IDN Tools and ElliotsBlog.com are co-sponsoring a IDN domain contest beginning today and ending in two weeks from today. All you have to do to win is register the IDN domain name with the highest footprint (explained below) and you will win $150. The second place winner will receive $100, and the third place winner will receive $50.

The domain’s footprint = average CPC x Google exact match search term (as determined by Google Adwords Keyword Tool as of 9 a.m. on the contest end date). Here is an example of how the highest footprint will be determined: ฟรี.com (Free.com in Thai).  The broad global monthly search volume is 7,480,000; and the exact global monthly search volume is 2,900 x $0.43 (CPC) = 1,247 (footprint).

Here are the contest rules:

• All submissions are FREE
• Submissions must be made in the comments section of this post announcing the contest
• Dot com submissions only
• IDN name submissions only (must have a real punycode equivalent)
• Fresh hand registered submissions only (no use of Snapnames or a drop catcher, handreg must have been made during the contest period)
• Contest ends at 9 a.m. (EST) on Thursday, March 25th – All submissions must be time stamped by this time or they will not count.
• No trademark names

*Rules subject to interpretation by consensus of Me (Elliot) and the IDNTools team (Gary Males and Aaron Krawitz).  The top 3 domain names with the highest footprint will be the winners. Although someone can submit as many entries as they would like, a person is only eligible for one prize. In the event of a tie, the prize will be split between the co-winners.

To determine the CPC, visit the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and use the dropdown “Choose Columns to Display” you can display CPC easily without having an Adwords account.  You can also see the Google Exact Match Global search volume by using the Keyword Tool.

One of my friends and business colleagues is Aaron Krawitz, publisher of IDNBlog.com, co-owner of IDNTools.com, and an expert in the IDN business. Aaron previously wrote a guest post about why he thinks IDN domain names are going to grow in value, and I asked Aaron if he could follow that up with a small series of posts that could break down investing in IDN domain names.

Beginning tomorrow, I will be posting a 3 part series written by Aaron and his colleague Gary Males. To give you a bit of background about the two authors, Gary Males first entered the domain industry with early acquisitions of .co.uk names. Aaron Krawitz made his first big splash in domaining when he bought a premium Portuguese and Spanish portfolio. Both investors were looking at global domains from the outset as they saw a valuable commodity and a large untapped world market.

As mentioned in the previous post about IDN domain names, both Aaron and Gary will be visiting the posts to answer any questions, as clearly I am not well-equipped to handle them. Thanks to Aaron and Gary for sharing more information about a market in which I am unfamiliar.

My wife and I had dinner the other night with Aaron Krawitz and his wife, Emily. Aaron and I met at a New York domain investor get together, and not only are we both domain investors, but our wives are in the same year of graduate school working on a similar degree. Aaron is an Ivy-League graduate and currently works at a prestigious New York firm.

While our wives talked about internships and the field of Psychology, Aaron and I talked about domain names and investing. Aaron has significant IDN domain name investments, and I know next to nothing about them. I asked Aaron if he would write a guest post about IDNs so I can share with my readers why he and others are so passionate about them. Aaron and his business partner, Gary Males, wrote the following. Hope you enjoy.

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Any domainer worth his salt knows the history of the pioneers in the domain industry and how in the 90’s they took a risk on buying generic domain names.  Back in the pre-Google days, there was no business model, no parking, no affiliates, no monetization – you have to admire these innovators as they took a calculated risk and have been rewarded.

How many domainers have found themselves wishing they could have done that or that they could go back in time to the 90’s?  IDNs are exactly that opportunity.

There are 100+ million domains registered today; and the majority of these are in English.  There are only 1 million IDNs registered, and that is across ~200 different languages.  Do the math – that means there is tremendous opportunity.

It’s like a 1990’s Groundhog Day, but with the benefit of knowing you can monetize domains and there is end-user demand for virtual real estate.

So what are Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)?

They are domains that contain at least one letter not found on a traditional English keyboard.

IDNs really make a difference in countries with languages that do not use letters based on the English language; countries like Japan, China and Korea whose languages consists of symbols.  In contrast, in Spanish, French or Portuguese, it is easy to avoid IDNs and to simply substitute unaccented letters.

In these countries where the language differs so much from English, and also coupled with a nationalistic population, you can begin to see why users would use their native language over English, which is where the IDN advantage is.

As you start to take a closer look at other languages, you begin to see some unique properties that spell another opportunity.  Take for example the Japanese or Chinese language – there is no such thing as plurals, so every Japanese or Chinese term doubles up as both the single and plural version.  In other words, 2 for the price of one.  Also some Japanese words mean the same thing in Chinese, so from a domainers perspective your one domain registration now, not only means the single and plural, but it can also reach the combined population of China and Japan (1.5 billion) people – that’s 5 times more than the U.S.

Japan as an example has a very vibrant ecommerce industry, but to date, had no real use for English domain names they cannot read or remember; so what do they do, they don’t advertise the domain name, they advertise by displaying an image of someone searching in the search engine with a Japanese word, and then just buy the Adwords for that Japanese word to try and capture the searcher.  Sounds a little strange to us, when we are so used to seeing domain names in every walk of life – but that’s how it has evolved.  Domain names and IDNs definitely have a branding advantage over search box advertising.

Early domain pioneers took risks in the 1990’s not knowing what the future would look like; so what are the risks for IDN investors?

The single biggest risk, all surrounds IDN.IDN – in other words, today IDNs can be registered in .com .net .org .info .cn .jp etc – but the real benefit of IDNs is in full IDN, that is, the extension in foreign language too.

ICANN has been struggling with this for years, and will soon be inserting the first IDN extension in the root.

Dot com IDNs will remain valuable in most language as the dot com is a recognizable brand easily typed on foreign keyboards. Switching from a foreign language to English to type the “.com” is second nature, just as you or I shift characters to capitalize while typing a sentence.  In countries such as Japan, dot com is many times more popular than their ccTLD, and there are many examples of companies branding on an IDN.com.

If you still believe that an IDN extension is the holy grail to IDNs, then you can take comfort in a white paper released by Verisign that states that they intend to make available transliterated IDN versions of “com” and “net”, and alias them to the non-IDN version. This is the ideal solution after all, it provides full IDNs but leverages the brand of “com” etc that everyone is so accustomed to.

With hindsight, we all know what we should have done 15 years ago, but most of us didn’t do anything…so given what is most likely the 2^nd and last domain gold rush opportunity, this time with IDNs…what will you do?  There is a risk, some say minimal, some say calculated, but the size of the prize should be enormous; this we know from the current high traffic levels on IDNs.

Another reason why people tend to shy away from IDNs is because investing in foreign markets can be accompanied by a steep learning curve, especially if you do not speak the language. With this in mind, we have launched the first 2 dedicated IDN services:

IDNnewsletter.com – A subscription based, hand picked list of our members’ top IDNs for sale, and all of the IDNs listed will have been certified by a native speaker.

IDNtools.com – a set of IDN measurement tools, drop lists and translations.

This guest post was written by Gary Males and Aaron Krawitz, co-owners of IDNTools.com and IDNNewsletter.com.  You can also follow Gary and Aaron at IDNDemystified.com and at IDNBlog.com.