Bill Goss - The Luckiest Unlucky Man Alive

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello everyone. Welcome to the show. This is Monte Cahn, your host, for this week's edition of Domain Masters. I have a very special guest tonight, Bill Goss, from Jacksonville, Florida. Bill happens to be a Moniker customer, a long-time domainer, and has a helluva history in his life; and I thought it would be really interesting to have him in our studio to do an interview, because this guy has experienced quite a bit of things in his life that should apply to everyone else. Stay tuned. We're going to do a couple commercials. We'll be right back with Bill Goss.

[Commercials]

Monte: Welcome back to the show. This is Monte Cahn, again, your host for this week's edition of Domain Masters. As I mentioned before, I have a very special guest with us tonight, Bill Goss from Jacksonville, Florida. Bill happens to be a Moniker customer, a long-time domainer, and has a helluva history in his life, and I thought it would be really interesting to have him on line today and in our studio to do an interview, because this guy's experienced quite a bit of things in his life that should apply to everyone else and has written a couple books and been on several interviews. I'm one of many, including Howard Stern and Ted Nugent as well. Bill, welcome to the show.

Bill: Hey. Thank you very much Monte.

Monte: So, we've got to tell everybody a little bit about your interesting life history and then we'll get right into your experience with domain names and when you and I first met, which was in 1999 via the internet anyway and you became a customer of ours. But, you've gone through quite a lot in your life, and I think it's pretty interesting. So, I want you to lay out some of the history in your life story as you explained it to people in your book.

Bill: Sure. I was born and raised in New Jersey, and went to college at the University of Arizona. I didn't have any money, so I was a dynamiter in an underground copper mine 6,000 feet under the earth and had a cave in. Almost died. Quit school. Enlisted in the Navy. The Navy, in their infinite wisdom, trained me in underwater explosives. Did that for a couple of years. Got out. Went back to college on the G.I. Bill, Rutgers, and I became a Navy pilot for the next 15 years.

Monte: And as a Navy pilot, you were a test pilot with the Navy and test piloted several of the newer planes, or….

Bill: No, I was not a test pilot. I did get to fly a lot of different planes. I did test one by crashing it, though that was an unintentional crash. And that probably was one of the reasons why I wrote my first book, “The Luckiest Unlucky Man Alive.”

Monte: So that's one of several life-and-death experiences that you've experienced, I guess, huh. When I first heard your story, it was quite interesting; but you literally experienced death about five times? Is that correct?

Bill: Well, death or catastrophe approximately 30 times in 30 years.

Monte: Thirty times in 30 years. So, tell me a little bit about your most interesting life/death experiences here; because there are some interesting ones.

Bill: Well, there's a lot of very, very funny ones. As a matter of fact, even some of the most serious ones I truly believe that humor is the way to get through anything and everything. And the last 3 were probably the most serious. The plane crash, where I was in a plane crash of a $65,000,000 brand new Navy spy plane in Spain.

Monte: It was a jet?

Bill: It was a turbojet. So four engines. The number 4 engine came off, and I ducked. It almost beheaded me. That was a challenging experience for a young Navy pilot. I thought the Navy was going to pull my wings. They ended up letting me be a senior flight instructor in Texas, where I was lucky enough to be Officer of the Year and a few other things; but it was pretty tough coming back from that experience. But, then….

Monte: You were injured in that wreck?

Bill: Was not injured, and thankfully no one was injured; but the plane suffered about $3.5 million worth of damage.

Monte: So you had to crash land it?

Bill: A crash landing. And it was a challenge. Then another significant one was in 1990, I was struck by an out-of-control car that actually hit me in the legs. It was a 65 Ford Fairlane. My body caved in the front of the car, knocked me 45 feet through the air, had a wild out-of-body experience, and woke up in the Navy hospital, because I was in my Navy uniform.

Monte: Now, were you in a car or you….

Bill: No, no, no. I was walking along the side of the street. A 16-year-old kid driving his daddy's muscle car for the first time, tuning the radio, doing 100 mph, went off the road and struck me. Hit me actually doing about 60. He had decelled from 100 down to 60. Caved in the front of his car. Knocked me 45 feet through the air. An eye witness said I did 6 cartwheels 10 feet in the air. And, Monte, I'm here to tell you, I was in the hospital for a couple days; but no broken bones, caved in the front of the car, and I was flying a Navy bomber to Holland two weeks later.

Monte: Wow, how lucky is that.

Bill: That's pretty lucky. My father says I have the most rubbery bones on the planet.

Monte: Well, you must be soaking them in vinegar or something.

Bill: Something. And then the biggest challenge of all was in 1994. I was a garbage man in New Jersey, long hair, 18 years old, and I always had the dream somehow of breaking the sound barrier like Chuck Yeager did. Well, 20 years later, almost to the day, I broke the sound barrier flying an F-18 Hornet off the coast of Florida and I was literally and figuratively on top of the world, and the next day I got a phone call from a doctor. He told me that this little tiny bump of my left ear was a very deep, malignant melanoma tumor and that I'd be dead in 6 months. I had a ton of surgery, 12 hours of surgery on my face, neck, and shoulders. They removed my jugular vein, my trapezoid muscle. If you saw the movie Face Off, that's what they did to the left side of my face. Lifted my face off, took out 200 lymph nodes out of my face, neck, and shoulder, then put my face back on. And they cut off half of my ear. And, amazingly, after I had survived a year, a plastic surgeon put me back together again and now you're able to actually look at me without losing your lunch. [Laughing]

Monte: Yeah, definitely. And you don't look bad, you don't look bad, that's for sure.

