you where searches are happening, how often, in what language and some top stoies associated with your search. This is a great tool for insight into country and language searches to take some guess work out of selecting your IDN.

Trends Come and GO

Some important advice for trend watching is that as quickly as trends start, they can end. Do you research use common and try to anticipate your risk with certain trends. Trend based domain purchases are not for everyone, but they can be a very lucrative investment.

The Internet’s Transition Towards International Domains

One of the reasons the .ws World Site IDNs are such an amazing investment opportunity is that you have access to millions of domains names that are either no longer available or extremely expensive to own as a “.com.”

You may have already noticed the trend away from .com names as your browse the Internet or use social media sites. Short country code top level domains (ccTLD) are everywhere these days. Click a link on Twitter, chances are it ends in “.ly.” Shortened Facebook links end in “.me.” This is more than a new trend; this is the changing face of the Internet and domain names.

What are the two main features that set Global Domains International (GDI) and and .ws World Site apart from these other ccTLDS now being used by commercial entities?

GDI was one of the first companies to begin offering a ccTLD for commercial use effectively making .ws international from day one. With over 10 years experience doing so, we know how to market and position .ws domains and have already had much success. GDI is also the registrar for .ws, meaning all of the rights to .ws are owned by GDI. The experience, established business and internal power and notoriety of .ws World Sites is virtually unmatched by other ccTLDs being used commercially.
.WS stands for World Site. People accessing other ccTLDs and shortened website names generally have no idea what the meaning is behind that ccTLD. This is because it isn’t marketed or promoted. Visitors do not give any thought to why many shortened names end in something like .ly or what it stands for. But .WS stands for and is marketed as World Site. .WS is the best ccTLD to show that your company and your website are international.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. The New York Times recently wrote on the importance of new short ccTLDs and their benefits to business. “One reason for the renewed push [for ccTLDs] is a shortage of potential names ending with the most widely used domain suffix, ‘.com.’ More than 90 million ‘.com’ addresses are already in use, and the companies that sell them say few combinations are still available.”

This signifies the ending of the strictly .com age and opens the doors for .ws to be a powerhouse.

With the Internet turning away from .com and towards ccTLDs to tell the story, now is your chance to capitalize on this opportunity. Purchase your .ws IDN today and be at the front of the changing Internet landscape.

Full New York Times Article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/technology/07dotco.html