|
Seeing
that huge crowd assembled at the opening session in the
Venetian’s ornate new Palazzo Ballroom was a jaw-dropping
experience. It is simply amazing how far this industry has come
since Schwartz and Neu staged the first major domain conference at
a small Marriott in Delray Beach, Florida less than
two and half years ago with just over 100 show pioneers on hand.
Part
of the record-breaking crowd at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West 2007 in
Las Vegas
Before
getting down to business, the crowd gathered Monday night, March
5th for the traditional Welcome to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. cocktail
party. This stage-setting social event has proven to be the
perfect way to kick off every T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference. The show
has always been about networking and building business
relationships and those goals are achieved by giving people this
kind of golden opportunity to get to know each other face to face.
The room was buzzing with excitement and anticipation and that
electricity continued to crackle through the days ahead.
Opening
night cocktail party at the Venetian Hotel
(Left
to right): Michael Bahlitzanakis, Ofer Ronan (Sendori.com),
Cristin Donahue
(John Berryhill’s Awesome Assistant) and John Berryhill
enjoy the cocktail party.
|
Later
in the evening attendees headed off to sample the
entertainment options Las Vegas is famous our. Some tried
their luck in the casinos while others headed off to
private parties or to see a show.
I
joined a group that DomainSponsor took to see the
indescribable Blue Man Group. It was a psychedelic
feast for the eyes, ears and other senses that ended with
the entire audience literally buried under an ocean of
tissue paper. I wouldn’t want to be the guys who have to
clean up the theater! On the other hand, they manage to
get it done every night, so maybe we could try calling
them in to help ICANN clean up the Registerfly
mess!
Though
I expected the late night revelry around town (that
produces symptoms that have come to be known as the “Las
Vegas flu”) might lead to some empty seats the next
morning, there was a sizeable crowd when the day began
with the Sturgeon Law Group sponsored
breakfast. |
One
of the Blue Men |
By
the time Schwartz and Neu took the stage to officially open the
show at 9:45am, the place was completely packed. Moniker.com
CEO Monte Cahn followed with instructions for participating
in the multi-million dollar live and silent domain auctions that
would follow Wednesday.
At
10:20am, the new Internet
Commerce Association had its coming out party as
attending board members, with Benjamin Franklin in tow,
stepped onto the dais to sign a Domain
Owners' Bill of Rights. Franklin appeared at the
conference to personally hand this historic document on rolled
parchment paper out to show attendees.
|
Benjamin
Franklin was on hand
to help introduce the ICA's
Domain Owners' Bill of Rights |
For
the first time, with the ICA, domain registrants have a powerful
organization that is ready to fight for their rights.
The non-profit ICA was founded in October 2006 when
several leading domain companies, owners and investors
donated $50,000 each to get the organization off
the ground. A well-respected and highly experienced Washington
D.C. attorney and lobbyist, Phil Corwin, was
hired as the ICA’s Legal Counsel and former Sedo
Director of Business Development, Jude Augusta,
signed on as the group’s Executive Director.
After
spending the past five months quietly building the ICA
foundation and filling these key positions, the board opened
the doors new members at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West. In an
effort to build the broadest possible base of support for
domain owners, memberships begin at just $99 for
the Ambassador level and $495 for the Professional
level. Corporate sponsors have also begun signing on at $7,500
each. |
|
It
will take a large war chest to defend our rights and
assets against the well-financed forces that are lining up
to take them away, but I believe that if we unite in this
effort, the days of domain registrants being ignored and
abused are over.
|
The
ICA’s Board of Directors is made up of
representatives from Name Administration, Inc.
(Frank Schilling), iREIT (Bob
Martin), Oversee.net (Josh Armstrong),
Sedo.com (Jeremiah Johnston), Straat
Investments (Juan Calle), the World
Association of Domain Name Developers (Rick
Schwartz and Howard Neu) and DNJournal.com
(Ron Jackson).
It
is expected that other leading companies in the
industry will also join the board as the ICA
continues to grow in the months and years ahead.
