|
We’ll
tell you more about that and take you through the conference week
(Oct. 24-28) step by step, but first let’s lay one question to
rest. For the past two years in our T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show preview
articles, I have asked co-founders Rick Schwartz and Howard
Neu “Will you be able to top the last show?” The
answer each time, including this past week, has proven to be yes
and each time they have cleared the bar of higher expectations by
a comfortable margin. So, I won't bother to ask that question
again.
|
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Co-Founders Rick Schwartz
(standing
at podium) and Howard Neu (seated)
at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East 2006 |
The
first
conference at the Marriott in Delray
Beach, Florida in October 2004 earned rave reviews
from the 125 first-time registrants. Every show that
followed (two more in Florida, two in Las Vegas and
one in Silicon Valley) grew progressively larger.
The crowd last week was almost four times bigger
than that at the debut show just two years ago. Many
attendees commented on the large increase in the number of
business professionals who now attend; Wall Street
analysts, representatives from major investment groups, Madison
Avenue marketers, IP attorneys and all the rest. As
one speaker commented from the dais one day, “Wow, this
crowd is dressed a lot better than it used to be!,” a
wry reference to the recent past when most of the audience
favored Hawaiian shirts, blue jeans and sandals. |
It’s
another sign of the domain industry coming of age. It is also
evidence that T.R.A.F.F.I.C. has become a high end brand – one
that has consistently delivered excellence and one that we think
has now proven it can be counted on to continue doing so in the
future (which will include 2007 shows in Las Vegas next March, New
York City in June and back at the Diplomat next October). Now,
on with the show…
The
opening event for all attendees was the traditional 5:30pm
Cocktail party Tuesday evening (Oct. 24). Earlier in the day,
before many registrants arrived, the golfers in the crowd had
gathered for a morning tournament sponsored by GolfCourses.com.
For the first time, a pre-show afternoon Orientation
session was also held for T.R.A.F.F.I.C. newcomers to get them up
to speed on the history of the event and what was in store for
them so they could hit the ground running. They were shown a video
highlight reel from past conferences so by the time they arrived
at the cocktail party, they were already familiar with the faces
of many of the people who have helped fuel the show’s rapid
growth.
Scene
from opening night cocktail party
The
opening evening is designed to let people mingle and meet friends
old and new. Many say the relationship building opportunities from
these social events provides more value that any other aspect of
the show, which is the primary reason the conference features
daily cocktail hours and after dinner parties throughout the week.
| However
when the sun came up Wednesday morning (Oct. 25) it was
time to get down to business. Steve Sturgeon, a
well-known Washington, D.C. based attorney from DomainNameLawyers.com
sponsored and gave a brief talk at the opening breakfast.
Attendees
then moved to the conference room next door to hear a
welcoming address from Schwartz and Neu. Moniker.com
CEO Monte Cahn also took the podium to provide
information on the live domain auction his company would
conduct on Friday as well as their silent online auction
that started during the show and continued after the
conference closed, finally ending late Monday afternoon
(Oct. 31).
In
that opening hour, the crowd also heard from Pinky
Brand, the director of new market development for the .Mobi
registry. Brand explained the role the new extension is
expected to play in helping bring a better Internet
experience to the world’s millions of mobile devices
(there are four times more mobile phones in use than
personal computers).
Before
the week was out, Brand would be an extremely happy camper
thanks to unexpected six-figure bids on two .mobi domains
that the registry put in Moniker’s live auction Friday.
More on that when we get to auction coverage in this
report.
The
next session featured on ICANN issues and featured Directi
CEO Bhavin Turakhia who served as Chairman of the
ICANN Registrars Constituency for two years, current
Registrars Constituency Chairman Jon Nevett of Network
Solutions and attorney Mike Zupke who is the
registrar liaison manager for ICANN. They explained how
ICANN works and urged attendees to get involved in ICANN
matters (particularly by joining the organization’s Business
Constituency) because decisions made by the
domain name oversight body can have far reaching and even
devastating consequences for domain owners. |
Steve
Sturgeon
Pinky
Brand
.Mobi Registry |
|
Directi
CEO Bhavin Turakhia |
| Due
to the amount of ground we have to cover in this
article we can’t go into great depth about the
content of each seminar, but to summarize Turakhia
and Nevett echoed the complaints many domain
owners have voiced in almost unanimously opposing
proposed new contract agreements for the .com,
.org, .info and .biz
registries that would give them unprecedented
power to raise prices at a time when costs of the
services they provide are dropping.
