Monte talks to Matthew OBrien & Ron Jackson

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, everyone, welcome to Domain Masters. This is Monte Cahn, your host. Another great week and a great show. I'm feeling a little bit better; I finally made it into the office after my two weeks laid out on my . . . flat on my back from my back injury. Had a little epidural block and so I can't feel of the pain I'm supposed to be feeling, so I was able to make it into work finally [laughs]. We got a great show tonight, obviously. And by the way, right behind this show is Yahoo!'s show “Power Source” so please stay onboard; you'll always learn something great from those guys at Yahoo!, so make sure you stay onboard on Web Master Radio to listen to “Power Source.” I'm going to be ending my show a little bit early to make room for them. Every third Wednesday they are on behind me.

My guests tonight will be Matthew O'Brien; he's the president and CEO of SearchMarketing, LLC, an awesome technology . . . this is a group that I met at SES and they have a unique approach on increasing your search relevancy through your site mapping and I'm spending a lot of time, over the last couple of weeks as you know, for domainers to link domains in search in a lot of different ways. One reason because SES was a big huge success and Web Master World is coming up right on its heels and people should know and learn everything they need to know about domain names and search and how they're related, because that's really what's driving the back end of our market right now, is domain names, direct navigation and search engines. So I think its good to spend a couple weeks on this and then we'll shift over to some more domain stuff in the weeks to come.

We're also going to have on Ron Jackson and do a market update; there's been some good, significant sales in the marketplace lately. We're going to cover some of the highlights of the market. Some unique sales have been going on; even some high end sales with hyphenation, with hyphenated domain names and a lot of ccTLDs going. And we have a couple of new sponsors TLDs coming out, like .mobe and that kind of stuff so we're going to talk a little bit about that with Ron Jackson.

If we have time, we're going to go over some of the things that are happening out at the ICANN meeting in New Zealand (which I was not able to attend due to my injury), but if not, we'll cover that next week, depending on how our timing goes. So stay tuned; we're going to do a couple commercials. I'll be back on with Matthew O'Brien with SearchMarketing, LLC.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, welcome back to the show. This is Monte Cahn, your host. My first guest tonight is Matthew O'Brien. Matthew is president and CEO of SearchMarketing, LLC, a marketing technology leader that helps online businesses get found through an innovative online and offline marketing process. Their patent pending site maps software automates search marketing through an easy-to-use, web-based tool that drives targeted traffic from search engines to call-to-action web pages. This is kind of a unique approach. Everybody's focused on SEO and optimizing your front page and content and this company spends a lot time on the site map and how important that is. Matthew, are you on the show?

Matthew: I am.

Monte: Hey, welcome to Domain Masters.

Matthew: Thank you very much.

Monte: Well, before we get started, why don't you give me a little bit of background about how you got involved with the Internet, what your experience with domain names are, and then give us a little bit of information about awesome technology and SearchMarketing, LLC.

Matthew: Very good. My experience starts about 10 years ago. I started a web development company called AdForsight and at the time, we not only were building software and developing, you know, custom applications, but we saw the Internet a little bit differently and we created this thing called an aerial sitemap, which is now progressed into what we call our site map technology. And the concept was we wanted to put all the web pages on one page; so it was like a visual site map. And what got me excited about this is it was our unique selling proposition when we were out selling our website. So we got huge companies to buy into and they literally funded the development of this technology, which took us 10 years to get to where we are and two years ago, I sold my company. We had a resume of Circle K, Chemical Phillips, Costco, Motorola, American Express, that we were working with and the company was interested in getting rid of the web development custom application side and focusing on developing this marketing technology. So I stayed on after I sold the company and was continued on as president and CEO, so what really gets me excited is now I can focus 100% on developing the software and I'm really looking for partners to license to.

Monte: Right, right. That sounds great. Now, your organization owns a number of domain names as well, correct?

Matthew: Yes. In fact, we typically purchase about 100 domain names a week.

