With the new top-level domain (gTLD) application process down to the last two months, here are three last minute tips on how to submit a successful gTLD application to ICANN:

1. Show your work
2. Don’t go negative
3. Make your application stand alone

Show your work. Sometimes the most obvious information is also the most important. In ICANN’s supplemental notes under the “Best Practices” section, the first best practice ends with the parenthetical statement (i.e., show your work). For an applicant, these may be the three most important words in all the ICANN guidance.

Your written application and attachments are the only means to communicate with the panel evaluators reviewing your application. And any individual panel evaluator may review 10 to 50 applications. Remember back in algebra when your teacher made you write your math calculations on each side of the equation? It is the same idea here. Make it easy on the evaluator to understand your rationale.

Not sure if your Continuing Operations Instrument (COI) calculation is “correct” because you are choosing between straight-line, stepped-level or tax-table method of COI guidance table interpretation?

Are all of your calculations hidden away in a mass of spreadsheet attachments to each financial answer?

Put key tables or equations in-line with your answers so that the evaluators can easily understand your calculations. That will help simplify their review of your gTLD application. If your answer is “not applicable,” explain why or why it is zero. Show your work.

Don’t go negative. It is not only a political campaign strategy. It is also a worst-case scenario principle.

When you evaluate your worst-case scenario, make sure that your cash balances never go negative during any month of the three years of operation. That would be a bright red flag to the financial evaluators that you have not resourced your string adequately. Worst-case scenarios should include significant cash inflow reductions coupled with reasoned cash outflow reactions.

The key characteristic to be demonstrated is sustainability of the registry. If the cash balance goes negative, it’s game over. Increase your initial cash funding to cover the shortfall or take more drastic action to cut costs. Don’t go negative.

Make your application stand-alone. Let’s say that you are applying for three top- level domains and have a parent company that is allocating cost down to the three applications. Each application absorbs one-third of the parent cost and all things are good. Right? Wrong. You have now just made the cost structure of your application dependent upon the approval of another application. What if only one of your applications passes initial evaluation? Does that mean that ICANN should burden each application with 100% of the parent cost structure as a worst-case scenario?

How you organize your parent business is important. But how you determine the method to allocate those costs to multiple applications is more important. First, start with the unique elements of each individual registry and develop the cost rationale for independently running each string. Then find comparative cost structures in the industry and provide your evaluators a clear rationale for your estimates.

The total cost of your individual applications will likely add up to more than your planned parent company allocated, but now each application stands alone in its cost structure. This also provides a more conservative cost estimate for the application. Make your application stand-alone.

These are basic tips but ones that can help make your application more reader friendly to the panel evaluators. Submitting an application by April 12 is only the first stage of a long race. But only those who pass initial or extended evaluation have the opportunity to go on to the next stage. To increase your odds of participating in the next state, the old adage still rings true: “put yourself in someone else’s shoes,” in this case of course, the shoes are those of the panel evaluators. Remember to show your work, don’t go negative and make your application stand-alone.