Quick follow-up on my post about IDNs from few days ago:

In the post I wrote that IDNs have not performed all-too well traffic-wise, in my experience. However, I asked a fellow German domainer, Nico Zeifang, who owns some high-value IDNs, for his opinion on this topic. He was so kind to share his experiences and some traffic numbers in the post’s comments area. Here is what he said:

Hello Everybody,

Dominik asked me whether I could comment on the traffic issues for German IDN’s as I was responsible for the purchase of two of the more well-publicized (through dnjournal) purchases of German Keyword IDN Domain names. Let me comment on Ernährung.de first which I bought more than a year ago. Ernährung is the proper German spelling for nutrition and I excpect (although it is hard to say) to get about the same amount as the non-IDN version (although the IDN version is gaining ground and the non-IDN version should be loosing ground as people get more used to being able to use the natural spelling – which is IDN – in their Domain names). Traffic numbers (Unique visitors) by month since the purchase were:

October 2006 351
November 2006 404
December 2006 349
January 2007 729
February 2007 587
March 2007 727
April 2007 569
May 2007 776
June 2007 753
July 2007 606
August 2007 574
September 2007 742
October 2007 870
November 2007 694
December 2007 467
January 2008 901

So as you can see, traffic is clearly on the rise. Overall, I am very very happy with this investment. I have received considerably higher offers on this name already and would put it in the Euro xxx xxx value range at the moment.

The other purchase published in DnJournal.com was Bücher.com (German for Books). This is a more tricky one to comment on as it has not been constantly parked but rather used with different affiliate programs as well as leased out on a flat fee in the past. The name is getting about 300 – 500 unique visitors a month. It is another investment I am very happy with.

To conclude this: In languages, where the IDN spelling is the natural spelling and the IDN characters are readily accessible on the keyboard (as is the case in Germany) I would prefer to own the IDN version over the non IDN version any time.

Hope this helps Dominik, keep up the great blog!
Nico