Turakhia
noted that the ground up policy formulation
apparatus that ICANN currently has in place was
not used, leaving the Internet community with no
input in the contract process. As the only person
on the dais who represented ICANN, Zupke did his
best to present the organization’s side of
things, but could not address many of the issues
directly as they involved matters that are outside
his area of responsibility at ICANN. |
|
After
a lunch break, the
afternoon session began with a wide ranging 8-man panel discussion
about domain values and various ways to generate the best returns
you’re your names. There was also debate about whether this is a
good time to sell or hold one’s domains and the role development
can play in unlocking domain value. The participants including
domain owners, financial analysts and domain company executives.
The owners group included veteran domain investors Rick
Schwartz, Sal Shepherd and Grant Keiser. The
company executives included iREIT Vice President Adam
Dicker (who also owns DNForum.com), Fabulous.com
COO Dan Warner and LeaseThis.com CEO Jonathon
Boswell. RBC Capital Markets Managing Director Jordan
Rohan and Milbank Roy VP Ari Bayme represented
the financial community.
| Keiser
and Shepherd commented on the versatility of a good domain
name which can provide a revenue stream even it is
undeveloped or can be the base for a thriving worldwide
business. Shepherd noted the importance of taking future
growth into consideration before deciding to sell. For
example, he pointed out that one of his properties, Atlas.com,
made only $5 a day in revenue five years ago but
was making $250 a day today. Schwartz added that
you should look beyond PPC numbers and, if considering
selling, take into account how much the domain is worth to
the buyer’s business as that is often the most important
factor in the value of a domain.
Warner
pointed out that while many prefer to buy and hold,
selling selected domains can have a very positive impact
on overall portfolio value and he showed several slides to
illustrate his point. Rohan, Bayme and Dicker all liked
the benefits of development. Bayme noted that this can
open the door for you to sell directly to advertisers
which can be far more lucrative than PPC (pay per click).
Boswell presented a way to have your cake and eat it to
which is to lease your domains. That allows you to keep
the asset while potentially earning much more money than
you can through PPC. |
Grant
Keiser
Speaking at Wednesday seminar |
|
Steve
Hisey
VP, Oversee.net |
Rohan
also talked about how troubles at Yahoo.com are
causing a reduction in PPC payouts, another reason to
consider development as a way to protect yourself against
fluctuations in the PPC model. Rohan also made a case for
buying non .com extensions like .mobi and .tv,
saying they could make sensible investments because buying
the land around you can help protect the ground you hold.
In
the next session Wednesday, DomainSponsor.com
presented a panel discussion on valuing portfolios and
preparing them for sale. Steve Hisey, VP at Oversee.net
(DomainSponsor’s parent company) explained the
steps the company takes a portfolio owner through in
making a purchase of their domains. DomainSponsor
executives Ron Sheridan and Jothan Frakes
(who moderated the session) also helped answer questions
and attorneys John Berryhill and Paul Keating
discussed the best ways to structure a sales contract
and the tax implications of a sale. |
| I
also have to note during this session,
DomainSponsor’s Director of Business Development, Ron
Sheridan, unveiled the cleverest promotional item we
have ever seen. It is a set of two ink pens (sporting the
DomainSponsor logo of course) that have a unique feature.
When you are closing a domain deal, the details of which
you would just as soon not have appear in DN Journal,
each pen has a pull-out, attorney-approved non-disclosure
form built in! DomainSponsor was giving the pen sets
out at their booth and they were one of the hottest items
in the exhibit area. |
Ron
Sheridan, DomainSponsor.com
demonstrates his non-disclosure pen |
In
the final session of the day, a new non-profit organization
devoted to protecting the rights of domain owners, the Internet
Commerce Association, made it’s debut. Previous efforts to
organize domain owners haven’t made much headway, even though
registrant’s rights and assets are increasingly coming under
attack from parties that want to take away what you have. The ICA
looks like they could change that. The five founding members of
the organization represent some of the industry’s strongest
companies, iREIT, Oversee.net, Sedo.com, Name
Administration and the World Association of Domain Name
Developers (the company that produces T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conferences). Each of those entities has made a substantial
financial commitment to the ICA and a legal counsel and Washington,
D.C. lobbyist, Philip Corwin, has already been hired.
