IDN demystified

I have finally decided on the running order for this first batch of posts.

For the purposes of this post, and in the absence of any better categorization – let me be clear on my terminology of what I will be referring to as “Regular Domainer” and “IDN Domainer”:






Regular Domainer: A domainer who buys/sells/monetizes/develops etc what I am calling regular domains – in other words English language domains only. The regular domainer knows nothing, very little, or they actually know a lot about IDN’s – but in each case they have decided it’s not for them, or maybe it’s not for them just yet.

IDN Domainer: A domainer who buys/sells/monetizes/develops etc domains that use special characters (not just A-Z, 0-9). The IDN domainer may of course (and in what appears to be the majority of cases I’ve seen) have a “Regular Domainer” heritage. The important difference being that, for whatever reason, they have decided it is for them.

It is no secret that IDN-ing, is perceived as a niche area of domaining.

That is certainly the perception, but how niche is it really? I was recently quoted as saying that IDN-ing is like wearing your wife’s underwear – in the sense that a lot of people do it, but few would admit to it. I’ll cover more on this perception vs reality another time, but for now I want to focus on the perception.

Just as Regular domainers scratch their heads with a bemused look on their faces wondering why the majority of Businesses “don’t get it” with domain names…

… so do IDN Domainers, but they also scratch their head wondering why a lot of Regular Domainers don’t get it with IDN either.

Don’t misunderstand me, there is no right or wrong answer. I am not for one moment suggesting Regular Domainers have made the wrong decision not to embrace IDN; because like I said, it either floats your boat or not – as long as that decision was an educated one and not just due to ignorance.

One final point to all this preamble – rather predictably I have already been accused in a forum post of trying to manipulate the IDN market.

I thought I was really clear on my About the author post as to my motivation for this blog – but let me be really-really clear: Reputation is everything, I have publicly said that many times in forums over the years. Burning your online reputation for the sake of 5mins of hyped glory BS is not my cup of tea; and you all know how much us Brits like our tea.

I said I would pull back the curtain, and that’s what I will do, some of what’s behind the curtain might be ugly, but it is what it is.

So in the spirit of attempting to Demystify IDN..

The next series of posts will candidly charter a journey that started for me in 1987

–A brief intro on how I sleep-walked through the 90’s

–How I stumbled into Domaining as a Regular Domainer in 2005

–How I then stumbled across IDN’s

–And why, with only a very few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle assembled I started to register and buy IDN’s. I will be writing this post as I saw it in 2006, knowing very little about the history of IDN’s from 2000-2005, and of course not having the benefit of hind-sight with everything I know today. In short I want to explain how and why I got it.

–I will then switch focus to more recent times where I had filled in more pieces of the puzzle; now knowing the history of IDNs and having the benefit of a few more years of activity, and how this affected my decision making and the size of some of those decisions.

–The tail end of these posts will then focus in on one particular language and end with one particular domain, and culminates with pulling back the curtain on my involvement in what I understand is the single biggest unreported deal for an IDN.

There’s a genuine reason why I won’t just skip to the end and blurt it out; and it’s not because I plan to pull a Frager on you, with endless foreplay and no climax – to appreciate the value proposition and the opportunity, you need to see the whole picture.

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