Missed this story yesterday.  Congrats to the Castello Brothers on a job well done once again!  True Geopreneurs setting the standard!  Article from DNJournal.com

They continue to practice what they preach and are about to officially announce a major partnership between their Castello Cities Internet Network (CCIN) and WorldGolf.com to build the world’s largest golf geodomain network. 

WorldGolf.com’s extensive network already includes popular golf geodomain sites LasVegasGolf.com, OrlandoGolf.com and HiltonHeadGolf.com to name just a few. CCIN will bring at least a dozen of their golf geodomains into the WorldGolf.com network including names like LosAngelesGolf.com, NewOrleansGolf.com and SanFranciscoGolf.com. 
(Full Article)

 Out of the Box Thought

Sem-i-nar:  any meeting for exchanging information and holding discussions

In realestate, most of the seminars are designed to educate an individual how to maximize their revenue thru proven tactics for a set fee.   They are normally 1 to 3 day workshops depending on the content being delivered and makeup of the audience.

Every industry has these types of seminars throughout the world that thousands attend. Those that do not, have conferences and expos.  

Now lets focus on the local market and potential advertising clients.  Time is money, and cold calling businesses to advertise on your geo domain one at a time is just plain silly.  Effective time management is needed to accomplish a task that will pay you residual income for your hard work done today. 

Geopreneurs with prime domains in an area should network and organize local quarterly seminars for businesses to educate them on the effectiveness of internet advertising on a intuitive brand, such as a city.com name.  Unfortunately, there are thousands of business owners that are uneducated on the power of the internet and targeted traffic.  Business owners want and need to be educated whether they know it or not, and the best people to do it are Geopreneurs with prime geo domains of the area. 

One seminar could gather 100 or more business owners thru farm mailing and promotion thru different services.  By doing this, the content is delivered one time to a targeted crowd, enabling Geopreneurs to sign-up new clients into their advertising network.  Why focus your energy and time on chasing a potential client thru cold calling, when you can have them come to you willing to learn and spend?      

 Are any geopreneurs with prime property doing this already or tried ?  What was the outcome?  If not, is there another game plan you currently have working that is just as effective?

Steve     

 Today was a slow day all around in the domain industry.  I often visit namepros.com forum to see topics of interest to domainers.  There you will find the next hot trends domainers are ready to invest in.  The domain extention .travel seems to be that next hot trend in domain extentions.  The .travel extention is reserved for travel agencies and until recently, government agencies(cities, counties, etc).  These types of domains can become power houses in the geo domain niche if the right companies promote them accordingly to consumers.  Interesting concept on what Tralliance Corportation has in store for this extention. You can visit the webiste travel.travel for more information on the full game plan for this extention.

The top-level .travel Internet domain is part of the next generation of restructuring and reorganization of the Internet along industry verticals. .travel gives travel and tourism businesses and organizations the opportunity to be www.company.travel instead of www.company.com.

Unlike “.com”, “.org”, “.co.uk” or the other top-level domains available on the Internet today, .travel is an industry-sponsored, industry-exclusive top-level domain, which means that only travel organizatons who go through an authentication process can get a .travel name insuring that all .travel web sites are held by legitimate travel organizations.

Only valid travel and tourism entities are represented in the dedicated .travel web space, which supports small and large tourism companies alike. The .travel domain ensures that companies with .travel Internet addresses are bona fide and, through its vetting and authentication system, eliminates “cyber squatters” and domain name speculators

I am interested in hearing your opinions on this subject.  Please keep in mind that it is not being compared to dot com, but as an alternative to be apart of the geo domain niche.  Will we see Geo empires built with .travel?

Steve

Now that Christmas has passed, It’s officially time to finalize your list of acts for your New Years Resolution.  These are nothing more than short term goals you wish to accomplish throughout 2008. It is important to set personal and business goals seperately for 2008.  This will allow you to stay focused on accomplishing each of them.      

Goals
The key for success and ongoing success is to establish short term realistic goals.  Your short term goals should be established in the following format; crawl, walk, run.  Identify your goals and arrange them as stepping stones.  They should be structered to compliment each other to reach the next level.   

