Domain Name News

2008 Domain Roundtable Wrap Up: Networking Opportunities in Stunning San Francisco Setting Helped This Show Rise Above Auction Woes

2008-05-10T10:35:00.000-07:00

After spending the first three years of its life in the Seattle area, where its parent company Name Intelligence, Inc. is based, the Domain Roundtable conference pulled up stakes and hit the road for 2008. Show organizers proved they could travel in style, settling into the elegant Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco for their April 18-21 run.

The show was sandwiched in between two other major conferences in the City by the Bay, AdTech just before and Web 2.0 immediately after Roundtable. The domain conference pulled some people from each but that gain was offset by the dates conflicting with the Passover holiday that kept some domainers of the Jewish faith at home or resulted in them leaving early for seders (traditional dinners) Saturday night. The net result was an attendance figure that was about the same as 2007 with a little over 200 registrants and DRT again drew a top notch group of attendees. The event got underway with a welcoming cocktail party Friday night (April 18) that gave everyone a chance to mingle and take note of who was on hand. This was the third major domain conference in four months so some of the regular show goers probably felt like they’ve been seeing more of their domain friends and colleagues than their own families lately. I don’t think you will find anyone complaining about the frequent opportunities to get together though – it’s rare to leave any major conference without feeling much richer for having been there. Roundtable also drew a healthy sprinkling of new speakers and registrants that kept things fresh.

Show director Susan Prosser and Name Intelligence CEO Jay Westerdal deserve special credit for programming a very informative and enjoyable series of seminars and keynote sessions. A Roundtable staple, the CEO Roundtable, kicked things off Saturday morning (April 19) with moderator Derek Newman welcoming Ofer Ronin (Sendori.com), Jeremiah Johnston (Sedo.com), Donny Simonton (Parked.com), Ed Russell (NameDrive.com), Bill Mushkin (Name.com), Dan Warner (Fabulous.com), Freddy Schiwek (EuroDNS.com) and Ammar Kubba (TrafficZ.com) to the dais.By now you have probably heard the rumors that TrafficZ's parent company, Thought Convergence, is buying Roundtable parent Name Intelligence, Inc. I was given some inside information about this rumored deal while in San Francisco, but those comments were made off the record so I’m not at liberty to elaborate on it at this time. As of this writing neither side has publicly confirmed or denied a sale agreement has been reached but you can expect to hear some news about this soon. There were interesting comments on a wide variety of topics during the CEO session (for the record, some of the participants fill CEO positions while others serve in other high ranking executive roles). Fabulous.com’s COO Warner talked about ways to create value at a time when PPC revenues are falling and the general economy is in a widespread funk.
Using Glasgow.com owner Tommy Butler as an example, Warner said Butler had accumulated every other Glasgow related name he could get his hands on so he has pretty well cornered the Internet market on all things related to Glasgow. “Do you want to own the Internet?,” Warner asked? “You can’t own all of it but you can own a slice of it if you know how to go out there and create something that is rare and valuable”

Many of the following seminars would go into specifics on how to do just that. Of course developing is hard word and for those who do not have the stamina or temperament to take it on alone, it is good to know that there are alternatives to domain parking out there now. Several of those were discussed in the next session Emerging Trends, Emerging Companies that featured Ofer Ronin (Sendori), Gary Kamikawa (Mpire), Geoff Nuval (EVO Landing) and Scott Fasser (Domain Strategies). Michael Gilmour (Whizzbang’s Blog and ParkLogic.com) served as the moderator. Each of the companies represented is taking a different approach toward domain monetization and/or development. For example in Sendori’s system, your traffic can be sent to a specific advertiser when that advertiser will pay more for your visitors than can be earned from a traditional PPC page. That eliminates some parking headaches such as the necessity to optimize keywords or text on each landing page. Since the wide scope of this article goes not allow us space to go into details on the various offerings out there, I would encourage you to explore the sites of each panel participant to see what they offer (each company name is hot linked in the previous paragraph to make that easy for you).

Michael Gilmour stayed on the platform to moderate the next session Parking Analyzed that featured an all-star five man panel. Ammar Kubba, Donny Simonton and Dan Warner all returned and were joined by Ed Russell (NameDrive.com) and Don Ham, (Reinvent and HitFarm.com).
Gilmour is probably the top blogger on the subject of parking and since he led this discussion I think the best way to give you a sense of what was covered in this session is to direct you to what Michael wrote about it on his blog right after the conference ended. Gilmour also had an interesting follow-up post a few days later on the topic of “fear” in the marketplace that Ed Russell brought up during this session when he said that some people were panicking prematurely. Kubba noted that with PPC revenue down industry wide, the top companies were working on diversifying revenue streams through lead generation, leasing and other methods.One of the newest innovations in the parking space was unveiled at the luncheon that followed. It was sponsored by NameMedia and their Senior VP Brian Carr used the occasion to
introduce SmartNameShops, a new product for clients of their high end PPC service, SmartName.com.
This platform merges ecommerce shopping functions with the traditional parking page, opening up an entirely new revenue stream for domains that are accepted into the program. You can see examples of SmartName Shops at ToyCatalog.com and NotebookPC.com.

This is a very interesting advance in the space and others will no doubt scramble to match it or roll out new twists of their own. One thing you have to love about this business is no one is ever standing still. With recent declines in PPC revenue anything that holds the promise of squeezing new revenue out of direct navigation traffic will be warmly welcomed.

After lunch, I strolled through the exhibition hall to visit the various sponsor's booths. Fabulous.com used some cool props to drew attention to their company and the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Down Under conference they will be staging on Australia's Gold Coast in November 2008.The afternoon session got underway with Google’s Matt Cutts providing one of the true show highlights as he took the microphone for a 90-minute question and answer session that gave attendees some invaluable insight into how Google ranks sites and what site owners can do to gain better placement in the dominant search engine (hint – unique and frequently updated content is a solid #1, followed by incoming links from reputable sites). Cutts is a very personable and engaging speaker and no one knows the subject matter better than him.
I’m sure legendary domainer Scott Day was impressed when he asked Cutts to analyze a diamond retail affiliate site he operates. Day thought he had everything optimized the way it should be but still wasn’t getting as good a ranking as he expected. Cutts brought up the site and within seconds spotted several small things that could be changed to boost the site’s ranking.

Cutts suggested that people visit Google’s Webmaster Central page that has links to a number of great tools and guidelines that will help you get the most out of your site. After his session I heard several people comment that just hearing Cutts was worth what they paid to attend the entire week. Matt’s appearance was the perfect lead-in to the next seminar – SEO Experts & Best Practices, a panel that included Vanessa Fox (Ignition Partners), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), Dave Bascom (SEO.com), John Tompkins (Trellian) and webmaster/SEO expert John Andrews delved deeper the subject of Search Engine Optimization. Among the many pieces of solid advice dispensed by this panel was that you find a niche that doesn’t have too much competition. Rather than go head to head with major companies with much deeper pockets than you have, look for a category you are passionate about where you can become the expert in your field. That panel closed Saturday’s seminar session and gave way to the first of two major evening events – the annual Name Intelligence Awards Dinner. Winners were chosen in ten categories through open balloting on the Roundtable website and among the thousands of DomainTools members (or where applicable, winners were based on industry statistics, such at the registrar net gain award). The winners were:

Registrar with the Largest Net Gain - GoDaddy

Best Registrar for Resellers - Enom

Outstanding Drop Catcher - NameJet

Outstanding Secondary Market - Sedo

Best Registrar - Moniker

Best Parking Company (tie): Sedo and Parked.com

Best Aftermarket - Afternic

Best Forum - DNForum.com

Best Industry Coverage - DNJournal.com
Best Blog Community (3-way tie): SevenMile.com (Frank Schilling), Elliot's Blog (Elliot Silver) and Domain Name News (Adam Strong and FrankMichlick).

After the Awards dinner everyone boarded buses for Club 443 where TrafficZ hosted a fundraising casino night party “Gamble for Good” to benefit Grassroots.org. Attendees donated money for chips and at the end of the night those with the highest winnings were given an array of prizes provided by sponsors. The photos below will give you a glimpse into a very entertaining evening that brought down the curtain on the Saturday schedule at Roundtable.

Dn Journal.

The Domain Giant You Didn’t Know: Rob Grant's Roundabout Route to Real Estate Riches (Online and Off!)

2008-04-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

There are certain names that everyone in this industry knows, names that newcomers normally encounter within hours of entering the domain business. Names like Rick Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Frank Schilling, the Castello Brothers and others from a small band of pioneers who have reached the top of a mountain that thousands of others continue to climb. Most in that group became wealthy because they were visionaries who foresaw how valuable domain names would become long before they appeared on anyone else’s radar.
Rob Grant may not be as widely known as some of his pioneering peers, but few in the industry can match the foresight, financial commitment and unwavering faith in the future of domains that Grant has shown over the past 12 years. During that time the personable real estate broker from upstate New York assembled the world’s best collection of real estate related domain names (as well as some gems in other categories). With the explosion in domain values in recent years Grant has been well rewarded for his prescience. So much so that he has begun giving back through a series of generous domain donations (totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars) to grateful educational institutions in the U.S., including his alma mater, Arizona’s Prescott College.

There were times in Grant’s life when the kind of philanthropy he practices today would have seemed like the wildest kind of pipe dream. He had walked away from a dream job on Madison Avenue so he could move to New York’s Adirondack Mountains, even though there was no job waiting for him there. After the move, the company he started wound up folding but like all great entrepreneurs, Grant bounced back and bounced back big.

Some of that resiliency may have come from growing up with two rambunctious brothers. The three boys were born in a five year span starting in 1953 when Rob was the first to arrive. The family lived in Evanston, Illinois (suburban Chicago) at the time but soon moved to Memphis then on to Providence, Rhode Island as Rob’s dad climbed the corporate ladder, becoming a VP at one of the first business conglomerates, Textron. Most of Grant’s formative years were spent living near Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay where he developed a love of sailing (a love that played a big role in his first successful business that we will be talking about shortly). He would sometimes take off for days at a time, exploring the Atlantic Coast in a 25-foot sloop. Grant also developed an appreciation for nature and love of the outdoors during this time and that love would be a critical factor in the decision I mentioned earlier to walk away from a promising advertising career in New York City.

Though he had an idyllic life in New England, Grant said he had grown a bit tired of “East Coast culture” finding it a little too pretentious for his tastes. When the time came to go off to college he zeroed in on a school on the other side of the continent. “I really wanted a change and I had never been out west so it had this romantic appeal to me. Prescott was also an experimental college that offered a brand new concept that allowed students to design their own courses and majors. It was something that really clicked with me – a chance to get out in the great wide open and explore the world in this unstructured academic environment,” Grant said.

“Prescott also attracted a lot of rebellious, independent thinkers and it was a very exciting mix. We all knew we were part of something new and I just found it to be exhilarating,” Grant added.
That freedom to be as creative as he wanted to be would serve Grant well when he graduated and went out on his own.

With his degree in hand, Grant headed backed to Rhode Island and opened his own business – in fact two of them. One was a boat building company called Breton that manufactured 16-foot daysailers. The other was a restaurant in historic Newport, a joint venture with some friends. Breton leased and managed fleets of sailboats for local resorts that would in turn make them available for guests to rent. While in that business an interesting twist of fate would send Grant off in an entirely new direction. In 1977 the America’s Cup yacht race would be coming to Newport and Grant knew the whole world would be watching – especially since the Cup would be defended by the Mouth of the South, media mogul Ted Turner (who would wind up winning as the skipper of Courageous). Grant got the idea to use the sails on his fleet of boats as huge billboards that would be impossible to miss when the TV cameras from around the world were trained on the local waters where the famous racing series would be staged.

“The concept was something that no one else had tried at the time,” Grant said. “I pitched the idea and was able land King William Scotch as our sponsor." Grant hired a handful of craftsmen to hand sew the giant highly detailed logos on the sails of more than a dozen boats.” The whole idea was kept as quiet as possible because Grant knew if the stodgy America’s Cup committee got wind of it, they would be horrified and do anything they could to keep Grant’s boats out of camera range. “The day of the race we towed the boats out to the entrance of Newport Harbor. Moments later hundreds of press boats from around the world headed our way and up went our King William Scotch sails! It was a gorgeous day and the sails were just beautiful as we cruised in formation right through the press fleet. You could literally hear the motor drives on their cameras whirring away because they had never seen anything like this at the America’s Cup before,” Grant recalled fondly. “Instantaneously we wound up in about 150 publications worldwide including Newsweek who ran a big story on this.”

The scotch company was understandably delighted with the worldwide exposure they got for around $40,000 and that successful gambit opened the door for Grant to start an entirely new company called Creative Sail. “You never know where something is going to lead,” Grant said. “You start with one idea and it morphs very quickly into another. The whole point of this is that you have to remain very opportunistic and very unstructured in your thinking. I think that is the hallmark of anyone who is successful - they are very good at turning on a dime when necessary and that is what I have tried to do throughout my career.”

In fact soon after this success with sailboat advertising, Grant decided to turn on a dime again and head for New York City to see if he could parlay his marketing skills into a career on Madison Avenue. He set up shop in what he called an incredibly seedy hotel on the West Side where he hooked up with aspiring art directors that helped him produce a portfolio of storyboards to take around to the different agencies to see if one would like what they saw and give him a chance.

“It was a very grueling process but finally someone at Grey Advertising sent my portfolio up to their new Creative Director Billy Giles (a major figure on Madison Avenue at the time) who thought Grant had real potential. He called Rob into his office and after a short interview asked him is he could start the next day. “I was stunned. I had been looking for so long I didn’t really expect to hear anyone say yes,” Grant said. But Giles did and Rob’s foot was in the door.

Even though he started out with a desk in the hallway with the secretaries, Grant was ecstatic just to be there, especially since Grey was one of the world’s top ad agencies. His first big break came when he was on one of several creative teams that were given an assignment to come up with a slogan for the Playtex company describing a new bra that broke new ground in terms of comfort for the women who wore them.

Grant, intent on making a name for himself, stayed up until the wee hours almost every night trying to come up with something. Grey told the writers to concentrate on the word “fit” (just as domainers would concentrate on keywords when they came on the scene some 15 years after this). Among the words and phrases Grant scribbled was TGIF but his translation for the famous acronym was “Thank Goodness it Fits”. “I looked at it and said That’s It! I knew it was going to be huge,” Grant said. When he showed it to the Creative Director the next morning a big smile crossed his bosses’ face. Playtex loved it too and Grant’s idea appeared in all of their ads. The campaign was very successful and Grant was soon ushered into his own office as a reward. He was soon working on other major accounts including Proctor & Gamble, Northwest Orient and STP (which resulted in Grant working directly with legendary NASCAR driver Richard Petty who was the company’s spokesman). Grant went on to win several major advertising awards including The President's Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in 1982 for the Northwest Airlines campaign and a variety of awards for television including one for an Izod Lacoste campaign.

In addition to his status as a highly respected copywriter, Grey brought Grant something even better. He met a bright young account executive there named Pat and they soon fell in love and were married. However Grant found there was also a downside to his occupation. Advertisers doled out multi-million dollar accounts

based on how well they liked the ideas coming out of the different agencies. Landing one big account could make or break a company. “It was a very intense period. I literally worked day and night,” Grant recalled.

After six years in a very high pressure job burn out started to set in just as Rob and Pat had their first child, Elizabeth (Caroline and Charlie followed over the next few years to round out the family). With a family to think about now, they decided to pull up stakes and make a radical change in their lifestyle by moving upstate to the mountains. All of their friends thought they were crazy and warned them that if they walked away from their jobs they would never be able to come back. Grant said, “even so I looked at my life and thought if I stayed in Manhattan and raised a family it would be enormously expensive and we would have to live in an apartment out in the suburbs. It just turned my stomach to think that I could spend the rest of my life going back and forth to the city on a commuter train.”

“I also thought here I am, expending all of this creative energy to make money for other companies – why can’t I do this for myself? I had this tremendous urge to channel all of this energy into something that would be mine. So we made the move and headed for the Adirondacks. We rented a house up there but didn’t have a clue what we were going to do! It was a very scary time,” Grant said.

He finally decided to start an Adirondack furniture company in Saranac Lake (Adirondack furniture is a popular style of casual outdoor camp furniture that originated in that region). “The idea was to take something that had always been a cottage industry and market it on a national scale,” Grant said. The furniture company started hiring local craftsman and their high quality hand made pieces were soon in high demand. In fact a big Christmas order from Saks Fifth Avenue resulted in Grant personally filling up a U-Haul trailer to take a load of his furniture back to New York City where the pieces were displayed in Saks’ windows. Grant targeted the design trade and gained strong acceptance in the high end market. The problem was he couldn’t find enough qualified reliable craftsman to produce enough pieces to meet the demand. If it was deer season most of his workers simply disappeared! Eventually he came to grips with the fact that this was a cottage industry that wasn’t scaleable and decided it was once again time to try something new.

Grant had actually already taken the first steps on another path while the furniture company was still going. “I was beginning to buy real estate because I felt there was a great opportunity in these mountain resorts where I thought property was grossly undervalued. I began to buy old commercial buildings in Saranac Lake and residential property in Lake Placid. I remember buying an old 3-story commercial building for just $20,000! I got seriously involved in rehabbing these buildings and then turning around and selling them.”

“We happened to get lucky because we hit that market just as the Adirondacks were starting to be rediscovered,” Grant said. “People were starting to come up from New York, New Jersey and Boston and I found I was able to sell the residential properties for two and three times what I paid for them. That kind of ushered in my real estate era.” Real estate was an area is which Grant really thrived. “Around 1991 I decided to start a brokerage firm,” he said. “but in 1991 we wound up entering one of the worst recessions in history, one that went on for two or three years. I remember thinking my timing could not have been worse.” Still Grant managed to hang on and slowly built a reputation during those lean years, especially when he won listings for local waterfront camps (properties that could sell for $1-$5 million). His marketing background came in handy because it allowed him to develop marketing plans for property owners that other brokers couldn’t do as well. That was the birth of today’s powerful Rob Grant & Associate Real Estate firm.