However, if the organization is to have real
strength and staying power, it needs everyone’s
support, regardless of how many domains you
own. |
ICA
Executive Director Jude Augusta (left)
manning the organization's exhibit hall booth |
There
truly is strength in numbers and every single new
member will play a key role in giving the ICA the kind of
muscle it will need to fend off the ever increasing threats
to the assets you have built through your vision, your
hard work and your capital investment. Others would
like to step in now and harvest the fruit produced from the
seeds you have sown but we believe that the ICA, with your
help, can keep that from happening.
Ben
Franklin hands out ICA's Domain Owners' Bill of Rights |
In
the final morning event, the Recall
Media Group hosted a session detailing success stories
that resulted from connections made at previous T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conferences. Recall founder Sahar Sarid and company
CEO/President Darren Cleveland headed a panel that included
domain investor Gregg McNair, Faisal Chughtai (VP of
RBC Capital’s Technology Group) and Ari Bayme, a
VP at investment banker Milbank Roy who specializes in
technology related transactions.
|
Sahar
Sarid
Founder, Recall Media Group
Faisal
Chughtai
VP, RBC Capital |
Sarid
has moved far beyond the bounds of domaining and is
focused on building full-blown businesses rather
than simply monetizing domains. Recall’s FuneralHomes.com
is a perfect example of this. The site has risen to a
dominant position in the search engines and has aggregated
more advertisers than any other entity in the funeral
business. Sarid met Cleveland and a previous T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conference and that pairing has turned the company into an
important force in domain and business development.
Chughtai,
whose company helped Marchex raise the $164
million they needed to purchase Yun Ye’s Name
Development portfolio, said that there is a great deal
of capital on the sidelines looking for an opportunity to
get into the domain business. Those investors would rather
buy successful developed sites than raw domain names and
that fact is fueling the current search for development
partners being undertaken by owners of high quality domain
names. Chughtai said he believed RBC has benefited more
from contacts made at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. than anyone else.
Bayme
added that it is quite possible for every show attendee to
boost their bottom line by 10-15% through contacts
and partnerships made at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conferences.
Perhaps, the primary thing that has set T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
apart from its competitors is that it has succeeded in
attracting the heaviest hitters from both the investment
and domain ownership camps.
LeaseThis.com
hosted a 90-minute lunch break punctuated by a short
presentation from the company’s CEO, Jonathan Boswell.
You can learn more about that ground-breaking new firm in
an article
we recently published about the company. |
The
afternoon session then got underway with Madison Avenue Round
Two, a sequel to the lively session at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
East in Florida last October that Rick Schwartz
has described as the best seminar in show history. As it did a
little over four months ago, this session brought in a panel of
top advertising executives to explain how Madison Avenue views the
domain market and why major advertisers have failed to scoop up
key generic names that define their product categories.
The
panelists included Will Margiloff, CEO of Innovation
Interactive Corp., Bill Lickson, Director of
Interactive Strategy at Zimmerman Advertising, Lance
Podell, CEO of Seevast and Matt Bentley, Chief
Strategy Officer at Sedo. Though major advertisers have
bypassed opportunities to acquire category killer domains,
Margiloff said Madison Avenue is not ignoring domains, they simply
don’t yet have an understanding of the channel. He said
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s first New
York
show, coming up June 19-22 at the Grand
Hyatt in Manhattan could go a long way toward bridging
this education gap.
(Left
to right) Lance Podell, Will Margiloff and Bill Lickson
Lickson
noted that advertisers remain focused on their brands rather than
the generics that define their business. “Starbucks.com
is not Coffee.com because their brand allows them to charge
$5 for a cup of coffee!,” Lickson said, adding that he
did think that Coffee.com would make a truly great media property
that could provide news and information about the popular beverage
and profit from advertising on such a site. In fact, Lickson said
there is a huge potential upside for generic domain owners who
think of their names as media properties and develop them
for that purpose.
|
Bentley
also likes that approach and advises you to look into your
portfolio for a niche domain that defines a category that
you can “own” through development. Margiloff agreed,
saying “you need to think about other ways to make money
on your domain rather than just relying on Google and
Yahoo for PPC earnings. If either of them change their
algorithms, they can severely hurt your revenue.”