Bill: Thanks. Thank you.

Monte: You're a recovering cancer survivor as well.

Bill: Yes, I have gone 10 years now cancer free. So, very, very, blessed and lucky about that. And as I said it's all part of the book, “The Luckiest Unlucky Man Alive.”

Monte: Right. So, when you experienced those kind of things in your life, and I guess there's 27 more incidents listed there, it obviously gives you good reason to have something to write about. So, you published your first book. I guess that was the first time that you started writing, or you've been contributing to several other books in the meantime, like “Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

Bill: I have a couple Chicken Soup books that were New York Times best sellers. “Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul” and “Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul.” I won some awards as a Navy pilot for writing, but the “Luckiest Unlucky Man Alive” was my first book, and then I had a book published by Simon and Shuster entitled “There's A Flying Squirrel in My Coffee.”

Monte: Now, the Discovery Channel did a special about this little squirrel that you became quite attached to, you and your family. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that too; because that's an interesting story as well.

Bill: Well, right after that grueling surgery that I kind of described, I was in the hospital long, and I was sent home on morphine. And, so, trying to recover from these dramatic scars on my face, neck, and shoulder; a veterinarian whose a friend of mine brought over this tiny little flying squirrel that was the size of a cotton ball and had fallen out of a tree. He asked if I could take care of this little squirrel while I was recovering from my cancer challenge. And I think he knew that this little squirrel would be a wonderful distraction from the prognosis that I would be dead in six months, even though I had the surgery.

Monte: Right. When you're mind was redirected towards taking care of somebody else, your body was able to heal and taking your mind off the injuries that you had.

Bill: Rather than being fearful all the time. And you know, I have boy/girl twins who were 6 years old at the time, happily married. When you're fearful, you produce cortisol, which is a very harmful hormone in your body and when you're upbeat and positive, like when you have a little flying squirrel sitting on your head eating a pecan, that puts endorphins in your body, which are very positive immune stimulators. And cancer is a disease for failing immune system. So if you can do anything to supercharge your immune system, such as supercharging your human spirit, which also supercharges your immune system, these are very positive things. And without me knowing it, my veterinarian friend, I mean my best doctor of all, Monte, was a vet. He delivered the best medicine; and so this little flying squirrel, Rocky, used to sit on my head eating pecans while I'm sitting reading the newspaper in my bathrobe on all this morphine. Well, one morning I sneezed while drinking my coffee; and I put the coffee cup back up to my lips and here this little flying squirrel is in my coffee cup peering out at me saying you like, what the hell, what the hell, what the hell.

Monte: Yeah, it's friggin hot in here.

Bill: And so I called out to my wife, I said there's a flying squirrel in my coffee. And then he immediately jumped out of the cup onto my head, started licking his fur, you know getting a caffeine buzz I guess and, Monte, that's how the second book was made. “There's a Flying Squirrel in My Coffee.” But the important thing was, when you deal with cancer, you think that why me God, and this whole thing like that. Then you basically, and this is a common thing, because I'm a consultant for the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Health, a lot of cancer organizations. I own cancercombat.com for what it's worth, which you helped get me; and when you're dealing with cancer, you truly feel why me? And if I'm anybody special, but you basically say there's 6 billion people. What makes me different. Why should God or whoever, why should any power be listening to me. I'm one of 6 billion people. When that little flying squirrel was in my coffee cup, I called out there's a flying squirrel in my coffee. And a few moments later he's on my head, all of a sudden I had this realization. I said, I am unique, I am special, because I have to be the only human being in the universe that has a flying squirrel in their coffee right now.

Monte: Right, and then on your head.

Bill: And then on my head. And so, I am unique. And your uniqueness is what makes you feel special that someone maybe looking out for you other than you're just 1 of 6 billion people. So, I mean, there is a philosophical side to this “There's a Flying Squirrel in My Coffee.”

Monte: That's right. And so the Discovery Channel I guess, did you write in and say I have an interesting story, they came after you, or what?

Bill: No, I actually think they heard me on the Howard Stern show and they called me from that. I'm not a big Howard Stern fan, but he loved my story, he promoted it widely, and he just ah, he's a guy who has not had a lot of misadventures, physical pratfalls like I've dealt with. And he's kind of fascinated with it. So, I think they heard me on that show, they called up, and they did a full half hour show that they've been running for years. And also PBS did a show as well.

Monte: Yeah. What's even more interesting is that people from the Discovery Channel are listening to Howard Stern everyday.

Bill: You'd be surprised who listens. I got a call from a Catholic priest in New Jersey and said, “Hey Commander Goss, were you on the Howard Stern show?” And I said, “Well, bless me Father for I have sinned. Yes I was.”

Monte: [Really laughing]

Bill: And he goes, can you tell me. I have a question for you. And I said, yeah, I'm sure you've got a couple. And he said, uh, I'm trying to remember exactly what he said. I was so shocked that I got this call from this Catholic priest in New Jersey. He said, “What were you doing on the Howard Stern show?” And I was like, you know, telling my story. So I said, “Can I ask you a question? What the hell were you doing listening on the….” He goes, “Oh, my constituents listen to him. I have to be in touch with my church, my flock.” I'm like, okay Father. That's a true story.

