When I launched BlogoDomaines.com back in 2007, it was meant to be a a 100% French blog. The reasons for that were quite simple: I didn’t feel comfortable enough writing in English or even in German on the one side; and on the other side, I wanted to do something good for the French market instead of having my content diluted among highly qualitative English ressources that were (and mostly still are) mostly read at that time.  Also, because I was working at Sedo back then – and so being somehow on the other side of the fence – the perspective was pretty different and I honestly wouldn’t have known what to blog about in English.

But today, things are different. Not that my English has become better – far from that – but when English was rather needed on an internal level when I worked at Sedo, I now have to use it on a regular basis when speaking with domain investors worldwide, making spontaneous offers to domain owners, answering to sales inquiries regarding our portfolio… and most of all when thinking about our development strategy and about how our domain portfolio should ideally look like. And to be honest with you and with myself, I don’t think you can really earn a decent leaving from a French-only portolio, not matter how good it is and assuming you don’t work on anything else than sales (for me, development IS another business). Of course, there are always more good surprises and still a lot of opportunities on the French market. Although we happened to sell French domains for 6 figures amounts like Masculin.com back in 2007, we would be crazy to think we can close similar sales on a weekly or even monthly basis.

So it looks like today I have to be even more open than I was before when I dealt with other aspects of the market, but after all that’s what I like and that’s why I always chose foreign languagues as an essential part of my education. Although German was my first choice and I spent more than 6 years overall in German speaking countries, I also had the chance to travel to English-speaking countries and I enjoyed it very much. When I chose to join Virtual Network and so to head to Switzerland 3 months ago, I must admit I was a bit concerned about losing my language skills, so I tried to figure out ways to avoid that. Well, looks like I have found one  more (the other ones being chatting in German on the phone with my former colleagues at Sedo and going to the pub with some British friends I made over here) : blogging in English! And why not blogging in German and in other languages too, until I can take the translation toolbar out of my blog for ever.

Let’s be honest: blogging in English will also be a way for me to get better exposure for projects I am involved in and to exchange with my readers on a broader reach. I already had the chance to have some chats with English and German-speaking « domain bloggers » and I would love to interact with them all via our respective blogs/websites.  Funny enough, one of these guys is French and most of you know him for what he has done and is still doing for the domain industry: François from Domaining.com. By the way, I would like to thank him for integrating my blog’s feed to domaining.com although I was not blogging in English back in these days.

To round it all up, there actually is a project which I wanted to talk you about today. Not a revolutionary thing – not yet – but something that I figured out I could mention here. Yesterday, we launched a new website on Domains1.com. Basically, Domains1.com is the best way for domain sellers to get in touch with us and to submit domains they might be willing to sell.  Virtual Network has been investing over 10 million USD in domain acquisitions since 1998 and is constantly looking for new opportunities. So if you are looking for some serious buyer for your domains, there you have one. If you’re not selling yourself but know about people that are, feel free to spread the word!

Back to the main subject of this post, I just wanted to add I won’t be systematically writing in English here, but rather sporadically. You will recognize it at my post’s titles.  I may also feel like blogging in German, who knows? So this goes to ally my French readers: don’t worry. I know most of you understand English, so I guess I don’t need to translate my post back into French*

Thanks for reading!

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* Si vous n’avez rien compris à ce post (sans doute à cause de mon mauvais anglais), pas de panique : je vais juste blogguer en anglais de temps à autre pour le fun, mais la majorité de mes billets restera en français.

Quand y’en a plus, y’en a encore :

• 55.com currently auctioned at Sedo – reserve met – now it’s your chance!
• L’Internet Commerce Association (ICA) s’implante en Europe
• Les noms de domaine auto.fr et voitures.fr vendus pour un total de 150 000 EUR sur Sedo
• Enchères Premium Sedo / Juin 2008 : les résultats
• Vous prendrez bien un domain hack ?