Frank
Schilling, Name Adminstration (left) and Philip Corwin,
Counsel for the Internet Commerce Association
You
can get a very good idea the ICA stance on important issues
current facing domain owners by reading a letter
that Corwin sent to the ICANN Board of Directors Oct. 31. In his
opening paragraph Corwin pointed out, "The website ownership
community represented by ICA has risked large amounts of capital
in order to develop domain names as the first new form of property
of the virtual age. These professional registrants are the source
of the fees that support registrars, registries, and ICANN
itself." Corwin goes on to detail the problems the Internet
community has had with lack of transparency and accountability at
ICANN and suggests ways the organization can address those issues
and restore confidence among domain registrants.
The
industry needs to take steps to insure that the fruits of our work
are not stolen by others. Corwin noted that the train is leaving
the station and you have to decide if you want to be on it or
under it. The ICA will soon be opening its doors to new members as
it seeks to build a broad base of support throughout the industry.
We will let you know about important developments with the
group as time goes on.
|
Tom
Gardner sitting between Diana
Jackson (left) and Alina Schwartz at dinner
Gardner
begins his keynote address
Wearing
his famous Motley Fool jester's cap |
While
the ICA session brought the business day to a close,
another nine and a half hours of activity was still ahead
with a cocktail party, a dinner sponsored by DomainSponsor
featuring keynote speaker Tom Gardner, co-founder
of the Motley Fool, and the big after dinner
DomainSponsor party that went on until 3am Thursday
morning.
Gardner
proved to be one of the most entertaining and informative
speakers we have heard in a long time. The Motley Fool,
co-founded by Tom and his brother David, is one of the
most successful financial media companies in the world. My
wife and I sat with Tom during dinner and it was
fascinating to hear how the brothers had built their
company from scratch when everyone told them they were
crazy. It’s a refrain just about every domain owner has
heard and can identify with. Gardner certainly has a
kinship with domain investors and he has great admiration
for the foresight they have displayed in finding and
mining a rich vein of Internet gold that just about
everyone else in the world missed.
Gardner
told me he was a fan of small cap stocks (which have
returned 18% annually in recent years) and that he was
going to close his speech by making a prediction of
success for a domain world equivalent of a small cap
stock. Just before he got up to to go to the podium, he
told me that because of the explosion of video on the
Internet .tv would be his pick for future price
appreciation. I didn’t get a chance to tell him that the
.tv registry keeps most of the potential profit from .tv
domains by charging extremely high annual renewal prices
for what they classify as “premium” domains. |
When
Gardner closed his speech with the prediction of stardom for .tv
and started taking questions from the audience I got up and asked
him if he knew about .tv’s unique pricing structure. Without
skipping a beat, Gardner looked out at the audience and
said, “Did I tell you how much I like .info?!”
That drew a raucous round of laughter, one of many he earned with
the charm and wit he displayed throughout the evening.
| After
Gardner’s address it was time to walk across the street
for the DomainSponsor party, held at a scenic outdoor bar
at the edge of Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway.
The event, always a centerpiece of the week at
T.R.A.F.F.I.C., presented another great opportunity to
meet new people and learn about what they were doing in
the domain space. It also the perfect occasion to catch up
with old friends and compare notes. While a fair number of
people were still on hand for the 3am close, I reluctantly
had to throw in the towel around 1am so I could catch a
few hours of sleep before the next 18-hour day began
bright and early Thursday. |
Scene
from DomainSponsor Party |
Thanks
to DomainSponsor keeping everyone up late, there was plenty of
elbow room at breakfast Thursday morning, but by the time the
first seminar on click fraud began at 10am attendees were
back out in force. This two-hour session featured John Berryhill,
Dan Warner and the head of Google’s Domain Channel, Eytan
Elbaz. Elbaz said that Google has a much better handle on
eliminating the click fraud problem that mainstream print outlets
let on. You have to remember that print media is losing readers
and advertisers to the Internet in droves, so they have a vested
interest in trying to scare advertisers away from the new medium.