Monte: Oh, that's great. Okay. So you see the value in domain names and how they play and I guess your own strategy. So why don't you talk a little bit about that. Why do you buy 100 domain names a week and what do you do with them?

Matthew: Well, in building websites, its typically a lot of . . . it's a big challenge to launch something out of nothing, so we created this concept (I'm sure we weren't the first but we call it MicroSite) and we literally have partnered with all the top affiliate companies and we literally create a very search engine-friendly, lite version of a website with a very targeted niche focus. So, we start by researching; if there's a good opportunity, we find a great keyword domain name based on the research; and then we just look at the Internet as if a page exists, we think of that as its own website and we use optimization tools, but primarily, we keep buying domain names every week because our research shows that there's still a lot of value out there if you take the time to see, you know, what traffic is being generated by specific markets or specific keywords, so to speak.

Monte: Right. So, a lot of . . . you know, there's a lot of speculation or a lot of varying opinions about, hey, is it too late to get a good name, is it still valuable, and of course, we're in the business to show people that there are great opportunities out there, that the Web is dynamic and growing and that the domain market is exploding, even for newly registered domain names or previously registered domain names with pre-existing links and traffic. So, give us some ideas about how you go about finding these domain names and what you're exactly looking for. Are they names that have never been registered before? Names that were previously registered that carry some kind of value indicators that say, hey, if we get this domain name and throw a little bit of content on it, we're going to have immediate search engine recognition? Or are they names you're acquiring in the aftermarket?

Matthew: We do not . . . well, sometimes we acquire in the aftermarket but actually what you were saying is we go out, we use tools, Overture, currently has an old search component up there; I use that along with a lot of other software, but the most important thing is that we're literally looking for little niche pockets of opportunities. So, for instance, if someone is looking for “hair loss;” we're not going to go and buy the Procerin or a specific Rogaine name – we're going to literally find, you know, hair restoration process or hair restoration treatment. There's a lot of those keyword domain names out there and what most people are doing is they're buying these domain names and they're putting up a link farm and I think that does help a little bit with the index, but we just take it one step further. There's a lot of affiliate companies; some in particular will pay up to 50% commission on sales, so . . .

Monte: Can you . . . can you name some of these for the listening audience so that people know where to go to if they have some of these types of names?

Matthew: Well, we started with MyAffiliate program. They're kind of the more rogue affiliate process, they're not as refined. But they have some very aggressive companies on there.

Monte: Is that MyAffiliateProgram.com?

Matthew: MyAffiliateProgram.com and you know, for instance, there's a company there that sells Procerin Hair Loss Treatment. That was our first example. We built a micro site, a five-page website. I think we created hair . . . a hyphenated keyword, I think it was hair-loss-treatment.com. Since then it's changed. I'll have to give you the domain off the top of my head, but we just went there, took a look at their content, changed it up a bit. We have a search engine optimization process since we've been building sites for 10 years that we just decided to throw in there and, you know, a lot of it is just going out and finding the top keywords that are being searched on the Internet. And typically, you can find ones in the half a million, you know, quarter of a million, version. We look for words that are being searched for roughly 1,000 or 5,000 hits a month. So we literally look at building a five-page website with each page being specifically focused on a keyword. We wrap content around that, content that reads well and then we just literally put call-to-action links at the very top of the page and this process is finished off with what our site map technology does and literally, it reinforces the website. We link that site on another URL. We're reinforcing the title and the meta-data tags and we're actually reproducing that in our patent pending technology on another site. There's a lot of people have always challenged whether this works or not. I found that 95 % of the sites that I link this with work. But getting back to your question, I mean, it's just literally going out and doing a little bit of research to find what keywords are being hit and then buying domain names around those keywords. And then . . .