As the economy started growing again, Grant’s business boomed. At this same time, in 1995-96, Grant became aware of the Internet and domains. “That was a remarkable awakening for me because I had the Madison Avenue marketing background and I had the real estate background and suddenly these two powerful thing merged. I looked at a domain and thought My God, not only is this a brand as the Internet develops, but it is also has all of the properties of real estate,” Grant said. A web designer working on a site for him told Grant he should register his company name RobGrantRealEstate.com but (even though he did take that domain) he had bigger ideas from the start. “Nobody here cared about Rob Grant – what they cared about was Adirondacks Real Estate and I felt that is what they would look for.” When he looked to see who had AdirondackRealEstate.com he was surprised that it was available for registration. He quickly took it then, convinced that he was onto something big, went on to take thousands of other .com domains starting with a city, state or country name and ending with “real estate.”

At that time Network Solutions had a monopoly on domain registrations so it cost about 10 times what it costs to register a domain today. So, Grant laid out a huge amount of capital on a theory that most thought would never pan out. Also keep in mind that back then there was no PPC, no Yahoo and no Google, so the domains had only one apparent value – their generic brand value. Grant said, “my hunch was that as the Internet grew and developed these intuitive brands would take on more value as property and assets.” That was the beginning of Grant’s remarkably deep Real Estate Directory at RealEstateDirectory.com. Grant soon started taking his idea global, sweeping up key real estate domains outside the U.S. “That was really an exciting time because no one had thought to go international,” he said. “There was very little resistance, unlike today when there is so much competition.” Though Grant was focused on real estate he realized that this same phenomenon would happen in many other industries. “If you could own a keyword term for a particular industry that was a very significant asset so I picked up some in other categories too, like TropicalFish.com, CaribbeanResorts.com, LiteraryAgents.com, BookPublishers.com and MusicPublishers.com”

On the downside, the more domains Grant piled up the scarier it got because of the extremely high annual registration and renewal fees at that time. “It was brutal,” Grant said, “because you had these high carrying costs but absolutely no revenue. You really had to believe. I feel it was the true test of whether or not someone has vision. I sat for years paying these registration fees and not earning a nickel and wondering if I was out of my mind.” Grant, who piled up over 8,500 domains (many are featured at WebMediaProperties.com), added something that a lot of guys (including me) can also identify with - “my wife also wondered if I was out of my mind!” Grant not only held on when the .com bubble burst in 2000 (reinforcing critic’s views that domain investors were nuts) he used that as an opportunity to buy up more high quality assets as others panicked and sold out cheap. “They had decided they had made a bad move, that they had been in it long enough and they had made a bad investment and they were getting out. I remember buying good domains for a dime on the dollar,” Grant recalled.

“I can’t tell you how many times people told me to get out. That the domain thing was over – especially the techie guys. They never got it. They didn’t have the marketing background and I know they kick themselves to this day for not understanding the true value of these names,” Grant said. “I’ve seen so many peaks and valleys since 1996 and in each valley there was a washout as people get scared or got discouraged and got out. Then a new generation would come in with a new sense of conviction.”

Grant’s belief in real estate domains has never wavered and today there are now multiple ways to monetize those domains. He has some leased out through LeaseThis.com and there is always PPC, but he said the best returns can be realized through lead generation. For example he has HawaiiRealEstate.com, representing a state where the average home sale is $750,000. A single lead to a licensed broker in Hawaii can be worth up to $45,000.

Grant did better than that with a listing on his CatskillsRealEstate.com site several years back. Though his company was several hours north of the Catskills, he won a listing for a very large multi-million dollar estate and marketed it through his Catskills domain. He ended up selling the property in house with no help from any Hudson Valley or Catskills area realtors, giving him the full commission – approximately $150,000. “This showed me that with the Internet you could reach out beyond your traditional territory – you were no longer restricted by conventional boundaries which might extend maybe 50-70 miles from where your agency was,” Grant said. “It was a great case study for me.”

With his business thriving and interest in the Adirondacks reaching a new high, Grant started looking for ways to give back to a cause he believed in. A few years ago he settled on higher education, especially small schools like his Prescott College alma mater. Again drawing on his marketing background and the power of domains he felt he could help quality schools that were struggling compete more effectively with better endowed institutions that were chasing the same pool of students.

“By giving them intuitive domains we felt we could help them increase their admissions and also increase their brand exposure, “ Grant said. “We started with Paul Smith’s College in our neck of the woods in the Adirondacks. They had a very enlightened president who was receptive to the idea so we were able to work with them to build a network of domains that effectively drove traffic to the college’s website. All they needed was one applicant enrolling from the program for four years to gain $120,000 in tuition. We started by giving them $10,000-$15,000 worth of domains and they were very excited with the results so we went on and gave increasingly larger gifts to other colleges.”

The donated domains are appraised by Moniker.com and though many appraisal companies tend to come in on the high side (to ensure happy customers who will come back and order more appraisals) the long list of appraisals I saw for names Grant's donated were on the very conservative side. This is probably why Moniker’s domain appraisals are recognized and accepted by the IRS.

Grant made a portfolio gift valued at $60,000 to Prescott College that included Conservationism.com, FinancialGrant.com, LiberalArtsDegrees.com, MastersDegreePrograms.com and many others. He followed that up with another portfolio of 107 domains valued at over $99,000. A portfolio valued at over $237,000 went to his daughter Caroline’s present school, St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. In 2006, a portfolio of 225 domains valued at more than $371,000 was given to the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. Paul Smith’s College also got new gifts totaling over $84,000.

The schools have been thrilled with the donations. Grant has also consulted closely with school officials on how to best use the domains. While there is a lot of value in redirecting keyword domains to the the individual school’s websites, some are moving beyond that. St. Scholastica is setting up a committee to work on building out some of the marquee domains given to them. Both faculty and students will be involved in those projects. Grant is now expanding his program beyond colleges to other community organizations and non-profit groups. He also provides hosting services and website marketing advice to many groups in his area. More details are available at Grant’s Adirondacks.com website.

Adirondacks.com is one of about 1,500 developed websites that Grant operates. It includes a busy travel section and Grant is now applying the same formula to travel guides in Florida and Vermont. Though domain development has just become a front burner issue over the past year as PPC revenues have fallen Grant has been developing properties for ten years now. “It takes a lot of hard work, you’ve got to have the right content, you have to continually refresh that content and you have to have a sales team that goes out and gets the advertisers,” he said.

Development is just one of many ways Grant has financially diversified in recent years to protect himself from shocks in any one category. “In addition to our real estate brokerage, we operate a self storage business, we have a big vacation rental business, I operate a 23,000 square foot office building, so we have both commercial tenants and residential tenants. One of the lessons I learned early on was that it is very important to be as diversified as you can be. You can’t rely on any one business model because if you do you will be taken out. I’ve seen it time and time again and I’ve had it happen to me. So anytime I see an opportunity to create a business, or even just another revenue stream, I do it.”

Grant has been around long enough to see just about every conceivable up and down in the business cycle. With the general economy now going through a major down cycle, I asked him what he thought about the domain industry’s prospects over the next year or two. “I think we’re going to go through a very intense period and I think we are going to go through another shakeout. We have seen these rough patches historically in the domain space and I think
right now we are faced with multiple threats. There is going to be more and more dangerous legislation created that could take our domains away and I commend the Internet Commerce Association for everything they are doing to combat that and everyone needs to understand how important it is to support the ICA” Grant said. Grant added, “The National Association of Realtors (NAR) understood decades ago how important it was to have an organization that could lobby on Capitol Hill and the NAR is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the world. What we have seen in the real estate industry is wave after wave of potentially damaging legislation and it has always been the NAR and their lobbyists who have protected this industry. They can do it because they are so well funded and so well organized and because the individual members all understand the importance of having that kind of representation. The domain industry, as young and as small as it is, needs to very quickly understand that if they don’t have this same kind of representation, they will not last. They will not be an industry, they will be a footnote in the history of the Internet.”

Despite the hurdles ahead Grant remains bullish about the long run, predicting that current monetization methods will be supplemented by new models. “I think we are going to see pay per call, pay per action, much more sophisticated lead gen. Ultimately the best domains will rise to the top and those will be the big powerful generic domains. Many of those will move from being a $200,000-$1 million asset to being a full blown company that’s worth $30 million-$50 million and I think that’s where we’re going to go next.” “I think a lot of today’s PPC companies like TrafficZ will morph into development partners because they already have the client base and they’ve already established the loyalties so I think you’re going to see these companies approach portfolio owners with development proposals. The owners will merge their domains with the technology and the expertise of these parking companies," Grant predicted. Sound unlikely to you? Visionaries don't always have 20/20 vision, but with Grant's track record I don't think I would discount anything he has to say about the future.

Domain Roundtable Set to Reconvene April 18-21 with New Faces and a New Location

2008-04-12T18:04:00.001-07:00

ABy Ron Jackson. After three successful conferences in their Seattle area backyard, Name Intelligence Inc. is taking their show on the road. The upcoming 2008 Domain Roundtable conference will be held at the elegant Palace Hotel in San Francisco April 18-21.

In addition to a change of scenery Roundtable gets a new show Director this year in Susan Prosser, a longtime colleague and friend of Name Intelligence CEO and co-founder Jay Westerdal. I connected with Susan to get the inside story on what Roundtable attendees can expect in San Francisco. DN Journal: Susan, let’s start by having you introduce yourself to our readers and to those coming to San Francisco for Roundtable who will soon be meeting you in person.Susan Prosser: My work history, so to speak, has always been in production and operations - managing data center operations, migrations, production and administration – in technology and other fields. Specifically, I met the Name Intelligence founders in 1997 when we worked together at LightRealm/VServers (Interland), now known as Website Pros.
I have primarily been in technology since the mid 90’s starting at Worlds as the technical division for a non-profit, Starbright. There, I managed the national network production and technical roll-out of facilities and events. In 1997, Worlds “downsized” and I took the Starbright project to LightRealm/VServers where I met Ray Bero and Jay Westerdal and worked with them until I closed down the Seattle datacenter for Interland. We remained good friends and I was intrigued by the opportunities to join a small technical company again. I presently am a Director at Name Inteligence and am managing the production of Domain Roundtable plus other projects when time allows. Prior Executive Producers of DRT have left some big shoes to fill. It is a fun and interesting challenge to follow Jothan Frakes and Stephen Douglas in this.

DN Journal: This is the fourth edition of Domain Roundtable and for the first time the show will be held outside of the Seattle area. What was behind the decision to move this year’s show to San Francisco and how do you think the change in location will improve the event?

Susan Prosser: The desire to change host cities was because all previous DRT were held in Seattle. The choice of San Francisco was based on two major items. One, as everyone knows, it is a tech savvy area. The other is the timing. Two extremely popular and well attended conferences surround DRT; AdTech and Web2.0. In considering the very busy conference calendar, these two items solidified the San Francisco location and timing.

DN Journal: Let’s talk about the show agenda. Two major attractions will be keynote speaker Gary Kremen who sold Sex.com in what is believed to be the largest sale of a single domain name in history and a Q&A session featuring Google’s Matt Cutts. What do you think attendees will get out of hearing Gary and Matt speak?

Susan Prosser: They are very different angles of the same industry. Mr. Kremen has such a tremendous story that many have likely read (Editor's Note: Kremen was the subject of DN Journal's March 2006 Cover Story). But, to actually hear it from him you capture the essence of the emotional challenges faced when trying to win back a domain name in an arena that still to this day is faces challenges of “ownership rights.” That is the low part. Opposing that part of his life is the overwhelming success of owning a great domain name and knowing how to market it with Match.com.

Mr. Cutts, on the other hand, will be able to offer interesting insight and guidance to how Google works. Information that can benefit others in their ability to make their property more valuable. It is a terrific opportunity to ask a Google-insider questions on how to improve their site. Send questions to: mattcutts [at] domainroundtable.com. DN Journal: Last year’s show utilized a dual track format. Will you be doing that again and what do you see as some of the highlights on the seminar schedule?

Susan Prosser: This year we have chosen to go back to a single track format to offer opportunity to attend all seminars rather than choosing sessions. Previous DRT’s have had single track and multiple track. Each has its’ advantages and disadvantages. Feedback helped make our decision to return to a single track format. The days are filled, that is for sure.

A few topics have been combined to be able to offer a wider range. Aside from the CEO Roundtable, Gary Kremen keynote and the Matt Cutts Q&A sessions, another is the session highlighting a few new companies becoming familiar in this space – Domain Strategies, EVOLanding and Mpire plus more to follow. DomainTools will be offering a Tips & Tricks session on tools that can benefit users in managing their portfolio. During one lunch, NameMedia will be presenting their latest updates. There is a panel presented by SEO experts that will guarantee to be interesting and educational. GoDaddy will be hosting a lunch to discuss the arrival of dotME. Plus, a favorite for many is a legal panel discussing the current Snowe Bill issue amongst other challenges the industry faces.

DN Journal: The CEO Roundtable has always been one of my favorite parts of DRT. Do you have your line-up for that event set yet?

Susan Prosser: Yes, the CEO Roundtable is a staple in the conference agenda. It is a popular session for many and is scheduled as the first sessions to kick things off right. The line up so far is Bill Mushkin from Name.com, Donny Simonton of Parked.com, Freddy Schiwek of EuroDNS.com, Ofer Ronen from Sendori.com, Ammar Kubba of TrafficZ.com, and of course NI’s CEO, Jay Westerdal. There are a few others that I am working on adding to the panel as well.

DN Journal: With more conferences to choose from these days it is important to be able to differentiate your show from the others out there. One way that Roundtable really stood out last year was in its utilization of cutting edge technology from interactive electronic name tags to the live telecast of the auction. Will you be continuing down that path in San Francisco? Also, are there other new wrinkles that distinguish Roundtable from other conferences that you can tell us about in advance?Susan Prosser: Wrinkles is an interesting term. Name Intelligence does like to introduce new items into the conference space, as you mention with the nTags last year. As the initiators of the simultaneous live and on-line domain auctions, will are definitely continuing that with some improvements. We will continue to try to raise the bar of conferences in utilizing latest technologies. For instance, we know that many companies find gobo lights expensive to produce and banners can quickly be dated. In replacement, we are offering digital ads that will be rotating on screens throughout the conference, could be considered a commercial. This is similar to how the nTags allowed companies to broadcast a message to attendees during the conference, without the large attendee badge. Plus, these are in full color, can include animation and companies can make the “ad” specific to this event unlike banners and gobo’s. DN Journal: Let’s talk specifically about the live auction. Some of the top names were recently released from a list that will grow to about 250 domains and it looks like there are some real winners on the list that you would have to be excited about.

Susan Prosser: Yes, the reviewers are diligent in their process of analyzing names and submission reserves. Those 250 domain name lots on the final sales sheet will be great names at a well considered price. Plus, an attendee advantage, is the guarantee of one name in the auction as well. Those domains are in addition to the 250 chosen lots. It will definitely make for an exciting and interesting auction.

DN Journal: One thing that virtually everyone agrees on is that the key to a great show is the opportunity to network. Tell us about the kind of networking opportunities you have built into this year’s schedule.

Susan Prosser: Honestly, it really is about networking. One of the reasons we chose the Palace Hotel as the venue was the layout. We are able to create traffic flow throughout the sponsor exhibit area as it will be the primary entrance / exit to the session room. Between sessions is a 15 min break to stretch the legs, talk and grab a cup of coffee at the coffee cart sponsored by Namedrive.com. In addition, we have chosen to leave one night open for attendees and sponsors to do as they would like. We have received feedback from previous events regarding the schedule occupying every moment. It was challenging as it required day sessions to be utilized for what would have been an evening keynote. However, it seemed important to listen to our community. We do still have the opening night welcome cocktail, a party sponsored by TrafficZ for Grassroots.org and the ending conference party hosted by Name Intelligence.

DN Journal: Good conferences are always fun as well as educational. With your Gamble for Good event benefiting Grassroots.org it looks like you have set the stage for a fun evening that will also help a very worthy cause. How did that come about?

Susan Prosser: Name Intelligence believes in the Grassroots mission. And, after last year’s success raising almost $22,000 for the organization I believe it was, we had to carry on. Angela Siefer (Grassroots Executive Director) came up with the idea of a casino as a fundraiser which seemed like an excellent idea. Having participated in similar events myself, they are a fun way to raise money. TrafficZ stepped up again this year to be the sponsor and then we lined up the venue at Club 443.
You don’t have to know how to play any of the games since it is a fundraiser, prizes will be awarded throughout the evening and from drawings, not by your skill level. Although there will be a few people in attendance who may be able to give you a pointer or two. If you win or lose, it all goes to a worthy cause. Grassroots has been donated quite a few prizes for the evening already and more are coming in. You can get the details here. DN Journal: Finally, I am sure there are some areas that my questions did not address, so feel free to close with any comments you would like to add about DRT 2008.

Susan Prosser: The conference is truly going to be an interesting. I realize the conference “space” is a busy one, each one offering very valuable material. I am really looking forward to the variety of sessions. I like being able to introduce new companies into the space as they offer viable options to improve portfolios, which is good business for everyone. All of the sponsors have been so supportive of DRT. I am appreciative of that. I believe all attendees and sponsors will find this a worthwhile and profitable event to attend.

Born to Run: How Oversee.net Co-Founder and CEO Lawrence Ng Built a Company with $200 Million in Annual Revenue Before His 30th Birthday

2008-04-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

The wave of consolidation that has swept through the domain industry over the past couple of years has left a handful of giants at the head of the pack. Oversee.net is certainly one of those, having assembled some of the best-known brands in this space, including DomainSponsor.com, SnapNames.com and Moniker.com.

Oversee also owns approximately 600,000 domains of their own and through DomainSponsor they monetize over 2 million more for other domain owners. They also operate leading websites in the mortgage and travel fields with Low.com and LowFares.com. The company’s annual revenues topped $200 million in 2007 (up from $125 million the year before).

