As many of you know I love travel and have spent the last 20 years traveling 3-4 months a year. Like most domain investors, when I get to a new country I can’t help but take a look at what domain names I see out in the wild. When I’m here in the US it’s pretty clear that .COM has won, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
But, take last December when I was in South Korea…
Not as much .COM, but plenty of .kr and .co.kr. In case you missed it, I wrote an article while I was there taking a look at some sales the Korean domain market.
Last year I was also in Japan a couple of times, .jp and .co.jp was everywhere and promising Japanese startups like Hey, that raised $66M built their brand on Hey.jp.
And well, who doesn’t love Italy? Two years ago we spent the holidays in Lake Como and, I think you get the picture – .IT takes the cake.
While I love traveling…this whole global pandemic issue has grounded me here in San Francisco which hasn’t been a bad place to be, but I do really miss my life outside of North America. At the same time, it’s given me a lot more time to think and strategize about opportunities in other markets and areas where there might still be plenty of domain gold to be mined.
I’m still pretty early on when it comes to research so I haven’t made any moves yet, right now I’m still collecting data. There’s a good chance I’ll be collecting data for quite some time before I do start making any buys, but I can tell you that I think there are some great opportunities in domain extensions that aren’t on most people’s radars. Japan is one market I’m very interested in, they have the third largest economy in the world and thriving eCommerce superstars like Zozo that are bringing in over $4B/year, all online.
My guess is you don’t own any .JP or .CO.JP names, and you probably don’t know other investors who own them. But I can tell you there are about 126 million people that know and love .JP and .CO.JP and that means there’s a real opportunity, and no, it doesn’t involve bidding against everyone else on Go Daddy auctions.
On thing I’ve always really appreciated about domain investing is that there are so many amazing niches to explore and opportunities you can carve our for yourself. Sure, we could all buy one-word .COMs or try to get the best .IO names, and yes, I still love .COM – but I’m starting to explore and what I’ve found learned so far is pretty exciting.
As usual, more to come – I’m only 13 years into my domain investing journey, the adventure has just begun!
