My first newsletter will be coming out tomorrow (sign up if interested) and I started to put it together.  While doing so, I was thinking about features that would be of interest to me if I were to sign up, and I would like to hear back from you, too. Here are some things I plan to add into the newsletter, and I am open to more suggestions.

Domain registration coupons – I will reach out to some of the registrars to see if anyone is willing to provide special coupon codes for discounts to newsletter readers. If any registrars are reading this and are interested, drop me a note and I will be in touch.

News & notes – With so much information out there, I don’t always have time to read everything, and there are times when I do read something that I think is very important.  I will list my 3 most read/commented articles from the week, and I will also send one or two outside reads that I believe are important.

Tips and tricks - I’ve given lots of tips in a variety of posts on my blog, but I will add a tip about domaining or development each week.  Some might be obvious and some might be things I’ve learned along the way, but I am not a rocket scientist inventing a new patentable product, so I am happy to share.

Dropping domains – I like searching for good dropping names, some of which are available to buy right away, some are going to auction, and some are on auction.  If I had a larger staff, endless money, and/or more time to develop, I wouldn’t give these away, but I can’t buy them all.  I actually don’t buy very many at all, but enjoy the search, so I might as well share what I find.

Domains for sale - This is the biggest conflict I have.  I don’t want to open up and accept domain listings from others, and I don’t want this to be a self serving newsletter.  From time to time I might show a domain name I have for sale or I might provide a link to a good domain name I saw for sale.  I will try to limit this because I think there are enough sales outlets available.

Upcoming events - There’s a ton of conferences, auctions, get togethers…etc that it’s hard to keep up.  If I hear about an event, I will post a link to more information.

So… after reading the above features, what else would you like to see that’s not already included on my blog?

As I said before, I am not going to allow sponsors yet because I want to see how things go for a few weeks.  I appreciate the inqueries, but at this time, I am going to keep it private label without a sponsor.

I noticed something interesting during my travels and don’t know if it’s isolated or more widespread. In several advertisements, I’ve seen foreign companies who do business in the US using the .US extension for their primary American website or in addition to their primary .com site.

Although I haven’t really seen many American-based companies using the .US extension as a primary website, I know that country code extensions are very popular in places throughout the world – especially in some European countries.

IcelandAir uses IcelandAir.us, BMW sometimes uses BMW.us, ClubMed has used ClubMed.us, Volvo uses VolvoCars.us (forwards to .com) and there are many other examples. It seems to be more of a European way of thinking as many EU people and businesses use their country codes far more regularly than we use the .US extension here in the States.

It’s just interesting to notice, as I have seen the above examples used to target US customers, and all of these companies own their respective .com – they just choose not to use them.

So what is it?  Foreign companies’ marketing departments not thinking like American consumers? A domain extension test?  Something else?  What do you think?