Building that kind of empire would take a lifetime for most businessmen, so it is hard to get your head around the fact that Oversee’s energetic Co-Founder and CEO Lawrence Ng is just 29 years old. Ng and a pal from his college days, Fred Hsu, started Oversee from scratch in 2000, just after the original .com bubble had burst and everyone else thought the game was over. Ng and Hsu refused to believe that.
Fast forward to 2007 and there was Lawrence Ng accepting Ernst & Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Technology category for Greater Los Angeles. Also last year, the Technology Council of Southern California honored Oversee with its Internet and New Media Company of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Business Journal said that Oversee was the year’s third fastest growing private company in Los Angeles in any category.
I love entrepreneurial success stories and it was becoming obvious that a great one was unfolding at Oversee. Better yet all of these good things were happening for the kind of man that people want to see succeed. I’ve watched Ng interact with hundreds of attendees at his DOMAINfest Global conferences in Hollywood, California over the past couple of years and he is always polite and unfailingly humble. Ng greets everyone as if they were guests in his own home. From the first time I met him his manner struck me as being that of someone with wisdom and maturity far beyond their years.

My guess was that Ng had been an “early bloomer” so when I began delving into his story it didn’t surprise me to learn that indeed had been the case – especially where business is concerned. Ng was born in Hong Kong but his family moved to the United States when he was 3 years old. After his parents divorced his mother was left to raise Lawrence and his older brother in New York on her own.

“One memory that stuck out in my childhood was that I was not given any allowance or other financial assistance,” Ng recalled. ”So at an early age, I learned I had to spend wisely and earn my own way. I always looked for ways to earn money and make a better living.”

That drive to succeed served Ng well as he looked at every job as an opportunity to learn. “From paper routes and food delivery to buying and selling cars and various jobs in larger corporations, I gained a lot of experience and business acumen early on,” Ng said. “I think my thirst for knowledge has been the driving force behind me since I was young.”

After finishing high school, Ng headed to New York City’s Pace University where his work ethic went into overdrive. “I held four jobs during that time that helped me learn about the inner workings of the business world, including considerable knowledge from a number of high-profile corporations. It gave me a taste for the tremendous opportunities that were available and gave me the foundation of the solid business practices that are now the linchpin of Oversee. I interned at Merrill Lynch, which provided me with exposure to financial consulting while a job at Smith Barney helped me better understand the role of marketing. Both jobs gave me excellent insights into all aspects of an organization and how it operates.”

In 1998 Ng decided to move to Los Angeles and continue his undergraduate work at the University of Southern California while interning with the local Smith Barney office. While still in school he also took a job with a new Internet advertising company called Startpath. Fred Hsu, who was a computer science student across town at UCLA also went to work at Startpath. He and Ng met there and began a relationship that would change their lives forever. At Startpath they learned a lot about the technology and tactics used to drive traffic to websites. However when the .com bubble burst in 2000 Startpath was one of the many tech companies that collapsed in the wreckage. Still Ng was excited about what he had learned - so much so that despite the dreary climate for web-based startups at that time he decided to start his own business. “Fred and I both realized the importance of quality Internet traffic and decided to use our collective expertise in online advertising, Internet traffic patterns and search engine optimization to create Oversee. This was at a time when many had given up on the Internet,” Ng said.

“I think one of the most interesting things we did with creating Oversee is in the timing. There were no venture capitalists that were willing to help companies that were Internet-based. I envisioned how the Internet could really change the advertising market. This would be possible by taking a scientific approach by adding performance metrics that would bring quantitative results for clients. We quickly moved to understanding that quality Internet traffic would drive the future success of Oversee,” Ng said. “So, we used our modest savings and began Oversee without any outside funding. We started in a small office (about 400 square feet) located near the Skid Row section of downtown Los Angeles. It was not a pretty area! Ron Sheridan was our first employee.” Though they looked like a 1,000 to 1 shot at best, Ng and Hsu, starting with just $10,000 between them, beat all the odds.

“Oversee has experienced tremendous organic growth in the last seven years, increasing the scale of our existing businesses that fall into either domain services or marketing services,” Ng said. “DomainSponsor was really the beginning of it all and today we monetize 2.5 million domain names. We also have a $100 million line of credit with Bank of America to fuel the company’s growth through acquisitions.”

“Our acquisitions of SnapNames and Moniker were based on the premise that we wanted to get into the aftermarket space and grow our share of the domain industry, becoming a one-stop shop for domainers and domain

investors. And then Oak Hill Capital Partners, a private equity firm, invested $150 million in us," Ng noted. "We plan to use the investment to augment organic growth and acquire technologies that will enhance our suite of services in the online marketing and domain name industries.”

Their meteoric rise has caught people’s attention, including the New York Times who featured Ng and Oversee in an October 2006 article by James Flanagan. Three months after the Times article, Oversee entered still another arena with their first DOMAINfest Global conference in Hollywood, California. They has previously done some regional shows but this was the first one with a worldwide focus. Scene from the SnapNames Live Domain Auction at DOMAINfest Global 2008 in January

When asked why Oversee got into the conference business and how doing so fit in with their overall mission Ng said, “I believe that the domain industry was maturing, which opened the door to a new and different type of conference. As a company, we wanted to bring competitors and
partners together, which nobody had done before, to leverage each other’s good ideas and create an innovative forum where we could help to propel the credibility and respect of the domain industry to a new level.”
“While there were other shows out there, none had taken the approach we had. The domain industry has incredible potential and I think, for the first time, others outside the industry are realizing that. The DomainFEST Global event has brought something different to the industry conference arena by offering a unique experience, including the SnapNames Live auctions, a great roster of speakers, global exhibitors, and a chance to network and have fun. We have received such positive responses from attendees that we are already planning next year’s event.”

As they plan for the future Oversee has a lot more elbow room than they did during their days in that 400-foot office near Skid Row. A lot more manpower too. “Since our start in 200 we have grown from two employees to approximately 200 at the end of 2007,” Ng said. “We have significantly increased our square footage too, going from that first tiny office to a larger headquarters in downtown Los Angeles (26,000 square feet), then on to a beautiful new space that covers about 56,000 square feet on the 43rd and 44th floors of the City National building, also in downtown L.A. We also have SnapNames located in Portland, Oregon and Moniker is in Pompano Beach, Florida.” With the business continuing to grow quickly and the company’s future apparently secure, Ng said his friend and partner "Fred Hsu decided to “retire” from day-to-day operations in 2007.” Ng added “As Oversee’s Co-founder, Fred has been an essential part of our success, developing the technology that has helped to make us a leader. He continues to be a major company shareholder and is an active member of Oversee’s Board of Directors.”

Meeting Fred proved to Ng how important it is to work with the right kind of people. “It is vital that we bring in smart, tech savvy people who have a good work ethic.” Ng said. “We also work very hard at continually improving our work environment so that we can retain the talented people we hire. I have pulled a lot of best practices from other companies to create a culture that encourages professional and personal growth as well as community involvement. I believe that being a hands-on leader has helped keep

our talented team in place. In the end, it is really about matching positions with skill sets to build a more creative and productive workforce.”

Ng is not the type who likes to spend a lot of time talking about himself but when pressed to describe what attributes he thinks helped him build Oversee into what it is today Ng said “I believe that I am humble in my approach towards business. There is always a way to do things better. For me, there is always a new goal to reach for to help improve my own experience, enhance the team’s talent, and grow the metrics of the business. There is a significant amount left to learn about business. I envision that the company will continue to expand, improving and increasing services in both our domain and marketing services divisions.”

Of course the direction of the Internet advertising and domain industry at large will have an impact on Oversee’s individual fortunes. Internet ad revenues have been booming for years, growing at an annual clip of around 30%. Still Ng said, “I would not necessarily characterize the Internet ad business as experiencing a boom. That sends the message that there is a probability of a bust on the horizon. I believe it is better to say that it has enjoyed steady growth because of the returns generated for advertisers. In addition, the medium has offered precise targeting and accountability that has not been experienced in other forms of advertising.” Ng also had one other prediction about the future of this industry. ”I certainly see consolidation increasing over the next couple of years. This is only the beginning of what’s to come. We hope to be leading much of this consolidation.”

Though things look good there is always the chance that something could upset the apple cart. I asked Ng what he viewed as potential threats to the rapid growth the industry has enjoyed in recent years. “As with any industry, the domain industry and its stakeholders must continue to mature where more standardization and best practices are instituted to raise the bar on who participates in this business,” Ng said. “By incorporating a higher level of quality initiatives, those that do not fit that standard should fall by the wayside. This will be vital for the industry because as more people become interested in online advertising and domains, they will demand the same level of accountability and standards that have long been a part of the traditional advertising mediums.”

Ng added, “In terms of legislation that is being proposed about standardizing the industry, we

have to be clear about what our industry does, its reputation and its willingness to live by best practices so that regulators, legislators, and the media perceive us correctly. That’s why we all have to work as a group to build a true understanding of the issues.”

To that end, Oversee was one of the co-founders of the Internet Commerce Association, the non-profit trade association based in Washington, D.C. that represents the interests of domain owners.

Though Ng has sprinted to the front of the domain field in record time, he always has the long run in mind. In fact he is a marathon runner in real life. He has completed two Los Angeles Marathons and is already training for the 2009 event.Though no one can predict what the future will bring Ng’s approach will be, as it has been throughout his life, to make his own good fortune through hard work. “We are continually
looking for ways to extend our current capabilities whether it is by adding new talent, acquiring more domain name portfolios, partnering with the right organization, or buying companies. Our goal is finding the right people and companies that are capable of working with our technology and our culture. There is so much potential out there!”
That’s a fact and it reminds me of something Grambling’s legendary football coach Eddie Robinson once said, “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” Lawrence Ng is a prime example of the kind of person Eddie Robinson was talking about.

Say Hello to DNZoom and Goodbye to Domain Management Hassles

2008-03-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

If you are like most people in this business, you have found that the domain names in your portfolio have a way of multiplying like rabbits on maximum strength Viagra. Before long, managing all of those domains can become a real headache - especially when you reach hundreds or thousands of domains in your collection as I have.Like many of you I tracked my domains in an Excel spreadsheet, but that leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you forget to enter names you buy in your Excel file. I've done that several times and a few years ago it cost me four 3-letter domains. Since I had forgotten to enter them when they were purchased, the spreadsheet did not alert me when they were expiring. To make matters worse, I wasn't reading the hundreds of renewal notices I was getting because I thought I already knew what was expiring from the information in my spreadsheet! End result, bye bye domain names I would liked to have kept.
I thought there had to be a better way to keep track of domains. Some smart guys based in Louisville, Kentucky thought the same thing and when they looked around and didn't find what they were searching for, they created it themselves, called it DNZoom - and it was good! DNZoom was spawned by an industry leading billing automation firm called ModernGigabyte that was founded by CEO Jeremy Christ and CTO Michael Fountain.
I met some of the their key team members while making the trade show rounds last summer. Their service was in its first stage of beta so I logged in and started poking around. I thought it was a major leap forward so I told them I would like to do a story about it.
Over the past six months that article has been sitting on the back burner but the water has been continually boiling as DNZoom developers have added one new feature after another
since I first peaked at the product. Now described as being in Beta 2.0, DNZoom allows you to not only manage all of your domains in one place (regardless of wherethey are registered) but also manage all of your parking services (so you can get one cumulative set of stats across multiple PPC companies instead of having to go to all of them individually).
On top of that, you can track domains for sale at Sedo and Afternic and domains that will be dropping through the built-in lists included with the free service. There are also tools that let you search keywords, spin keywords, check Alexa information and do WhoIs lookups. Basically it offers everything but the kitchen sink (and I'm sure that is coming soon too) all in one easy to use interface. The screenshot below is your starting point where you can begin adding your registrar and parking account portfolios. Fully automated importing and synchronization of your DNZoom and registrar accounts is currently available with eight different registrars (with more on the way). Full or semi automatic operations are also in place for several key PPC companies and those parking companies and registrars that are not yet set up for automatic importing and syncing can be accessed manually. Knowing that DNZoom developers plan to keep adding things as long as users keep asking for new features, I decided there was no point in continuing to put off this piece while waiting for a "final" release. So I rounded up the key guys on the DNZoom team to tell us more about what prompted them to tackle the challenge of building the domain industry version of the Swiss Army knife and how this service works to solves domain management problems.
It all started when Sean Stafford (who is now DNZoom's Director of Product Development) realized that he had a problem. "After getting to a near breaking point with my own domains, I knew there was a better way to handle the management of them," Stafford said. Dan Kimball (DNZoom's Chief Strategy Officer) and I searched on the internet for a way to make the process more efficient. After finding virtually no program out there to manage domains, we knew this was an area of the market that needed to be addressed. Since we already had vast knowledge of API’s, automation, and software, we felt our team could fulfill that need. After Jeremy and Dan attended a few tradeshows, the decision was made to move forward with the design of our tool. What we came up with was the world’s first truly agnostic tool, built for domainers by domainers. A few months later, DNZoom was born.
The expertise Stafford mentioned was developed at ModernGigabyte, where he, Kimball and other members of the DNZoom team earned their stripes. Kimball said, "Jeremy and Michael started ModernGigabyte six years ago out of necessity while owning a hosting company. We have over 13,000 customers in over 50 countries and are on our 5th version of that software. DNZoom uses a lot of the same technologies and has just as many or more touch points or API integrations. We are building on our six years of development expertise with applications and APIs in developing DNZoom."
Christ told us "Consolidation and interactive services are the key words.
Working with domain centric companies, DNZoom will become a "launch pad" for domain name investors. We are building the foundation that will make the industry more efficient for all players involved; no matter how big or how small. DNZoom makes it easy to be a domainer again!"
Considering how fully featured DNZoom is, I was a little curious about why the Beta label is still on the product. Christ explained "I see software and life both as BETA. I’m not sure what version of BETA my life is in, but I’m constantly learning, which is what life is all about. DNZoom Beta 2.0 is similar in ways, because we are constantly learning from our customers, endorsers, and this exciting industry we live, eat, breath, and play in. We do NOT consider the word BETA as broken or feature incomplete. Rather, we see BETA as growing and maturing and I only hope that DNZoom will continue to grow.
Kimball followed up on that saying, "Prime example; Our first thoughts on the functionality for DNZoom was totally focused on domainers who focused on parking revenue, but since then more and more speculator domainers have contacted us to build in more and more functionality for them. Like can we push domains from DNZoom to sale at Fabulous, Sedo, DNForum in one click...or can we input offers we get from these services into DNZoom so they can track the offers for each domain in one place… I can keep going...but we get a suggestion a day basically. Great ideas...and we want to get them all into DNZoom.
Lead developer Brian Smith and DNZoom's User Interface expert, seasoned designer/developer Eric Radtke deserve a lot of credit for incorporating a steady stream of new features into DNZoom. A solid buzz has grown up around the service since it was introduced so it is obviously striking a chord with portfolio owners who felt that their domain management chores had gotten out of hand. Fountain feels their pain.
"If you have 1,000 domains, on average, 2-3 of them will expire every day. This will include EVERY weekend, EVERY holiday, and of course when you least expect it, on EVERY vacation!" Fountain said. "Now, every day of the year, you need to be on top of your domain renewals. If all of your domains came from one registrar, this might be fairly easy to maintain; however for most Domainers, it’s not that simple. In our research, we find that most Domainers have their domains spread across half a dozen or more registrars! But wait, there’s more! What about your parked domains? Where are they parked? How are they performing this week? What if you had 10,000 domains or even more! Using DNZoom, you can take control of your domains and get your life back." Considering how much time and money went into building DNZoom I had to wonder how the developers were going to make any money from the project when they aren't charging anyone to use it. Kimball said, 'I think our history of building quality software products in the past gives us a unique perspective on this. On our other products like ModernBill, we charge a minimal fee or nothing to use those services but rather focus on the add-on services to generate revenue. Services like auctions, domain consulting, DNS, and referral fees can offer DNZoom enough revenue to run and profit from this venture."
Director of Business Development Jude Augusta added, "Google was free and had no revenue whatsoever for years. They provided value. Before you knew it, everyone was using Google – and now, its actually frightening – we can’t live without Google. We’re capitalizing on that same example. We provide intense value and utility. We quickly gather an audience who evangelizes our services. We can introduce the masses to value added services, affiliate products and services, and new utilities to capitalize on the most value out of their domain portfolios." When someone is inputting sensitive account data in a new service, security is an obvious concern and Fountain said it is the top priority at DNZoom. "One of our major goals was to create a "secure" and "trusted" web-based application. All account related data is securely encrypted and never presented to ANY human user; In addition, you do not have to store your 3rd-party account credentials at all. The application is smart enough to ask you for them before performing any task when credentials are not present."
"I’d also like to point out that this is not some "little script" installed on a shared web server amongst other unknown sites," Fountain said. "DNZoom is securely hosted in our private rack custom built by The Planet in Dallas, TX. The solution is firewalled, load balanced, and setup to scale to millions of domains. No client data is stored on any of the front-end production servers and the back-end database is clustered for optimum stability, scalability, and security."
Building trust is also why there is a good chance you will run into one or more DNZoom team members if you go to any major domain conference. "Dan, Michael, Jeremy, Jude and I have made going to these different shows a top priority for our company," Stafford said. Although each and every one of these events has been fun, the main reason we go is that we want to show domainers that we can be trusted. If the people who use your software trust you, then it is much easier to do business with them, and they are far likelier to tell other people about that software. We want to show people that we are trustworthy, and so is our platform."
"Since we have made going to these tradeshows a high priority, we are getting fewer and fewer people who don’t know what DNZoom is," Stafford added. "In the short time we have been in existence, we have gained a lot of recognition. We fully believe this is because the software we are building is going to vastly improve domainers organization, which ultimately means improving their bottom line."

Changing of the Guard: How Dan Pulcrano Became The Point Man in the Historic March From Old Media to the New World Online

2008-02-16T15:20:00.000-08:00

By Ron Jackson.

If you are a domain owner you are involved in something much bigger than the domain business- you are in the media business. The success that domain owners are enjoying today is a direct result of a historic upheaval in the media business that is shifting advertising expenditures away from traditional outlets and onto the Internet.

As one of the few publishers that have successfully navigated the treacherous straights between print media and the new world online, Boulevards New Media founder and CEO Dan Pulcrano gave us a unique opportunity to take you beyond domains for an inside look at the larger forces currently shaping our industry. Forces that are precipitating the fall of old media empires offline and the rise of new ones on the web - a seismic shift hat has put owners of high quality domains in the catbird seat.