Monte: Well it seems like those experiences kind of landed you in some minor roles in some movies, and I don't know how all that came about; but you know an awful lot of people. And then I guess one thing led to the other, and you've played some minor roles in some of the more famous movies that have been recently out.

Bill: I've had an awful lot of fun. Getting cancer seemed like it was a kick in the butt to really enjoy my life more than I was before; which I gotta tell you was hugely before. I've done 4 movies, I been an extra in G.I. Jane with Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen. And Viggo is a great, great guy. He was in Lord of the Rings.

Monte: Right.

Bill: After that, I was in, let's see, I was in Alexander with Colin Farrell. Another great guy that was shot in Thailand. Val Kilmer, Jon Voight's beautiful daughter, what's her name, Angelina Jolie. Yeah, she was in it. She is beautiful.

Monte: Yeah, baby.

Bill: I went to the world premiere out in Hollywood, walked the red carpet, and she actually ended up sitting behind at the world premiere. Met Oliver Stone. He's a very nice guy. I was in “Their Eyes Were Watching God Picking Cucumbers” with Halle Berry.

Monte: Which is a hottie number one.

Bill: She is very sweet and very pretty. And then I was recently in “Lonely Hearts” with John Travolta, James Gandolfini, and Salma Hayek.

Monte: And that's a movie that's yet to be out.

Bill: And that will be out in probably 3-6 months. Then all these people, they were all very, very nice, unpretentious, fun, hard-working people. Completely unlike the tabloid stuff that you read.

Monte: Yeah. Definitely, definitely. So, some of the folks might be asking, well what in the hell does that have to do with domain names and the internet. I'm sure people think that things lead each other to certain directions, and lead to certain things, things happen for a reason. So, how did you get in the internet? What got you on the internet back the days? When was it? And what got you started to buy domain names?

Bill: Actually, I believe that I read an article about this guy named Monte Cahn about 6 or 7 years ago, and his side kick Eric and it was a very stimulating article. And then I called you up, and you persuaded me to buy my name, billgoss.com, which is my web site now, and I've made a lot of money on that web site, so thank you very much for that advice. But I have always been stimulated by the idea of taking something so short and simple and sweet and turning it into internet real estate. So I own over 800 domain names now, many related to real estate, cancer, a huge variety of things. I remember buying one. I think it was FSDN.com three or four years ago. I bought it for just FSDN.com. I think I paid $15 or $20 and I sold it to Lynx a couple weeks later for $15,000; and you handled that for me in terms of the brokering of it.

Monte: Right. Right. So, automatically you found out that domain names do have value and I think you just, yeah, your first domain name was your own name, and then you started registering domain names, and we had some of them on the market, sold a few of them. So, now we're helping you monetize your portfolio in some other ways with your traffic. So where do you see this whole internet thing going? What do you think about what is going on now and where is the internet going and how are domain names going to increase in value in your mind? Why are you increasing your portfolio?

Bill: Well, I've seen some very interesting things on TV lately. Major companies are changing the way they use a domain name. These major companies have gigantic public relations budgets and are using giant public relations firms; but you'll see things like, and this is just an example, Bayer's Aspirin and Bayer's Children's Aspirin where they used to have a web site Bayers.com, which doesn't mean anything. Now they'll do an advertisement on TV for Bayer's Children's Aspirin and they'll show a web site much larger, much more prominent, and it will say stopthepain.com. So they're going from name branding to going very descriptive and it's okay now to have three words rather than just one word; but you want to have domain names that are much more descriptive than they used to be. People used to say you need a short name because people don't want to type in a long name, but your computer now remembers the name anyway. You only have to type it in once; but, it's so much easier to remember something descriptive than something non-descriptive.

Monte: Right. Right. And that's a good point, because on the last two conferences we attended, one being the WebmasterWorld Conference in New Orleans, it was very apparent that long, descriptive search terms are now something that are desirable, where in the past, short and generic search terms were something that was more desirable to get you where you want to go. But people are starting to type in the full character set into the search string and into the URL line to get where they want to go, because it's, like you said, more descriptive and people are now typing in where they want to go exactly. Things are getting geo-targeted so that you can say New Jersey Cars For Sale instead of autos.com, which is one of the domain names we sold back in 1999 for millions of dollars. But now, New Jersey or a city name, Fort Lauderdale Autos for Sale, is a lot more descriptive word and it actually converts better when you have that domain name and you're driving traffic to web sites of that nature. So you're create.

Bill: Of my 800 names, just about all of them are still .com names. I think the other names have value. I still have a lot to learn about keywording and keyword searching, but I have been buying a lot of names now directly related to keyword searches with, and I'm using hyphens now, strictly if they're involved in keyword search. I don't know if that's a correct strategy or not, but I guess I'm going to learn.

Monte: Well, actually, hyphens do have some advantages in domain names because they act as spaces and MSN happens to recognize that space, and then you actually get the benefit of using the search terms before the hyphen and after the hyphen. So it is a good strategy depending on what you're doing with those particular domain names. So, that's a good strategy that you're getting those. And longer and longer domain names are getting registered now than before for those same reasons. So, definitely. So, of your portfolio, what's some of the more valuable domain names that you think you own right now; and do you plan on building anything out and developing any of the domain names that you have?

