Asia SEO GuruBlogging SEO in Bangkok Thailand

Some early coverage of ICANN 35 currently being held in Sydney. For ongoing updates see CircleID.com

Asia Affiliate is:

- Already Live @ AsiaAffiliate.com

- An online database of affiliate programs organized by location.

** Coming soon, publisher listings to help program managers quickly partner up with Asia focused content publishers.

See program listings at:

Asia Affiliate Programs
Thailand Affiliate Programs
China Affiliate Programs
Japan Affiliate Programs
For more information on how your business can Affiliate & Prosper in Asia…….Contact me

Mitsubishi Electric’s new Asia Pacific portal is built on MitsubishiElectric.Asia

Use of the .Asia extension is becoming common place amongst Asian conglomerates with Honda adopting .Asia in 2008.

The MitsubishiElectric.Asia domain name is being used on the companies cable TV broadcast advertising campaign throughout Asia.

If Owen is going to keep on blogging about .mobi’s decline, expect more posts soon on the continued uptake of .Asia

A few weeks back when reading through the weekly DN Journal sales report I noticed Microphones.Asia had changed hands for 1190€.

I thought that was a bit of a steal at the time. I just checked Microphones.Asia and it now redirects to http://www.sennheiser.com

If I was the previous owner of that name I would be a little bit cheesed to see the new owner is a large German conglomerate with a long history in the audio industry (Founded 1945 / Revenue 300 Million € in 06).

Welcoming another corporate to the ranks adopting .Asia

I was in a small town on the Gulf of Thailand called Hua Hin when I saw it.

My first .Asia in the wild. I’d previously seen them spring up in PPC campaigns. I’d seen them in newspapers. I’d even seen them on television screens. But this, the first one on the streets.

Hua Hin is a small beach town with a population of 50,000 people, so if you take the rest of Asia in to account with dozens of sprawling cities, proliferation is going to be rapid.

I’m almost certain that right about now a bunch of people in the domain industry are asking themselves…

Why were we so wrong?

Prior to the launch of .Asia domain industry leaders and most commentators in domain forums wrote .Asia off as useless and unlikely to go anywhere (a little bit like .mobi :)).

My guess is most domain forum commentators were American domain kiddies who’s knowledge of Asia extended as far as noodles and Bruce Lee.

As for the larger players in the Domain Industry, as they have spent the best part of a decade watching their dot com investments turn into a valuable assets it is easy to see how they may have been skeptical about rapid acceptance and adoption of a new niche name space.

The best explanation I can see for the change in time frames comes from Eric Schmidt’s recent presentation at Bloomberg.

At 12:15

“These changes are happening faster than ever before. The statistics are quite interesting.  50 million users in North America took 37 years to adopt radio, 15 years for television, 6 years for cable, and 3 years for the internet.”………..”But clearly time is compressing”

So however long Rick Schwartz had to wait to see Time Square covered in .com, take that figure and divide it. New name spaces Aren’t going to take decades to take off.

My prediction is that in just over the next 2 years, Asian cities from Tokyo to Tashkent will be dripping in .Asia

I recently completed my first aftermarket sale of a .Asia name via the SEDO aftermarket. Crowdsource.Asia sold on SEDO making it in to the first 10 reported aftermarket sales of .Asia domain names.

It seems to be a cliché in the domain industry to say so, but I think the buyer got a steal.

Here’s why.

Asia is the most populated region in the world. Even though .Asia is a new space it appears that it will be readily adopted by businesses to market to the region.

Asia is likely to play a big roll in the growing crowdsourcing industry. I have used crowdsourcing services to build relationships with content and media producers in Thailand and the Philippines and find it a really efficient way to source talent at reasonable prices. The industry clearly has a future.

So the buyer has acquired the best name to operate in the industry, in a region that is highly relevant to the industry. After paying the aftermarket rate, the ongoing expense to maintain that highly valuable asset is an inconsequential $20 per year.

Best of luck to the buyer. Looking forward to see what ends up on the name.

This month I had the chance to consult for one of Thailand’s largest condominium developers. The preliminary consultation for Raimon Land Plc on behalf of Bangkok startup Arctos Group focused on the development of a Russian site to target the growing number of Russians buying luxury condominiums in Thailand.

Raimon Land’s push in to Russia was recently covered in the Bangkok Post.

MOSCOW : Raimon Land Plc is confident in strong demand from Russians, planning to launch a Russian department to tap the Eastern European market after finding that 23% of its total sales from foreign buyers last year were from Russians, according to chief executive officer Nigel Cornick.

Russian market will be closely monitored over the current high season, says Mr Cornick.

He said the new department would be based in Bangkok to manage increasing interest from the booming Russian market in the company’s upmarket condominium projects.

“We will see the profile of customers in Russian and CIS (the Commonwealth of Independent States) market and do market research to find which segments have purchasing power and potential to tap into,” said Mr Cornick.

In Russia, he said, there were 200,000 people with annual incomes of more than US$1 million and 170 of them were billionaires.

Since 2006 the company has sold 745 million baht worth of property to wealthy buyers in Russia and the former Soviet states. Of the figure, 426 million baht was generated last year. Their favourite destination was Pattaya, accounting for 63%, followed by Phuket with 28% and Bangkok with 9%.

Elsewhere in the Industry

Even though many industries are only beginning to Focus on SEO here in Asia, elsewhere the property search space is highly competitive and already stratified. To own a slice of the most valuable media property (a.k.a the Google front page) means serious investment, serious web development and a SEO focused business strategy. Even though some larger SE Asian enterprises are beginning to invest in SEO, as I look around the search space I still see a land of opportunities. Those who make the right investments now will be the market leaders in the near future. Those who miss the boat will face a much steeper mountain to climb when they attempt to enter a more competitive and stratified space.

I may make this a habit

A few more .Asia spotted in this weeks aftermarket report.

Accountancy.Asia going for $2962 US
TopShopping.Asia made $2000 US

Must have been a pleasant week for Bangkok based idevelop.TV flipping two .TV names clearing over 10K

Tours.TV for $8500US and NA.TV reaching $2750.

Good to see a local in on the game.

Wonder if Narcotics Anonymous is building a new site?

Surprised to receive my first offer on a .Asia name via SEDO. Was totally not expecting any action on .Asia for at least 2 years. The $500 offer was for a technology trend term that has been going around a bit lately.

The domain was hand registered for $20 at the .Asia go live so $500 represents a reasonable ROI after just a few months.

Was tempted to flip the name and do something exciting for myself……like buy a new pair of sneakers

But still a little bit early in the game for that

**UPDATED**

Noticed on SEDO that the same person who offered on the name picked up a hyphenated .com for $4100US.

It’s a shame it’s really only a one word term

.Asia has made a surprisingly strong and early appearance in the aftermarket with a number of sales just months after go live.

This weeks SEDO sales report included 3 .Asia names.

esports.asia - 3,500    EUR
icasino.asia - 3,500    EUR
imobile.asia - 3,500    EUR

Whoever picked these up is clearly trying to duplicate Rick Schwartz’s success in selling iReport.com to CNN for 750K.

Previous aftermarket sales include LasVegas.Asia for approximately $30000 US, and ILoveYou.Asia for  $1102 US.