Of the six billion people on our planet, only a few dozen had the foresight in the mid 1990's to start acquiring domain names with the idea that they could become valuable in the future. Those very rare individuals were almost universally regarded as fools who were flushing perfectly good money down the drain. Fast forward barely a decade ahead and yesterday's fools have become today's visionaries.
"Visionary" is a word that gets thrown around pretty casually in this business today and it is often applied to folks who, by their own admission, just happened to be lucky - in the right place at the right time. But there are true visionaries in the space and none is more deserving of that apellation than Dan Pulcrano. He saw (and bet the ranch) on the future of domains. Today he owns a near priceless portfolio that includes 20 of the 30 largest American city names in the .com extension (many already developed), including LosAngeles.com, San Francisco.com and Philadelphia.com to name just a few.
But Pulcrano saw much more than just the increasing value of domain names. Back in 1993, when he was already a successful publisher of alternative newspapers, Pulcrano saw and warned his colleagues about the print media train wreck that we are seeing play out before our eyes today. On Oct. 27, 1993, Pulcrano wrote a private paper called The Alternative Press at the Crossroads: Will We Be Players in the New Information Age Or Road Kill on the Digital Highway and sent it to fellow board members of his industry trade group (the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies).

About the Internet, Pulcrano wrote this, "The biggest area of competition for the alternative press, at the user information level, will be at the back of the book: music, movie and event listings, classified advertising and personals. While print offers many user-friendly advantages to electronic technologies and will likely remain the dominant player for at least the next decade, we can expect to see a gradual erosion in the percentage of readers who rely on print exclusively for these categories of information - particularly as portable wireless devices begin to proliferate and screen technologies cross the 2,000-pixel threshold, at which point electronic resolution will overtake print in terms of readability and resolution."

The accuracy of his comments, especially in view of the fact that they were written 15 years ago, is uncanny to say the least. Here's another passage that is even more compelling - "In terms of advertising, we will likely see a migration (to the web) of classified and personal advertising, along with the introduction of "electronic yellow pages" type services. The electronic medium offers several advantages to print: instant search capabilities based on predetermined criteria, direct placement of ads by readers, instant updating, and the ability to responds to ads electronically."

All of this was laughed at then, but has since come to pass. The other AAN leaders thanked Pulcrano for trying to save their skins by kicking him off the board and going on about their business - certain that their cash cows had nothing to fear from this upstart called the Internet. Bet they would like a do over on that one.

While his peers went on their merry way and kept their date with disaster, Pulcrano acted on his own advice and started preparing for the new age ahead. He started a new company - Boulevards New Media - and began assembling the great portfolio of domain names assembling the great portfolio of domain names that would be his future media platform. Pulcrano sold off money-making print properties while pursuing then unproven digital assets. If they could have, his colleagues undoubtedly would have had him Baker acted for his own protection. Today they all wish they had been as "crazy" as Pulcrano was in 1993

OK, so we have established that Pulcrano made some smart moves - perhaps some of the smartest moves in business history, but who exactly is this guy? What path in life put him in a position to acquire domains like Dallas.com, Seattle.com, Houston.com and many more? Those were the questions that were bouncing around my mind the first time I met Pulcrano at the 2007 GeoDomain Expo in San Francisco last November. I started getting my answers after the opening day of the conference when Pulcrano invited my wife and I to join him and Boulevards executive Mauricio Mejia for dinner at the Farallon Restaurant.

When I was in junior high school I started my own "newspaper" and circulated it among classmates, so I knew I had found a kindred spirit when Pulcrano told me he had started his first publication when he was only 11! Pulcrano grew up in New Jersey where both of his parents were schoolteachers. "During the summer they ran a day camp and were foolish enough to leave a mimeograph machine, which they bought to duplicate camp flyers, unattended in the basement," Pulcrano recalled. "It was, of course, the gun on the mantel."
"At age 11 I was publishing, quite literally, underground newspapers. That was way more interesting than my prior experiments in mass media, such as using carbon paper to make copies of Batman’s cast for my third grade friends or running to tell the neighbors about the Kennedy assassination after a news ticker appeared on a cartoon show. Within three years, it was printed on newsprint presses and distributed statewide."

By the time he reached high school, Pulcrano had picked up another obsession. "I was also fascinated by communications technology. I disassembled telephones and hacked into phone networks. The phone phreaks of the 70s were precursors to the computer hacking of the

1980s and I think those movements laid the philosophical groundwork for the Internet because one way or another individuals were going to crack the monopolies of IBM, AT&T and the Department of Defense over global information networks. These entities were not going to share computing technology and network access with a billion others voluntarily," Pulcrano said. " I once wrote IBM and asked if they would send me instructions on how to build a simple computer for a science project, but all they sent me was a sales brochure."

"We also had a 10-watt FM radio station at my high school. I covered board of education and borough council meetings, interviewed the governor, met Secretary of State Kissinger and talked my way into a Washington party with then-Vice President Ford. Being where the action is and getting to meet smart people was part of what attracted me to newspapering," Pulcrano added.
When he was 15 years old, Pulcrano's parents moved him and his two younger sisters to Southern California where he continued pursuing his passion for media. "I convinced my teachers to let me out of class in the afternoons to write newscasts for the local AM radio station. I got credit for things like interviewing California’s then

state senate majority leader, George Moscone about his bill to decriminalize marijuana. How much cooler can you get than that in high school!?," Pulcrano smiled.

"I wasn't exactly captain of the football team and dating cheerleaders, you know. (Okay, I was a nerd.) I finished high school as quickly as I could and enrolled in San Diego City College’s journalism program, where the average student was a decade older. I was 16 and the

journalism adviser kept comparing me to another teen journalist who had been there a year or two earlier. His name was Cameron Crowe, who was by then working for Rolling Stone magazine and later wrote and directed the autobiographical movie Almost Famous," Pulcrano recalled.

Then Pulcrano got the first break that would allow him to turn his favorite pastime into a profession. "The Reader, which was then a small, struggling weekly in San Diego, hired me. That was the first time I got paid to do something that I loved so much I would have done it for free. The following year, I went overseas and studied International
Relations and wrote an early exposé of nuclear weapons programs in the Middle East. I returned to go to school at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A cast of characters ranging from Spaulding Gray, I.F. Stone and Eugene Ionescu to Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Angela Davis, Jello Biafra and Huey Newton were running around campus then, so there was a lot to learn and write about!" Pulcrano said.

"While working in Santa Barbara on a summer break when I was 19, Jay Levin approached me and asked if I would help him start the LA Weekly. He was an entrepreneur and journalist who wrote about things that mattered but were ignored by mainstream media: independent film, punk rock, undiscovered comedians, emerging fashion districts like Melrose, the secret U.S. war against the Sandinistas. It became the fastest growing weekly ever launched, and had a transformative effect not only on Los Angeles, but on major sectors of the entertainment industry and the newspaper publishing industry as well. Working there was life changing for me too; from that point on I knew what I wanted to do," Pulcrano declared.

Legendary Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner also inspired Pulcrano. " He nurtured the careers of Tom Wolfe, Hunter S.Thompson, Annie Liebovitz and others, and even after 40 years, offers some of the most compelling writing about the dangerous idiocy in D.C. published anywhere," Pulcrano said." Jann was a founding investor in my publishing group and has remained incredibly supportive through the ups and downs of transforming it from a print company into a Web publisher at the epicenter of the Internet revolution, which has been a fun but hellish 15-year odyssey."

More on the "hellish" part (triggered by the web bubble bursting in 2000) shortly, but long before reaching that crossroads Pulcrano wrote a business plan for a publishing company while he was a senior in college, taking an entrepreneurship course
taught by the fiber optics pioneer Dr. Narinder Kapany. "That led to starting a community weekly in Los Gatos, California, where I got to watch legendary entrepreneurs like Atari's Nolan Bushnell in action during Silicon Valley’s PC and video game boom," Pulcrano recalled. " Michael D'Addio, who owned San Jose’s soccer team and an early networking company, helped me understand how computers could share information and devices when you wired them together."

"Around that time I wrote the business plan for Metro, an alternative weekly in Silicon Valley, on an Apple III, using the Visicalc spreadsheet program. Being in Silicon Valley, we began working with personal computers and an early electronic mail program, MCI Mail, back when everyone else was still using typewriters or dumb terminals, and when "cut-and-paste" editing involved using scissors and Scotch tape," Pulcrano said.
"We messed around with all the early online services: Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL. At one point I realized that much of the information that newspapers provided could be delivered more efficiently online. It would be archived, searchable, cheaper and more current. I knew we were in trouble. So I went to the board of our trade association in 1993 with a plan to establish a common effort to develop digital services. They thought I was nuts and booted me off the board," Pulcrano said.

However, as is so often the case, when one door closes another opens - and that proved true for Pulcrano (who by the way still has a toe in the print water with his Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz editions of Metro and a paper called the North Bay Bohemian). "That year we started Livewire, the first graphical online service in the weekly industry. It was a dialup service that had all of our articles, as well as free email accounts, live chat and forums. A bookstore sold its books through the service. People met online and hooked up. Area governments started posting their agendas and minutes. It was Silicon Valley's version of The Well, and thousands of people in the valley got their first online experiences with us. In many ways, it was a microcosm for the Web, which caught fire two years later," Pulcrano said.

From his special vantage point, Pulcrano could now see the handwriting on the wall. "By 1995 it became clear that the browser and the World Wide Web was going to squash the early online technologies, so we launched a site and abandoned Livewire and its successor, Virtual Valley. Like many early web companies, we tried to do it all: contract website development, our own content services, and, in the late '90s, made some domain investments, which were premature and made very little business sense. By the bust of 2000, we were overinvested and spread too thin."

The sudden contraction forced Pulcrano to make a tough decision, one that went against conventional wisdom at the time - but one that again proved to be prescient. " By exploiting email, desktop publishing technologies and networked file sharing, we had grown from one to 11 publications in under a decade and were sharing a common business infrastructure and production department. We had built up a thriving community newspaper group in the Valley, which I had no choice but to sell."

"We also closed down our publications in San Francisco and Oakland. I made a decision to concentrate on the Internet and divest from print just at the time everyone thought the Internet fad was over. Some of my partners thought I should sell the domains and keep the newspapers. Luckily I didn't listen," Pulcrano said.

That could be the understatement of the year. Pulcrano now sits pretty while much
of the newspaper business appears to be in an irreversible meltdown. His good fortune today stems from a series of bold moves he made when others might have given up and gone home.

It started with scraping up as much money as he could to buy the domains he owns today (unlike many other holders of great domains who got their names on the drop or as new registrants very early in the game, most of Pulcrano's were purchased on the aftermarket in the mid 90s). "The first purchase was a number of domains that were owned by a film director who had produced sequels to Night of the Living Dead," Pulcrano said. "I tried to aggregate as many cities as I could after that and bought others from private owners in the belief that there would be some economies of scale in managing these as a network. Although most were purchased for a fraction of today's values, it was a lot of money at the time, and very risky."

Once he had his hands on the prizes he was after, Pulcrano set about turning them into something more than just great domain names. "As the owner of the majority of the big U.S. cities we feel a responsibility to make sure these assets realize their potential. Last year we relaunched our major sites with colorful logos for each city and a new design. It was a huge

effort by our content and technology team, headed by Kyu Kyung, to rebuild that many sites, and they did an amazing job," Pulcrano said.
"Boulevards also created an automated platform to empower community-based businesses and event promoters. It allows them to take control of their digital marketing. They can market their companies and promote events in an organized environment where people go for information. In integrating both time and location-based data, the Boulevards platform goes beyond one-dimensional directories and calendaring systems, and as an added benefit serves the information under a powerful local brand rather than a national one," Pulcrano said.

"We are also developing real estatesystems and a news channel that will be rolled out on our sites as we move through this year. We want to add staffing for both sales and content in each city, but obviously this will take a lot of investment. Boulevards is a private company that bootstrapped all this without outside investment, and we are carefully evaluating what kind of partner we need to fully realize this opportunity."

"Obviously we have the virtual real estate to become a significant media company, along with the enthusiasm and historical perspective to do so. We want to do a great job for our communities, since they are losing an important local institution with the "reinvention" of daily newspapers, which is really just disinvestment and managed decline. The local space is up for grabs right now, and successors must be conscious of the ways in which media shape and enrich cities through leadership, a mix of civic activism and boosterism, economic development and social responsibility," Pulcrano said.

While Pulcrano has the world's strongest collection of large market geodomains, he says that those who hold small to mid-size city sites face a less challenging development path. "Big national players generally focus on the top markets and don't drill down into the less populous ones, so there are more opportunities for entrepreneurs in the small and mid-sized markets," Pulcrano said. "In a community with a population in the tens of thousand or low hundreds of thousands, an operator can get to know the key players in a community by walking the commercial districts, joining a service club and hanging out at chamber mixers. If they live in the community, they'll understand the pulse of the community, develop a passion for it and find out about opportunities first."

As a founding member of Associated Cities, a trade group for .com geodomain owners, Pulcrano, who currently serves as the group's chairman, has been instrumental in helping individual geodomain owners realize the potential of their properties. Their group has become a model that other sectors of the domain industry might do well to emulate. Domain owners have a history of being "Lone Rangers" but Associated Cities seems to have cleared that hurdle. I asked Pulcrano how the group has managed to keep inevitable personal disagreements from sidetracking the association's goal of pushing the geodomain sector as a whole forward.

"It's entrepreneurial, and the geodomain industry is still in its early stages, so owner-operators tend to share business practices and develop close personal bonds that will not be as prevalent when the industry is consolidated," Pulcrano said. " Also, by only accepting pure city names with the dotcom suffix, people aren't stepping on one another's toes too much."
Pulcrano added, "It’s amazing to me that the venture capitalists, media companies and equity funds haven't yet woke up and started pouring money into this category because it really is the last mile of the Internet. The heavy lifting of creating organizations to manage relationships with local businesses and local information will require capital and persistence but the rewards will be large. The dailies' death spiral is creating a huge vacuum."

"It won't be like the early days of the Internet where a successful vertical play could lop off the most lucrative chunks of a market," Pulcrano said. "The Internet equivalents of big box stores are fine but the advantage of low cost, highly personalized communications technology is that it enables the growth of low overhead boutique businesses. Organizations that provide service at the community level will create tremendous value for their owners. And I think the geodomains are well positioned to mine this opportunity."

Pulcrano was a speaker at last month's DOMAINfest Global conference in Hollywood, California. I was there to cover the panel discussion he was involved in and he had some particularly interesting things to say about the decline of newspapers. Though the Internet is widely perceived to be the force that is wiping out the papers, Pulcrano said the web was actually just the final nail in the coffin. He said their decline actually began decades ago - and that they have no one to blame for their downfall but themselves.
"Daily circulation remained flat for half a century while US population more than doubled," Pulcrano said. Big Media consolidated markets and formed joint operating agreements — legal monopolies — with their competitors, or informal duopolies that had the same
price-fixing effect. They made obscene

profits by punishing their customers with higher rates, not by delivering more readers or better value. Their smugness, arrogance and inability to innovate made them sitting ducks."

"Meanwhile community weeklies, alternative weeklies, business journals, shoppers, city magazines and other specialty publications started grabbing whole categories of advertising with more targeted offerings. My newspaper company grew quickly in the 1990s because we concentrated on offering quality local products and better value to local businesses," Pulcrano said.

"We published both alternative newspapers (free news and entertainment weeklies) around the Bay Area and community newspapers that were home delivered in Silicon Valley communities like Los Gatos and Cupertino. Lightweight companies like ours were gobbling up whole categories. Alternatives grabbed the entertainment franchise, business journals dominated commercial real estate and community weeklies became the preferred vehicle for main street businesses and local Realtors."

"The dailies raised their classified rates and stayed fat and happy with employment advertising during the great economic boom during the Clinton years, which made the dailies vulnerable to Craigslist, a competitor that outperformed them at low cost in the Bay Area — or for free in other markets," Pulcrano said.
Once newspapers realized they had a real problem, they tried to pull the fat out of the fire by going online themselves, but their efforts were largely ill-conceived and ineffective. Pulcrano noted "The big newspaper companies invested heavily in online delivery of information early on, but just didn’t deliver a compelling offering. For example, Knight-Ridder/Dialog had products like Viewtext, which sold articles. Their web brands — like Nando, SFGate, AZJournal and SignonSanDiego — were neither musical to the ear nor intuitive."

"Web nomenclature turned out to be a great leveler," Pulcrano said. " Sean Miller of NewYorkCity.com/NYC.com calls geodomains "disruptive brands." The failure of the newspapers to mine the Internet opportunity goes beyond vague, klunky names. They presented a digital version of the 19th Century penny press rather than understanding that this was a new medium that was going to be used in different ways. It was transactional, and a package in itself."

"They thought they could deliver news, sports, business, weather and entertainment in a book, like before. But the reader had a different idea. They were going to go to a sports site for sports news, a financial site for stock market intelligence, and so on. When daily publishers bought a city domain like Miami.com or Boston.com, they put news on it and organized the information the same way as their print products. And their defensive strategies, designed to protect their golden gooses while they were feasting on foie gras, ensured that category killers like Match.com, eBay,

Marketwatch, Google News, Craigslist or Trulia would come from outside the industry," Pulcrano said.

Wired Magazine co-founder John Battelle was a keynote speaker at last month's DOMAINfest Global 2008 conference in California. He emphasized the point that we began this article with - that domains are media properties. Battelle urged domain owners to develop their domain assets with lots of Web 2.0 seasoning sprinkled into the mix - features that allow visitors to interact with the site and produce user-generated content. Battelle calls them "conversational media" sites.

Though it is more labor intensive I believe that if you can add one more ingredient - unique content from good writers - you will fare even better. In my mind that is the surest way to create a special identity for your site that is hard for someone else to duplicate. Pulcrano agrees. "Wouldn't it be great if

you could rely on your readers to create the DN Journal?" he asked. "While you can get your interviewees to contribute their thoughts and do some of the work, a good editor has to develop expertise in a subject area and select the topics that make a content offering compelling. A site that ranks content based on algorhthyms or user popularity won't push the envelope like one that extends a personality like Drudge, Salon, Slate, Huffington or Koz."