Monte: Okay, let me ask you a couple quick questions about that cause you mentioned a couple things that intrigued me a little bit. One, is that you started off with domain names with hyphens in them (and ironically, we're going to be talking with Ron Jackson from DNJournal later; there were some big hyphenated domain name sales this week for the first time, like a hyphenated name sold for $22,000, which is the first time that's ever happened). Tell us a little bit about hyphenated versus non-hyphenated and how that's . . . if there's advantages, disadvantages and all that stuff. I mean, obviously, some people know what those are and how those place in the search engine. But I'd like to hear it from you as a search engine marketing expert. And then, two, getting back to your search engine optimization strategy. You talked about a couple steps that you do before you implement your site map technology. I'd like to learn a little bit more about that as well.

Matthew: Okay. The hyphenated keywords. We've been testing and you know, there's specific, ah, we like to stick with .com, .info; there's a few others that we'll go into and primarily, we don't put too many hyphens in – one or two at the most. We've had actually very good success and ranking and results and page rank with a three or four hyphenated keyword . . . hyphenations in the URL. I don't know specifically, but our research shows the fewer the better. So, you know, we literally look at putting a buy or some sort of term in front of the very rich keyword that we're really trying to promote.

Monte: So, like buy- . . .

Matthew: hairlossproducts.com.

Monte: Okay, I got it. So, the hyphen would be between the “buy” and the keyword name.

Matthew: Yes.

Monte: Okay.

Matthew: And when you research a keyword, you know . . . I'll give you some of the lower ranking options there, but typically, you know, a hyphen is just . . . typically, it helps the search engines to know where it can read those things sometimes better. As long as you're not too spammy and put too many hyphens in, you're actually getting clear separation of the words.

Monte: ‘Cause it acts like a space, right?

Matthew: It acts like a space.

Monte: So, you actually get a search on both “buy” and “hair loss products” or “hair products” or whatever.

Matthew: Absolutely. And then whatever that word is you're going to reinforce that on the web page that you're designing and put it in the title tags, put it in the meta data. Even though, you know, there's controversy about that, its still inane and I have a theory on that which, if you ask me, I'll tell you.

Monte: Well, what's your theory on that, Matthew? [laughs]

Matthew: Well, my theory is that meta data has been abused in the past but I think its going to come around full circle because the Internet is a tough prospect for search engine spiders to index and they're looking for ways to guide them, you know, when I was in college, I hate to admit it, but I bought Cliff Notes. I like the quicker version of something. Meta data was set up that way. Site maps reinforcing meta data are a very effective marketing tool. I think that there needs to be an Internet standard and the meta data was set up that way and its just abused. So, it's going to come back around, as long as you're reinforcing it in the right way.

Monte: Well, that's a good point and that is a good theory. I actually believe in that.

Matthew: Good point.

Monte: Now, just give me, like, the three or four steps, you know, ‘cause everybody thinks, oh, you know, I need something so rich in content on my website in order to get good search engine ranking. But you mentioned three times now that you're talking about little micro sites: five pages, relevant content. But, give us like the three or four key things on building a micro site so its as powerful as something that's a thousand pages deep. I mean, what should people be focusing on here?

Matthew: Well, the adage is WYSIWYG software needs to be thrown away. Canned codes or pages written in basic HTML are great. The other thing you want to do is focus on the, you know, sub-URLs are important; you don't want to get too keywordy but if you look at Buy.com and they organize their whole site, its very database-focused. If you want to go to the sports section, its going to be Buy.com\sports. I mean, you're literally telling the search engines where this belongs in their database. So reinforce that with the content on the site, too. Let it flow in a database format and if you follow that process and you don't get too crazy with keywords and then you build a site map that's also reinforcing that link and that process, you're doing, like the show says, start with a strong foundation if you're going to build a house. That's the basic. And then there's a lot of things you can add from there.

Monte: Right, right. What is like one or two of the things that no one knows about but you guys. I mean, give me some love a little bit on the show, ‘cause that's what we try and use, like, share something that no one else knows. But give me one or two things. I know you have a bunch that you guys know that no one else knows. Give me one or two things that could really help somebody that's listening.

