Well, finally some good news from the Ebay Partner Network. I don’t want to even talk about the upcoming shift to “Quality Click Pricing” because it’s just going to upset me. Perhaps I’ll have a future post all about optimizing your phpBay sites for the new system, but first I’m going to have to figure that out for myself!
In any event, EPN recently introduced four new programs: Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.
Why is Germany in bold!? Well, because Germany is Ebay’s second largest market after of course the United States. This means that all sorts of untapped niches and microniches can potentially be exploited over in good old Deutschland.
Pic (sorta) related:
It also opens up some domaining opportunities if you’re thinking about registering .de domains. Although there is definitely competition in the .de domaining game, it’s nowhere near that of the .com industry. However, keep in mind that .de is the second most popular TLD in the world with an estimated six million .de domains already registered.
If you’re interested in searching for a good .de domain in any particular niche, here is what I recommend you do:
- Determine the main keyword related to your niche
- Use Google Language Tools to translate that word into German
- Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to check out how many searches that keyword and related keywords are pulling in [use exact match]
- Snag a .de domain
Unfortunately, my most favorite registrar, Namecheap, does not offer .de registration at this time. Here are some alternatives (prices/currency conversions obviously reflect the time of this writing, don’t expect me to update this shit all the time!):
- GoDaddy* – $17.99/yr (PayPal accepted)
- iWantMyName.com* – $29.00/yr
- EuroDNS* - apprx. $26.23/year (€16/yr plus €2 setup fee)
- iDotz**- $19.95/yr
- DomainDiscount24.com – $10.39 (€7.14)/yr
- Joker.com – $9.16/yr
- Europe Registry – $13.11 (€9)/yr
But I Heard You Have to Live in Germany to Register a .DE domain!?
Not the case, not the case. That myth is derived from the fact that the administrative contact on each .de domain registered must be located in Germany. Some registrars offer to act as the administrative contact on your behalf, thus circumventing this little bump in the road. However, some registrars will charge an additional fee for this (and some may not offer this service at all).
The registrars with the * listed above are the ones that include an administrative contact in Germany with your registration.
**Idotz.net will provide a German administrative contact for an additional fee.
The others either don’t offer this service or charge an additional fee (you’ll have to do your own research you bastard). Or you could just use your long lost cousin that lives in Germany as your administrative contact.
Only one I’ve used myself is GoDaddy (I know, I know). They might not be my favorite registrar but when it comes to international domains, I’d rather deal with their spammy site/terrible support and hopefully not have any further problems. Coincidentally, they’re also the only registrar listed above that I have an active affiliate relationship with. Weird.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that if you plan on building and optimizing sites for German traffic, it’s imperative that you have the site(s) HOSTED over there. Having your international sites hosted on IPs in the countries they are targeting helps a ton for ranking on search engines specific to that country. As far as which host to use, do your dang homework. As of now I use a UK host called Nativespace for all my European e-pillaging. That’s pretty close to Germany, right!?