"Battelle is right though - the land needs to be developed, because without content and sales forces, the branding edge (of a great domain) can turn out to be a transitional advantage. Remember what happened to the dailies? The parking phenomenon has created laziness. The less you do with your names, the more you make. The name "parking" is appropriate, because in cities, land owners found that they could make money by not building anything or even
managing a property. They could tear down an old structure, skin it with asphalt and put a guy in a tiny booth to put a slip of paper under your wiper blades. Think of how many great cities let their cores be reduced to skid rows through that monetization scheme. They came back to life when investors bought the land, swept up the malt liquor cans, hired good architects, placed high rises on the parking spots and created great spaces for people to live, work, socialize and do business."
"The same has to happen with the Internet real estate," Pulcrano said. "Otherwise, the public reacts in the same way as a visitor to a downtown that has decayed. The person visits once and doesn't come back. If you go downtown expecting to see well dressed people, good restaurants and entertainment venues and instead get empty parking lots with abandoned cars and malt liquor cans, you are not likely to spend time there again."

Since Pulcrano has such a great track record for predicting the future, we couldn't help but ask where he thought our industry is headed from here. "I have great faith in the future of direct navigation," Pulcrano said. "As the Internet matures, more and more people will develop relations with sites and go directly to them rather than do a new search every time. The top brands will get stronger and stronger. Over time the media buyers will understand that there are things more important than traffic. They have to understand why people are at a site, not just how many of them are there and what gender, age and income category describes them."

Pulcrano added "There is a big difference between direct navigation city guides and media sites. The former have disproportionately high conversion rates because visitors are there looking for something specific, often before a trip or purchase. Newspaper sites have high traffic but much lower conversions. Among the most hit pages on any newspaper site will be any article they carry about Britney Spears. What do you sell to that visitor?"

"A few years ago I noticed that the most visited pages on our newspapers' websites were articles about selling women's' panties on Ebay, a photographer who argued that nude portraits of children were not pornography and the alternative rock band Good Charlotte. We realized that the newspaper sites' growth was being enhanced by a global audience of pedophiles, panty sniffers and young girls who wanted to date the lead singer of Good Charlotte!" If that doesn't explain why Pulcrano decided to change horses in the media race, nothing will.

Pulcrano is obviously a man with a lot of balls in the air at the same time. That leads to the kind of long work weeks entrepreneurs are famous for, but he does manage to combine business with pleasure whenever he can. "Luckily I love what I do, so the 80-hour weeks are fun. I've had some of the best times of my life hanging out with my Associated Cities friends in places like Acapulco, Las Vegas, Hilton Head, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Chicago (where we spent a night buying drinks for the Bush twins)," Pulcrano said.
"Besides travel, I like to hike in the mountains, go deep sea fishing, take road trips, collect
exotic plants and have been restoring an historic house. I go to clubs and concerts and museums because I enjoy staying in touch with the pulse of cities. I'm still single so I don't have family responsibilities. Right now I'm the vice chair of a city commission on open government that's drafting San Jose's first sunshine law. I write columns and editorials from time to time and I try to find time for volunteer work in the community and stay active in Rotary, because it does great work both locally and around the world," Pulcrano concluded.

Many new chapters will undoubtedly be added to Pulcrano's story in the years ahead. As media consumers continue to usher old empires to the exit and welcome new ones to center stage, Pulcrano should be easy to find - just look for the guy standing in the spotlight.

Typosquatters make millions in domain name trade

2008-02-09T19:35:00.000-08:00

Shady companies are making big bucks buying domain names with trademark-infringing characteristics and then creating Web pages full of advertising links.
By Jeremy Kirk

A civil suit filed in Florida by Dell andthat can be made by creating Web pages full of advertising links.
its Alienware subsidiary is giving insight into the enormous sums of money that can be made by creating web page full of advertising links.
In October, Dell sued a group of domain registrars, alleging the companies bought more than 1,100 domain names with trademark-infringing characteristics, such as "dellbatterrogram.com" in order to put advertising links on the pages.
The practice, known as typosquatting, is illegal. It's intended to draw unwitting Web surfers to pages with URLs (uniform resource locators) that are similar to legitimate sites, and then redirect them to other sites. The owners of these Web sites get revenue from advertising referral programs every time a link is clicked.
The defendants -- Belgiumdomains, Capitoldomains, Domaindoorman, Netrian Ventures, iHoldings.com, Juan Pablo Vazquez and 10 unnamed defendants -- deny the claims. Dell contends the businesses, most of which are registered outside the U.S., are shell companies engaged in collusion.
Dell sought a court order in November to freeze their assets so the money from their operations wouldn't disappear. Last month, the court amended the freeze order, and contained in the details of the new order are clues to just how much money the defendants may be raking in.
Google, whose AdSense advertising- placement program was used to monetize the domains, was ordered to hold in a special account the first US$1 million collected on behalf of the defendants each month. The second $1 million that accrues in the account every month will be given to the defendants. If more than $2 million accrues in one month, the money is split between the defendants and the Google account.
Google takes a cut of AdSense revenue, which shows that it in part benefits from this kind of abuse of the Internet. However, Google recently announced it will not allow AdSense campaigns on "kited" domains.
Kiting is a technique used by some rogue registrars to avoid having to pay the fee for using a domain. The domain is repeatedly registered and unregistered within a five-day Add-Grace Period. The grace period, which applies to a handful of TLDs (Top Level Domains) was intended to let people get a refund of their domain registration fee if they made a spelling mistake.
Kiting often goes hand in hand with another abusive practice, "domain tasting." A domain name is registered and monitored during the grace period to see if it gets sufficient traffic to pay for its registration fee. The domain owners then get refunds on the sites with low traffic. However, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is considering keeping a $0.20 fee it normally refunds as part of the registration process in order to stop tasting.
Dell has accused the typosquatter defendants in its lawsuit of both practices and is claiming their profits as well as $100,000 per infringing domain used.
Google's antikiting policy doesn't apply to domain tasting, meaning the company will still potentially benefit from Web sites intended merely for advertising. A Google spokesman said Tuesday, however, that Web sites are supposed to have legitimate content in order to be accepted into AdSense.
Other information in the court documents shed light on the economics of monetizing domain names. Dell contends the defendants control some 1 million domain names, and believes they also have used at least 64 million other unique domain names.
When the court froze the defendants' assets in November, it also froze their ability to stop renewing domain names that weren't producing enough revenue to justify the registration fees. Since the defendants controlled so many domain names, the automatic renewal of those names -- likely around 3,000 domains a day -- cost them $20,000 per day.
However, the defendants successfully petitioned the court to cancel domains that were generating less than $8 a year in revenue.
"These [figures] tell us that there's lots of money in tasting, and it's a game of huge volume," wrote John Levine, a consultant and author of "The Internet for Dummies" on his blog.
The Dell case continues in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Domain Name Game Still Going Strong; Tad Less Secretive

2008-02-09T18:30:00.000-08:00

BY BRIAN DEAGON

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 2/8/2008

People scoffed when investment firm eCompanies paid $7.5 million for the Web address business.com in 1999 from a person who had paid $150,000 for it.

The purchase, though, shined a light on a secretive world where people actively and aggressively buy and sell Web domain names.

Thousands of Web addresses were bought in the early days of the dot-com boom on a hunch by people who expected Internet real estate would appreciate in value.

They were right, and still are.

In July, directory services firm R.H. Donnelley (RHD) bought business.com for . . . $345 million. Reportedly, Dow Jones and the New York Times (NYT) also were interested in buying the site.

The domain name business has matured since the early speculation days. Business.com, for example, wasn't just an empty site. It's a repository for ad-supported business-to-business e-commerce Web links, ranging from business travel and construction services to legal services and industrial goods. It claims sales of $50 million last year.

The domain name industry has largely consolidated into a handful of big players that have received hundreds of millions in funding in the past year. Companies or individuals are paying tens of millions for thousands of domain names sold in a single block. Last year, Seattle-based Marchex (MCHX) paid $164 million to the holder of some 100,000 domain names.

The best generic names were taken long ago, but that hasn't stopped domain name seekers from coming up with ideas for new ones. One analyst estimates that up to 45,000 domain names are registered each day; 146 million domain names were in use as of Sept. 30, 31% more than a year earlier. So says VeriSign, which operates the Domain Name System servers that support the dot-com and dot-net top-level domains and provides services to companies that sell domain names to end users.

Domain names often sell for thousands of dollars into the many millions. In 2006, diamond.com sold for $7.5 million while sex.com sold for $12.5 million. Casino.com sold for $5.5 million in 2003. Computer.com sold for $2.1 million last year. In all, 33 sites have sold for $1 million or more, according to research firm Zetetic.

Bold Early Adopters

"This field got started by a group of very early adopters, bold business people willing to take the risk," said Courtney Montpas, an executive vice president at Demand Media. The company buys and sells domain names and provides other services that help domain name owners build their business.

Demand Media, based in Santa Monica, Calif., received $100 million in a funding round last July, led by Goldman Sachs. (GS) Demand Media has raised $320 million since its launch two years ago.

Another big player, Oversee.net, last month said it received $150 million in a funding round from private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners. Oversee.net owns 700,000 domain names and helps service and maintain another 2.4 million domains owned by others.

Oversee also has a $100 million credit line from Bank of America, says Lawrence Ng, Oversee CEO.

Ng co-founded Oversee in 2000 with $10,000, in a 400-square-foot office in downtown Los Angeles. Today the company occupies 56,000 square feet on two floors of an L.A. high-rise. He says sales last year topped $200 million, up from $125 million the year before.

Part of the money comes through fees paid by firms to put their Web links on Oversee's generic sites.

Oversee also does a brisk business in managing domain sites, in addition to registering, trading and selling domain names. "This has become a very sophisticated market," Ng said. "We've seen a tremendous amount of consolidation in the past 12 to 18 months. We want to be at the forefront of this business."

Another large player, Name Media, recently filed to raise $172 million in an initial public offering. The Waltham, Mass.-based company owns 750,000 domain names and represents an additional 1.5 million names held by third parties. It generates revenue through online ads and the sale of domain names.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company reported a profit of $254,000, up 50% from the year-earlier quarter, on revenue of $21 million, up 28%.

"The business is so different now than it was seven years ago," said Ron Jackson, editor and publisher of DNJournal.com, which tracks the domain name business.

Several events made domain names a big business. One was the emergence of ad networks developed by Google, (GOOG) Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo. (YHOO) They place ads relevant to the domain name. Links for western wear, for example, would be placed on Cowboys.com.

Search Navigation Trend

Google's network, called AdSense, reported third-quarter revenue of $1.5 billion, up 40% from a year ago.

This search ad revenue is expected to jump 15% this year in the U.S. to $14 billion, says Jupiter Research. That's 62% of total U.S. Internet advertising.

Also fueling growth in the domain name business is direct navigation. Many people search for things by putting dot-com or dot-net when typing in a search term, as a way to more quickly get options. Typing diamond.com into any search engine takes you to a Web site with links to many diamond and jewelry sellers.

Analysts estimate 15% of searches are conducted this way.

"That produces a steady flow of natural traffic that's always there (for generic sites)," Jackson said.

It also produces the kind of highly targeted traffic that advertisers desire most. Advertisers typically pay per click, and the Web site owner gets a share.

"Pay per click is definitely driving the growing interest in this market," said Matthew Zook, founder of ZookNic, a domain name industry analysis company.

Other firms in the domain name field include GoDaddy Group and Australia-based Dark Blue Sea. Individuals who control thousands of domain names include Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling, both of whom reportedly have become multimillionaires as a result.

As with any gold rush, some observers say many of the primary veins have been mined.

"A lot of people are losing money because they don't take time to learn the ins and outs of this business, and register crappy names," Jackson said. "You have to learn what domain names have value."

Others still see plenty of growth.

"We're in the early stage of much of this," said Jeff Kupietzky, executive vice president of Oversee.net. "We're still seeing new people (domain name speculators) come into this space."

UK DomainChannel Charts New Course With First Country Specific Domain Conference in London

2008-02-03T17:20:00.000-08:00

By Debbi Williams

(London, Feb. 2, 2007) The sun shone on a new era for the “dot-UK” domain industry with its first country specific domainers' conference. UK DomainChannel launched with an electrifying day of seminars, networking, negotiations and deals.
130 Domain owners, executives, service providers and equity analysts from the US, Germany, Spain, France, Finland, Poland and the UK met for the first time in the Victoria Park Plaza in central London, for what will be the first of many to come.
Ed Russell, NameDrive President and premium sponsor said: "We are delighted to have achieved something that nobody in the UK domain industry has done before. This is the biggest domain conference anywhere outside the United States." "Many of the most influential members of the UK domain community are gathered here and it is clear that the UK domain industry is booming," Russell added. "At a time when many US companies are looking to invest in Europe, I can only see these events growing in popularity in the future." This was a feeling upheld by many."Aiming to centralise networking in the UK domain market and exposing the UK to a more global audience, the day was opened by event coordinator, charismatic David Brayshaw. He welcomed attendees into a new era for the industry and introduced them to a vision for where the industry is heading.
Arguably one of the hottest topics of the conference was the eagerly awaited revision of .UK Registry Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service (DRS). Attendees listened keenly as CEO Lesley Cowley spoke of Nominet’s plans and held her ground as questions were thrown at her about what is being done for the protection of their industry.More exciting for some was the announcement of plans to discuss the long awaited release of two letter .co.uk domains, via a possible charitable auction; as well as the possible launch of new UK domain extensions such as .scot, .cym, .scot.uk and .cym.uk. Nominet also plans for the coming year to discuss lengthening the domain registration period to as much as 10 years. Angus Hanton of www.giraffe.co.uk gave a captivating seminar on effective sales techniques in the UK and domain value. With the use of various props, Angus guided us through the complicated world of domain valuation and sales. Girraffe.co.uk hold 18,000 domains, mainly .co.uk, and in the past have made some impressive sales: three.co.uk to the mobile phone giant Hutchinson, egg.co.uk to the financial group and 3121.com to Prince.
Angus commented on domain value, “The trite answer is always ‘a name is only worth what someone will pay for it’ but this is hardly a satisfactory response because it is so subjective and as owners we are often in a position of needing to quote a price or as buyers to make a firm offer.” Throughout the attendees it was interesting to find that over half the audience had both bought and sold domains with the same number again having been asked to price the domain and faced legal action over them. After his presentation, he was joined by Michael Toth, owner of a first-class .uk portfolio, including UnitedKingdom.co.uk, and Daniel Law, CEO of Sombrero domains and broker of several industry-known sales, among them Blackjack.de, the second largest published .de sale of all time.
Michael discussed the potential trademark issues surrounding apparently ‘generic’ domain names while Daniel highlighted the differences between the UK market and others such as Germany and the US where traffic plays a greater role in valuation, and how continue maturation of the UK domain market would continue to mirror the recent developments in the US.
After a refreshments break to recharge the batteries, the next seminar was a legal panel of some renown. Paul Keating of Renova Ltd., Stevan Lieberman of Greenberg & Lieberman and Jim Davies of Bell Denning provided the attendees with one of the strongest panels on domain law anywhere in the world.
Paul began with a simple question: “Can I ask how many lawyers there are in the audience?” Only one hand was raised. “You’re a much better-dressed crowd than the guys in the US. The only people in suits there are the lawyers!”
Keating continued to give an overview of risk management cov ering domain transactions, hijacking and dispute resolution – His buzzwords – Always reply to C&D letters and Never default as this harms the domain industry itself. Stevan focused on trends in domain law in the US while Jim provided the counterbalance by lending his extensive expertise on UK domain law, the under-fire Nominet DRS procedure and several case law studies, including BernardMatthews.co.uk, a man who is in the news for other reasons currently.
The afternoon session kicked off with a monetisation panel featuring Peter Smith from Miva UK, Tyson Pearcey of BUY.AT, Tommy Butler from Glasgow.com and Ed Russell of NameDrive. They argued over the best ways to make the most of the monetisation options available.
The general theory was monetising domains can take up to 2 years to find the right solution for you and your domain. Each domain should be treated as an individual, analysing each one to figure out where the revenue would come from. By starting with domain parking you can see what traffic exists and where best to deve lop but that only work for domains with traffic. By talking to your affiliates and PPC networks you get better value from them. They are the experts and are there to help.
Tommy Butler was keen to push development, by branding and getting repeat traffic. The better the site looks and the more content and information, he opined, the more repeat traffic won and advertisers will feel they want to work and be associated with you. If your sites link to each other and have good content the more likely you will be to keep the customer within your site. The key question is, “would I go to that page and use it?” In the second session of the afternoon, Ross Sandler of RBC Capital Markets gave an in-depth look into the equity market’s perspective on the domain industry. In a tale of two cities, Sandler compared the fortunes of Mountain View’s Google and Sunnyvale’s Yahoo. With 81.3% revenue growth in 2006 Google has outperformed Yahoo by almost 58% whilst maintaining a dominate market share of search query volume worldwide.
In terms of implications for the domain industry, Sandler said that Google views the domain community as strategically positive. Looking to the future, Google wants to reshape all media, making them faster, fresher and more relevant with moves into Google audio, Google Print and the hot new buy of You Tube for Google video.
The big new current development for Yahoo is Project Panama. This will lead to a shift from a max bid approach for advertising to a relevancy approach. Project Panama is expected to be fully rolled out by the end of 2007. The implications of this in the short term are not very transparent but long term should lead to advertisers increasing their spending. For domainers, however, the implications look likely to be problematic for some while others will benefit. In terms of the financial markets, what is clear for the year ahead from Sandler’s talk, is that they are watching with keen interest the progress on the NASDAQ of Marchex and the upcoming IPO’s of Name Media and Demand Media. In the closing seminar Mark Van Dyke of Army.com spoke about developing a site’s brand by sourcing everything from content management systems to content and moderators for free. Van Dyke explained how the five principle steps toward success in your domain depend upon determining strategy, developing and launching the site, selecting technologies, joining ad and affiliate networks and most importantly monitoring statistics and performance and adjusting accordingly.
By sharing his money-winning optimisation principles with the domainers of the UK, Van Dyke inspired the attendees that they, too, could develop their sites into the cash cow that is Army.com. The only question left on the minds of all was, “How can I do that with my two word, hyphenated, .co.uk?” So much for the structured content of the one-day conference. What happened behind the scenes? With only one day to network, there was quite a bit of table-hopping and more than a few “quiet words” were exchanged at the after party.
In true British fashion, the after-after party went on until 8:00 am, well lubricated with pints of proper English bitter and smooth single malts. In terms of highest valued domains batted about, entrepreneur Steve Russell chose Domain Channel to formally announce he’s offering his portfolio of villas.com and another 130 “villas” domains and trademarks for £2.5 million. It was also leaked that a group of UK domainers are banding together to start their own commercial development of monetisation and cooperative development, The Domain Name Association.
DN Jurnal

The State of the Industry January 2008: Our Panel of Domain Experts Analyze What Happened in 2007 and Share Their Forecasts for 2008

2008-01-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

By Ron Jackson
It's time again for our annual round up of domain industry experts to get their forecasts for the New Year as well as their thoughts on the key trends that impacted the domain business in 2007. We've brought back some of your favorites from past State of the Industry reports and also reached out to some new contributors to keep things fresh. In this article, you will hear from leading company CEOs, major domain portfolio owners, conference organizers and representatives from the legal, finance and domain development sectors.