John
Berryhill - How come no one talks about dumpster fraud
(newspaper ads that go straight into the trash)?
Berryhill
made a point of showing how much paid advertising in print media
is wasted, probably much more than is wasted online. For example,
he held up a copy of USA Today which is distributed at most
hotels free of charge. This is counted as “circulation” and
sets of eyeballs reading the ads, even though a huge percentage of
the distributed papers are thrown away and never read, yet
advertisers pay as if their ads had been seen by the number of
people cited in the circulation figures.
|
Exhibit
area |
Warner
said that the click fraud problem was much more one of
perception that reality. He estimated that the percentage
ad spending lost to successful click fraud is less than
1%.
Thursday’s
luncheon was sponsored by Directi. The lunch break
also gave attendees a good opportunity to explore the
exhibit area which featured a record number of companies
at this show. Domain owners could meet face to face with
representatives from many well-known companies and get
personal demonstrations of the services they offer. Many
also gave out promotional items ranging from T-Shirts and
beach shoes to umbrellas and tote bags. |
The
afternoon session opened with 1:30 seminar on valuing individual
domain names and tips on selling to end users. Warner and Rohan
returned for that panel where they were joined by Afternic.com
President Roger Collins, Sedo’s Chief Strategy
Officer Matt Bentley and Robert Hoult, Executive VP
at the Intersearch Group. Bentley and Hoult explained what
factors end users look at in valuing a domain. If sellers look at
it from their perspective and can make a persuasive case for how
the domain can provide them with a real return on investment they
can greatly increase their chances of making the sale.
Left
to right: Jordan Rohan (RBC Capital Markets),
Robert Hoult (Intersearch Group) and Matt Bentley
(Sedo.com)
I
was on the panel for the next session that posed an interesting
question, “If you had $100,000 to invest in domains, would you
be better off buying a single premium .com domain or spreading the
money out over 100 domains at $1,000 each in non .com
extensions?”. Joining me in tackling that topic were iREIT
CEO Bob Martin, Sedo CEO and Co-founder Tim Schumacher,
NameMedia VP Brian Taff (one of the original
co-founders of BuyDomains) and noted attorney Ari
Goldberger.
|
iREIT
CEO Bob Martin |
Martin,
Taff and Goldberger all like the tried and true .com
approach, with Goldberger comparing having a great .com
domain to owning a Picasso. Schumacher and I leaned
toward more diversification. I believe the answer to the
question depends in large part on what you intend to do
with domains. If you plan to build a full time business on
one and sell goods or services, I would take a great .com
too. If you were buying for a PPC revenue stream, the .com
will usually be the right choice as well. But if you are
spending $100,000 with the intention of having inventory
for a business devoted to buying and selling domains, I
like having more than one egg in the basket, especially
when we know that domains are currently an illiquid
investment. Dan Warner estimates that only 1-2% of
a typical portfolio can be sold in a given year. |
Having
a wide variety of carefully chosen non .coms (primarily .us and
.info in my case) has been profitable for me for some time
now and becomes more so each month as these extensions slowly but
steadily gain recognition, especially in the small business sector
that has been priced out of the market for quality generic .coms.
|
It’s
not surprising that Schumacher also likes the idea of
spreading the money among multiple domains because Sedo
has proven it works while building a dominant position
country code sales with major ccTLD extensions like
.de, .co.uk, .eu and .us.
Schumacher showed an interesting slide that used stock
terminology, Buy, Hold or Sell, to
express his outlook for various extensions. His Buy
column included .us and other major ccTLDs, .info,
.mobi and IDN’s (International Domain
Names). His Hold column listed .eu, .com
and .net and his Sell column contained .biz,
.cc, .ws and .tv.