If
you hope to make a killing by selling to a major
advertiser, Podell said that is probably a pipe dream. He
noted that advertising campaigns have a set budget and if
a domain name is to be part of the campaign it has to fit
within the budget. He said advertisers will think of a
name that would help them but it if costs $1 million
they say “forget it!”. He added that the sweet spot
for ad campaigns is names in the $5,000-$10,000
range. |
Matt
Bentley
Chief Strategy Officer at Sedo |
Lickson
agreed, saying that on an ROI basis, it may be more effective for
advertisers to buy clicks for specific campaigns than purchase a
domain name. Unless major advertisers can be convinced otherwise,
these exchanges seem to underline the wisdom of making something
out of your best domains rather than counting on a huge sale to
unlock their real value.
| Next
up on the agenda was an 8-man panel discussion of the
respective merits of domain development versus domain
parking, a topic that was the primary theme for this
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference.
This
distinguished group included Mark Van Dyke,
President of Army.com, Lou Doctor of Arbor
Advisors, Dan Warner, COO at Fabulous.com,
Andrew Beckman, President of SearchAdNetwork,
Adam Dicker, President of High Impact Sites
(and owner of DNForum.com),
Ammar Kubba, CEO of TrafficZ, Brian Carr,
VP of Direct Search Services for NameMedia and Divyank
Turakhia, President of Skenzo.
Doctor
was a strong advocate for development, noting “Companies
want to buy companies, they don’t want to buy
domains.”
If
you do develop, Beckman cautioned that you should
understand that it is no guarantee of success
because you will have to develop something better
than other sites devoted to the same topic if you want to
attract an audience. “It is very competitive,” Beckman
said, “You have to build content and links, put out
press releases and continually update your site. Building
some content and then sitting on it will not work – it
is an ongoing process.”
Warner
favored a balanced approach, recommending that some
of the best names be developed while others are sold and
others are monetized through PPC.
Kubba
championed a hybrid model using new PPC technology his
company has developed to produce great looking multiple
page websites en masse with content on every page
that a surfer might click on. Kubba said that TrafficZ
is working on content partnerships with major providers so
that it would be possible to automatically put content on
50,000 domains if a portfolio owner wanted to do so. |
Mark
Van Dyke (left) and Divyank Turakhia
Dan
Warner (left) and Lou Doctor
Andrew
Beckman (left) and Brian Carr
Adam
Dicker (left) and Ammar Kubba |
|
Kubba,
who company is the lead sponsor for all three
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. shows this year, talked in depth about this
topic in a solo seminar that followed the panel session
and said “we think we have found the holy grail
for domains – which is to create pages with content that
will get indexed and generate search engine traffic.”
The company's new pages also pull in news headlines, maps
and other material related to the domain name. He
demonstrated that by showing the site TrafficZ generated
sites for Candy.com,
Reno.us,
Property.com
and other domains. |
|
Kubba
noted that Property.com, a parked page, now had the #2
listing in Google, out of more than 600 million
pages with the word “property”. He added that the
company’s new pages had generated traffic increases of 10-100%
during testing with traffic coming from Google, Yahoo, MSN
and AOL’s search engines.
Kubba
said TrafficZ had been working on the concept for years
and that “no one else has anything even close to
this”. However, to keep identical content form
appearing on too many domains, Kubba said the some of the
best new templates would be reserved for high quality
domains. |
TrafficZ
CEO Ammar Kubba |
Still, the attractive site generated for Candy.com, with java
animated graphics and deep content show how the lines between
developed sites and PPC pages are finally beginning to blur.
If
you follow our daily Lowdown
section, you may have seen my post Tuesday (March 5) about my
notebook computer’s hard drive dying the previous evening in Las
Vegas. There is no downtime in the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. schedule, so in
a last ditch attempt to resurrect the laptop I had to skip the
5:15pm Speed Networking session to run some diagnostic tests on
the machine in an effort to revive it and get daily show updates
posted for you.
Unfortunately,
my rescue attempt was in vain and even worse it made me miss GoDaddy
girl Candice Michelle’s autograph signing party!
Michelle appeared in the cyber café that was set up by first time
sponsor GoDaddy.com in the hall. Fortunately, GoDaddy's Nate
Curran provided us with the snapshots below.