Bill: I may, but I don't know if I'm as creative as that. But I have some friends that may do that and I may be asking for your help and advice on some of that. One of the names that I think is most valuable is a five letter .com name that I have; and its oilbx.com.

Monte: Right. You have a lot of domain names with the “bx” thing. Explain to the audience why this “bx” initials. A lot of our clients go on tangents sometimes about concepts, but your bx strategy is actually something that's pretty relevant.

Bill: Bx stands for “business exchange” and it is widely becoming recognized around the world as a business exchange. Bx and oilbx.com to me could be used as a world-wide central point for all oil and petroleum-related business exchange. And I own gasbx, condosbx, I own many short word bx names. One of the names, I've bought many names from Moniker.com, there are times that I have bought from other services. I did buy a name about 5 years ago that I thought was a great, great name. Did not buy it from you. It was globalbx.com; and one day I was looking at my list of names, and I'm like oooo. No, I know what happened. I got an email from an angry lady. She's saying how dare you say that you own globalbx.com; and I said, well I do. And then I went on line, and that name had got snatched away from me. And now it is a large, very successful web site, globalbx.com, and I had not had that name locked; which I did not even know about locking a name at the time. Now I do know about locking names. But globalbx.com represents world-wide franchises and anybody in the world can get into a franchise by going to globalbx.com; though if you talk to the lady who owns that, tell her I'm still mad at her for snatching that name from me.

Monte: Well, did she call for it for transfer? I mean, she didn't steal that name.

Bill: No, well no, what happened was the name just disappeared from my portfolio.

Monte: Oh, so you never knew what happened and that name was not registered through us, but through another registrar? Do you remember?

Bill: I believe it was InexpensiveDomains.com.

Monte: So that's why you don't go to InexpensiveDomains.com and register your domain names.

Bill: Well, you said that, not me.

Monte: Well, definitely. So, that brings up another hot topic that we've discussed many times on the show, and that's domain security; and one of the things that we focus in on at Moniker; but more importantly, for anybody that has their domain names at any registrar, make sure that your domains are definitely locked down at the Registry and the way to see, sometimes the registrar interfaces to tell you a domain name is locked, but you may not know for sure. So the best way to find out is to do a Registry lookup on your domain name and you look at the status of that domain name. If you go and use Moniker.com's who is, we give a Registry who is record at the top of Who Is page and then a Registrar record down below. And under the status, if your name says active, it means your name is unlocked and it needs to be locked in order for it to be safe. If your name says Registrar Lock, then you're safe and everything is fine. Lots of times the Registrar's don't interface and sync up with the Registry and it may say that that name is locked in your account when, in fact, it is not. So the only way that you can really tell is to look at a Registry lookup and make sure that your name is in fact locked and is says Registrar Lock so that will protect your names.

Bill: And I do want to clarify one thing. I am not sure I bought that name from the Registrar that I mentioned before; but one thing I would tell people to do when they buy names is do try to buy it from someone who has immediate control in terms of a, what's the word?

Monte: Control panel?

Bill: No, the higher level where who buys the domains in terms of registrar. I'm sorry, I was having a…. To buy a name from someone who is also a registrar. It seems like the whole process happens much faster or instantaneously where other services, you buy a name, you go to check if the name is with Who Is and hour or two later and it isn't. But it seems, when you buy through someone who is a registrar, it happens almost instantaneously.

Monte: You're talking about buying through a reseller, not a registrar.

Bill: That's it exactly. Maybe you could explain that to me.

Monte: Well, we used to be a reseller of a registrar when there weren't that many registrars before they became ICAN accredited. When you are a reseller, you actually go through a couple different steps to register a domain name on behalf of your customers. So, you have to have interfaces and systems in place to be able to query their database, their domain management systems, to be able to register those domain names. So, you're right by dealing directly with a registrar and not a reseller. And a lot of people don't know whether the people they register domain names with are in fact resellers or registrars; but you can probably tell by looking on the web site. If you see the ICAN emblem or you see something that says they are ICAN accredited, then you know you're at a registrar. If you don't see that symbol or that accreditation anywhere on that web site, you are not at an ICAN accredited registrar and you're probably at a reseller. For years, for instance, RegisterFly and NamesCheap and a bunch of resellers where people think that that's the registrar, are in fact resellers for other registrars. So. That's a good point. So you have some valuable domain names and you might be building some out. And now you're getting ready to monetize some traffic, because of your domain names get a lot of traffic, don't they?

Bill: Yeah, and I still, one of the reasons I'm coming through is I want to sit down and talk with you about that and learn more about it because a lot of it still goes over my head.

Monte: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well the hot thing right now is for unused domain names for people that have large portfolios that aren't building out all the domain names is to monetize the traffic in a matter of various different ways, and one of the most popular ways is using a domain PPC parking program where you can actually map the keywords to the domain name to advertisements that will display down below through one of the primary, large PPC providers, which is either Overture, Google, or some of those companies. The natural type-in domain names draw a lot of traffic and, in fact, when somebody types in a domain name that's on one of those parking pages, if it's mapped correctly, they're more likely to click on the advertisements down below, and every time that they click on one of those advertisements down below, the advertiser, the company that's paying for that advertisement, pays that company, and then they split the revenue with the publisher, which would be you as a domainer. So that's how you make money on domain name parking pages that are mapped to PPC advertising. So, that's what we're going to be doing for you through or TrafficClub.com web site and helping you monetize your domain names, which actually monetizes domain names through multiple feeds. We're about ready to launch next week for all mainstream names, so we're pretty excited about it.

