Mydomainparkingsite.com

I often read about domainers who talk about how hard it is to find someone to by their domain names and I wonder who are they trying to sell their names to. Many seem to be marketing their names to other domainers, maybe not intentionally but it is the way it seems.

They do posts on their site about domaining. Stuff that other domainers may be interested in but not the end user. Others park on the usual parking sites and others still list them in the various auctions.

When I sell a site I dont really care who buys it as long as I get paid and it is all above board but I do like to sell to someone who is going to use the name for some productive purpose.

So how can sites be targeted to an end user. Well I set up my domains with a simple information site targeted at a possible use with relevant information and key words. I put a few google ads on it hopeing for some revenue in the meantime and always put a message on it telling people that it is for sale and how they could get benefit from it. This all sounds like a lot of work but if you want to target a particular audience the normal parking is unlikely to work for you. This also gives you the benefit of collecting all the revenue for any ads on your site and lets face it do people really look through normal parking sites and I am sure the search engines are awake to these people.

If you want to sell your sites people who will use them then you are going to have to do a bit of work. Domaining is often compared to realestate, well I am going to do that here. if you by a block of land and sell it without doing anything to it you can only expect to sell it for the same price. If you get approval to develop this land and then sell it with this approval attached then you can expect to get much more for it. Developing a domani name the way I have described is a bit like get approval to develop land. With this effort you may just be able to make more money and be able to find someone who wants to use the site and just another domainer who wants to buy the domain cheaply just to make a profit when they sell it on.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) report said the nation’s online population had risen to a massive 253 million users, up by 56 per cent since the end of June last year. This makes China the biggest internet user, overtaking the U.S.

This just goes to show the power of the Asian region as far as the internet is concerned. China’s internet users as a percentage are 19.1% compared to the U.S with 223.1 million internet users representing 71% of the population. China has a lot more room to grow compared to the U.S.

All this growth is despite the Chinese Government putting many restrictions on Chinese internet users and dissident web sites. The Chinese also restricted access to web sites like YouTube during the uprising in Nepal and also restricts access to sites ruled to be pornagraphic or a threat to national security. Many of the sites that have thrived in the Chinese Market are Tencent.com and search engine Baidu.com which are both both large Chinese run web sites.

With this continued growth, which is predicted to continue at 18% per year, Chinese internet users will grow to 490 million by 2012. Keep an eye on the Asian region, I think it will surprise a lot of people, especially those that remain U.S. centric.

As Google moves into differnet aspects of the Internet you have to ask yourself whether it is a considered diversification of its Internet business or a doomed experiment to move away from search based advertising, which has been Googles core until now, to content production. Google has already struggled to monetise its youtube purchase which makes you wonder why they dont concentrate on the search based advertising that has seen them do so well.

One of Google’s forays into content production has been Google news. This could be seen as a move on Yahoo news, which has done well for Yahoo. Google’s move could be seen as a way to capitalise on its advertising business by keeping it in house, but it hasn’t even put its ads on this site. It seems like a lot of effort for no return, not relly good business.

Google has recently announce that it will be dropping its AdSense Referral ads from its advertising offerings and will be concentrating on its AdSense for Content ads. It sites the reason for this change as seeking to continually improve its products and perhaps Googles other moves are an attempt to improve its business, but seeing how other companies have struggled to be successful at this, notably Yahoo, one would hope that google can capitalise on these moves.

What ever Google does do, a move away from its very successful core business could spell disaster, which would be a shame for Google. Hopefully they can keep their focus as they test the waters in these other markets.

One of the .Asia auctions has recently ended with a big result. The auction for export.asia ended at $18011. Obviously this was always going to be a popular auction considering the opportunity in using it to target export opportunities either to or from the Asian region. With what was a fairly busy auction with 94 bids in all and with the time for auction bids being extended many times according to the auction rules.

This shows the value of the .asia extension both worldwide and in the Asian region. According to the site www.keywo.com the top ten sales so far are sex.asia US$83,334, sexshop.asia US$53,607, business.asia US$29,000, promotion.asia US$26,000, resorts.asia US$22,501, sushi.asia US$22,500, cooking.asia US$21500, ace.asia US$20501, pos.asia US$20500, water.asia US$19388.

Obviously sex.asia is not a surprise, it was always going to be a popular domain name. but there are some surprises that are at the top over some of the names that went for a low value. This may be explained by the number of people involved in an auction, as only the people who registered their interest in the domain in the sunrise or landrush period of this domain release were allowed to bid in these auctions. So there may be some auctions with only two or three parties involved and there may be others with many more involved. There may also have been auctions where other parties involved didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend at these auctions so competition may have been very low in some and very high in others. I do think that the results in so far do show the interest in the .asia extention and the very real value to be found in this regionally targeted extension. As the recognition of the .asia name gains pace I think many people will see the value and we will continue to see some interesting sales happening in the near future.

A question that all site administrators are, or should be asking themselves, when they are deciding what they should be doing to develop their site further is, what will internet users be wanting tomorrow? In order to answer this you need to know who is using the internet, how and why. Secondly you need to know where the use in increasing and where are the users increasing their usage of the internet.

Internet Usage by Population.

With World population of almost 6.7 billion there are just over 1.4 billion internet users or 21.1% of the population. There has been a worldwide increase in internet usage of 290% from 2000 to 2008.

With a population of just under 3.8 billion or 56% of World population Asia has just under 530 million internet users which is 14% of Asian population and 37.6% of worldwide usage. The increase in internet use in Asia from 2000-2008 has been 363.4%.

North America has a population of just over 337 million or 5.1% of World population. Internet usage in North America is 246.5 million or 73.1% or the North American population and 17.5% of world usage. North American usage has grown by 127% from 2000-2008.