Above: Candice
Michelle signing autographs.
At right: Candice with T.R.A.F.F.I.C. attendee
Bruce McLeod |
See
other pics of Candice at TrafficPics.com |
Those
who participated in the networking session said it featured a new
wrinkle this time around. Instead of having people sit opposite
from each other and rotate every two minutes, 48 attendees were
picked to go to the podium where each delivered a 90-second pitch
to the rest of the crowd. In the old format 30 people were able to
meet 30 others. Schwartz said the new format multiplied
that exposure by a factor of 8. Since the networking session was
immediately followed by a DomainSponsor.com cocktail party, you
could approach anyone you saw on the podium who had a product or
service you were interested in.
| The
cocktail hour that followed also provided a good
opportunity to stroll through the expanded exhibit hall
and chat with representatives from the companies on hand.
There were several newcomers including Pricester.com
who was there to introduce a new low cost development
service for domain owners.
Given
that the theme of this show was development, their booth
attracted a lot of attention, especially since the company
(which started as a web development firm) offers to
produce websites (including hosting) for a total outlay of
just over $300 annually. Those who were at the
conference were able to take advantage of a show special
offering development of up to five free websites so the
company could prove their value to domain owners. |
Pricester.com
booth |
I
ducked out of the cocktail party briefly when I found out that
some of the industry’s best legal talent was in a meeting in
Howard Neu’s suite on the top floor of the Venetian. I walked in
to find the crème de la crème of domain attorneys gathered
around the dining room table; John Berryhill, Ari
Goldberger, Paul Keating, Phil Corwin, and Neu
himself. In another illustration of the kind of support the
Internet Commerce Association is building, these gentlemen had all
volunteered their time to serve on a special advisory panel to the
ICA’s legal subcommittee. Steve Sturgeon and Stevan
Lieberman, who were not at this meeting, are also on the
panel.
(Clockwise
from the far left): John Berryhill, Ari Goldberger, Paul
Keating,
Phil Corwin and Howard Neu (with back to camera).
When
I started thinking how much this kind of firepower would cost if
the ICA were being billed for it, I started getting woozy! Maybe
it was just the altitude of Neu’s 36th floor suite, but I
decided to play it safe and head back down to the party while our
much appreciated legal eagles continued to plot strategy on behalf
of domain owners.
Following
the cocktail hour, TrafficZ.com sponsored Tuesday night’s dinner
in the main ballroom and after another one of the great meals that
have become a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. trademark, the conference’s keynote
speaker, John Reese, founder and CEO of Income.com,
took the stage and promptly stole the show. Reese has been
involved in online marketing since 1990 and is probably best known
for his “Million Dollar Day” in which he produced over $1
million in sales for a new product in less than 24 hours!
Better yet, he did it without spending a penny on advertising!
Reese has owned over 35,000 .com domains and has been
involved in this business since 1995.
| T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
has had some great keynote speakers, but let me say this -
when it comes to giving the audience practical detailed
advice that they can take home and immediately start
making money with, Reese was the best I’ve ever
heard.
I
was fortunate to be sitting at the head table in front of
the podium with some of the smartest people in the domain
business. Soon after Reese started talking, I noticed two
of the industry’s top pros, Larry Fischer and Ari
Goldberger, had started scribbling notes as Reese
talked. I don’t think there is any better endorsement
than that!
Reese
made so many great points there is no way to cover them
all in the scope of this article about an entire
conference, but I’ll pass along a few pieces of his
advice. |
John
Reese
Keynote Speaker |
Reese
told the audience to take some early profits because sitting on
your assets forever can cost you a lot I missed opportunity. He
sold Ship.com for $1,000 - obviously an incredibly
low price, but Reese said that sale helped make him rich. He took
that $1,000 and bought 10 more domains at $100 each, in turn
selling those for $5,000-$10,000 each. That snowball kept
rolling down the hill, getting bigger and bigger as it went.
|
|
He
also told the crowd to use outsourcing to help grow
their business, summing up the tip this way, “Write
small checks – cash bigger checks.” He noted that
there are people who will write original 500-word articles
for you for $7 each. “You can develop properties
without having to write a word,” Reese said. Adding
forums to your sites is also an inexpensive way to get
user generated content and boost search engine
ranking.
