It was a trip I was very much looking forward too because I had heard so many good things about the organization and had been very impressed with the three
AC representatives I had had the opportunity to meet previously (Executive Director Patrick Carleton and board members Michael Castello and David Castello of Castello Cities Internet Network). In December 2006 I wrote a Cover Story about the Castello brothers (owners of PalmSprings.com, Nashville.com and many other premier domains) that has become one of the most popular articles we have ever published.
At the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York City last June, Michael, David and Patrick extended the invitation for me to come to San Francisco this fall to speak and meet their AC colleagues. Though it didn't start out as a story assignment, as soon as I met the organization's other leaders for the first time, I knew I had to write an article about this group and their gathering because what they are doing now may well be what many of you will be doing in the future. That is building a full scale ecommerce site and/or media property on a blue chip domain name.
Michael Castello (left) and David Castello speaking at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York - June 2007
Associated Cities was started three years ago by a group of leading .com city geo domain owners who felt everyone who owned a domain in that category could benefit by working together to share ideas and cross promoting each other's properties. Since every city is unique no member was in direct competition with another. The concept clicked and with membership essentially a no-brainer, new city .com owners are continually joining the family.
For our readers, I think the most important thing to understand about AC members is that this a different group of people, with a completely different focus than those who own large domain portfolios and monetize their assets through pay per click parking or domain sales. Most of our readers fall into the latter category but over the past couple of years many in that group - disenchanted with lower PPC revenue trends despite a huge surge in online advertising - have started exploring the development path that AC members took long ago. While developing obviously entails much more work and there are no guarantees of success, a single home run can produce more revenue than thousands of parked domains combined.
The first day at the Expo, November 15, was devoted to meetings and seminars for Associated Cities members only (the two-day public conference opened on the 16th). On the afternoon of the 15th I was at the podium to give members a preview of the talk I would give the next day and to conduct a question and answer session. To be sure my perception of their interests was accurate I asked for a show of hands to see how many in the crowd owned or was interested in owning and monetizing a large portfolio of domain names.
Very few raised their hand. Most of the attendees had concentrated their efforts on acquiring and operating a relatively small number of key
Seminar at 2007 GeoDomain Expo
properties that they were developing into full scale businesses. For them it was more about quality (especially in terms of development potential) than quantity.
It was also interesting to see that most of the large portfolio owners who were there were familiar faces to me who were attending their first GeoDomain Expo - people like Canadian partners Shaun Pilfold and Rob Montgomery, who have had success monetizing large portfolios but are now taking it to the next level and starting to build out some of their key properties. Pilfold told me "You know a lot of us who have large portfolios have been talking for years about doing something with the best domains we have. I finally got tired of talking about it and decided to start doing it. I'm learning a lot of new things from this group."
At the end of the members only day, Associated Cities Chairman Dan Pulcrano, whose SanFrancisco.com site served as the show host, treated attendees to a trolley ride through the streets of San Francisco and a tour of his company's offices. Pulcrano owns a phenomenal group of major U.S. city domains, including LosAngeles.com, Philadelphia.com, Dallas.com and others. All together he holds 20 of the 30 largest American city .com domains.
My wife and I had dinner with Pulcrano and Mauricio Mejia (who arranged the Expo's evening social events) later that night and it was a pleasure to learn about Dan's background and beliefs as well as some of the things we have in common (both of us had started our first publications before we reached high school). Pulcrano has spent almost all of his adult life as a publisher and journalist (in addition to his online properties he operates a number of popular print weeklies in California) and is devoted to building great media outlets on his city domains. It is going to be a lot of fun watching him develop one of the world's great new media networks in the years ahead.
Dan PulcranoAssociatedCities Chairman
It was also a treat to meet and listen to so many of the other giants in the geo domain space, including Skip Hoagland (Atlanta.com, MyrtleBeach.com and BuenosAires.com as well as non-geo monsters like Fishing.com and Hunting.com), Sean Miller (NewYorkCity.com), Josh Metnick (Chicago.com) and Barry Hodge (Richmond.com) as well as up and coming stars like Jessica Bookstaff (PigeonForge.com and Durango.com) and Fred Mercaldo (Scottsdale.com). There are valuable lessons to be learned from all of them and as interest in developing grows among our readers, I expect to be writing more about people like this in the months and years ahead.