This
topic provides fodder for a debate that could go on for
months, but I think the bottom line is that you can
succeed with either approach if you are careful in your
selection of names. It’s hard to go wrong with highly
searched keywords and good 3-letter combinations in major
extensions for example. As millions of businesses poor
online, .com continues to strengthen as the gold standard,
but the overall pie is getting bigger, creating a steadily
increasing market for some of the better non .com
extensions. |
Tim
Schumacher
CEO & Co-Founder
Sedo.com |
The
final session Thursday was one that T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founder Rick
Schwartz called the “best seminar in the history of
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.!” It featured a Madison Avenue panel of ad
agency and marketing executives who tried to explain why major
corporations had failed to snap up the generic keyword domains
that define their industries. The corporations are the one entity
that has the deep pockets needed to pony up the kind of money many
owners of premium domains think their assets are worth. Bringing
the two sides together could chance the face of the industry and
Schwartz believe this session was the first step in getting that
done.
Madison
Avenue panel - Left to Right: Bill Lickson,
Laura Sturtz, Lance Podell and Will Marigiloff
The
panel included Bill Lickson, Director of Interactive for
the Zimmerman Agency (one of the 20 largest ad agencies in
the U.S.), Laura Sturtz from PR and marketing firm Euro
RSCH Magnet, Seevast (formerly Kanoodle) CEO Lance
Podell and Will Margiloff, CEO of eXact Advertising.
All four indicated that domains represented a new opportunity that
the corporate giants have not yet recognized. They pointed that
corporate cultures move very slowly and that it could take a
couple of more years before they start figuring it out.
|
Schwartz
frustrated by Madison Ave. |
They
suggested domain owners need to do everything they can to
educate corporate leaders, including taking advertisements
in trade journals they will see in their world. The
fireworks didn’t really begin until after the panelists
opened up the session to questions from the floor. As is
often the case, Schwartz was the guy who lit the match.
Using hotels as just one examples, Schwartz asked the
panel “How is it that Hilton and Marriott
and Westin and all of the rest couldn’t figure
our how many leads they would get from a domain like hotels.com?
Instead of paying a million or two for a domain they now
have to pay tens of millions (for leads) for the
rest of their lives. So they flunked – they
failed – and their advertising agencies failed them
too!”
This
drew a round of applause and, as you might imagine, set
off a spirited debate. The panel explained that
corporations have been trained to think in terms of
“brands” for 200 years now. The view their brand as
something with qualities that set it apart from generics,
in fact they view brands as the exact opposite of a
generic term. |
What
we think they fail to understand is that a generic domain name
reaches the consumer when they are thinking about buying something
in a category, like an automobile, before they zero in on brands.
The generic domains, like cars.com, could effectively make
them the gatekeeper for the entire industry, allowing them to
intercept the customer and send them to the brand they want
before they go to a competitor.
Schwartz
is planning to bring the two sides together again at the next show
in Las Vegas and Madison Avenue will be a centerpiece of the first
New York show next June. In the end, the payoff could be greater
than any other single effort domain owners could make.
SmartName.com
sponsored the Thursday dinner and partners Ari Goldberger
and Larry Fischer brought an entirely new twist to the
usual evening meal by running a game show featuring 5 contestants
chosen from the audience.
| They
presented a list of domain names, such as MadonnasBaby.com,
iREITDomains.com and CheapVasectomy.com and the
contestants had to guess if the domains were registered or
not registered.
The
first two names were unregistered and stumped the
contestants who thought they would have been taken (of
course someone did take them as soon as they got back to
their hotel room!). To add to the fun SmartName put up a $2,000
first prize that was won by Name Intelligence
CEO Jay Westerdal. It went over so well that
Fischer said that he would start running similar contests
online next week at DirectNavigation.com. |
Ari
Goldberger (left) and Larry Fischer
SmartName.com |
After
dinner, many attendees had to choose between two great parties. iREIT.com
loaded their guests on buses and took them out for a night at the Hard
Rock Casino. At the same time, TraffficZ.com took a
group on a cruise on the Intracoastal Waterway. They chartered the
100-foot double decked Miami Magic yacht for that
event. I went along for the ride and wound up meeting brothers Michael
and David Castello for the first time. They own a
remarkable portfolio of one-word and geo domains including gems
like PalmSprings.com and 117 other city names.
|
Michael
Castello (left) and David Castello
Castello Cities Internet Network, Inc. |
The
personable siblings also have a fascinating life story as
a pair of musicians struggling to make ends meet who
struck it rich in the world of domains. I found talking
with them so engrossing I decided they had to be the
subject of our next cover story and that is coming in
December.
