Did Traffic Show Flop For First Time?
Posted by This may be a controversial question I am asking here, but it is not meant to slander the Traffic Show. There is no doubt that it is a great show to attend. Further, these are questions that should be asked in an open forum to get a variety of perspectives to this question and others. Every business at one time or another suffers set backs when it has had solid growth performance. This is the course of business.
After reviewing comments on attendance and the results of domain names that sold at the Traffic Auction in Orlando today, I can not help but ask 2 questions. 1. Was the auction process a flop? 2. Was the Traffic Show a flop?
In the past, the Traffic Show did very well with attendance from all the major players and domain sales. While attendance numbers have not been released yet, it is speculated that attendance numbers were the lowest ever for a Traffic Show. This could have been because of the location the event was held at, Disney.
Then there is the auction portion, which had approximately $2.5 million in domain sales. It appeared from the live feed that the auctioneer at times was “begging” for bidding action on several of names. When you actually analyze the auction data, 6 names made up a big chunk of the revenue generated in domain sales. I believe approximately 100 names were sold in total. There were several of outstanding domains listed for sale in the auction, that were passed by investors in large numbers.
Here are the names that totaled almost $1 million in sales:
InsuranceRates.com $225,000
GasPrices.com $225,000
Athlete.com $122,000
OW.com $120,000
Rainbow.com $170,000
Ringtones.org $120,000
While $2.5 million is a great auction day in anyones book, it is a poor result for such a quality list of domains for sale in this Traffic Show. I am sure there were many attendees who did some great networking and business deals during this event with limited competition in the field when compared to past shows. It will be interesting to see all the blog articles that are posted on this event in the coming days. Will they fluff how great Traffic was this time again over past shows? Will they say they were disappointed with the outcome, when compared to other shows? Or will they say this show produced the best results because of less competition at the show and greater opportunity to network? Interesting to see the variety of answers to these questions.
Perhaps the economy has a lot to do with low attendance to the show and disappointing auction results, at least to most domainers. Maybe domainers had unrealistic expectations in an economy that is struggling. Why do you think this show had a lower showing compared to past shows and why investors passed on so many great names? Would this Traffic Show be considered a flop or are domainers simply conferenced out and investors auctioned out?
I know the New York Traffic Show will soar with attendees and reach new levels of success. There is no doubt that it is time to regroup and start new marketing strategies before the New York show to bring in record amounts of attendees and record auction results. Complacency will always stunt growth, as competition continues to stay proactive creating innovative ways to recruit attendees to their conferences. I am interested in hearing your comments.