I
think the single best piece of advice was Reese’s
emphasis on the importance of building a mailing list.
“having a list is like having cash on demand,”
Reese said, noting that if he needed money he could
instantly email a product offer to his vast mailing list.
“Let’s
say Sailboat.com gets 1,000 visitors a day.
What’s worth more, those 1,000 visitors or a list of half
a million people who have visited that site (and
demonstrated their interest in sailboats and related
products)?” Reese asked. “I can’t believe how much
money domainers are leaving on the table!” If you are
not getting those visitors to sign up for a list, many are
lost forever, depriving you of a chance to cash in on each
visitor over and over for years to come. |
“Leverage
what you have,” Reese said, “if you only get 20 type-ins a day
on a domain, you can keep that customer on file and recycle that
traffic rather than get paid one time for a single click from
someone who never comes back.”
When
Reese’s talk was over, I went to the back of the ballroom to
talk with some people I had an appointment with. When I came back
out a half hour later, expecting the place to be empty, I noticed
a big crowd gathered around someone I couldn’t see. When I
walked over to the group and peered inside, I saw Reese was still
there fielding questions from a pack of appreciative domainers. Elvis
had not left the building!
Reese
(second from left) surrounded by attendees long after his speech
ended
Reese
even hopped on one the buses that took the crowd to TraffcZ’s
post-dinner party at GameWorks. In a departure from
previous T.R.A.F.F.I.C. parties that are usually presented in a
night club setting, this event gave people a valid excuse to act
like a kid again. People were given game cards they gave them free
reign in the popular arcade playground throughout the evening. The
huge building also had quiet corners where people could veer off
to pursue their favorite game – networking. With GameWorks
situated on the Las Vegas Strip, those who preferred
traditional night club/casino fare were just steps away from the
other attractions in the Entertainment Capital of the World.
|
Scenes
from the TrafficZ Party
at GameWorks |
|
Some
time after midnight I was on the way back to the Venetian to get a
few hours sleep before the Wednesday agenda got underway. Casale
Media sponsored breakfast for those able to roll out of bed
before the opening session at 9:45.
|
That
was a development tools seminar conducted by Alan Warms
of ParticipateMedia.com, Lou Doctor, Darren
Cleveland and Adam Dicker. Cleveland pointed
out that the biggest decision comes before you even start
development – that is which of your domains would
be the best to build on. He said Recall Media looks for
the most viable product or service in a category that
offers the chance the develop multiple revenue streams.
Doctor
said making the right choice can have an astronomical
payoff, citing one development devoted to selling bicycle
tires that was started on a $15 domain but wound up
grossing $8 million a year in sales. Doctor said
building up that kind of business takes time. “I’ve
heard some say they want to develop one site a month,”
Doctor said, “I think it would be more practical to plan
one a year if you want a better payoff. Also, keep in mind
that development is much harder than it looks. It probably
only makes sense to develop your best domains because
successful developing requires a passion that is difficult
maintain.” |
Darren
Cleveland
President/CEO, Recall Media Group |
Dicker
gave some nuts and bolts advice on developing content and traffic
to new websites and Warms went through a case study of his ongoing
development of RumorMill.com,
a joint project he is working on with domain owner Rick Schwartz.
|
Next
up at 11am was a session on “Structuring Joint
Ventures and Domain Development Deals” with Chris
Mulligan and Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital
Markets, Ari Bayme and attorney Steve
Sturgeon. Sturgeon covered the various options for
legal structures such as LLC’s and what dictates
the best choice – a decision tied to the kind of
lifestyle you want to have, tax considerations and growth
potential.
Bayme
recommended that you not use friends as development
partners as the end result is often that you are no longer
friends and not making money! Successful development experience
is a far more important parameter.
