The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2005 domain conference opened in Delray Beach, Florida Tuesday (Oct. 18). The landmark show exploded from 125 attendees at last year's debut event to 300 this year. After opening comments from T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founders Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu the action began with a seminar featuring success stories from Brian Benko (FindADentist.com), Brian Null (GolfCourses.com), attorney Ari Goldberger (Esqwire.com) and Robert Hoult (Walnut-Ventures.com). You can see the capacity crowd at the opening session in the photo below.

Opening seminar at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2005

Mr. Hoult's company was involved in the recent $11.15 million (cash and stock) acquisition of the ParkingDots.com domain portfolio. At this session he revealed the purchase price worked out to 5.5 times annual revenues for the portfolio that included IRS.com and a number of other prime tax related domains. In the photo below you see Mr. Null addressing the audience with Mr. Benko looking on. We'll have more details on this session and all seminars in our complete show wrap up which will be published early next week. The show schedule and associated social events runs from 8am to well past midnight so we will be posting opening day highlights only then produce a detailed final report for you after the show ends.

Brian Benko (left above) and Brian Null (right)

Ryan Berryman
DomainSponsor.com

The second seminar was put on my DomainSponsor.com and featured their General Manager Ryan Berryman (pictured at left Wednesday) and Director of Product Management Sumant Sridharan. Berryman said domain owners are now being recognized as a key traffic channel for major advertisers and have a bright future and bigger payouts ahead. He also said some major changes are coming to DomainSponsor landing pages that will include graphics, ecommerce product sales opportunities and possibly even content relevant to the domain name. In another interesting comment, Berryman said he expected all major TLD's to eventually become successful.

After lunch it was time for the main event - the keynote address from Andrew Miller and Mike Zapolin of InternetRealEstate.com (the subjects of our September Cover Story). Miller and Zapolin delivered a fascinating account of their domain experiences which have included the acquisition and sale of such gems as Beer.com, Diamond.com and Shop.com.

Mike Zapolin (left) listening to partner Andrew Miller

Zapolin and Miller emphasized that we are the very early stages of what the Internet will eventually become. As successful as they have been they said their company is still "experimenting" to find the perfect formula. They counseled owners of good domains to have patience because they believe values have just begun to rise.

Mike Zapolin at the lectern Wednesday Oct. 18).

In the final seminar of the day representatives from six companies that offer PPC services took part in a very active panel discussion on the present and future prospects for pay per click domain monetization. Those on the dais included Google's Eytan Elbaz and Josh Meyers of Yahoo Search Marketing (each pictured below) as well as Matthew Bentley (Sedo.com), Dan Warner (Fabulous), Ryan Berryman (DomanSponsor.com) and Ammar Kubba (TrafficZ.com).

Eytan Elbaz of Google.com (above) and Josh Meyers of Yahoo.com (right).

Above: Dan Warner of Fabulous.com (left) and Matthew Bentley of Sedo.com

At each seminar members of the audience were invited to ask questions of the panelists and many took advantage of the opportunity, including Ahmed Farooq (seen below).

The Thursday and Friday schedules are so jam-packed (I will be presenting an afternoon seminar) that I will not have time to bring you another update until our show wrap up scheduled for release Monday night (Oct. 24). The way things are shaping up after the first day, it should be information worth waiting for!

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