Matthew: If you get one champion URL and you have a page rank on it of 4 or 5, you can leverage that to literally buy domain names and make those . . . get creative; if you link them properly and get those to a page 3 or a page 4 rank. And I know page rank is one of the factors but it's also a big traffic indicator. The way we do that is literally we start with a five-page website, we have the linking process we talked about but literally the secret sauce is the way you do your site map. And most people overlook the fact that a site map, instead of calling it “About Us” page, call it whatever keyword you're trying to get ranked and if you reinforce that on your site (everyone has a site map on their website) but if you try putting the site map link on another URL, now what you're going to do is your going to create that URL with a page rank value, and it typically . . .

Monte: Oh, I see. So you're taking a URL that has some relevancy and your assigning it to your site map so that it has a better chance of getting your whole site ranked.

Matthew: Yeah, and it's a very incestuous process, so once you have that other URL that is reinforcing your site map, you can do a lot of things with that. You can link new sites, you can link new . . . you can literally create a farm (and I hate to say farm) but you're literally creating a whole relevance. As long as you don't go too crazy and try to link things that are just similar; the whole process here is to try to create relevancy.

Monte: Right.

Matthew: And I think you can build franchise around one champion by doing a proper link structure.

Monte: That's great. Okay, that's good. That's good. Any other little loves that you can throw our way? [laughs]

Matthew: Uh, well, there's a lot of simple tools out there, but if you're going to be getting . . . I think that Internet real estate is an overlooked market and most people try to go after existing sites or existing URLs; I think the best thing is to start from a value of zero and literally build a simple website like we talked about. I don't see why . . . you know, if you're going to go brand specific, a lot of people go for the flashy domain name, you know, concepts they think are big. If you're going to buy a domain name, go out and research how many people are searching for that specific name or specific keywords in that URL. If no ones searching for it, chances are it's not going to have much value.

Monte: Right, right. So the simple . . . so the way do that is the Overture tool and seeing what's being searched on a daily basis.

Matthew: Absolutely. I think they do . . . if they give it away, it's a free link and its easy find.

Monte: Right, right, right. Alright, now let's go into the site map itself, because that's where you guys really kick ass. What is it . . . why is it that somebody should engage with your firm about the site map technology that's different than everyone else that's on Web, and I know that's what put you out up front of everybody?

Matthew: Yeah, the . . . we created an automated process. It's literally taken us 10 years to get where we're at and it's as simple as you feed a URL into our system, we go out, we spider the entire site, we grab some nailed screen shots of the pages, we grab all of the meta data and we can go as far as grabbing any of the content on the site. Then what we do is we reinforce that in a graphical; we have thumbnails and it looks like a search engine with thumbnail pictures and we are reinforcing all that meta data content on the other site. So, why is that important? Because we have an admin tool and when you go into that admin tool, it literally gives you exposure on how you're treating your website. I would say 80% of the websites on the Internet start with their name. It's ABC.com. And then they talk about whatever they do after that. Our site map literally – and most people reinforce that on every page, so their strategy is, we have a website and those people that know my company name are going to find me. So that our site map's back end tool just literally just says if you have a 10-page website, it really gives you an idea of every page that exists on the Internet from my website should have an entry point based on a certain type of keyword or keyword phrase.

Monte: Okay.

Matthew: And then from there you can optimize your site map and then the next step would to . . . it just pretty much gives you an SEO strategy in a more simplistic format. And, what's different about us is we're not competitive. If you're working with search engine optimization companies, great, because our site map tool will work better. If you haven't worked with a search engine optimization company, then we're a great start, because we're going to help build you a solid foundation and strategy and then the next step would be to look at other advertising options . . .

Monte: Okay.

Matthew: . . . because we're not the only thing that you need. We're just an element. We call ourselves an ingredient system.

Monte: And how do you engage with a client. Do you . . . how do you charge? What's the general fee? Is it cost effective? Is it something that only large companies can afford? Can you engage with one of these individuals who are interested in building some of these micro sites and starting out from scratch? Give us an idea of what, you know, who's your target market here?