Mulligan
discussed the circumstances under which a joint venture
makes sense. Those could include situations where a domain
is a must have but cannot be purchased because it is
either too expensive or not for sale. It also makes senses
when your partner’s content is more effective than yours
and when you have a need for cost predictability. |
Chris
Mulligan
RBC Capital Markets |
The
Wednesday luncheon was hosted by another new T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
sponsor, SnapNames.com. Company Vice Presidents Mason
Cole and Nelson Brady each took a turn at the podium to
talk about the popular expired domains auction service that has
been a highly respected industry fixture since 2000. It was also a
pleasure to meet SnapNames Chairman and CEO Sudhir Bhagwan
who was attending his first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference. Just about
every domain owner in this business (including me) has used
SnapNames to make key portfolio acquisitions. The company has a
well deserved reputation for excellent customer service and a
highly transparent, trustworthy auction system.
|
|
|
|
SnapNames
Vice Presidents Mason Cole (left) and Nelson Brady (right) |
I
also spoke during this luncheon to bring the audience up to date
on the latest industry sales trends. I leaned heavily on some new
research from Sedo’s Matt Bentley that studied sales data
from DNJournal.com combined with Sedo’s own sales database
(including many sales that have not been released due to non
disclosure agreements). That sample reflected a huge increase in
sales activity in the year ending Dec. 31, 2006. Both the number
of reported sales and the dollar volume of those sales doubled
in that 12 month period with the total value of reported sales
soaring from $50 million to $100 milllion. Since reported
sales are only a fraction of the overall market, we believe one
could assume the total market is 5-10 times higher than
that $100 million figure from Bentley’s data sample.
|
Ron
Jackson, Editor/Publisher
DNJournal.com |
The
average sales price of domains sold only at Sedo increased
from $1,500 to $2,200 in the past year. When you
add DNJournal’s sales data to the mix, the average price
jumps to $3,881 but that number is skewed higher
because we do not track sales below $1,000. If we did, it
would pull the average number from the combined
sample closer to Sedo’s average price. Bentley said Sedo
enjoyed a 60% increase in sales revenue over the
past year, a number that we would guess many other popular
venues approached given the exceptional health of the
market.
.Com
remains the dominant TLD, accounting for 73% of
all reported sales volume, however that is down from 81%
in 2005 as investors appears to be looking for additional
profit opportunities in new and untapped markets. Bentley
said the biggest increase in these non .com categories was
in country codes such as .cn (China), .ca
(Canada), .it (Italy), .se (Sweden) and .it
(Italy), to name just a few. |
After
lunch, the final seminar session for this edition of T.R.A.F.F.I.C
was held with Mark Van Dyke and Alan Warms returning
to the dais to join Brian Benko of NoParking.com in
a discussion of development successes and failures (and how
to obtain one while avoiding the other). Van Dyke said the success
of his Army.com could be attributed to these factors;
self-funding, open source applications, slow growth and strategic
relationships.
|
Brian
Benko
NoParking.com |
Alan
Warms
ParticipateMedia.com |
Warms
advised developers to concentrate on a good user experience and
understand that it takes time to build up traffic. Don’t expect
to make money from day 1. He also cautioned against overspending
for website design – placing $5,000 as a ceiling he
doesn’t think is necessary to exceed.
Benko
said that once you make the decision to develop, get the site live
as soon as possible so it can start getting indexed by the search
engines. Don’t worry about fonts, colors and assorted design
issues that can be tweaked along the way. Benko also thinks that
for your first projects you should work with a local designer that
you can stay in close contact with. Once you have defined your
needs you can consider cutting costs by moving your development
work offshore.
With
that final seminar in the books, it was time for what has become a
marquee event at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. – Moniker.com’s live
domain auction. Veteran auctioneer Joel Langbaum was again
flown in from Florida to direct the action while Moniker CEO Monte
Cahn helped spot bidders from the dais. Other Moniker crew
members were stationed at floor level around the 13,500 square
foot hall to make sure bidders were seen.
Auctioneer
Joel Langbaum (left) calls the action
as Moniker CEO Monte Cahn spots a bidder in the crowd
When
the dust had settled $4.3 million worth of domains had been
sold and the percentage of names sold was an all-time record,
hitting 67% - approximately double the success rate
from the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East auction in October. That indicates
that Moniker is getting better and better at identifying names
that will sell (and that have reasonable reserve prices) with each
event they conduct. The absence of a 7-figure sale (like the one
of Cameras.com at $1.5 million at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
East) brought the auction in a little under the record live
auction total of $4.7 million in sales at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
East.
