Upon building this portfolio came wonderful remarks from people who were amazed that I owned KEN.ph. Along side compliments came questions.

So how did I manage owning this? You can do the same by simply buying a domain from the official DotPH registrar. It’ll cost you $70, which is far more expensive than the .com but is already good for 2 years. You can opt to find other means to register it at a cheaper price and save a couple hundred pesos but that’s really the margin .PH domains run at the moment. When converted, that’s around P1,500 a year. Utilize that with hosting and proper web development and you’ll have one portfolio piece like this.

Some people ask why I aimed for the .PH instead of the global .COM. Well, first off, the KEN is my name, which taken in all gTLDs – the .com being utilized for a girl-related brand so it’ll be nearly impossible for me to acquire something so expensive considering the value such premium quality domains are.

Second, I aim to brand myself easily via a very short and easy-to-remember domain name such as KEN.ph, which typically describes who I am and where I am from.

Upon realizing the availability of ‘KEN’, I didn’t think twice. I’m stuck with a name that is so common if you search anywhere you’ll end up in millions of results. I want identity and owning the .PH, which nobody else can own, will definitely put me on a spotlight somehow. It’s a good branding strategy to get something generic and easy to remember but unique – characteristics that this domain possesses… Plus really, there are no other decent domain names on the .com for me.

SEO-wise, it’s still a tough task to accomplish being the #1 result when people from localized search engines search my name, but it won’t be too far now considering the first few steps have been taken.

Over dotcom choices KenDesigner (long and prone to typo for KenDesign) and KenDesignPH (kinda more confusing), I thought I needed to stand out well enough.

Remember, just because you’re on a .PH doesn’t mean people from other walks of life won’t find and be able to view you, so it’s still a global market for me. Besides, a lot of ccTLDs have done great in the global field. It’s just that I am picking a leverage of pulling myself from the crowd locally as a first step. Then from there I’d pursue excelling further.

Hopefully, and I believe time will come, I’ll look back at this post and thank myself for making the right decision. It’ll help too if you can share my portfolio so go on ahead and like, share, tweet, +1, or whatever it is that can help me achieve this goal ;)

UPDATE: As of July 28, 2011, I decided to purchase KEN.COM.PH as well. That’s to catch some traffic bleed and just so no other Ken can own it ;D