Matthew: Our target market . . . my company's search marketing that essentially has the licensing rights to the technology is really looking for business partners that have, you know, membership basis or affiliate networks that they can distributor our software through. Our price points are very inexpensive. For as little as $199 and $9.95 a month, you can literally engage your entire website with our tools. Now, I have . . . if I'm . . . I'm literally not going to selling direct. I launched a company called Austin Technology, which is nothing more than a test to see if this technology worked as well as we thought it was going to. And its one of those rare cases that works better than I thought.

Monte: That's great. Okay, well, before we sign off, is there any last . . . last minute hints, pointers, things that people should know about that they wouldn't typically know about being successful on the Web?

Matthew: Yeah. The thing is that its kind of like economics. You're a . . . you can prove a theory and you don't have to be right to actually have any results but the bottom like is that I think more people have the knowledge within but they really don't . . . they take the advice of other people, so its really a basic thing. If you're not having any success, go back to the basics and you know, start with . . . I would recommend calling us and getting a site map for $199. It's going to be the best investment you have. And what happens is that 80% [inaudible]

Monte: That's through AustinTechnology.com?

Matthew: That's through AustinTechnology.com or you can go to awsmsitemap.com and we'll even set you up with a free test and we have a 90-day money back guarantee if you're not happy because chances are we're going to get you deep indexed. We get every page of your website found on the Internet.

Monte: Just by spending 199 bucks?

Matthew: Just by spending $199.

Monte: That's great. Well, I can tell you right now Moniker's going to go out and spend that money for you . . . from you.

Matthew: Well, thank you very much.

Monte: Definitely. I definitely will do that. Well, Matthew, its been a pleasure having you on the show and you definitely shared some love, so I'm sure all the listeners appreciate it and it will be on the pod cast, so I think you'll get a lot of play out of it, that's for sure.

Matthew: Appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity.

Monte: Thank you. And I'd like to have you on sometime in the future as well.

Matthew: I'd love to.

Monte: Okay, great. Alright, well, thanks to Matthew O'Brien; that was a great interview and everybody please check out Austin Technology, that's awsmtechnology.com. Oilman posted on the chat room the exact site map link as well. I think after what we've heard, $199, you can't go wrong, especially if there's a 90-day money back guarantee. I mean what have you got to lose.

Stay tuned. We're going to take a commercial break and be back on with Ron Jackson and check out what's going on in the domain name world these days. Be back in a couple minutes.

[Commercial]

Monte: Hello, guys and girls; welcome back to Domain Masters. I want to thank my first guest again, Matthew O'Brien from AWSMTechnologies and SearchMarketing, LLC. My next guest who's been a frequent guest on my show is Ron Jackson, the chief editor and founder of DNJournal.com. Ron, welcome to the show.

Ron: Thank you, Monte; glad to be here again and always appreciate the opportunity to stop in and chat with you.

Monte: Yes. And I like to have you on every few weeks to take a pulse of what's going on and I thought this week was particularly interesting because of the unique sales that have been occurring over the past couple weeks. Obviously, we had a couple banner weeks to report, but for the first time, some hyphenated names and some ccTLDs really made some headlines, huh?