However,
there were seven impressive six-figure sales, led by Families.com
(a developed website business) at $650,000, Greeting.com
at $350,000 and Blogster.com at $275,000. Settlement.com
went for $200,000 while the other three that cracked the
six-figure barrier were all two-letter .coms; ET.com ($225,000),
OL.com ($150,000) and PX.com ($120,000).
There
were also some strong sales in the .mobi extension topped
by RealEstate.mobi at $85,000 and
Casinos.mobi at $52,000. You can see a complete list
of all of the winning auction bids here.
Bidders
track the action at the Moniker.com Live Auction
With
silent auction results added in, the final sales total at
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East in October was $5.3 million. At the
time of this writing, the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West silent auction
(conducted over the Moniker.com
site) still has two days to run (ending March 14), so the final
tally could eclipse the overall mark from the fall show in
Florida. That seems more likely when you consider that about 100
domains that were slated for the live auction had to be moved to
the silent auction when the allotted time for the live event
expired before those remaining names could be offered for sale.
| After
the auction, everyone headed for a networking cocktail
party sponsored by iMonetize.com and Domainer’s
Magazine (a new print publication being produced by
iMonetize chief Jerry Nolte).
The
party segued into a closing dinner sponsored by Klickerz.biz
that featured fare worthy of the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. name with
each plate graced with filet mignon, lobster tail and a
chicken breast. The desserts were also exquisite which
explains why you will see no T.R.A.F.F.I.C. attendee
anywhere near a set of scales this week!
After
detailing his PPC company’s unique co-op model, Klickerz
founder Fin Lemonde presided over some nice prize
giveaways and some special treats. One of the nicest was a
live performance by Klickerz customer service rep Emily
Anne (Emme for short), who happens to be an
extremely talented singer-songwriter that we expect you
will hear much more when the music industry inevitably
steals her way. You can sample her music now at Emme's
MySpace page. |
Klickerz
founder Fin Lemonde |
Emme
Rocks!
That
brought the curtain down on another very successful T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conference, though there was an informal breakfast Thursday
morning for those who stayed over Wednesday night.
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s Board of Advisors (who are elected by
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. attendees at the East show each fall) also met
Thursday morning. That group makes suggestions on future show
themes, seminars and locations. T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West will return to
the Venetian in Las Vegas is 2008 (dates not yet announced) but
the 2008 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East show may move from South Florida to Orlando.
Of course, there are still two shows to go on the 2007 calendar
– New York City in June and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East in a return
engagement at the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood, Florida
October 8-12.
Hats
off again to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founders Rick Schwartz and Howard
Neu. By pioneering the domain conference space and maintaining a
consistent level of excellence you have been the catalyst for this
industry’s spectacular rate of growth over the past three years.
As always, Alina Schwartz and Barbara Neu deserve a
special thank you for being such wonderful hostesses and making
every T.R.A.F.F.I.C. attendee feel welcome and right at
home.
Alina
Schwartz (left), Ray Dillman and Barbara Neu (right)
I
have been remiss in not singling out Barbara’s son, Ray
Dillman, for special recognition before now. Ray has also
worked quietly behind the scenes to help make every T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
show a success. He has clearly inherited his mother’s “people
skills” and I will guarantee you that this intelligent and
athletic college junior will be a huge success when he
moves into his chosen career. Ray has his eye on the FBI
Academy and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him running the
agency one day!
So
another one is now in the books. Next stop – New York City.
We hope to see you in June when T.R.A.F.F.I.C. makes its first
stop in the Big Apple!
|
|
Next
Page:
-
How
Rice Put Himself Out of a Job By Making BulkRegister an Attractive Buyout
Candidate
-
Rice
Tells Registrars They Are Leaving Millions of Dollars on the Table
-
Why
Rice Believes the Bull Market for Domains Will Continue - not
just for years, but for DECADES to come!
|
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to Page 2 of this story
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