If this is a direction you are interested in going, I think you could jump start your plans by attending future AC events. Since this was my first trip to the GeoDomain Expo I concentrated primarily on meeting the people involved in this space which often meant spending time chatting
Truman Hedding, VP of Internet Marketing for Boulevards New Mediaspeaking at the 2007 GeoDomain Expo
in the halls while some of the seminars were going on. However I did attend enough of the educational sessions to see the high value they offer anyone who wants to develop a business on their domain name (whether it be in the geo space or some other category). The seminars centered on development issues such as building content, attracting advertisers, the best SEO techniques and incorporating new technologies to improve your site.
The two-day public Expo got underway Friday morning (Nov. 16) with Dan Pulcrano's State of the Industry update on developments in the geo domain world and Moniker CEO Monte Cahn's preview of Saturday's first ever live geo domain auction. A trio of morning seminars followed featuring these timely topics; Building a GeoDomain from Scratch (featuring panelists Michael Castello, Jessica Bookstaff, Sean Miller and Fred Mercaldo) , Cracking the Content Code (presented by Brad Shapiro, Truman Hedding and Thomas Rask), and Advertising Sales & GeoDomain Monetization (a one-man tour de force from David Castello).
My keynote address came during the luncheon that followed and a fair amount of my time was spent confessing my envy of the geo domain owners in the room (and the reasons why I think they are in such a great position). I can't think of a better platform for building a great media property than a definitive city geo domain. I can see a not too distant future where well-
Ron Jackson speaking at the GeoDomain Expo
developed city domains will be more important and valuable than any of that city's newspapers, radio stations or TV stations. Everything the traditional outlets offer - print, audio and video - can be delivered through the domain and it can be delivered globally at a tiny fraction of the distribution cost incurred by old line media operations whose circulation is limited to a small local area. Holding the exact city name also gives the domain registrant ownership of that city's "brand" on the Internet and a never ending flow of search engine independent traffic from around the world. It's a platform that in the long run simply can't be beat.
After my talk, the Internet Commerce Association's Legal Counsel and Washington D.C. lobbyist Phil Corwin
took the stage to fill the geo domain owners in on the ICA's efforts to fend off increasing attacks on the rights of domain registrants.
The ICA began just over a year ago and after some initial growing pains appears to be gaining solid traction through new memberships now as more and more domain owners have come to realize that there is an organized effort underway in Washington and within ICANN to get laws and current UDRP procedures changed in a way that would be extremely harmful to current domain registrants. That is a separate story in itself and I will talk more about it in our November newsletter that will be going out before the end of the month.
The afternoon session Friday included five more seminars and a structured speed networking event. I spent those hours sampling the panel discussions, visiting some of the company booths in the exhibit area and talking with friends old and new. The seminar titles will give you a sense of the broad range of development issues that were addressed including Mapping Out SEO Strategies, Positioning GeoDomains for Local Search, Making the Most of Third Party Booking Engines, Incorporating New Technologies and Innovation and PPC Parking & GeoDomains.
eXtreme Networking session at the 2007 GeoDomain Expo
Brad Spirrison, President of eXtreme Networking and Midwest Business Inc., oversaw the popular speed networking event. The hour was set up to insure that each participant met 10 other people in their area of interest. This kind of session has become a staple of just about every domain conference and for many it is the highlight of the week.
The busy opening day continued well after the sun went down with the first annual Geo Awards dinner, followed by TrafficZ's official GeoDomain Expo Party at the Roe night club. I had the honor of handing out awards in five categories at the Awards dinner. PigeonForge.com won as the best resort destination site and Jessica Bookstaff accepted that award, Fred Mercaldo's Scottsdale.com was named the top small-medium sized geo site, Richmond.com was recognized for having the best local content (Barry Hodge accepted the honor), Sean Miller's NewYorkCity.com won for best overall U.S. site and BuenosAires.com for best international site (Skip Hoagland accepted for his BuenosAires.com team). The winners were chosen by their peer members from Associated Cities and no one was allowed to vote for their own site.