The industry is coming off it's fourth consecutive year of robust growth and that has attracted major capital investors who are attempting to roll up the domain space. In last year's article the consensus among our panel of experts was that consolidation would continue to be the key force in
2007, just as it was in 2006. Their forecasts again proved to be on the money. The most recent example of that was this month's announcement that Oversee.net had acquired Moniker.com.

With the ink on that deal barely dry, we felt Moniker CEO Monte Cahn (who signed a long term deal to stay on under Oversee) would be the perfect lead-off man for this year's round up. In addition to being one of the most popular registrars among domain pros, Moniker permanently changed the industry for the better by pioneering the live auCahn kicked it off with his thoughts on another boom year for the domain business in 2007. "With a total base of more than 146 million domains, the rapid and continued growth and expansion of new domain registrations worldwide is proof that the industry as a whole is healthy," Cahn said. "Not only have .com domains continued to expand at a healthy rate, but other TLDs and extensions have also seen remarkable growth. Localization of the internet continues to increase. Not only have we seen a stronger interest in geo target domains, but country code domains – with Germany’s .de and China’s .cn leading the pack – continue to draw attention from both businesses looking for market share in those countries and individual domain investors who are expanding their portfolios. We see even further evidence of this with the increase in demand for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), which allow internet users with a non-ASCII alphabet to type domains in their native languages." "The organization, popularity, and growth of the live domain name auction has been a significant milestone in 2007," Cahn noted. "We are beginning to see some competition and “coopetiton” (competitors working together to advance the industry), with Sedo and our new sister company, SnapNames.com (also acquired by Oversee in 2007), bringing live domain name auction to domain-related trade shows. The various iterations and concepts we are all bringing to market are healthy for the industry as a whole. In addition, other partners of ours such as Fabulous, NameMedia, RevenueDirect, and others have been both buyers and sellers at most of our events this past year which has demonstrated cooperation, and alignment never seen before. Indeed, we have come a long way from our first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. event in 2004, where there was a manual domain auction process. Now auctions have grown into multi-million dollar events, with online, proxy and telephone bidding."

"The sheer number of events has also grown," Cahn added. "In 2007, Moniker alone hosted 10 live and online domain name auctions at both industry and “niche” events. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. New York was the break-out event of the year netting more than $12 million during the live, four-hour event and subsequent online auction. The publicity surrounding these events has lead to a greater understanding of the industry as a whole and an increase in the price of domains. We’ve seen this happen before our eyes at some of the niche auctions we’ve done. The secondary market for unique, marketable domains has risen greatly and we feel that everyone from corporate executives to brand managers on Madison Avenue are starting to understand the value of a domain name."
"These trends influenced a great deal of growth at Moniker," Cahn said. "As a result of our auctions and our related Domain Asset Management suite of services, Moniker experienced growth in registrations of more than 50% and saw a 109% increase in domain sales year-over-year. These were led by some of the industry’s top-grossing domain transactions of 2007. Porn.com (brokered by Moniker) topped this year’s chart when it sold for $9.5 million in May and we had other significant success allowing us to capture 4 of the top 5 domain name sales of 2007 according to DN Journal’s domain sales chart. Looking ahead to 2008 Cahn said, "Moniker headed into 2008 with excellent momentum. Of course, it started when we announced that Moniker has joined forces with Oversee.net, a leading technology-driven online marketing solutions company and parent company of Snapnames. With our addition to the Oversee family, we can together leverage our capabilities, and those of SnapNames, to offer the industry’s most comprehensive live and silent auction services as well as the most complete suite of Domain Asset Management Products and Services available."

"We will also continue to bring auctions to premiere and niche events throughout the world. This global expansion will provide new opportunities for us and domain investors around the world. Whether you participate as a buyer, seller, or observer, these events will benefit you and the industry. 2008 will also be more and more challenging for the domain industry from a legal perspective and with regard to security, trademarks, cybersquatting, customer confusion and monetization of traffic," Cahn concluded.Now let's turn to the CEO of another industry powerhouse, Sedo.com Co-Founder Tim Schumacher whose company also took part in 2007's continuing wave of consolidation. "Sedo was certainly very happy with how our business in a thriving environment, developed," Schumacher said. "Apart from our acquisition of GreatDomains.com, we didn't have any major events, but instead, we focused on quietly improving our products and processes and almost doubling our revenue and the revenue we pay to our clients - did you know, by the way, that in 2007, we at Sedo paid out over $100 million for domain sales and domain parking to our clients?"
"2007 was also a big year for auctions," Schumacher noted. "We see more and more people pushing their names into auctions, when they get a bid through Sedo (and this also does make sense whenever someone owns a name for which there could be demand from more than
one bidder). We also ran more and more monthly and topic/country-specific auctions, and of course also the dotMobi premium auctions."
"This was probably also Sedo's biggest bummer of the year," Schumacher admitted. "We really didn't anticipate that level of demand, but the auction received so much attention in the final moments that our auction servers crashed before the completion of the auctions, rendering our system incapable of processing many validly submitted bids, including proxy bids set by user’s using the feature to automatically bid up to a maximum amount, and sending out winner notifications in error. It was a tough moment for me personally as well, because no matter on which decision we took, we knew we wouldn't make everyone happy, and all we could do is apologize. We do hope though that with dotMobi's decision to re-run the auction starting January 23 (which we also believe is the most fair option to everyone), people will be understanding and give the auction another shot."

"Looking at the entire industry, I believe 2007 definitely was a good year for the industry again, though things are definitely not as easy as two years ago and competition is further heating up," Schumacher observed. "With competition increasing, consolidation is too. We have seen major players (e.g. Ireit) going through restructurings and others being actively shaping consolidation (e.g. NameMedia or Oversee)."
And how about 2008? "Just as for 2007, I see that we move even further down the road in our "domain evolution theory", meaning less expiring market, more domain sales and portfolio sales," Schumacher said. "I also think the Registrars are starting to wake up and they will play a more important role, either by partnering (smart!) or by doing things on their own (smart only if you're among the top 3 in the world!)."
"Also, I do think domaining will move more mainstream, with advertisers seeing the value of domains (especially the improved long-term ROI vs. paying every month in a PPC model). That's what will increase our market in the long run... not if there's only a market for domains between domainers themselves.

In regards to that, I'd also like to congratulate NameMedia for filing for their IPO! NameMedia has
done a great job in the past years and we at Sedo applaud their IPO efforts and drive to bring greater attention and awareness to the domain name industry outside the original domain market. It's good to see that with companies like NameMedia generating interest and excitement on Wall Street, individuals and investors alike are realizing that domain names are not simply a cost of doing business online or a novelty, but rather a valuable asset that can be bought, sold and utilized strategically for any number of activities" Schumacher said.We are glad Tim mentioned NameMedia. We certainly would have had representatives from the company in this article, but because they have filed their IPO they are now in an SEC-mandated quiet period that prevents them from commenting publicly. We wish them the best with their offering and look forward to having them back in next year's State of the Industry report.

Through their AfternicDLS, NameMedia made a big push in getting aftermarket domains exposed in new venues in 2007. That has also been the focus of Fabulous.com's new Domain Distribution Network. Fabulous COO Dan Warner has long been one of our go-to guys when we are looking for in-depth industry analysis. He can speak with authority on every aspect of the industry but for this article we focused on the domain aftermarket where, through the DDN, Fabulous is making their newest initiative.
"New retail sales channels via the registrars and auctions dominated growth of domain sales in 2007," Warner noted. "Registrars were finally enabled to actively trade aftermarket domains at fixed prices with instant settlement and high quality control. Most of the major registrars were able to benefit from the robust rollout of new contextual technology, quality controls, and registrar API’s to flex their muscles in a largely new and untapped market for them. As an added benefit, new registrations increased for registrars when aftermarket domains were listed in-line with the new registration path."

"Domain banners (on partner registrar sites) which advertised aftermarket domains provided a new traffic stream to registrars. This new traffic sold a massive flow of new registrations, aftermarket domains, hosting services, and other registrar products making domain banner traffic a proven and important new source of income for domain owners and registrars alike. A source of revenue that is now difficult to discard," Warner said.
"Domain banner traffic is expected to produce half of the registrar aftermarket sales in 2008. New registrars are rolling out aftermarket domain systems and a wide variety of new domain stock is becoming available through the global listing system to registrar clients. 2008 with be the year of aftermarket domain stock and sales. After seeing some portfolios increase net profits by millions of dollars last year through new registrar aftermarket sales, domain owners are unlikely to ignore the high profit gains to be made in 2008," Warner concluded.

A key reason that the aftermarket continues to scale news heights is the availability of domain financing, an area that was pioneered by DomainCapital.com. Their Presdent, Robert Alfano, told us "Domain Capital is in the unique position of not owning any Premium domain names, but
adding a service to an ever growing industry. From where we stand, we are seeing numerous inquiries a day for our financing services and with the additional Trade Shows, which adds more Live Auctions we are seeing more financing opportunities from that avenue as well."

"The sky seems to be the limit and we don't see the sales in the secondary market slowing down," Alfano said. "Even with consolidation taking place the Auctions allow a well organized and professional forum for domains to trade. I would say the most significant event of 2007 is the increase of live and online auctions that are taking place and that are ALL highly successful."

Looking ahead to 2008 Alfano said, "As

Domain Capital enters our 3rd year being in business we see consolidation as the possible theme of 2008. When you have an Oversee.net buy a Moniker in the first week of the new year you can only expect more acquisitions and mergers. And as we have stated before, we are looking to continue our growth and support within an industry that continues to grow at the speed of light."

2008 DOMAINfest Global Conference Set to Unveil New Twists This Month in Hollywood

2008-01-09T11:56:00.000-08:00

By Ron Jackson

The DOMAINfest Global Conference returns to the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, California January 21-23. The phrase "back by popular demand" is often mis-used but that description rings true for this event. Attendees simply loved the debut conference at this location last year. Even so, the conference organizers (Oversee.net) initially planned to taking the show on the road with Las Vegasslated to host round two. That was before they started getting overwhelming feedback from attendees calling for a return to the Renaissance and the entertainment capital of the world - Hollywood. Recognizing that the customer is always right, Oversee relented - though truth be told, they were happy to make that concession as Los Angeles also happens to be their hometown.
Though the site will be the same - the show will not. Oversee wasn't content to stand pat even though their first outing was so warmly received. With the phenomenal growth of the domain industry, competition has also grown in the conference space. With so many options to choose from now, show promoters have to keep coming up with fresh concepts to give attendees a reason to come back to their event.
For starters, DOMAINfest Global will feature two keynote speakers - famed adventurer Peter Hillary, who will talk Monday afternoon (Jan. 21) and best-selling author and Wired Magazine co-founder John Batelle, who will take the podium Wednesday morning (Jan. 23). In still another headline event, wildly successful domain investor Frank Schilling (who was the subject of our Dec. 2007 Cover Story) will host a Domain Town Hall meeting Tuesday morning (Jan. 22).
In another new twist, DOMAINfest Global will enter the live domain auction derby with a pair of three-hour events running Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons (Jan. 22-23) from 4-7pm Pacific time each day. That major addition to the show was made possible by Oversee's purchase of pioneering auction house SnapNames.com last year. The conference will mark the debut of SnapNames Live and the auctions will be further enhanced by know-how acquired in another major purchase earlier this month when Oversee added live auction pioneer Moniker.com to their stable of corporate assets. You can participate in the live auctions even if you are unable to attend the conference. Details on how to register to bid are available here. A few of the gems scheduled to go on the block are romance.com, soapoperas.com, bookmarks.com, dude.com, ar.com and iq.net. You can download the entire preliminary catalog for the live auctions here.Also new to the agenda will be the presentation of the first annual Domainers Choice Awards at a closing night dinner (Wednesday, Jan. 23). The awards program was actually developed
independently by Donna Mahony and Sally Letzer to give everyone in the industry an equal opportunity to vote for those they felt represented excellence in individual and corporate achievement. Balloting was conducted over several weeks on the DCA website with voting open to all. DOMAINfest Global offered to host presentation of the awards, giving them an appropriate Hollywood backdrop. As it happens, the Renaissance Hotel sits immediately adjacent to the Kodak Theater where the movie world's biggest event - the Oscars - are staged each year.
DOMAINfest will again feature the limited dual-track format they used last year. In addition to the main conference track, special sessions for DomainSponsor.com clients will run concurrently at selected times during the show. DomainSponsor of course is the domain parking giant that is also owned by Oversee.net.
A wide variety of topics will be covered in the conference seminars. With tax time now upon us, one of the most timely sessions (on Tuesday, Jan. 22) will feature CPA Sandy Brooks who literally wrote the book (the Domain Tax Guide) on how domain owners can best comply with current tax laws. We asked Sandy to share with you some of the information she will be passing on to showgoers later this month.
"As after-market domain sales activity continues to increase, so does the need for sound legal, financial and tax planning for domainers," Brooks said. "What was once considered a hobby or a high-risk investment is now a respected business model and domain conferences, such as DOMAINfest Global and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. are opening up the field to a lot of domain investors."
"Whether you’ve accumulated thousands of domain names as one of the lucky early stage domainers, or if you’ve only just
begun in this expanding industry, now is the time to tend to your business. How you structure your company and how you report your domain purchases and sales can have a significant impact on your bottom line. The following are three things you can do NOW to save you money and resources later:
Choose your advisors carefully. Chances are that you may already have an accountant and/or an attorney with whom you are comfortable. These professionals may not be experts in domaining, but they should take the time to become educated in your industry. A good professional can be hard to find, so there is no need to can your trusted advisor for someone who knows more about domaining. Help your advisor by setting up a meeting to explain your business. Bring industry documents, printouts or your laptop as visual aids to help him or her gain an understanding of what you do. If you are new to the entrepreneurship or do not yet have advisors, now would be the time to narrow your search to professionals that have advised domainers or Internet marketers. Ask around for referrals from those with a similar business model to yours.
Become your own tax and business expert. If you are like most entrepreneurs, you are an information hound. You are fast becoming an expert on domain marketing and many other facets of the trade. Just because taxes are boring doesn’t mean that you can ignore this part of your business. Your taxes and your finances are ultimately your responsibility. The domaining industry is unique, and you should take the time to become educated about the financial side of domaining. Go to domain conferences, making sure to attend the tax, finance and legal workshops. Talk to other domainers, especially those who are successful. Read up on the business aspects of domaining, taking care that your information is coming from reliable sources.
Be prepared. This advice isn’t only for Boy Scouts. If you are expecting to sell a domain at an upcoming auction, ensure that your accounting treatment for the purchase of the domain was sound. If you want the favorable capital gains treatment on the profit from the domain sale, make sure that your records indicate that you have owned the domain for more than a year." I will also have the honor of moderating and speaking on a panel Wednesday afternoon (Jan. 23) called "Understanding the Big Picture" that will focus on current online trends and how they will impact domain name values over time. I am also looking forward to another legendary DomainSponsor party. That gala is slated to start Tuesday night, Jan. 22 at 8pm and run into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
As always, DN Journal will be in hand for the entire show so we can preserve the event for posterity in our exclusive conference wrap-up article that will be published on our home page before the end of the month. Hope to see many of you there. It is always a great pleasure to see old friends again as well as to make new ones. That's what the conference experience is really all about.

How to Create Value in Domain Names: Build the Business

2008-01-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

Domain name investors have done well over the past few years simply trading generic domain names. But with a little extra effort, savvy entrepreneurs are exponentially multiplying their return on investment by developing traffic and real business on top of those domain names before selling them off. And these days, it's not as costly as you might think to develop a real Internet business.
The owners of Chocolate.com for example, bought the domain for $300,000 and two years later have turned it into a business that generates about $2 million in annual revenues.
According to Business Week, "instead of flooding a site with pay-per-click ads and flipping the domain for a quick profit, they're trying to develop real businesses that will sell for much more."
In recent news, it's been reported by the Wall Street Journal that the company built around the domain name Business.com, which was purchased in 1999 for $7.5 million in illiquid stock, could fetch $300-400 million.
"Entrepreneurs Jake Winebaum and Sky Dayton were widely mocked for lavishing $7.5 million on a single Internet domain name -- business.com -- back in 1999. It was the single highest price paid for a domain name at the time... The company that grew out of business.com -- a search engine used by businesses to find products and services -- is now on the auction block, and could fetch anywhere between $300 million and $400 million, according to people familiar with the matter."
The domain name itself has become inseparable from the underlying business, but as a generic domain name without the developed business, it would likely sell today for about $10 million. The real value was gained through what was done with the domain.
No doubt the company Business.com put a lot of work and effort into building their business, and indeed has survived through some ups and downs. But even with a little effort—by building a directory or content website, gaining traffic, and promoting a site—domain owners can really ratchet up their returns.
If you're not a website developer, for a few hundred dollars you can find skilled designers and programmers to build a quality website or blog, complete with content management system that will allow you to easily publish content to the site.
Even if you don't have a million-dollar generic domain you can build a solid business on a shoestring and get 10x or even 100x return on your investment.