Bill: I'm really looking forward to it. I have looked at the TrafficClub web site, and it's a very nice, clean design.

Monte: Right. So, when we come back, I'm going to do a break just for a commercial or two, and when we come back, we're going to catch back up with Bill Goss and some of the more interesting things he's done on the internet. I understand that you write for Military.com, which is a very successful portal for military and military families, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about that, because they were just purchased by Monster.com.

Bill: That's correct.

Monte: And you know the CEO of Military.com pretty well.

Bill: He and I had lunch at the White House about six months ago.

Monte: Wow, interesting. Okay, so we'll be right back in a couple minutes, we'll pay some bills, and do some commercials.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, welcome back to Domain Masters. I'm Monte Cahn, your host. My guest who we've been speaking with is Bill Goss, one of our customers at Moniker and someone who's had a lot of lifetime experiences that are pretty famous that we've been discussing. Bill, tell me a little bit about your contribution to Military.com with so many families overseas defending the country and on the initiatives in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Obviously Military.com is probably the largest military family, military-directed on the web today. Tell me a little bit about that web site. What you know about it. You're pretty close with their CEO.

Bill: Military.com is a terrific portal for retired and active-duty military people. It has about 4 million members around the world right now. I did 20 years in the Navy, and I told you, underwater weapons first and then as a pilot later on, and when I was the navigator of a giant nuclear aircraft carrier out of San Francisco, called the Coral Vincent.

Monte: You were the pilot of the boat?

Bill: No, no. I was the navigator of the boat.

Monte: Oh, the navigator. Oh wow.

Bill: Which was called a disassociated sea tour where, as a pilot, you have to do something non-pilot related to upgrade your professionalism; and it was a very demanding job. But the point I'm getting at is, when I did that, it was impossible to communicate with your family, there was no email or anything like that. Now, the military, someone on an aircraft carrier thousands of miles from home can just email their family, they can look up anything on the web; it's just absolutely remarkable what you're able to do now. And through Military.com, I do write a monthly column right there with Oliver North and also Colonel David Hackworth, who recently died. Some real interesting columnists, and I actually do write quite a bit on world terrorism, what is called the GWOT, the Global War on Terrorism. Military.com was founded by a guy named Chris Michael. He was the navigator and the tactical coordinator of the spy plane I used to pilot. Bright guy, set the company up in San Francisco and also in Washington, D.C.; and as you said correctly, he recently sold it for a lot of money to Monster.com and he still runs the company and just a terrific guy. We were invited to the White House about six months ago, we had lunch in the White House mess and a friend of mine works there. He is Admiral Fox, the first guy to shoot down a MIG in the Gulf War, in the first Gulf War. In the second Gulf War, he was a wing commander, and he lead all the attacks. And right after he'd come land on the carrier after leading a 50-plane attack against Iraq, he'd sit down on his computer, hey Bill, this is what I did, this is how we did it, and I would uplink and write to Military.com and it was all approved. So, we were getting the word very quickly after an attack on what was done. And if you go to Military….

Monte: You can see some pretty wild video that's not released to the press. Right?

Bill Very amazing.

Monte: Definitely reconnaissance missions and….

Bill: A lot of infrared movies that are just unbelievable and what our capabilities are. And if there's any terrorist listening right now, you don't stand a chance. That's all I'm telling you; because the United States has the greatest military in the world and we're fighting for individual freedoms around the world. And we're going to win; you might as well give up.

Monte: So as a former Navy pilot and someone who has been in the military, what's your take on what's going on over in Iraq now and where you think the United States is positioned. You know, there's a lot of press and a lot of news, and it's not all accurate on how things are being positioned; but from your take and all your buddies and all the things that you've been hearing and listening to first hand, and your participation in Military.com, what's your take on really what's going on, what the mission is, and if we're getting close to accomplishing it.

Bill: 9/11 established very clearly that terrorists, Muslim extremists, wanted to do horrible things to the United States. The smartest thing you can do when you're in a war is to move it from your back yard to their back yard and keep it there. It's very hard to do that successfully. We have been extraordinarily successful at doing it. I was in Donald Rumsfeld's office soon after the attack on 9/11. Then, remember there was an attack at the Pentagon as well. My flight instructor was killed in that attack. My brother was in the World Trade Center for the first attack in 1993, which a lot of people don't realize that a huge bomb was put in the basement of one of the World Trade Center Towers.

Monte: Everybody forgets about that incident.