AC representatives I had had the opportunity to meet previously (Executive Director Patrick Carleton and board members Michael Castello and David Castello of Castello Cities Internet Network). In December 2006 I wrote a Cover Story about the Castello brothers (owners of PalmSprings.com, Nashville.com and many other premier domains) that has become one of the most popular articles we have ever published.
At the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York City last June, Michael, David and Patrick extended the invitation for me to come to San Francisco this fall to speak and meet their AC colleagues. Though it didn't start out as a story assignment, as soon as I met the organization's other leaders for the first time, I knew I had to write an article about this group and their gathering because what they are doing now may well be what many of you will be doing in the future. That is building a full scale ecommerce site and/or media property on a blue chip domain name.
Michael Castello (left) and David Castello speaking at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York - June 2007
Associated Cities was started three years ago by a group of leading .com city geo domain owners who felt everyone who owned a domain in that category could benefit by working together to share ideas and cross promoting each other's properties. Since every city is unique no member was in direct competition with another. The concept clicked and with membership essentially a no-brainer, new city .com owners are continually joining the family.
For our readers, I think the most important thing to understand about AC members is that this a different group of people, with a completely different focus than those who own large domain portfolios and monetize their assets through pay per click parking or domain sales. Most of our readers fall into the latter category but over the past couple of years many in that group - disenchanted with lower PPC revenue trends despite a huge surge in online advertising - have started exploring the development path that AC members took long ago. While developing obviously entails much more work and there are no guarantees of success, a single home run can produce more revenue than thousands of parked domains combined.
The first day at the Expo, November 15, was devoted to meetings and seminars for Associated Cities members only (the two-day public conference opened on the 16th). On the afternoon of the 15th I was at the podium to give members a preview of the talk I would give the next day and to conduct a question and answer session. To be sure my perception of their interests was accurate I asked for a show of hands to see how many in the crowd owned or was interested in owning and monetizing a large portfolio of domain names.
Very few raised their hand. Most of the attendees had concentrated their efforts on acquiring and operating a relatively small number of keySeminar at 2007 GeoDomain Expo
properties that they were developing into full scale businesses. For them it was more about quality (especially in terms of development potential) than quantity.
It was also interesting to see that most of the large portfolio owners who were there were familiar faces to me who were attending their first GeoDomain Expo - people like Canadian partners Shaun Pilfold and Rob Montgomery, who have had success monetizing large portfolios but are now taking it to the next level and starting to build out some of their key properties. Pilfold told me "You know a lot of us who have large portfolios have been talking for years about doing something with the best domains we have. I finally got tired of talking about it and decided to start doing it. I'm learning a lot of new things from this group."
At the end of the members only day, Associated Cities Chairman Dan Pulcrano, whose SanFrancisco.com site served as the show host, treated attendees to a trolley ride through the streets of San Francisco and a tour of his company's offices. Pulcrano owns a phenomenal group of major U.S. city domains, including LosAngeles.com, Philadelphia.com, Dallas.com and others. All together he holds 20 of the 30 largest American city .com domains.
My wife and I had dinner with Pulcrano and Mauricio Mejia (who arranged the Expo's evening social events) later that night and it was a pleasure to learn about Dan's background and beliefs as well as some of the things we have in common (both of us had started our first publications before we reached high school). Pulcrano has spent almost all of his adult life as a publisher and journalist (in addition to his online properties he operates a number of popular print weeklies in California) and is devoted to building great media outlets on his city domains. It is going to be a lot of fun watching him develop one of the world's great new media networks in the years ahead.
Dan PulcranoAssociatedCities Chairman
It was also a treat to meet and listen to so many of the other giants in the geo domain space, including Skip Hoagland (Atlanta.com, MyrtleBeach.com and BuenosAires.com as well as non-geo monsters like Fishing.com and Hunting.com), Sean Miller (NewYorkCity.com), Josh Metnick (Chicago.com) and Barry Hodge (Richmond.com) as well as up and coming stars like Jessica Bookstaff (PigeonForge.com and Durango.com) and Fred Mercaldo (Scottsdale.com). There are valuable lessons to be learned from all of them and as interest in developing grows among our readers, I expect to be writing more about people like this in the months and years ahead.