Population in Oceania/Australia is 34 million or 0.5% of World population. With an internet usage of 19.4 million or 57% of the regions population and 1.4% of world usage Oceania/Australia has seen a usage growth of 290% from 2000-2008.

Europe, with a population of 800 million has 12% of the Worlds population. Europe has 382 million internet users which represents 47.7% of European population and 27.1% of world usage. Europe has seen a 263% increase in internet usage from 2000-2008.

With Middle Eastern population of 197 million people, representing 3% of the world population, there are 42 million internet users. This is 21.3 % of middle eastern population and 3% of world usage. The Middle East has seen a 1176.8% increase in internet usage from 2000-2008.

Africa has a population of 955 million which is 14.3% of World population. There are 51 million internet users in Africa making 5.3% of its population and 3.6% of world usage. African internet use has grown by 1030.2% from 2000-2008.

The Latin American/Caribbean region has a population of 576 million people which is 8.6 percent of World population. This region has 137.3 million internet users representing 23.8% of the regions population and 9.8% of world internet usage. The Latin American/Caribbean region has seen an increase in internet usage growth of 659.9% from 2000-2008.

From these figures we can see where internet use is likely to increase in the future and where there is limited room for further expansion.

Asia with just over half the worlds population has one of the lowest levels of penetration as a percentage of population. Regardless of this, it still has the second highest level of usage as a percentage of World use at 37.6% yet still has a population of over 3 billion yet to enter the internet usage market. With the burgeoning Asian economies and this huge potential market the Asian region stands to be a lucrative area for internet expansion. This could be illustrated with the recent release of the .asia domain extension.

The North American region by contrast has an internet usage of 73.1% of its population numbering less than 100 thousand people. There is very little room for expansion in this area with such a large percentage of the population there already using the internet.

Other areas with that already have a significant portion of the population already using the internet are Oceania/Australia and Europe with 57% and 47.7% respectively. Oceania/Australia has a very small population and little to offer in terms of an expanding internet market. Europe has over 400 thousand people who are not using the internet, this small when compared to Asia and even the African region.

The African region has just over 900 thousand people who are yet to begin internet usage. However further expansion of the internet usage in Africa may be restricted by the relatively poor population in this region along with significant political instability in the area and poor infrastructure.

The remaining regions of Latin America/Caribbean and the Middle East when combined have approximately 600 thousand people who have begun internet use. Although this is a significant market it will be limited by the size of the economies in these regions combined with significant political instability in parts of these regions.

So Asia sits to be quite a powerful area for internet expansion with its vast population and increasing economies providing both a significant market penetration opportunity and an increasing amount of consumers with the income and wish to enter the internet market. Europe also has quite a bit of room for expansion while North America is just about at saturation point and has very little room for further expansion of its internet market.

At the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Annual General Meeting yesterday delegates approve plans to open up the creation of thousands of new domain names. With the final details to be worked out the new domain names are due to be issued sometime in 2009.

The new rules will allow for a departure from the current 240 country and territory domains and the 20 generic names such as .com .net and .aero and open up the way for many more new ones such as .sex, a hot contender for popularity and even names such as .bank or .car and the many brand names. It has also given approval for domain names to be released in languages such as Arabic or Chinese Mandarin.

This set to change the way we see the Internet with many new and imaginative names set to appear next year.

A Domain Extension is the .word on the end of a domain name such as .com, .net, .mobi and so on. At the moment these are restricted to those extensions approved by ICANN, the body that governs the release of domains and IP numbers. How would the internet change if you could use any word you liked as a domain extension? Well, this could become a reality with the ICANN Annual General Meeting happening in Paris in July 2008. One of the Items for discussion at this meeting is the release of generic names for domain extensions. This would mean that anyone could apply for a domain with any extension they like. Words such as .love .world .holiday, if you can think it you can have it.

ICANN currently issue domain names on IPv4 which is estimated to run out by 2011. With this in mind they are now developing IPv6 which would open up the way for these generic domain extensions. How will this affect the value of domain names? The top level domains such as .com may lose some value with the many other extensions available but there are some great opportunities to use your imagine in creating some very new and unique domains. I wont give away to many ideas, I have some of my own but there is a great opportunity here to have fun with words and expand the way people see and use the internet instead of being stuck in this .com world we have. Company such as the Australian giant BHP could have www.bhp.steel, Could think of a better way to market any business. Cnn.cnn could be the new web site for this news giant. There are so many possibilities here.

I hope this goes ahead, my imagination is already running wild.

This is a question I ask myself everytime I register a new Domain. Unfortunately it is not an easy question to answer, but there are some signs to know whether a name is worth something or not much at all.

Things that need to be considered is whether it is related to a subject that people want to know about, how searchable is the name and how likely is the name to be typed directly into the address bar. These are just a few considerations. Other considerations are the length of the name and how easily the name can be remembered. Very short names such as two or three letter names can be very valuable because of their limited availability and .com names lend to sell for more due to the universal appeal.

There are however many new domain extensions coming to the market. A relatively new extension .mobi is one that could become more valuable as more and more mobile phone networks are developed and mobile phone internet web browsing becomes more popular.

The new .asia domain extension is another set to gain value as its appeal to the asia-pacific region becomes more obvious and internet users in the area start to seek out web sites ending in .asia.

Ultimately the value of a domain is what someone wants to pay for it, so while you may have an idea of what you want for a domain it is real value wont be realised until you find someone willing to pay for it and you are able to settle on a price that you are willing to accept in exchange for the domain.

Check our list of available domain names, there just might be one there that is perfect for you.