Yesterday we told you about Sedo.com having online bidding for the live auction of the Chinese IDN for Online (.在线) which will be held in  Macau starting at 11 a.m. Friday local Macau Time (03:00 UTC) March 21, 2014 (Thursday March 20th at 11pm EST).

Personally I don’t own any IDN’s but this one may make me change my mind.

For one as most know, China has more internet users than the population of the United States, 618 million as of December 2013.

About 2 weeks ago LinkedIn launched its website in simplified Chinese for the first time. An English version of the site was already available in the country and used by 4 million Chinese members, but linkedin believes the native-language version will give the company significantly more exposure in the country

Anyone looking at the year to date domain sales report can see that many of the top domain sales are to Chinese buyers.

DnJournal.com’s  year to date domain sales chart is showing 13 of the top 21 domain sales in 2014, were purchased by buyers in China, not including 114.com which was purchased in late 2013 for $2.1 million.

We had a chance to chat with Simon Cousins about the two extensions TLD Registry is rolling out the Chinese IDN for Online (.在线) as well as  Dot Chinese Website (中文网)

Simon tell me why you think IDN will become widely adopted in China.

The Chinese government has stated that they will require every Chinese government company website move to Chinese language there are around  700,000 gov.cn or org.cn websites which are owned or operated by the government.

Of course you know there are over 600 million internet users and they have a population of 1.4 billion people

IDN’s in China will happen

Western domain investors need to look closely at what is to start in Macau.

How about the Chinese IDN Verisign’s is putting out for .Com?

Verisign’s IDN for Chinese are transliterations not translations, transliterations are rarely a good idea.

Why did you choice the IDN for “online”?

We did an exhaustive an analyst of Chinese search engine inquiries  and “online” is the  most commonly used search term when a Chinese person is search engines for a product or service online.

Chinese search for more for  sentences unlike American that search more for keywords.

So someone in China looking for Airline Tickets is more likely to search for “Air tickets online”

So what do you suggest for domain investors like myself that see the opportunity in China but doesn’t speak the language?

Remember these are domains for Chinese users searching for Chinese language website.  This is why I made the point that you want transliterations not translations.

So if American investors if combine their existing knowledge and wisdom with Chinese support that is find someone who has lived on the mainland there are plenty of people in the US that speak and understand the language.

Otherwise concentrate on easily found information.

Family names are very popular in China for domain names.

When it comes to IDN’s an overwhelming number of family names are single character.  Also remember unlike in the US where a person with the last name of  Smith would just want smith.com or their first and last domain like larrysmith.com, in China people use Wang Family, Wang Home and House of Wang to express their family.

So you can find very easily big lists of Chinese family names online including Chinese billionaires and No to answer the next question you would ask me, not all of those domains are reserved by the registry.

Keep in mind that when it comes to Chinese IDN’s 60% of all words are expressed in one character.

Another thing investors can do is find a list of idioms and phrases that are very popular in China.

The Chinese use phrases that westerners use like “good luck” “work hard”, “best wishes for happy new year”, but there are many others that are unique to China like “value harmony”, “one china”,  “”work hard and study everyday”

Again if you find someone who has lived in China they will know these.

You can also have ASCII words on the left of the dot with the right of the dot IDN

You should know that we support every form of Chinese language

Mandarin, Cantonese, Simplified, Pinynon

Tell me more about the auction:

There are 39 lots, some have multiple domains in each lot.

Reserve prices are $500- $5,000 per lot.

The auction will be live in Macau and we expect a nice turnout of course bidding will also be held on Sedo.

When does your Landrush and general availability start and which registrars are handling the extensions?

We are starting out Our Land Rush also from Macau on  Thursday March 20th and goes for  30 days

The cost of a Landrush application is around $300, prices vary by registrar and included two year registration.

General availability will be around $55 a domain.

40 registrars, including many in China are taking Landrush registrations including:

1and1.com

enom.com

eurodns.com

hexonet.net

Any predictions on Registration numbers?

I would say we have a greater than 50% chance of both of our strings being in the top 5 new gTLD’s in terms of domain name registrations  at the end of landrush.

Thanks Simon and best of luck.

Once again if you want to bid in the auction you will have to  request certification, in advance.

Please send an email to  MacauAuction@sedo.com with your login name and copy info@rightofthedot.com on the email and we will make sure the Registry gets your request.