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National Advertisers Want to Target Locally Online

  Posts Posted by Steve under General on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 3:03 pm

National advertisers want to target local communities online according to a new study conducted by Sterling Market Intelligence and commissioned by Marchex, Inc. The down side to this new trend is National advertisers are confused on the best tactics and best traffic sources to use and how to measure their ROIs.

The study, conducted between September 11 and September 21, 2008, surveyed 150 national advertisers or agencies that offer products and/or services through local outlets, dealers, franchises or branded stores across more than one state. The study examined advertising budget allocations, local online advertising strategies and tactics, and ROI perspectives on national advertisers’ local online advertising efforts

Marchex is the largest owner of geo targeted domains in the world with a portfolio of over 400,000 geo domains.  I imagine we will see many more of these commissioned studies by Marchex to help educate main stream media.

Sterling Market Intelligence has launched a webinar titled “Local Online Advertising: Strategies and Tactics Every Company Should Know,” if you want to further your education on local advertising.

(Via MarketWatch.com)

NewYorkRestaurants.com Sells For $30,240

  Posts Posted by Steve under General on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 1:19 pm

As reported across the industry blogs, Moniker.com’s silent auction concluded yesterday.   Among the names that sold for top dollar was the geo domain/geo targeted domain NewYorkRestaurants.com for $30,240.  It took the number 5 position on high sales for the silent auction.  One year ago, no one would have expected a domain like this to sell for $30k.  More than likely, this geo domain was purchased by a reseller and not an end user, which means the domain will be sold for more in the future.

Here are other geo domains that sold for 4 figures in the auction:

Orlando.mobi  $6,030
MarylandAccidentLawyer.com  $4,900
NewYorkAccounting.com  $4,710
WashingonDUILawyer.com $2,360
NewJerseyNews.com  $1,400 (Great Buy)
NewYorkGym.com $1,180

We continue to see descriptive geo domains go up in value even when the economy and domain industry is in a rut.  Many generic domains have gone down in value and under performed in this recent market as Geo Domains have continued to gain value and do very well.

The RickLatona.com auction sold Lisbon.net for $32,000 during the traffic show.  This once again validated the demand and value for geo domains that make sense and are targeted.

Congrats to the Moniker.com team for doing another outstanding job!

Traffic Sells $2.5 Million So Far and Still 50 Names Left To Sell

  Posts Posted by Steve under General on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 5:21 pm

Update: Here are the final results for the Auctions that were conducted during the Traffic Show.  The total came to approximately $4.7 million for all auctions held.

Moniker.com Live Auction: Approximately $3 million
Moniker.com Silent Auction: $907,649
RickLatonia.com Live Auction: $699,600
Aftermarket.com Live Aucion: $150,000
___________________________________________________________________________

The live auction today is doing lower than expected. So far the Moniker.com auction at the Traffic Show has sold over $2.5 Million of domain sales. The highest domains sold so far are:

FinancialAid.com and FinancialAide.com $800,000
Floor.com $275,000
Cleaning.com $100,00
LT.com $100,000
Searching.com $85,000
BirthdayPresents.com $80,000
Sax.com $70,000
Date.me $70,000
Literature.com $60,000

Will be interesting to see the final results.

Geo Domains On Auction During The Traffic Show

  Posts Posted by Steve under Announcements on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 4:01 pm

The 3 auction houses, RickLatona.com, Moniker.com, and Aftermarket.com have done a great job assembling premium acution lists. The domains being offered during this venue are impressive as well as many of the reserves associated with each of the names.

I have gone through the major lists and listed the geo domains that will be offered for your convenience. Aftermarket.com has some great geo domains and I will not be surprized if almost all of them sell during Traffic.

AfterMarket.com
Palermo.com $75,000
Illinois.org $25,000
*NewYorkLoft.com $20,000 (* For Pair)
*NewYorkApartment.com
MadisonAve.com $10,000

RickLatona.com
BroadwayShows.com
Rhodes.com
PrinceEdward.com
Lisbon.net
SanJuan.com
TheBronx.net
BrooklynLawyers.com

Moniker.com (These are only a few, as their list is long)
NewYorkPhoneBook.com
Zimbabwe.com
Arizona.info
Europe.mobi
Africa.info
Africa.mobi

Current Strength Of The Domain Industry Will Be Measured Soon

  Posts Posted by Steve under General on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 3:27 pm

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!

Blogging Is Hard Work! Take Time To Embrace And Thank Bloggers

  Posts Posted by Steve under General on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 11:12 am

A blog is a very powerful media platform if you have an effective writer behind the scenes. A blog can build an industry, a business, and educate individuals across the world. TechCrunch.com is a great example of how a guy with an idea and effective writing skills impacted an industry with a blog.

The blogging community in the domain industry is unique in many ways and responsible for sustaining growth in the industry. Everyone has done a great job providing content on a niche in the industry for the most part. It is great to have three blogging sites and writers that cover the Industry as a whole, such as DomainNameNews.com, DomainNameWire.com and TheDomains.com. I really enjoy reading all the articles found on Domaining.com that bloggers take the time to publish. I try my best to read all of the content that is published. Many posts are insightful and provide different perspectives on topics of interest to domainers. The goal of most of them I would assume is to provide educational content that will help individuals understand the domain industry and help them find a level of success in the industry.

