Scott Roberts has won the GeoDomainer.com contest that concluded today. He won a $695 conference ticket to the GeoDomain Expo in Chicago 10-12 July. There were many participants in this contest and I would like to thank each of them for their participation. Additionally, I hope to see all of you at the expo in 10 days.

This was not the standard contest you see held in the domain industry. In order to have a chance at winning the ticket, participants had to submit an essay on their goals in the domain industry and how they feel the AssociatedCities.com GeoDomain Expo would help them in accomplishing their goals. Even though only 1 person won the $695 ticket, I think several participants ended up winning by outlining their goals and now having a map to accomplish them.

Again, Congratulations Scott Roberts! GeoDomainer.com and team are happy to help others in attaining their goals. This is Scott’s winning essay.

2008 GeoDomain Expo Contest Essay ? Sponsored by GeoDomainer.com
Scott Roberts

Trading time for money. As a business model, it has limitations. I’m an IT consultant, so I can increase rates or add staff, but those are essentially the only options I have to grow my business. I’m not complaining; servers, workstations, switches and routers have been a great career for over ten years. But I want more. I want a business that will generate revenue without requiring someone’s physical presence. I want a business that can be leveraged into ever larger projects. I want a business that excites me again.

A little history is probably in order. I bought a few domain names as far back as 1997. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the massive potential of geographic and generic domains. Then around 2005 I became aware of the hidden industry known as domaining. I made up my mind to get into this business and began to read and learn. I started buying names I thought had potential. It took time for plans to come together, but on July 1, 2007 I started my own IT consulting business with flexibility as a primary goal. Now nearly a year later, I can devote two to three days a week to domaining and web development.

I’ve never wanted to rely on parking revenue, so my immediate goal is to develop and launch one website. It’s a modest but very achievable goal. I learn best by doing, so it’s important to get this first project completed. One operational site will create a kind of human inertia, paving the way for future goals.

Over the medium term I want to develop additional websites, while continuing to learn about the industry. For long?term success, I think it’s important to have a firm grasp of advertising sales, web analytics/testing and industry trends just to name a few topics. Ultimately my goal is to own a true media company, with a diversified portfolio of web properties.

The 2008 GeoDomain Expo can help me achieve these goals in several ways. By meeting and talking with industry veterans I can gain valuable insight about which domain to launch first. Making a wise choice at this stage will jump?start my development efforts. Also, from my background as an IT consultant I can attest to the value of knowing colleagues who can provide advice when needed. These connections can be priceless at times, and I enjoy the give and take of people helping people.

The speakers and sessions at the GeoDomain Expo look great for learning a tremendous amount about the industry, including details that may not be easily found online. I’m especially interested in the sessions on local advertising sales, technology and GeoDomains in the news. Beyond that, I’m sure I would learn answers to questions I didn’t even know enough to ask!

Finally, I think just being at the GeoDomain Expo would be a tremendous motivation to me. Meeting industry leaders, listening to speakers and watching a live domain auction would be the best way I can imagine to start a new career as a domain developer.

This is going to be an interesting show to watch during the application process of gTLDs/vTLDs. After reading a current article posted on thedomains.com, I decided to make this post here on the blog. A while back, Kevin Ham was featured in Business 2.0, titiled, “The Man Who Owns The Internet”.

In that article, Paul Sloan discussed how Kevin had negotiated a deal with Cameroon for management of the countries .CM extension to earn PPC revenue. Here is a clip from the article:

And what few people know is that he’s also the man behind the domain world’s latest scheme: profiting from traffic generated by the millions of people who mistakenly type “.cm” instead of “.com” at the end of a domain name.

Try it with almost any name you can think of — Beer.cm, Newyorktimes.cm, even Anyname.cm — and you’ll land on a page called Agoga.com, a site filled with ads served up by Yahoo (Charts, Fortune 500).

Ham makes money every time someone clicks on an ad — as does his partner in this venture, the West African country of Cameroon. Why Cameroon? It has the unforeseen good fortune of owning .cm as its country code — just as Germany runs all names that end with .de.