If this is a direction you are interested in going, I think you could jump start your plans by attending future AC events. Since this was my first trip to the GeoDomain Expo I concentrated primarily on meeting the people involved in this space which often meant spending time chatting
Truman Hedding, VP of Internet Marketing for Boulevards New Mediaspeaking at the 2007 GeoDomain Expo
in the halls while some of the seminars were going on. However I did attend enough of the educational sessions to see the high value they offer anyone who wants to develop a business on their domain name (whether it be in the geo space or some other category). The seminars centered on development issues such as building content, attracting advertisers, the best SEO techniques and incorporating new technologies to improve your site.
The two-day public Expo got underway Friday morning (Nov. 16) with Dan Pulcrano's State of the Industry update on developments in the geo domain world and Moniker CEO Monte Cahn's preview of Saturday's first ever live geo domain auction. A trio of morning seminars followed featuring these timely topics; Building a GeoDomain from Scratch (featuring panelists Michael Castello, Jessica Bookstaff, Sean Miller and Fred Mercaldo) , Cracking the Content Code (presented by Brad Shapiro, Truman Hedding and Thomas Rask), and Advertising Sales & GeoDomain Monetization (a one-man tour de force from David Castello).
My keynote address came during the luncheon that followed and a fair amount of my time was spent confessing my envy of the geo domain owners in the room (and the reasons why I think they are in such a great position). I can't think of a better platform for building a great media property than a definitive city geo domain. I can see a not too distant future where well-
Ron Jackson speaking at the GeoDomain Expo
developed city domains will be more important and valuable than any of that city's newspapers, radio stations or TV stations. Everything the traditional outlets offer - print, audio and video - can be delivered through the domain and it can be delivered globally at a tiny fraction of the distribution cost incurred by old line media operations whose circulation is limited to a small local area. Holding the exact city name also gives the domain registrant ownership of that city's "brand" on the Internet and a never ending flow of search engine independent traffic from around the world. It's a platform that in the long run simply can't be beat.
After my talk, the Internet Commerce Association's Legal Counsel and Washington D.C. lobbyist Phil Corwin
took the stage to fill the geo domain owners in on the ICA's efforts to fend off increasing attacks on the rights of domain registrants.
The ICA began just over a year ago and after some initial growing pains appears to be gaining solid traction through new memberships now as more and more domain owners have come to realize that there is an organized effort underway in Washington and within ICANN to get laws and current UDRP procedures changed in a way that would be extremely harmful to current domain registrants. That is a separate story in itself and I will talk more about it in our November newsletter that will be going out before the end of the month.
The afternoon session Friday included five more seminars and a structured speed networking event. I spent those hours sampling the panel discussions, visiting some of the company booths in the exhibit area and talking with friends old and new. The seminar titles will give you a sense of the broad range of development issues that were addressed including Mapping Out SEO Strategies, Positioning GeoDomains for Local Search, Making the Most of Third Party Booking Engines, Incorporating New Technologies and Innovation and PPC Parking & GeoDomains.
eXtreme Networking session at the 2007 GeoDomain Expo
Brad Spirrison, President of eXtreme Networking and Midwest Business Inc., oversaw the popular speed networking event. The hour was set up to insure that each participant met 10 other people in their area of interest. This kind of session has become a staple of just about every domain conference and for many it is the highlight of the week.
The busy opening day continued well after the sun went down with the first annual Geo Awards dinner, followed by TrafficZ's official GeoDomain Expo Party at the Roe night club. I had the honor of handing out awards in five categories at the Awards dinner. PigeonForge.com won as the best resort destination site and Jessica Bookstaff accepted that award, Fred Mercaldo's Scottsdale.com was named the top small-medium sized geo site, Richmond.com was recognized for having the best local content (Barry Hodge accepted the honor), Sean Miller's NewYorkCity.com won for best overall U.S. site and BuenosAires.com for best international site (Skip Hoagland accepted for his BuenosAires.com team). The winners were chosen by their peer members from Associated Cities and no one was allowed to vote for their own site.
By DN Journal.
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