The Traffic show excitement is at its peak as the show gets ready to launch tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how successful this show performs in a few categories that will show the current strength of the domain industry. These include attendence, sponsors, and of course, domain sales. Unfairly, Traffic will be used to measure this as it is being held in the g-spot, NYC.

Attendence is definitely something many people will be looking at since the last show had poor results. Will Traffic break an attendence record with this coveted show being held in the Big Apple? Because of the location and the value Traffic has delivered throughout the years, many are betting on a large attendence, and a new wave of attendees.

Then their is the amount of sponsors for the event. Traffic opened up bidding for sponsorship opportunities, once again setting a new industry standard. Did this strategy work and enroll a larger amount of sponsors, or did it under perform, or stay consistent with past shows? More sponsors show strength of the industry, especially in this current financial market and premium location.

Lastly, their are the auctions. This will be the most interesting venues to watch. I am already impressed with Rick Latona’s approach to entering this competitive market. A total of 3 auction houses will offer reasonable reserves on some great domains. The financial crunch and current economy is going to have a major impact in the success level of these auction houses. Most have done a great job promoting their inventory and communicating to end users. I believe a new era has begun and we will see evolution occur at warp speed with this brilliant move by Rick and Howard. Competition and improved customer service will enable the consumer/domainer to take advantage and reap the rewards.

All of these categories will give all of us a strong indicator of the current domain industry. I think it is also important to take notice to the volume of domains sold, rather than the end prices. If you focus on only the Price a domain sold for, this can give you a very inaccurate indicator of the market strength. As an example, if 20 domains sell for $4 Million and 300 names are offered, at first look many will say the auctions were a success and the industry is strong. While in reality, the market is very weak with only 6% of inventory selling. Of course, everyone will hype it up regardless, but the devil is always in the details. If you truly want to see where the current and future strength of this industry is at, you to analyze all the details.

I am more curious in the details, (To include value of the sessions, opinions, etc) and hope that we will get great coverage of the statistics and not only the fluff. This data always seems to stay out of the spot light with all the shows. Will we get all the statisitics, or we will hear the words once again, “This Show Was Better Than Ever!”? I think with the quality of bloggers who are attending, we will see some great content published on the categories I listed and much more.

Hope everyone has a great time at Traffic. Good luck to those sellers and to all buyers!