Bill: People forget about it. Well the whole point of that was to put a huge bomb in the basement which you would think would blow out the basement and cause the tower to fall; and the plan was for the tower to fall into the other tower and knock both towers down. It did not happen, and my brother was actually in one of the towers looking down at the flames coming out of the other tower. That was in 1993; and also, for what it's worth, my high school football coach's son killed in the 9/11. He was in the top floor; and I lost people that I know in 9/11. It's just a, 9/11 just chokes me up guys. So, in 1993 the plan was to take out the basement, knock one tower into the other tower and bring both towers down. That was not successful. We ignored that. We didn't do anything about the people who launched that attack. I mean, we acted like nothing happened. And then, it should not have been a surprise that 9/11 did happen. And 9/11, they were never, they were just planning on flying two big planes into both towers, but you can imagine, they never were expecting both towers to go right to the ground. That's what they were expecting with the first attack. They were not expecting that in the second attack. And when those towers went right to the ground floor, which all of us have seen countless times on TV, that was a huge motivating factor. I mean, it was a tremendously motivational thing that inspired Muslim extremism that they can defeat us. They don't realize that the World Trade Center is a mega, mega-fraction of what America is all about. It's just like it's one cell on a human body with 6 trillion cells on it. And the United States does have the best military in the world, and the people signing up now to go in the military are as good or better than they've ever been, and what we did in World War I and World War II and that legacy, this is the best military. But, we all have to agree to fight. I mean, what happened in London just recently is just another demonstration that, when there are suicide bombers, the entire world, everywhere in the world is a soft target. When the person who is trying to do you harm is willing to blow himself up, the entire world is a soft target; and so we have to grow harder, we can't, we have to find ways to make the world not a soft target anymore. And there's lots of ways of doing that, and absolutely, the thing I love the most about America is all of the individual freedoms we have; but we should not give individual freedom to terrorists. Just find ways to give lots of freedom to everyone who is nice; and if you're a terrorist, take away all those person's freedom. And it's easy to do, we just have to have the willpower to do that.

Monte: So your articles, your experiences in the military, I guess the military personnel are reading Military.com as well; so they're inspiring them, you know, the people that are on the boats, the planes, have access to the internet. So your articles are inspiring them along with everybody else that's writing.

Bill: And they have huge email forums, you know. And I have people that write in about my columns, and some people like them, and some people don't. We're fighting for the freedom of expression, we're fighting for freedom of religion, we're fighting where women can have all the freedoms that men have, and these are all things that do not exist in the Muslim extremist world. They don't want individual freedom.

Monte: From a military standpoint and from what you heard, when are we going to be able to pull out of there and leave that country on its own?

Bill: The most important thing about fighting this kind of enemy is to never say when you're going to do any of that. Just do it secretly. Do it when you're ready, but don't tell anybody. And you know, it will come down to, as the President has been saying, we'll do it when we're ready to do it, when the Iraqi people are ready for us to do it, we'll do it. And it has to be very graduated. You know, the concept of a sudden pull-out just broadcasts everything that you shouldn't do. I was a boxer. You should never telegraph your punches.

Monte: Yeah. I saw a great movie last night, by the way. Speaking of boxing, did you see Cinderella Man?

Bill: No. My parents did and they said it's wonderful. I'm looking forward to it.

Monte: I wanted to see it. My wife and I had a date night last night; so we went and saw that movie. It was great. It's a great movie.

Bill: Was there any phone throwing in it? Telephone throwing?

Monte: No, no telephone throwing. It was during the time of the great depression. I think everybody lost their phones.

Bill: Okay, that must have been after the movie. [Both laughing]

Monte: Yeah, definitely.

Bill: Russell Crowe can throw a punch and he can throw a phone just as well as he can throw a punch.

Monte: Yeah. He can throw a phone alright. He actually did a good job throwing punches in that movie.

Bill: He's a terrific actor.

Monte: Yeah. And it's a true story about Braddock, who became kind of a Cinderella champion back in the time of the depression.

Bill: My father saw him fight, and he got a huge kick out of the movie. My father is 87 years old now.

Monte: So, getting back to some of the internet stuff, what's your thought and feeling about some of the other extensions now that you've been in the .com world now since 1999. What's your thoughts and feelings about some of the other extensions? I know you've asked us a lot about it, but you started to get educated a little bit more about some of the other extensions. I mean besides .net and .org, that's been around for a while, but what's your thoughts and feelings about .biz and .info and some of the newer extensions that are being released.

Bill: I've got a lot of friends who are very excited about them; but me, personally, I'm more focused on the.com names. I do think that when you're doing this kind of stuff, you have to have some kind of focus because it is very easy to just start doing things willy-nilly. And I feel like I've done that at times, so I'm largely focused on .com, some .org names; but .com when you're looking at trying to do something that's clearly non-profit, where the .org would actually be more valuable than on a .com name. Then there's lots of cases in there. So, I'm focused on .com, though I have lots of friends who are very interested in all the other stuff, particularly China.

Monte: Yep. The China extensions, the .cn names. Yep, Yep. Well, China's a booming economy, a booming internet economy, and we think that they're going to become less restrictive in terms of their ability to market their products and services on the web. They're very controlled right now. They have the ability to block access to the outside world and from the inside out. And that's one of the big pitfalls with some of the Chinese businesses that are trying to globalize their businesses on line right now. But, .cn does have a lot of potential and a lot of future.

Bill: Well, I spent a month in China last year, when I was in Thailand and I was doing that extra work in Alexander. After that, I spent 3-1/2 weeks in China. A fantastic experience. Monte, there's one thing major thing I learned after a month in China, I don't speak Chinese.

Monte: Well, not many people do unless you live in China.