The
Castellos are a perfect example of a “problem” I run
into at every T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference, especially now
that the shows have gotten bigger. There are always a lot
of people you want to talk to but you inevitably run into
someone with such a great story that you stop go no
further for the next hour or two! Before you know it the
week is over before you’ve made all of the contacts you
want to make, but it’s a great problem to have because
these special encounters frequently lead to great things. |
The
Thursday night parties made for another short night, but
everyone figures they can always sleep when the conference is
over! The
main event Friday morning was the extreme networking session first
introduced to rave reviews at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West in Las Vegas
last May. Everyone sits facing each other, then every two minutes,
one row moves down a seat while the other row remains stationary.
In this system, you wind up meeting and exchanging cards with
about 20 people by the time the hour is up.
| Richard
Cohen of National A-1 and his partner Sandra
were among the people I met during that hour. Their
company owns some stunning domains, like Diet.com
and Singles.com. Though we met for just a couple of
minutes, Richard has taken some of his valuable time since
the show ended to send me some excellent advice on making
websites more appealing and adding features that keep
people coming back. His company has been very successful
on the Internet for more than a decade so getting the
benefit of his experience from that brief meeting at
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is another example of what makes the show
well worth the price of admission. |
Scene
from extreme networking session |
The
next session focused on how to finance your domain purchases. DomainCapital.com
was the first in the space to offer than option and others are now
stepping up to do the same. The panel included DomainCapital
President Robert Alfano, Ari Bayme (who spoke on behalf of DotzUp.com’s
finance program), Moniker’s Monte Chan and Roland Chemtob of
LeaseMy.com. The seminar explained what you could expect
when applying for a loan to buy a domain. Typically the name is
held as collateral with a loan term of up to 60 months and
interest rates that run from 12-16%. You can normally borrow up to
two times the annual revenue produced by a domain.
Chemtob,
a former banker who has raised over $200 million for
Internet startups, talked about the benefits of leasing, an option
that is starting to turn up more and more often for domain owners
looking for increased income without giving up their domains.
The
Friday lunch was sponsored by Fabulous.com and featured a talk by
company COO Dan Warner who presented highlights from his new
52-page paper on the domain aftermarket that was featured in DN
Journal and is available in its entirety at AftermarketDomains.com.
|
Scene
from Moniker's Live Auction
Auctioneer
Joel Langbaum |
Then
it was time for an event everyone had been waiting for,
Moniker.com’s Live T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Auction, an
event that was broadcast over WebmasterRadio.fm
where Moniker CEO Monte Cahn hosts the Domain
Masters radio show every Wednesday night at 7pm
U.S. Eastern time.
Moniker
also conducted a silent auction online throughout the
conference that ran a couple of days beyond the show,
closing Monday afternoon (Oct. 30). Professional
auctioneer Joel Langbaum was brought in to handle
the gavel, repeating a role he filled in the first ever
live domain auction held at last year’s T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
East conference in Delray Beach. Langbaum is quick with a
quip and his entertainment skills kept the crowd engaged
throughout the four hour event.
When
it was all over, more than $4.7 million worth of
domains had been sold, more than doubling the previous
live auction record set last May at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West in
Las Vegas. The silent auction added another $607,000,
pushing the final total to $5.3 million.