Success can only be determined by the amount of goals you have accomplished.  Those who are successful, have goals outlined, and will continue to be successful as they continuously reestablish new ones.  Those who do not do well, simply lack realistic short term goals or no goals at all.  Ensure your short term goals map out to your long term goals.

What are your top business goals for 2008? 

Steve

How effective would online TV and video ads be on geo domains?  With a large amount of targeted traffic, I would conclude they would do better than TV, banner and link advertisements.  How would you go about getting the local businesses to place their TV ad on your geo domain?  This is oviously an additional revenue stream for geopreneurs.  Here is a study I came across (via techcrunch.com) that got me thinking of the multiple possibilities of video ads on geo domains.

“A new study by Simmons, a unit of Experian Research Services has found that consumers are 47% more engadged by ads that run with television programs viewed online than those watched on a TV set.

The study also found that viewers are 25% more engaged in the content of TV shows that they watch online than on a TV, are 18% more engaged in ads online, as opposed to print versions (magazines etc), and they are 15% more engaged in magazine articles online than in print form.”

A partnership would have to be established with local Ad/Media companys.  Additionally, a platform should exist for small business owners with limited cashflow to construct their own video ads either thru your site or an affiliate to ensure you capture every angle.  Interesting concept, have any of the city.com owners pursued this avenue yet?  

Geopreneurs, what are your thoughts on this?

Steve

Here is a great video I came across while conducting research on branding. It will help you understand these two types of branding techniques that 90-95% of those in the domain business have no clue about due their focus on strictly PPC. It is a great video to prime your thought process before we move forward with the 4 Topics to branding listed previously. If you are serious about developing your geo domain, this is a good start. It is long, but very informative. Use out of the box thinking to see how you can apply this data to your geo domain logo and website. Comments are welcomed.

Steve

Merry Christmas Geopreneurs!  I wanted to share a few thoughts with you this morning.  The blog has done amazingly well during the holiday season since launching a little over a week ago.  98% of the unique visitors coming to the blog daily are typing simplygeo.com.  This tells me that visitors approve of the blog and are doing word of mouth advertising.  We have gone from 0 to approximately 28 unique visitors per day and growing.  With so many domainers and newcomers on vacation and away from their computers, this is a very good start for the geo niche.  This shows the large amount of interest in the geo domain niche.   

Many people like to read the articles on blogs, but for some reason, these same people fear posting comments and opinions to blog articles.  I assume that people fear they will be ridiculed by others because of the way they think.  I would like to ask visitors to put that fear aside and please interact more in order to provide unbiased opinions, approval, disapproval, and experiences.  The true value of content delivered on any blog can only be measured by the amount of interaction from visitors.

Everyone loves to read the comments from readers on blogs, right?  That is the best part of the conversation, when it comes to blogging.  Peoples different perspectives, values, experiences, opinions and approval/disapproval of the content being delivered.  This is unconsciously used as a measuring tool for readers of the blog to assess the value of the content being delivered, right?  It also serves as a tool for the author to tweak content being delivered based on interaction and comments to provide an effective learning environment.  

I have made it very easy for visitors to interact with the blog based on their personality.  Here are the 4 things you can do to interact and provide input.  They are as follows:

**Post Anonymous:  If you want to post something, but do not want people to see who it has been posted by, simply type STEALTH as the user and stealth@simplygeo.com as the email address in the comments box.  It’s that easy.  Comments will be 100% moderated to protect the integrity of the blog. 

**Rate an Article:  At the top of each post is a rating system to rate the value of the content.  There are 5 stars, 1 to 5, with 5 being the best.  It is 100% discrete, and does not show who left the rating to visitors or to the authors.  

**Comment on the Post:  No brainer, write your thoughts in the comments section

**Submit a Post: Write a post on a geo domain topic and email it to me for approval.  I will then post it for readers. 

 I thank you in advance for your future interaction with the blog.  At a minimum, please RATE every article you read.

Thank you for helping simplygeo.com grow!

Godspeed,
Steve