Capitalize on China’s strong domain name market.
China’s appetite for domain names is booming. A quarter of Domain Holdings’ sales last quarter were to China, and Verisign credits the country with bolstering .com growth.
How can you capitalize on this market opportunity? In this episode, TLD Registry CMO Simon Cousins gives a crash course on the Chinese domain name market. You’ll learn why certain combinations of numbers are worth a lot and others aren’t. You’ll understand how the Chinese currently navigate the web and how this might change in the future. It’s an information-packed episode you won’t want to miss.
This week’s podcast also discusses Endurance’s $44.9 million acquisition of BuyDomains and what it means for domain valuations, as well as Michael Bloomberg’s funny .nyc domain name registrations.
You can subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad. I’d greatly appreciate you leaving a positive review on iTunes as well.
Or, click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:13 — 44.2MB) | Embed
Kassey says
Mandarin is the way to go. Cantonese has lost its place as the number one spoken Chinese language outside China. History gives us the glue. Since the 1800s a large number of Cantonese-speaking Chinese left China for a better life in other countries, resulting in Cantonese being the default spoken language in China Towns across the world. Now the reverse is happening. There is a mass migration of Mandarin-speaking Chinese to almost every country in the world. I saw it coming a few years ago when I noticed I had to switch to Mandarin instead of my beloved Cantonese in order to order Dim Sum (or should it be Diǎnxīn now?) dishes at Chinese restaurants. If Beijing.com (spelled in Mandarin) and Peking.com (spelled in Cantonese) were both selling for $1 million, I’d definitely get Beijing.com. Think Mandarin and forget Cantonese when buying domain names.
Simon Cousins says
“Forget Cantonese” is a little extreme Kassey 🙂 With respect for your valuable advice, I’d suggest “Skew to Mandarin/Simplified Chinese, and take your profits in the immensely wealthy and influential Cantonese/Traditional Chinese market when the opportunities arise”. Good luck with your Chinese IDN domaining! Simon.
John says
‘Human written’ 4.05
as a lot of chinese tlds will be released, do you believe these could be the .coms of the chinese web addresses
NameYouNeed says
Great interview! What schools have a Mandarin program at such a young age though?
I’m confused about Pinyin. Is that just simplified Chinese? Also is Cantonese and Mandarin different in terms of writing? I thought they were just spoken differently.
Kassey says
Cantonese is a Chinese dialect and spoken differently from Mandarin. The written part is basically the same. A bit complicated though is that there is the traditional written Chinese characters (complex script used for thousands of years) and the simplified Chinese characters (introduced after the communists took over China).
Simon Cousins says
Handy chart:
– China Mainlanders mostly speak Mandarin, and write it in Simplified Chinese.
– Many Mainlanders (about 48%) cannot speak Mandarin, but they speak their own regional dialect and write that dialect in Simplified Chinese.
– Many Mainlanders in the south (especially Guangdong province) prefer Cantonese, and they write this in Traditional Chinese. These people also speak Mandarin, and write that in Simplified Chinese.
– All Hong Kongers speak Cantonese, and write that in Traditional Chinese.
– All Taiwan people speak Mandarin, but unlike their Mainlander cousins, they write their Mandarin in Traditional Chinese.
– People who live in Chinatowns around the world are more likely to speak Cantonese (written in Traditional Chinese) than Mandarin – this is due to the historical diaspora of people from the south of China into other countries.
For domainers, skew to Mandarin/Simplified but be open to Mandarin/Traditional (for Taiwan opportunities) and Cantonese/Traditional for Hong Kong/Macau/Chinatowns around the world opportunities.
Pinyin is Mandarin written in ASCII characters (a-z). It is helpful but very imprecise.