The difference is that hardly any .cm names are registered, and the letters are just one keyboard slip away from .com, the mother lode of all domains. Ham landed connections to the Cameroon government and flew in his people to reroute the traffic. And if he gets his way, Colombia (.co), Oman (.om), Niger (.ne), and Ethiopia (.et) will be his as well.

So now a new opportunity exists for domainers or savvy business owners to apply for the .CIM or .CPM vTLDs. These domains will generate millions of typos for internet users searching for content online using a web address with a .com at the end. As we all know, if .CM gets millions of hits of typos monthly, it can be calculated that these two extensions .CIM or CPM, will generate millions of typos as well. This means big money for PPC payouts. It is going to be interesting what domainers/parking companies make the move on these two extensions. I am more than sure that domainers are working in stealth mode for this savvy investment.

You can bet that many of the companies that do apply for these, will be made up domainer business companies. There is alot of money on the table for these two extensions. I am making a prediction that there will be a bidding war to acquire management for the extensions .CIM and .CPM and people will be confused as to why, when other extensions are available as well. Anyone up to applying for these in a factional domaining group?

This is going to be a fun one to watch and see who comes out on top of these. I can assure you, it will more than likely be one of our all star players in the domain industry. Unless we form a group!

Since I started reporting the geo tracker in December 2007, never has there been such a large amount of ccTLDs in the top 20. This past week, 13 claimed positions. This is was a great week for ccTLD geo domain sales. Of course, many of these sales were because of the recent .ca auction MyID.ca held. However, this goes to show you what happens when you launch a targeted auction. Many of these names may have never sold if a targeted auction was never presented. We are very excited about GeoAuction.com and GeoDomain.com coming to market. We will have to sit and wait and see if this trend is something that will continue in the months to come or if it is just a fluke.

That is the great thing about the Geo Tracker. It enables us to view what is moving and current trends in the market place that are reported. Additionally, it serves as a historical tracker for future valuations.

ccTLD geo domain sales totaled $514,321 for a grand total of $542,416 in geo domain sales.

Nepal.de $59,153 Sedo.com
Austria-Trend.com $15,565 Sedo.com
NewportMedical.com $2,888 AfternicDLS
AsiaInvestors.com $2,888 AfternicDLS
IceUK.com $2,950 AfternicDLS
CaliforniaAttorney.net $2,000 AfternicDLS
Russland.com $1,804 AfternicDLS
LoansCanada.ca $3,112 MyID.ca
VancouverTravel.ca $1,816 MyID.ca
MontrealMortgages.ca $2,624 MyID.ca
QuebecHomes.ca $1,556 MyID.ca
QuebecHome.ca $1,574 MyID.ca
Paris.biz $3,533 NameJet.com
Norwegian.info $3,191 Moniker.com

Small businesses continue to make the move online as they have discovered they get much more for their marketing dollars.  It is amazing how much of their marketing dollars have moved online in such a short period of time.  I hope that many geodomainers are receiving a small part of this increase.  Effective development and building a community is the key to  recruiting  a portion of these advertising dollars. I am interested in hearing from established geo sites if their ad revenues have increased since last year.

A report released by local advertising research company Borrell Associates concludes that local advertisers are moving their marketing funds toward Internet campaigns to the tune of $13.1 billion this year, a 50% increase from 2007.

The report also predicts that local online ad spending will grow another 40% to $18.2 billion in 2009. Spending will eventually slow down and plateau at about $23 billion in 2012, while averaging 15% growth over the next four years.

(Via webwire.com)

I have decided to rethink how I am going to word my part 2 article I was going to publish today. There is a reason for this. The post I made, Industry Chaos, was the third most read article since I started blogging and only 2 people left a comment. This is an indicator that many domainers are not willing to comment on such a controversial topic.

This is definitely a sensitive subject to discuss in an open forum. I find it very strange that an industry that demands transparency refuses to discuss sensitive topics as outlined. Everyone is quick to complain about the unethical practices of companies, but are not willing to unite and do things to make a difference. This is not a shot at Michael, Andrew and others, but the industry as a whole. I believe my statement about uniting and causing disruptive change was way off target. I thought domainers would keep it going for at least 2 weeks. However, I was dead wrong. It only lasted 3 days. No more talk about it in the industry and this amazes me. This is why the industry will continue to be threatened and at risk.