Cameras.com
stole the show in the live auction, being taken for $1.5
million by Sig Solares of Parked.com. Flowers.mobi
made a huge splash after attracting a stunning high bid of
$200,000 from T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founder Rick
Schwartz. |
Schwartz,
who has always championed .com and had strong reservations about
other extensions and would seem to be an unlikely buyer, had this
to say. “First of all before we are "Domainers" we are
"Investors." At least that is how I would describe
myself. I decided that buying a few premium .mobi's would possibly
be a good investment. Time will tell. I sure am not going to pitch
anyone on the extension. I know what you know. In time we will all
find out if flowers.mobi was a steal or a bad investment. The
downside is it goes down in value or becomes worthless. The upside
is that a domain like this can be life changing. I don't see that
many opportunities that cross my path that fit into the "life
changing" category and I don't gamble much and don't buy
lottery tickets. I am willing to take the risk and give it the
time needed. Also take in to account that 4 people in the room bid
over 6 figures for this domain. I knew all the bidders. They were
all qualified. All I can say....stay tuned and we'll all learn
together."
|
Another
.mobi also cracked the 6-figure mark with Anything.com
purchasing Fun.mobi for $100,000. A
dozen domains attracted 6-figure or higher bids and a
total of 115 names, averaging $42,000 per sale,
attracted buyers in the live auction. That is a 35%
success rate for big ticket items that as we noted earlier
aren’t normally as liquid as other assets. You can
see the complete
list of live auction results here.
The
highest price paid in the silent online auction was $60,000
for Castle.com, followed by the $30,000 each
fetched by Cage.com and PAX.com. A total of
288 domains were sold in that event, an average of $2,100
per sale. The complete
list of silent auction winning bids can be seen here.
Conducting
these auctions was a massive undertaking for Moniker. More
than 50,000 domains were submitted for the event and that
list took countless man hours to whittle down to a
manageable size. They got it done and also made some
dramatic improvements since the Las Vegas show. |
Monker
CEO Monte Cahn
spots a bidder |
The
live auction ran especially smoothly this time out. This
auction taught them more about what works and what doesn’t
so the next one auction will be better still as this platform
develops into a premier showcase for selling quality
domains.
The
last big event of the conference, the annual Friday night T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Awards dinner, followed the auction. In early September,
nearly 1,200 ballots were emailed to people who have a
standing invitation to attend T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences. Their
votes determined the award winners. So, without further
ado…the envelopes please:
|
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Awards |
| Category |
Winner |
| Best
New Click Program |
Sedo
Pro |
We
Get It Award
(Awarded to a company
that understands the web and the domain space) |
News
Corp. |
| Sponsor
of the Year |
Domain
Sponsor |
| Domainer
of the Year |
Rick
Schwartz |
| Best
Overall Solution |
Fabulous.com |
| WADND
Registrar Seal of Approval |
Tucows |
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Domain Hall of Fame
(Two people will be voted in
each year) |
Rick
Schwartz and
Ron Jackson (DNJournal.com) |
Along with the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Awards, Brian Null of
GolfCourses.com handed out awards for the Tuesday morning golf
tournament. Chris Stewart, who is obviously too good a
player to be allowed on the course with other domainers, won both
the Longest Drive and Shot of the Day Awards.
The winning team was captained by Brian Null (and yes, the
authorities are looking into this!).
Saturday
morning breakfast gave everyone a chance to say their final
goodbyes before checking out. There was also a meeting of the new
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Advisory Board, a volunteer group that was
elected by show attendees earlier in the week to provide Schwartz
and Neu with input on future shows, such as show locations,
possible seminar topics and and potential keynote speakers.
Those
elected to the advisory board were Ron Sheridan (DomainSponsor.com),
Dan Warner (Fabulous.com), Frank Schilling (Name
Administration, Inc.), Monte Cahn (Moniker.com), Adam
Dicker (iREIT.com and DNForum.com), Ron
Jackson (DNJournal.com), John Berryhill
(attorney) and Steve Sturgeon (DomainNameLawyers.com).
Mr. Schilling, who has taken on a founding role in the new
Internet Commerce Association, regretfully excused himself due to
other time commitments.
As of
this writing everyone is back home and more than likely catching
up on their sleep (with the exception of Monte Cahn who apparently
never sleeps). In four months it will be time to do it all over
again at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. I hope to meet
many of you there!
*
* * * *
Coming
Thursday night (Nov. 2) - The T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 2006 East Photo
Gallery
We
snapped hundreds of photos during the week. We will be adding some
additional shots in this section Thursday night (Nov. 2).
|