Bill: Right. So the way I look at it, I figure I don't have any business buying .cn names if I don't speak Chinese.

Monte: Well, you can register English terms in .cn extensions that's for sure.

Bill: But I still don't understand exactly how that will work for me. Other people are smarter than me and they're snapping them up.

Monte: And one of the big announcements that came out right at the ICAN meeting which is going on right now in Luxembourg, but the .mobi extension was just approved. And for those of you who don't know what the .mobi extension is, MotoPhone, Verizon, Microsoft, all got together and decided that they wanted an internet domain name platform for mobile devices; so, they went to bat on this extension and got it approved pretty quickly. I definitely believe it was pretty politically and bureaucratically approved quickly because of who was behind it, but they all got on the bandwagon and got this thing approved. What we understand from the preliminary information is that the .mobi extension will be the extension to use on some of the portable PDA devices, the cell phones to launch web sites in mobile media on mobile devices. So, even though it doesn't sound like a very attractive extension, it is going to be something that some of the largest on line mobile players are supporting and putting their money behind. I spoke with the PR firm today, because they were supposed to be on the show as one of the guests today to talk about their launch, their platform, what the price is going to be, and so on and so forth. But, I will have them on next week; but it's an interesting domain extension that's coming out. And of course, everybody has been interested in the .xxx extension, which is due out in the 4th quarter of this year. I'll have a lot more information about that in a couple weeks. I'm actually sitting on a panel at one of the seminars that's coming up as a registrar that's going to be offering a .xxx extension for adult web site. Then there's the .jobs extension that's also a sponsored TLD. By the way, the .mobi, .xxx, .jobs, and .travel extensions are all sponsored TLDs. That means that there'll be some criteria put in place by asking several extra questions on a registration form to make sure that you're someone that's in that particular field or business. .travel for instance, when I had the folks on from the .travel extension made it very clear that, unless you're in the travel industry, you're not getting one of the names. Same with the .jobs guys. You're going to have to be in the business, in the job-recruiting, some job-related business in order to have access to those extensions. So, a lot of interesting extensions coming out and there's some new ones on the horizon as well. So, a lot of pickings for the domainers and those that are in those particular industries to try to diversify themselves. Obviously, when more and more people get on the web, and there's not there many .com names and .net and other extensions left, it leaves the door open for launching a platform on another extension. I had Mark Ostrovsky on our show, I think it was about a month and a half ago. He's the gentleman that bought and resold business.com for $7.5 million, and he made a very good point that .com is going to be here to stay, but millions of people are getting on the web all the time and there's no extensions for them. So, these extensions will become popular, and over time we'll be looking back 3-5 years from now see millions of .info names, millions of .biz names registered, because kids are coming out of school, starting businesses. People that are losing their jobs are starting businesses out of their garages and launching their ideas, concepts and their information on the web. So, they'll be there to stay.

Bill: Some of the prices seem different. .cn is more expensive than .info. What are some of the reasons for that? And one other thing I want to tell you is that I've been buying a lot of domain names as actual gifts, birthday gifts, my brothers and sisters, I bought them their names. Sometimes I couldn't get their exact names, so I was able to get their nickname. There's lots of things. But they open up this birthday card and they're reading this thing, “You are now the proud owner of RobertGoss.com.” It's like, you're kidding me. I go no, you own that name now; you can do whatever you want with it.

Monte: Gee, thanks dad! [Both laughing]

Bill: Exactly.

Monte: No, but you know what….

Bill: They make great gifts.

Monte: People don't understand; but that's extremely valuable if you can get your name. I couldn't even get Cahn.com. I have Cahn.net. So we have some family pictures, and our baby stuff up. It's not even a developed web site yet; but I made sure that I registered my kids' names. And everybody should do that, because it is virtual real estate, it is your identity on the web. You are going to be communicating on mobile devices, on the internet, through your computer and you do not want a brand and identify AOL and MSN and Hotmail. You should be sending a message from BillGoss.com, and Cahn.net, or your corporate name. Not a commercial service.

Bill: But also the names have great value anyway; because you're not, you know, like my brother Robert Goss, there are probably 10,000 Robert Goss' in the world and maybe one of those is another Bill Gates and he's going to want to buy that name from my brother. And I know that he'll cough it up if the price is right.

Monte: Right. But that's a great idea. And to get back to your first question about why some of the extensions are more expensive than others, everyone's been asking what's .xxx going to go for? Why is it more expensive? So, the bottom line is that the cost of registration for .xxx will be in the $75 to $100 range; and the reason for that is that it's not going to be an extension where there's millions of domain names registered. There's going to be maybe 100,000 or 200,000 domain names registered; and there has to be a support of the infrastructure. If the infrastructure cost to launch an extension, to have a registry, to handle and host DNS services, to be able to connect to the route zone servers, and to propagate those domain names around the world costs the same as in the.com world. So there's money that has to be generated in order to make that extension profitable enough to run the business. It's a non-profit organization that's actually registering the domain names and offering the registration services through the registry. And they happen to be using the Affilius backbone, which is the same backbone that's used by .info. Something that's unique with the .xxx extension however is that $10 to $15 is going to be donated back to I think it's called IFour, which is their organization where all the child advocacy groups, freedom of speech folks, the adult community business side, have all come together and agreed on a common platform on why .xxx may be important to them. Of course, the child advocacy folks don't want children on the web viewing adult web sites, adult webmasters don't want children viewing adult web sites, and the freedom of speech folks want the ability for people to go to a web site that they feel they want to go to and express their freedom of expression and their freedom of speech. So this platform has all come together on a common goal on a common ground to say, hey, .xxx has a purpose and there's not going to be a forceful move to make adult webmasters move their properties there, but they're calling it responsible webmasters will utilize that platform to launch those web sites. So, we'll see how that goes. But in any case, the infrastructure costs and some of the other costs that are involved justify the higher registration fees in that particular extension. .net just announced that they were lowering the fees; because VeriSign just won the bid to supply .net registrations along with .com again to the community and because they already had the infrastructure set up and their costs have been reduced, so they've decided to lower the cost of .net registrations. So, .net registrations are less than .com registrations to the registrars now. Not too many registrars have lowered their costs yet, because it just got announced, but we do see a number of registrars probably running some specials. As a matter of fact, we're going to be running a $4.99 new registration special for .net names so that everybody covers their .com and gets their .net for discount to do that.