The people in power who can make a difference, fail to unite and lead the small time domainers into an organized front. I just do not understand this way of thinking in the domain industry. However, we will continue to hear about the injustices that occur to them in the future and others, as they rile up everyone again.

There is a couple of ways to decipher this lack of interaction with this topic. One is that many are guilty of unethical behavior as individuals, and the other is I am plain crazy to even bring this into the limelight. I think it is a mixture of both. This is why I am going to take my time to strategically word the part 2 post. Maybe, just maybe, domainers will be willing to communicate on the core issues at hand. It all begins with the individual changing their own unethical practices and then uniting to make a difference. This honestly speaks volumes of the current state of the domain industry. My rail analogy still holds up with individuals looking out for number 1.

The good ole boy network is not going to save or improve the industry. Amazing that over 700 people have read that post in 2 days, and only 1 comment was made. Are domainers that set in their ways that they will leave things to be solved by others?

It took only person to start a movement in 1955 that changed a nation. The movement was called the Civil Rights Movement. The person Rosa Parks. Change can only occur when you unite into a powerful force. A united front speaking with one voice is the only thing that is going to improve and protect the domain industry for the domain entrepreneur.

The following universal domain Dickinson.com has been placed on the market for $24,000 and is being brokered by Mr. Rob Sequin. I have placed the information he has submitted for your review. You can contact Rob through his website if you are interested in Dickinson.com. SearchDomainsForSale.com

*Dickinson.com*

Great geo domain, family name and Emily Dickinson related domain
opportunity.

Emily Dickinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson

Nine results for cities or towns named Dickinson in Google maps

and…

Dickinson College http://www.dickinson.edu/
Dickinson County Iowa http://www.co.dickinson.ia.us/
Dickinson County Kansas http://www.dkcoks.org/
Dickinson Hospital http://www.cooley-dickinson.org/splash/
Dickinson Marine http://www.dickinsonmarine.com/
Dickinson North Dakota http://www.dickinsoncvb.com/
Dickinson Press http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/
Dickinson State University http://www.dsu.nodak.edu/
Dickinson Texas http://www.ci.dickinson.tx.us/
Dickinson Theaters http://www.dtmovies.com/
Dickinson’s Specialty Foods http://www.dickinsonsfamily.com/
Dickinson’s Witch Hazel http://www.witchhazel.com/

Becton Dickinson is a medical supply company http://www.bd.com/

ICANN just announced its approval of new gTLDs which will more than likely lead to a new online goldrush as suggested in the article. But this time it will be corporate America and Traditional Media making the move to become the new owners of elite extensions and not entrepreneurs. While many domainers have their opinions on this recent announcement, I for one am glad that ICANN has opened the flood gates. There are many Pros and Cons to new gTLDs or as David Castello has coined vTLDs on ElliotsBlog.com. But, I do not want to get into that can of worms at this time. I will leave most of that stuff for the experts to discuss and give my opinion on their blogs. There are plenty of topics already in the industry on this announcement if you are set on learning the pros and cons.

So why am I excited about this new announcement? Well, the Geo Domain Industry just grew 10 fold with this new announcement of vTLDs. We can anticipate the following geo domain extensions such as .nyc, .paris, .london, .chicago, etc…… to come soon enough. And the amazing thing is many of these will not be launched by small time companies. Major media companies are going to to jump at this opportunity since they missed the boat on geo .coms. True value will unfold in the industry as gTLDs are embraced by corporate America. This is a lot of geo domains when you look at how many countries, cities, states, and regions there are in the world.

The timing could not be better with all of the internet going local. It is really wide open for solid growth in the geo domain industry. Even generic name .TLD will still use city, state, country, and regions in their website addresses as well. The possibilities and opportunities are endless. Our geo network being built is center mass of all this growth.

These are exciting times, and of course those who own elite .com geo domains will be in a great place as those consumers who are confused will end up at the .com address from time to time. What will separate sites, is what I, and many others have said from day one, Content. Quality content will bring that visitor back to your site regardless of the extension. Love the term coined by David as well, Vanity TLDs (vTLDs). Makes Perfect Sense.