True global brands need a .com extension. Clearly there are obvious exceptions but for the most part, if you want to market to the world, you need a good .com. However, with all the patting on the back old-school domainers like to give themselves, you have to admit, we should have registered more country-code top-level domains and internationalized domain names.

I think this is especially true for those of us that resell our names. While I was in Spain this summer, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the small and medium businesses I saw had .es ccTLDs. Many large companies marketed ccTLDs locally as well. If only I had registered 100,000 of them to sell at 1000-10,000 Euros a piece!

The Domain In Spain Falls Mainly On The .es Extension

Instead I sat there comfortably fooling myself that .com was all that would ever matter.

This does not mean that I’m going to start buying $50,000 ccTLDs and IDNs so please don’t try and sell them to me. I just wish I had had the foresight to have gotten them early.

Time and again I am hearing stories about IDNs’ revenue growing year in and year out while revenue in most other extensions are falling. This of course, is especially true in Asian countries where businesses must adopt and promote an IDN because otherwise the masses wouldn’t understand the meaning of the name.

This almost makes me think .mobi names have a chance. Almost.

Let me repeat that I’m not a buyer on these names at big dollars. I just think hand-registering them makes a lot of sense. As does hand registering other extensions like .mobi, .name, .asia, .info, .me, etc. Hand register the hell out of them and sell them to end-users down the line.

More than anything I like the ccTLD names and I’m kicking myself in the ass for not having more of them.

Fortunately, there are still many opportunities left for everyone.

**Added after post went live** One thing I forgot to mention is that we are noticing it is easier to get a website ranked in Google.ccTLD if you have domain.ccTLD. In other words, Our aeiou.com customers are reporting higher traffic on their ccTLD names from the respective countries.