Bill: Is there any way that .net could be actually promoted more to give it a more perceived value relative to .com?

Monte: Well, there are some interesting things about .net that a lot of people don't know. The .net platform actually supports more DNS servers than .com does. If you look at any of the major Fortune 500 companies, the top companies actually operate their DNS servers on .net, not on .com.

Bill: So they have the .com go to the .net?

Monte: Well, they have a .com web site, but their DNS is actually located on .net platform, so their domain is on .net, supports their DNS, their web site is on the .com platform; and that was one of the main reasons that VeriSign won the bid for that. It was an infrastructure that basically has worked pretty flawlessly for years; and although VeriSign has the reputation of monopolistic and a lot of people were against them having this bid won again, if you look at the infrastructure and the change of moving that extension onto a different platform on another provider, there is always a risk of down time and not as secure or reliable infrastructure to keep those DNS servers alive. Some of the largest most important web sites run on .net servers including Boeing, Microsoft, and Citrix, and even some of the largest data communities. So, it also runs a lot of the informational platforms as well. So, that's why it's an important extension. And, of course, when .com, which originally was designed for commerce, .net was designed for network infrastructure, which is why a lot of .net DNS servers are there, and then .org was for organizations and non-profit facilities. That's how those extensions came to be originally in existence. That really never took off the way it was supposed to. What happened, everybody started registering .com names, and those left over and those that needed web sites and couldn't get a .com, were then going to .net and .org and alternatives. And so, there's no restrictions, thank God, on operating businesses on either of those platforms, nor is there on operating on a .biz, .info or another platform. You can operate commerce and sell information and do business on those platforms. So that's a little bit of information for you. So, in any case, we're getting to the end of our show. I also wanted to update everybody on some of the more recent sales that have just occurred in the past week. Go to BeInformed.com. I had Ron Jackson on last week, and we talked about an interesting cover story that he did on Christopher Chena, whose been the purchaser of about $500,000 worth of domain names over the last couple weeks. One of the domain names he purchased recently was Paraguay.com for $150,000. This was about 3 weeks ago. We just had a domain name purchased that exceeded that amount, which was Uraguay.com and that was purchased for $175,000 in this week's sales update. So that was the top name. So that was one of the top I think three domain name sales for the year that have been reported, that is. Local.com is in the number one spot, it was sold for $700,000. And Chat.de, the German extension of Chat, sold for $470,000 earlier this year. The number two domain name that was sold for the week was fights.com for $62,000 and the number three was tractor.com for $45,000. And a misspelling of careerbuilder landed the number four position, and it went for $33,600. Fifth place was eweb.com for $30,150. So it just goes to show you that there's a lot of valuable domain names being purchased and, again, just to bring up some of the other extension points that we talked about, .de is really kicking butt out there too. It's the number two registered extension now, the German extension, as a country code. So it's quite a valuable extension. The Germans are quite advanced and Europe is definitely, a lot of Europe is wrapping around the .eu extension that's due out very soon. There's a lot of pre-registration going on for that. We can do that through our web site, through Pool.com and some of the other pre-registration services. So, .eu for the European Union is catching fire as well.

Bill: One of the names I own is Eurobx.com. You were talking that .eu, and I do think there is a lot of value in the .eu related stuff.

Monte: I see in the chat room that several people went out and registered some bx names; so you inspired them.

Bill: Good. Smart.

Monte: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So that's good news. So in any case, that's a wrap for this week's show. My special thanks to Bill Goss for being my guest, and also for having a great friendship over the last several years. You're story is truly inspirational to many and it is to me and my team back in the office. We do tell lots of stories about you. Whenever we something interesting near-death experience, I go I wonder if Bill Goss experienced that. You know.

Bill: It's been a pleasure knowing you and I took you from a young pup with no kids, to now you have more children than I do.

Monte: Yeah, with 3.

Bill: You are the master.

Monte: Two and one on the way.

Bill: You need to be the master of your domain.

Monte: Yeah. I am. I am the master of my domain. Ask my wife. So in any case, we're going to wrap this week's show up and, again, my special thanks to Bill Goss. And next week I'll have the .mobi guys on and another interesting guest that will be a little bit of a surprise. So please join me next week on Domain Masters, same time, same place. Be the master of your domain.

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