Domain Rich News.

iPhone.com Domain Name Sells for $1 million +

2008-01-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

Back in 1995, Michael Kovatch bought the domain name iPhone.com. He knew that it was a good name, but he couldn't know that one of the greatest product launches, the Apple iPhone, would be coming. And now Mr. Kovatch's time has come, as he has reportedly sold the domain name for more than $1 million, according to Domain Tools Blog.Kovatch had registered the domain name with the thought that Internet telephony would be the wave of the future. And while he lucked out that Apple's hot new product bore the iPhone name, his foresight was not entirely accidental. Today, domainers with vision can come up with good names using similar strategies—identifying future trends and scooping up the domains.
Now that all generic keyword domain names are gone, brainstorming future product ideas and trends is one of many effective strategies for acquiring potentially valuable domain names.
Another forward thinker, Kevin Ham, a retired doctor from Canada and owner of hundreds of thousands of domain names, made an early investment in .cm domains in a partnership with the government of Cameroon (owner of the .cm extension). He now takes in an estimated $70 million per year from his 300,000+ domain name portfolio.
In an industry where the market landscape is in constant flux, there are many opportunities to cash in.
Domain Rich News

REASON WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE AN EXPIRED DOMAIN NAME

2008-01-04T17:31:00.000-08:00

Articles By Francis Haastrup.
Discover the secret to how to get google ads for free. visit http://www.linkupcash.com

Everyday, people are registering new domain names, and everyday there are many numbers of domain name that are getting expired.
Why is it that people let their domain name get expired? There are many diverse reasons to why people allow their domain name to expire. You see, some good domain names expire simply because the owner forget to pay for their renewal. Either the owner lost interest, or simply don’t have time, money or effort to manage those domain names, so they simply forget the domain names will expire.
Another major reason is that, domain owner may have forgotten the email address he used for the registration or may no more be in use of the email address. Thereby, leads to lack of information to as when his domain name will expire. In that case his loss is your gain.
Why should you now go for an expired domain name? You should know that a domain name that was once registered and got expired would have probably been developed into a website with some good traffic on it. A good way to test out a domain name that has expired is by going to archive.org and quickly search for their way back machine. Enter-in the domain name and it will display a full history about the domain name since the time of its registration.
Now, searching through the history of an expired domain name you discovered that the name has been developed into a website you could bet it with me that there may have been some traffic on it. As you know, buying an expired domain name that as traffic is like having the opportunity to a 10,000 square foot house for the price of a one bedroom apartment.

Article By Francis Haastrup.
Discover the secret to how to get google ads for free. Visit http://www.linkupcash.com

Something awful happens to somethingawful.com

2008-01-04T17:27:00.000-08:00

Somethingawful.com - the best place to go for something awful - is recovering from Domain Name Server problems yesterday that left the site unaccessible for many users.
Its forum included six pages of annoyed users who struggled to get onto the site. It appears the problem was caused by changes to a DNS server at Network Solutions.According to one of the site's administrators, someone got access to its domain name record on Network Solutions' nameservers.
A message from Generic Admin said:
We're still trying to find out exactly what happened. The nameservers on our domain record were reset to the Network Solutions nameservers. I called NS support, and they said that someone had logged in the NS domain manager and clicked on "manage DNS" or something, and that reset it. There are only two people with the network solutions login, and neither of us have logged in or made any change.
Network Solutions is investigating how the mistake happened.

By John Oates
The regiter news

Moniker.Com Brings Adult Domain Name Auction to Internext Expo in Las Vegas

2008-01-04T17:16:00.000-08:00

POMPANO BEACH, Fla., Jan. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Moniker, the leading provider of Domain Asset Management(TM) services, will host another exciting live domain name auction of premium adult domain names at Internext Expo, the world's largest business-to-business online and digital media adult conference, on Tuesday, January 15 at The Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

More than an additional 2,000 domain names will be available for purchase during a concurrent, online auction, which begins on January 15 and will continue throughout the week following the live auction.

Internext Expo attendees will be allowed to bid during both the live and online domain name auctions. To view the complete auction inventory please visit http://marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction/index.html .

Moniker was responsible for selling more than $20 million in adult-related domains in 2007 including the domains sold at both Internext auctions last year.

"Moniker's domain name auctions at Internext allow online entrepreneurs interested in beginning or expanding their online businesses an opportunity to purchase both new and developed domains that will enhance the value of their portfolio," said Monte Cahn, co-founder and CEO of Moniker.com . "We are pleased that we are able to bring our auction back to Internext in 2008 and hope to replicate the success we had in 2007."

Internext Expo Auction Rules and Procedures

Only attendees at Internext Expo will be automatically eligible to attend the private Live and Online Silent auctions. Individuals not attending the Internext Expo will also be able to participate by purchasing an absentee bidder registration for $199, which will applied to their domain purchases. Telephone bidding will also be available to individuals who want to participate in the Live Auction but can't travel to the conference. Interested individuals should contact sales@moniker.com or call 1-800-688-6311.
Official auction dates, rules and procedures for all Moniker live and online auctions can be found by visiting http://www.moniker.com/liveauction .

Domain Name Financing Available

Moniker, along with its partner Domain Capital, will offer domain financing to leverage domain purchases made at this event or for other transactions. Moniker and Domain Capital have been pioneering the same concept for virtual real-estate for years in a fashion similar to real estate mortgage financing. Please contact a sales representative at sales@moniker.com for more information.

About Moniker.com

Moniker is the first and only leading provider of Domain Asset Management(TM), a complete set of business services that provide companies a single-point-of-access to help manage and maximize the value of their domains. These services include name creation, registration, acquisition, portfolio management, appraisal and escrow services, traffic monetization and after- market sales - all backed by unsurpassed customer service and security.

With more than a decade of experience, Moniker is a top 10 domain registrar, holds the industry's highest customer retention rate and pioneered the industry's first domain appraisal formula. It is considered the industry's premier marketplace to buy and sell domain names.

Moniker, with headquarters in Pompano Beach, Florida, is an operating unit of Seevast Corporation, a company of marketing services firms that drive sales, build brands and leverage core assets for their clients.

About Internext Expo

Internext Expo is the world's largest business-to-business online and digital media adult conference. Since 1999, the bi-annual trade show has been held in Las Vegas each January and in Hollywood, Florida, each August. Internext originally was created to provide networking and new business opportunities for the adult online market. The goal is to provide the optimum forum to network and access to support products, services, information, and education for webmasters to succeed online.

About AVN Media Network

AVN Media Network has become a global leader in the adult entertainment community. AVN's portfolio of business includes the widely-recognized industry journals: AVN, AVN Online, GAYVN, and AVN Novelty Business. In addition, AVN hosts the leading industry conventions: AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, Internext Las Vegas, Internext Summer, AVN Adult Novelty Expo, the GAYVN Expo, GAYVN Summit; and the consumer show Erotica LA. It also provides online news coverage through AVN.com, along with cutting-edge industry e-newsletters. AVN also hosts the annual AVN Awards and GAYVN Awards ceremonies.

Moniker.com

CONTACT: Genie White, Director of Marketing of Moniker.com,+1-954-984-8445, geniew@corp.moniker.com

Web site: http://www.moniker.com/http://www.marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction/index.htmlhttp://www.moniker.com/liveauction
By DnJournal

Discovery Communications Buys TreeHugger.com for $10 Million

2007-12-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

Discovery Communications Inc. has purchased the environmental website TreeHugger.com for $10 million. The companies announced the deal today..
The website will be part of Discovery's Planet Green initiative, which will include a TV network with 24-hour programming dedicated to living a green, environmentally-friendly lifestyle.TreeHugger.com was founded in 2004 by Graham Hill. The site is among the most successful environmental websites, with 1.4 million unique monthly visitors. It has served over 50 million pages, and has an archive of some 13,500 posts.
This is not the first such acquisition by Discovery Communications. Last year, the company's Animal Planet purchased Petfinder.com and PetsIncredible.com. According to the company, "Discovery is pursuing its multiplatform strategy of being the leading content provider across nonfiction genres around the world."
TreeHugger's Graham Hill says Discovery has "a commitment from the top of the company for over $50 million to create content, including programming for the world's first 24 hour green channel and in addition have allocated significant budget aimed at building the leading green web portfolio on the Internet."
"It's important to note that this purchase was not just for the domain name, but also for the content and traffic that the site has generated over the past few years. However, it's still a good sign for domain investors as a whole, especially those committed to building out their premium domain names," notes Peter Goggin, a partner at the domain name investment company Argonaut Ventures.
"This acquisition of TreeHugger.com is a bold move for Discovery Communications. The company's Planet Earth series was enormously popular, and they're now expanding on their reach in this area. I think we'll see a lot more such acquisitions of popular, content-rich websites that dominate select niche markets," he added.

Domainrich News

THE BIG SECRET BEHIND TRAFFIC

2007-12-26T16:08:00.000-08:00

It is quite obvious that, nowadays, people tend to neglect the fact that the main factor that makes a site look meaningful is its “Traffic”. Unfortunately, gone are the days when you could buy a domain name for a business, and with just a little advert on a local newspaper & magazines, people get to know what you do and start visiting your site, by that turns to a quick profit. Today a good domain owner needs to for ways to promote his domains in order to attract visitors.
Some few domainers who are really doing well in the domain name business have gotten to know the fact that; it is until when a domain/website start getting traffic before it can start serving as a source of income for Its owner. To be perfectly clear, “Traffic simply means the number of people that know your site exist and visit your site at particular point in time.
Now, for you to let people know your site exist on the net, there are several things you need to consider doing in order to gain traffic to your site.
1) SUBMIT TO SEARCH ENGINES:
There are many free search engines on the net where you can regularly submit your site. I highly recommend the following site for you to place your submission now:
Google (The #1 search engine on the net)Go to: www.google.com/addurl.html
MSN Search (One of the best search engines)Go to: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Alta Vista (Also a better one)Go to: http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/defult
2) GOOGLE ADWORDS:
You will discover that every time you search for a term on Google search engine, there are always some special site on the right hand side of every search results. Those sites you see paid Google to help them advertise their site on their network. You could also do a similar thing to gain more traffic to your site.
In addition to all these search engines, there are several things you can also do to gain more traffic to your site: Setup an affiliate program for your site, Join forum to post question & answers, Write articles & post them to articles sites.
By adapting all the strategies have discourse above, you will discover that you are now catching a BIG with your small net.

Article by Francis Haastrup.

Francis Haastrup is a successful enterprenuer in the domain name business. He has coupled an ebook together on how to get a free ads on google site. To discover this powerful secret go to http://linkupcash.com/

South Florida Sojourn Earns Kudos for T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2007... PART ONE

2007-12-26T14:45:00.000-08:00

The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2007 conference held at the spectacular Westin Diplomat Resort in Hollywood, Florida October 9-13 was the ninth outing for show founders Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu but they are still batting 1.000 when it comes to delivering informative, entertaining, energizing and enriching events. I believe that each of the 500 people who made the trip to South Florida from their homes around the globe would agree that those carefully chosen adjectives fit this show like a glove.
As always, this edition of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. got underway with an electrifying evening cocktail party that, speaking personally, single handedly made this the most
energizing T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference I've ever attended. Allow me to explain why I say that. The past few months have been the busiest time of my life. In addition to the daily work of producing DN Journal I have been criss-crossing the country covering conferences, researching cover stories, visiting my mother in the Midwest and moving my daughter back into her college dorm in the Northeast. In the midst of all of that traveling my wife and I also bought a new home and had to try to move on the few days I was in town (with us both being packrats this was an ordeal you can't even imagine!).
When it came time to leave again for T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East I was perilously close to complete burn out. I went to the show thinking it was coming at the worst possible time but by the end of that first evening I realized that the timing could not have been better. Being in the middle of a
crowd composed of what I believe to be the smartest entrepreneurs in the world produced a miracle cure. Though I was exhausted when I arrived in Hollywood earlier in the day, the conversations I had that evening recharged my batteries so completely that I was only able to sleep a couple of hours that night.
I woke up at 2am thinking about the things I had heard, the fascinating new people I had met and how fortunate I was to be there to experience it. I never got back to sleep that night but it didn't matter - I couldn't wait to get going the next morning and as I write this, a week after the conference ended, the charge
I got from being there still has me feeling like I could run circles around the Energizer bunny. While this is a personal anecdote I know I am not the Lone Ranger as I have heard from other attendees with similar stories to tell. If you were there you know what I mean. If you haven't been to a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show yet I'm not sure words can explain it (though in this article I'll certainly give it my best shot!).
Wednesday morning (Oct. 10) it was time to get down to business (which I did right after calling my daughter and wishing her a happy 21st birthday - where did the years go!). Following a breakfast buffet sponsored by Klickerz.com, Schwartz and Neu welcomed the crowd and introduced Moniker CEO Monte Cahn who detailed how to take part in the live domain auction that would be staged Friday.
Internet Commerce Association Executive Director Michael Collins and the organization's Legal Counsel and Washington D.C. lobbyist Phil Corwin then took turns at the podium to talk about the one-year old trade group's efforts to bring domain owners together to protect their rights and assets from attacks that are steadily intensifying. Covetous parties that missed the domain boat are looking for any opening they can find (including getting laws and UDRP procedures changed) in an attempt to grab valuable domains without paying owners what their assets are worth.
Corwin summed the ICA's mission up by saying "The ICA is about preserving long term value of domains for you and not for people who want to steal domains from you." Though virtually every other industry has a strong trade group Corwin said "There has not been a tradition of working together in this industry to collectively defend your interests." An unfortunate result of that apathy was Verisign's ability to ramrod a huge rate increase for .com domain names through ICANN despite almost unanimous opposition from the Internet community. Referring to that, Corwin wryly commented "I'm sure you all got your thank you note from Verisign for that $1 billion transfer of wealth." It does appear that the ICA's message is starting to sink in.
The organization received several new commitments of financial support at the conference (including $25,000 from T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s lead sponsor TrafficZ.com) that will help it continue to represent the industry's interests before Congress, ICANN and in the court of public opinion.
The ICA is striving to get everyone in the industry involved. To keep ideas fresh and develop the broadest possible base, expansion of the Board of Directors is planned and new board members will replace some of those who founded the group at this same conference a year ago (the six original founders donated $50,000 each to get the organization off the ground). In addition every member of the non-profit organization is eligible to serve as an officer, including President. There are many membership levels (starting at $295) that make it possible for everyone to get involved. As I have stated in the past I think a strong trade group is a must if this industry is to maintain the prosperity it has earned through the capital put at risk by domain investors who had the vision to recognize how valuable these assets would one day become.
Next on the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. agenda was a wide-ranging nine-man panel discussion about The Domain Industry: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Those on the dais included (alphabetically by last name) Matt Bentley (CSO, Sedo.com), Jonathan Boswell (CEO, LeaseThis.com), Adam Dicker (Owner of DNForum.com), Ammar Kubba (COO, TrafficZ.com), Leland Hardy (Owner of NewYork.com), Ron Jackson (Editor/Publisher, DNJournal.com), Peter Lamson (Senior VP, NameMedia) and Dan Warner (COO, Fabulolus.com).
As you would expect with that line-up, there were so many interesting views expressed that it would require a separate article to do them justice. Many different topics were touched on but one common theme among the participants was a belief that the rapid growth the domain industry is enjoying today will continue for several years to come. The accelerating migration of advertising dollars away from traditional media outlets to the web appears to be an unstoppable wave that should lift owners of quality domain names to levels that few could have imagined when the first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference was held just three years ago this month.
After a lunch break (hosted by Casale Media) the afternoon session got underway with a panel discussion that explored the topic of whether of not domain owners are too dependent on pay per click (PPC) parking pages for monetizing their assets. This panel featured brothers Michael Castello and David Castello of Castello Cities Internet Network, Inc. (Michael and David were featured in our December 2006 Cover Story), Michael Gilmour (WhizzbangsBlog.com), Dr. Christopher Hartnett (Founder of USA Global Link), Ari Bayme (Managing Director of Modern Capital), Stuart Wood (Wifi.com) and Jonathan Boswell (Lease This.com).
The Castello brothers operate very profitable geo domain sites including PalmSprings.com and Nashville.com and are currently building out Cost.com as a major shopping portal in partnership with TrafficZ's Ammar Kubba and Kevin Vo (the latter two gentlemen are featured in our current Cover Story). With PalmSprings.com generating over $1 million a year from its home page alone, the Castellos are the poster boys for the rewards that can be reaped from good development work (and a talented sales force). With most domain owners holding large portfolios they understand the necessity to park names but they encourage owners to move forward with development of their top assets, partnering with others if necessary, to unlock their full potential.
Michael Gilmour has always been a fan of the PPC approach, in part because it is much less labor intensive than development and thus offers an excellent means of monetization for those who hold hundreds or thousands of domain names. However, the Australian domain investor also wants to see some big changes made in the way PPC companies currently operate.