Blogging is not an easy job. Providing effective content takes time, research, and skill. Those who are consistent bloggers can be compared to professional writers in many ways. The skill to communicate effectively is essential in order to have a successful blog. You have to connect with visitors and make them want to come back for more of your content. The good bloggers do this and do it well. I recommend thanking them for doing so.

Bloggers who can not do this consistently fade away. We have seen many blogs fade, R.I.P. to those who have. If you think it is easy to become an effective blogger, I recommend you start a blog to see the work load involved in providing effective content daily or weekly with effective spelling and terminology to strangers from around the world.

Oh and by the way, you have to face criticism sometimes for the content you publish publicly, which can make or break a blogger depending on their response to this criticism. I find criticism to be a developmental tool that makes an individual a better writer in the blogging world. It takes courage to publish a comment from an individual who is bashing your content or point of view. At times, content is taken out of context to advance a visitors agenda. Frustrating to say the least when this occurs, but overall makes an individual a better writer and communicater.

Bloggers also get writers block, which is very frustrating when it occurs. Eventually, they get out of this slump and start providing great content again. Then there are life situations that occur that take a blogger out for a duration. This happened to SimplyGeo.com. However the good news is most of those situations are complete now and content is soon to come! Hope you all will enjoy it.

Recently, I have noticed many of the major bloggers taking a break from blogging. I am not surprized by this as many of them run successful businesses and need to focus on certain projects. Others just need a break from blogging as it can be stressful at times finding original content to publish. And some may be facing writers block, and waiting to get out of their slump. Eventually, I foresee all of them publishing content again in the near future.

It is fun reading content and comments on established blogs. Visitors get to become educated from the content and comments published. Based on SimplyGeo.com’s statistics, only 3% of the visitors that frequent the blog post comments to articles. This is probally the norm in all domain industry blogs. Visitors fear sharing their opinions publicly. This however does not mean that a visitor can not express their thanks to the blogger. Take the time to write a comment from time to time. Embrace and motivate bloggers to continue doing what they are doing by leaving comments and being apart of the community. To those who are on break from blogging, make sure to leave comments motivating them to come back and provide content.

Blogging is a team effort and it benefits so many people in the long term. Visitors, readers and comrades, take the time to thank and interact with blogging communities and show that you appreciate the content bloggers provide. It is not hard to say, “Thanks for providing this content, keep up the good work.”

If you take away all the bloggers in the industry, what will you have to read? Where will you get a variety of perspectives and education from? Where will you get ground breaking news from? Where will you get professional advice from? The domain industry was once boring when it was silent and secretive. Bloggers have made the industry vibrant, exciting and center stage in main stream media. They have inflicted change in the industry, that no one else could have ever done. Do you want a boring industry again? If not, support your industry bloggers and leave comments. The true value on any blog is not the content they provide, but the response to the content in the comments section. This is where the real value is contained for the visitor most of the time. Our job is to get your experience, education, and perspective out of your head so the world can learn from it. I ask you to please do your part and embrace the industry bloggers.

At this time, I would like to thank all bloggers in the domain industry for your dedication in providing effect content for my reading pleasure. Please keep up the good work!

Lastly, I would like to thank Francois for establishing Domaining.com and continuosly upgrading the platform. It is a long term investment that will continue to promote the industry as a unified front.

Have a nice day!
Steve

Skip Hoagland Has Done It Again, Strikes Deal With Cairo.com

  Posts Posted by Steve under Announcements on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 4:38 pm

Skip has been busy executing his secret formula to forming strategic alliances with owners of domain name brands. He disclosed a part of his strategy during his recent cover story on DNJournal.com that enables protection and security to all involved in the partnership. This secret formula has led to Cairo.com and Skip forming a strategic alliance. This is a major alliance as Cairo, Egypt is one of the most popular tourists destinations in the world. It will be exciting to see how this site is transformed in the coming years by Geo Domains New Media, a division of Domains New Media.

Skip’s business formula solves problems to owners who do not know how to generate revenue streams with their premium domain brands or those who do not know how to create new revenue streams with their brands or who do not have the time to do so. With over 35 years of business experience and a portfolio of domain brands known by the world, Skip and his company Domains New Media do not plan on slowing down anytime soon. In fact, within the next year, his company will be announcing several more alliances with owners of domain brands the world has grown to know. His goal to use his successful formula to help other owners of domain brands turn their assets into revenue streams and increase their exposure as global brands.

Here is the press release that went out today:

Skip Hoagland CEO of Geo Domains New Media, Div of Domains New Media LLC announced today his recent management and development agreement with the owners of Cairo.com. We are very excited about this new alliance with Cairo.com. This is just one of many deals that we are doing with many owners of these pure Geo Brands worldwide Hoagland said. All our development will be done in Argentina and will eventually open sales offices in all the cities in which we operate. The terms of the deal remain confidential and were not disclosed.

Hoagland said his plans are to offer his services to many owners of these Global Geo Brands who simply do not have the time, desire, or ability to develop these brands properly. What we will do is try and put the 50 story building on these properties which will increase the value of not only the brands we manage and develop, but also help in moving the value and usage of all Geo Domain URL’s to a new level for others.

This is a critical time for our Geo Domain industry as many media companies are scrambling to find a way to tap the lucrative local internet advertising market that is replacing them and their old line media products offered for years. Innovation and technology have leveled the playing field for those who own Global Geo Domain Brands.

The future of traditional media companies is uncertain as the internet continues to transform and deliver content to mobile users who demand information immediately. Geo Domains New Media will continue to build Global Geo Brands that deliver this content Hoagland said.


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