He is particularly irked by the current lack of transparency with PPC companies and has been on a crusade to get companies to open their books to trusted independent auditors so domain owners will know they are getting a fair shake when PPC revenues are divided between the companies and their clients. Gilmour has written extensively about
this issue and other PPC matters in his well-researched WhizzbangsBlog that I would encourage you to visit. You will find some of the most insightful information on the parking business available anywhere on the web.
In the final seminar Wednesday, The Castello brothers returned to team up with Freddy Schiwek (EVP, EuroDNS.com), Liesbeth Mack-DeBoer (VP, Sedo.com), Jothan Frakes (DomainSponsor.com) and Adam Dicker (DNForum.com) for a session on Local Search and the role .com and ccTLDs play in that booming space. Frakes has long been a champion of ccTLDs and at this session he noted "people who are looking for an opportunity to get into domains like that of .com in the 1990s should realize that is not likely to be repeated. However, there are rich opportunities in ccTLDs. Many are relaxing their Nexus requirements, making them easier to acquire, sales are growing and we're going to see a big expansion of locally oriented domains." Frakes also said IDNs (International Domain Names) will play a growing role as search goes local - noting the current widespread adoption of Japanese IDNs as just one example. Adam Dicker concurred with Frakes on both the ccTLD and IDN fronts noting that he has purchased thousands of domains in each category. In fact on the same day this panel session was held, Dicker said he registered the last 4,200 three-letter .ca (Canadian country code) domains still available while listening to another seminar. Dicker, who is from Canada, said a lot of good generic domains are dropping in ccTLDs like .ca and represent a great acquisition opportunity. He also advised looking for .com domains that begin with a local name and end with a keyword that represents a popular product or service - for example TorontoFlorists.
As a Sedo executive Ms. Mack-DeBoer has a birds eye of the ccTLD market as her company dominates aftermarket sales in the country code category. She said that Great Britain's .co.uk in particular is a rising star and is now used by nearly 64% of the population in the UK. She noted that the other leading ccTLD extensions in terms of sales at Sedo are .de (Germany), .at (Austria), .ch (Switzerland), .be (Belgium), .us (United States) and .es (Spain).
Schiwek of EuroDNS.com said he thinks European country code domains are undervalued and represent a great investment opportunity. He noted that the European editions of popular search engines give heavy weighting to the local extension - for example someone searching in France will usually see sites that use that nation's .fr country code listed first.
Next on the Wednesday schedule was a speed networking session designed to hook attendees up with the largest number of people possible in the shortest period of time. These sessions, which have been staged in a variety of formats to keep things fresh, have always beenone of the most popular show features. At T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East last year, when you had just two minutes to spend with each person before moving on to the next, I made a new business contact in one of those 120-second time frames that has generated more revenue in the past 12 months than what it has cost me to attend all of the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences I have been to since they began in 2004 (including airfares and hotel bills). That relationship is ongoing and will likely continue to pay dividends for years to come. People often ask if it is worth the expense to go to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. I have yet to hear anyone who has actually been to a conference say no. After speed networking it was time to change gears from business to social (though at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. more business is done at the social events than in the business sessions). The evening got underway with another jam-packed cocktail party - with this one having a huge star attraction - billionaire Forbes Magazine publisher and former U.S. Presidential candidate Steve Forbes. Forbes, who was on hand to deliver the keynote address later that evening, had arrived at the hotel just minutes before the cocktail party started. He was under no obligation to attend that function but he immediately headed for the party where he quickly became the center of attention.
Forbes obviously enjoyed mingling and meeting new people as he posed for countless photographs with show attendees, gladly joined them in conversation and displayed an exceptionally engaging sense of humor. One thought that struck me after spending some time
with Forbes and hearing him speak was how sad it is that Americans choose their presidents based on how they come across in 30-second TV commercials in campaign years. When Forbes ran in 2000, there was no way a 30-second spot could convey his innate intelligence, the thought that went into his policy proposals (most notably overhauling the inscrutable U.S. income tax system with a flat tax) and his true personality. All of that is lost in a system where being photogenic and adept at delivering short soundbites determines who runs the country (OK, I'm putting away the soapbox now!).
After the cocktail party attendees enjoyed a sumptuous dinner then listened to Forbes' keynote speech. Forbes put the world-changing nature of domains and the Internet into perspective by citing historical examples of how other disruptive technologies had turned the business world on its ear, improved life for everyday citizens and built fortunes for the visionary entrepreneurs that saw such changes coming and acted to take advantage of those paradigm shifts.
Unlike most of his traditional media counterparts, Forbes recognized how powerful the web would become years ago and invested tremendous resources in Forbes.com while refusing (unlike the Wall Street Journal) to charge people for access to the site. He said he also recognized that print and the Internet were different mediums so the content on Forbes.com is almost completely different from what is in the printed magazine. Both entities are highly profitable and have helped his company escape the attrition that has hit other traditional media companies.
Forbes expressed admiration for domain investor/entrepreneurs and that in itself was probably more important than any other single thing he said in his speech. Those who missed the Internet/domain boat and remain bitter about their lack of foresight now stop at nothing to cast the entire industry in the most negative light possible. It is their hope that people will believe their misrepresentations (and outright lies) so that laws and dispute resolution policies can be changed in a way that will allow them to grab the assets they previously did not want - but now cherish - without having to pay for them. It has to be a blow to that camp to see one of the most
mainstream of successful mainstream businessmen - and a respected political figure - stand up and give entrepreneurs in our space the credit and respect they deserve. Politicians are extremely careful about the company they are seen in. Forbes' mere presence at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. spoke volumes and should pay public relations dividends for months and years to come.
After the keynote dinner, attendees were off to the official T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Party, a cruise on the Intracoastal Waterway hosted by TrafficZ. A large yacht - the Caprice - was commissioned for the event and was conveniently docked right across the street from the Westin Diplomat.By the time the ship shoved off at 10:30pm it was a full boat decked out with good food, great company, an open bar and a craftsman who hand rolled cigars for those who cared to indulge.
The party went on into the wee hours of the morning, delivering a fitting conclusion to the first full day at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East (and also assuring plenty of available seats at breakfast the next morning as those who partied a bit too hard gave their snooze buttons a good workout Thursday!)
By Ron Jackson - DN Journal

Associated Cities Delights Developers With 2007 GeoDomain Expo

2007-12-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

I went to the 2007 GeoDomain Expo in San Francisco as a guest after being invited to give the keynote address at the annual Associated Cities event held November 15-17 at the W Hotel.

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.

By DN Journal.

Domain Roundtable Dazzles Audience with High Tech Trade Show and Live Auction Twists. By Ron Jackson

2007-12-20T13:18:00.000-08:00

As this industry continues to grow at an exponential rate competition is heating up in every sector including registration and parking services, aftermarket platforms, media outlets, trade shows and everything in between. It is getting harder to stand out in the crowd but if you don't find a way to do it, you're sure to get lost in the shuffle. Organizers of the 2007 Domain Roundtable conference obviously understand that. Last week at the Seattle Sheraton they cut the standard conference deck in ways no one has seen before and the positive results will impact this industry for a long time to comeRoundtable founder Jay Westerdal and Show Producer Stephen Douglas introduced a series of high tech twists that changed the way conference business has been done.
It started at the registration desk where attendees were issued electronic nTags (see photo at left) - multi-function devices (about the size of a small TV remote control) that are worn around the neck. They replaced traditional business cards, conference programs and messaging systems while also enabling polling on a variety of topics with instantly tabulated results.
When you met someone new you just pointed your nTag at theirs, pressed a button and your contact information was instantly exchanged and recorded for later retrieval. If you weren't sure what was up next on the daily schedule, you could just check the electronic agenda. If show promoters wanted to let you know about something big going on they could send the message to every nTag in the building.
During seminars, the audience could vote on various topics (such as what features were most important to them in choosing a registrar) and the results could be shown within seconds on a projection screen. A lot of the service providers who spoke in the seminars were fascinated by this instant feedback on what their customers really wanted..

Later in the week, Domain Roundtable staged their first live auction and again they pulled a revolutionary new platform out of their hat that wowed those in attendance as well as people around the world who were able to not only watch the proceedings live on the Internet, but to actually bid for domains in real time right along with those sitting in the auction hall. That potent combo produced over $3.8 million in sales and gave the already exploding live auction format a powerful new weapon to use in the fight for aftermarket dollars.
While the new advances in technology gave Roundtable a serious wow factor, the person to person human element, as it always does, underpinned the event and opened doors for attendees that only face to face networking can push open. In this article we'll take you along with us for the entire ride so you can experience the people, places and programs that made show week in the Pacific Northwest such a special treat.
While the official opening day was Monday (August 13), Westerdal and Douglas arranged a Sunday night cocktail party to entertain those who arrived in Seattle early. Our plane from Florida arrived in time for us to catch the second half of this soiree. That allowed us to catch one of the first of many cool "photo ops" as we saw Jothan Frakes who produced the first two Roundtables hand the baton off to new producer Stephen Douglas (Frakes moved to a new position with Oversee.net's DomainSponsor after the 2006 conference, opening the door for Douglas to steward the third edition of this event).
Fortunately, we also caught Internet Real Estate Group co-founder Mike Zappy Zapolin's turn at the podium near the end of the evening. His pep talk about the endless opportunities in this industry (illustrated with examples from IREG's
many successes) served as a perfect stage setter for the week ahead. Also Sunday night exhibitors started setting up booths to show off their products and services in the days ahead (see our Roundtable Photo Gallery for shots of several of these displays and the company representatives who were there to answer all of the attendees' questions).
After registration and a sumptuous breakfast Monday morning, the main agenda got underway. I had the privilege of sitting on the opening panel with Ali Farschchian (CircleID.com), Andrew Allemann (DomainNameWire.com), Frank Michlick (DomainNameNews.com) and Ezra James (Modern Domainer Magazine). Our session was about the ever growing domain news media corps. The fact that these (and many other) media outlets have sprung up to cover this industry is proof positive that this is a business that a lot of people are interested in. It is an extremely healthy development for the industry and we are fortunate to have dedicated, knowledgeable people like those on the panel reporting on developments in the domain world and giving their unique perspectives on industry events.
Mike "Zappy" ZapolinCo-Founder, Internet Real Estate Group
The next session was a domain industry roundtable featuring Name Administration chief Frank Schilling (who would return to deliver the conference's keynote speech Monday night), IREG's Mike Zapolin, Sahar Sarid (Recall Media Group) and Adam Strong (DomainNameNews.com). This was a wide-ranging 90-minute discussion with many highlights. Schilling and Zapolin agreed that more and more traditional capital investors are looking at the domain space and Schilling noted that they are pushing prices up because they are competing for a very limited number of high quality domain names that are available for sale.
Zapolin commented on the amazing price escalation involving premier generic domains. For example his company originally bought CreditCards.com for just $100,000. In 2004 they turned around and sold it for $2.75 million. The buyer put some development
work into the domain and just this month filed a $115 million IPO plan for the property. That kind of run-up is understandably drawing attention.
Sarid said his company has little interest in selling their domains as today's 20-cent click could easily become a $20 click in the future as the value of targeted traffic becomes recognized by advertisers. As millions of new businesses (and domain investors) search for suitable domains, Strong noted that longer, more descriptive names are increasing in value, deflating the long held notion that only short (preferably one-word) domains were worth investing in. The sheer magnitude of the migration to the web is creating many different models for success.
After a lunch break sponsored by NameDrive.com, the afternoon sessions switched to dual-track mode - meaning that seminars on different topics were held simultaneously, increasing the options for attendees so they could customize a program to better fit their specific interests. For dual track sessions I split my time evenly between competing sessions so we could bring you at least some of the flavor from every seminar. Though I did that for reporting purposes I also found it to be a productive strategy for learning more about a wider variety of topics. So whether you picked one seminar and stayed wire to wire (as most did), or opted for conference room hopping as I did, the time wound up being well spent.
As you would expect, the Domains 101 seminar in the Aspen Room attracted the many industry newcomers at the conference. A panel including GoDaddy's Domain Business Manager Nate Curran, Matthias Mueller (NameDrive.com), Sean Stafford (DNZoom.com) and Jothan Frakes (DomainSponsor.com) covered all of the basics. Curran gave tips on finding a good registrar, Mueller explained how to get started with domain parking and Stafford detailed why good domains make sound investments noting that there are few assets that you can buy for $8 and potentially sell for $8,000. Frakes also focused on the value
inherent in domains as platforms for advertising and branding a business as well as providing a revenue stream from your investment.
While that session was going on, another group of attendees was in the Willow Room listening to a Registrar Executive Panel moderated by attorney Derek Newman. The panelists were Enom.com President Paul Stahura, Rebel.com CEO Dave Chiswell and Moniker.com VP Victor Pitts. Stahura expressed his opinion that other extensions besides .com will grow in popularity in the years ahead. Using population centers as an analogy he said "New York was a big city 200 years ago and it is still big, but that doesn't mean that other cities won't become fairly large too. For example, Las Vegas has become a large city in less than 50 years." Chiswell went a step further saying that acceptance of alternate TLDs had already happened in many parts of the world. Speaking of his own country, Canada, Chiswell said "There has been great growth in .ca and we are now seeing almost as many businesses in Canada using their ccTLD as use .com."
During this session the power of the nTag was demonstrated as attendees were invited to vote on some registrar related questions. When asked what was the most important thing they wanted from a registrar the largest number of attendees chose "extensive domain management features" (43%) followed by "low prices" (25%) and "great customer service" (21%). A couple of other choices barely registered; "easy transfer in/out" (6%) and "regular email notifications about expiring domains" (3%).

The first of several sessions devoted to search engine optimization SEO 101 and Beyond was next. The all-star panel for this seminar included Aaron Wall (SEOBook.com), Malcolm Lewis (Local.com), John Tompkins (Trellian), Dave Bascom (SEO.com), Dustin Woodard (AllRecipes.com) and John Andrews (Johnon.com). Some of the key points made by this distinguished group was the importance of having original content on your site, focusing on the right keywords and if possible, using a domain that defines the category your subject matter is devoted to.
Woodard showed a series of slides showing how good SEO could produce a 40-fold increase in revenue over a standard parking page. Another tip was to check out the local directories offered by Local.com that will help you add relevant localized content to your site. You can also sell your own ads in these turnkey directories. SanFrancisco.com and Nashville.com are among the sites already using this service.A pair of back to back legal sessions; TM Bullies and Intellectual Property Workshop, featuring attorneys Brett Lewis, Aaron Kornblum (Microsoft), John Berryhill, Jeremiah Johnston (Sedo) and moderator Derek Newman also drew well. While a lot of attention is paid to cybersquatters (those who register and profit from from trademark-related domains) Berryhill noted that this is a two-way street. Some trademark owners try to reach far beyond the boundaries of their marks. Berryhill pointed to the Target Corporation as just one example. They have lost three recent UDRP decisions and in the last two the panels made a point of telling them they had no universal right to the word "target" in a domain name when those names are not used in relation to the narrowly defined scope of Target's mark (as a general merchandise retail store). Kornblum said that Microsoft owns over 25,000 domain names and that they are delighted to be part of the domain industry. He said the company is supportive of domainers - but not cybersquatters whose activities harm the interests and image of legitimate domain owners. Kornblum said, "Microsoft would like to see the domain community grow and expand. It is the cybersquatting community that we would like to see contract."
While the legal panels were underway a Traffic Domains for Rent seminar was being conducted in another room. Ofer Ronen (Sendori.com), Jonathan Boswell (LeaseThis.com) and Yossi Goldlust (LookSmart.com) covered the ins and outs of the rapidly growing domain leasing field. Sendori's system is a hybrid that allows you to use standard parking that shifts traffic to a specific advertiser only when that advertiser bids more for your traffic than the parking page
will provide. Many large protfolios owners have used the Sendori system with very good results. LeaseThis.com was featured earlier this year in a DN Journal article and they continue to gain momentum in the leasing space with four million domains now available on their platform.
That session was followed by a wide-ranging Parking Services Summit featuring eight leaders in the PPC space; Ron Sheridan (Domain Sponsor.com), Donny Simonton (Parked.com), Jeremiah Johnston (Sedo.com), Jacob Knightley (NameDrive.com), Brian Carr (NamMedia), John Smrekar (RevenueDirect.com), Michael Robertson (Fabulous.com) and Ammar Kubba (TrafficZ.com). Parking may be the single most competitive sector in this industry and Johnston said domain owners are benefiting from the continual one upmanship in that category.
Speaking of one upmanship, after most of the panelists spent much of their time talking about their new graphics rich landing pages, TrafficZ's Kubba made a point of saying (with some justification) that these were features his company had rolled out three years ago, a time when competitors said fancier pages were a mistake because they would not convert traffic as well as "plain jane" pages. Though everyone is now offering pages that look more like websites, several companies still believe the plain pages work better and one said they only offer the fancier pages because customers are demanding them. Kubba said there is more to the equation than traffic conversion. He said more attractive pages have "curb appeal" that make domains more attractive assets to those interested in buying domains who land on more stylish pages. All of the companies on this panel have been successful. The best advice is probably to try several of them to see where you portfolio will perform best, as well as whose management system and customer service appeals to you most. The Parking Summit closed the Monday seminar program and led in to the main event, the after dinner keynote address from Name Administration chief Frank Schilling.
Schilling is one of the industry's greatest success stories as well as one of its nicest, most down to earth guys (also a key measure of success in my view). Schilling shared the story of how he built his empire from scratch and, in the question and answer session that followed, what he would do today if he had to start over with just $5,000-$10,000 to spend.
On the latter point he said he would try to buy a category-defining generic domain in an affordable niche, using his own RumCakes.com (for which he paid $6,000) as an example. A full-blown business could be developed on such a domain that could provide a lifetime income for the owner. Of course, this approach involves development rather than basic domaining (acquiring names that provide a revenue stream without development through either resale or PPC monetization). However as any development proponent will tell you, that approach can yield far greater profits if you have the time, energy and commitment needed to do the job well.I could spend a lot of time pulling highlights from Schilling's talk, but there is no need for that as the entire presentation is available on the web. You can view it here and I can tell you that the 54 minutes spent watching and listening to Frank will be time well spent.
After Schilling's speech everyone boarded buses for the short trip to Seattle's Sugar night club and TrafficZ's official Domain Roundtable party. In a nice twist, the event was set up as a fundraiser for a very worthy cause - Grassroots.org, an organization that supports and enables many other non-profit organizations to help them fulfill their missions.
A bevy of beautiful models was brought in with partygoers then bidding on the right to bodypaint their favorites. While there was a preponderance of women on the auction block, there were also a couple of males for female domainers to choose from. One of those was attorney Brett Lewis who a good enough sport to completely drop the legal profession's usual decorum to help drum up money for the cause. At the end of the evening $7,500 had been raised - a number that was short of the kind of support that Grassroots.org really deserves. I encourage you to check out their site to learn just how much good work they do, then visit http://donate.grassroots.org/ to make the largest donation you can.
By DN Journal.