Ron: I think was probably the most interesting sales week that we've seen all year for the sheer variety of what was selling. I mean, no matter what your interest was, you could find something to get excited about and the things that sold this week. Hyphens were just one of several but what was really unusual about the hyphens is we saw three of those hit the Top 10 sales of the week. It's unusual enough to see just one hit the Top 20 but to have that many come in at once is really something. The three were Myrtle-Beach.com (separated by a hyphen, of course); that went for $25,250 at Snap Names. And the real shocker to most people was New-York.info (with a hyphen between New and York) that went for $22,864.00. And you might remember in 2004, the unhyphenated version of that name sold for not much more than that. That was about $28,000. But here you are with a new extension, hyphenated name – people would have told you that would be impossible, probably, a couple of years ago. But the folks who bought that are buying up a lot of hyphenated city names, so they've got some concept in mind. I'm sure they're going to develop them with the kind of money that they're putting into it. But they had earlier bought San-Diego.info (with a hyphen between the two words) and Mexico-City.info was another one. And the third one within the Top 10 was also unusual; it was a .com, so that's really a big surprise but it was a French term and my French is a little rusty but it's TreVeil Emploi but it would mean in English the two words “work” and “employment” separated by a hyphen. And there's a domain that went for $20,457, something that I don't think people ever would have dreamed would have happened. And then you had . . . well, you always have the great .com sales and we had another one this week in Blue.com at half a million dollars and a number of other .coms sprinkled throughout the chart. But then we had an IBM domain in Germany's extension, .de, that was the highest IBM we've ever had and that $60,168 for Stadreson.de, which translates exactly into “City Travel” in English, but it has kind of a different meaning in German. It's a very, very big term over there, more so than the two words that we translate it to would be for us. Another thing that was happening this week was some basing .ca sales. Those are the Canadian extensions and the big one this week was the largest .ca we've ever seen, Savings.com at $36,050 at Pool and that's just one of a number of big ccTLD sales this week also.

Monte: That's incredible. I think what we're seeing now is ironic market. You know, after hearing Matthew talk about, you know, hyphenations, hyphenated names and the value they are in search engines and that kind of stuff, plus the sheer supply and demand curve that's happening with, you know, some key domain names being gone but hyphenated names still being available and being put to use pretty well, I think we're going to see a new trend of this going on, don't you think?

Ron: Oh, I think so, too. What we saw this week, we've seen kind of inklings of this sort of thing before. This is just the biggest example of it that we've seen. But I think we're going to see this more and more. Next week you may see a chart dominated all by .coms again, but you know, another couple of weeks you're probably going to see these alternate extensions sprinkled throughout, because there's no doubt that they're coming on. You can look back over the past few months and see this happening and I think .com deserves a lot of the credit for what's happening with the increasing values and the alternate extensions. The .coms are so valued and have reached such a high price level, that they've simply priced a lot of small business people out of the market. And those small business people still need domain names and there are millions and millions of them coming online every year, so they're looking at some of the options. If they want a good generic name or a place like a New York, for example, they can't get the base term, they might look at hyphens and that sort of thing. So, to me it's a very, very healthy sign for the market to see this kind of broadening going on because it opens up so many opportunities for everyone who's operating in this business.

Monte: Right. You know, it's a simulation to, you know, the beach properties all bought up and now we're moving west a little bit into the suburbs and into other types of communities that become valuable over time. They don't look valuable today but once there's a community and inherent value built by a number of people following the trend, then all of a sudden it becomes sometimes as valuable as it does to the beach property.

Ron: I think that's true and still I find it humorous that there's still this sort of division in the business where people think that one half can only succeed, lets say the non-coms can only succeed at the expense of .com and vice-versa but that's not the case at all. .com is what it is; its always going to be a fantastic brand name and the fact that the others are starting to go somewhere, that's not a piece of .com's pie that's getting eaten there, its just that the pie is getting much, much bigger. So I think it's the best of all worlds for everyone in the business.

Monte: Yeah, I agree. Now, lets talk a little bit about . . . I don't think you've heard any of the news from the ICANN meeting yet, or have you?

Ron: Well, the only thing I had heard is that they had set .xxx aside again, so that there won't be any action on that. I think Friday is when some of the other agenda items are going to be voted on, so I haven't heard a lot hard news out of there yet.

Monte: Yeah, neither have I but I did hear that .xxx was put off to the next meeting again. Those guys ICM registry must be just going bananas; they got approval of this thing and they can't get the final close and I know a lot of the adult listeners are on board and half of the crew are for it and half of the crew are against it but whatever the outcome is, I'm sure it'll work out.

Ron: You do have to feel for business people who put the kind of investment and time into that that they have and to continually get the decision put off regardless of whether you're for it or against it as people. I just feel like those guys would sure like to get that thing sorted out one way or the other and not kind of be left, you know, sitting on the edge of the blade month after month and year after year.

Monte: Yeah. Well, those guys for .travel went through a similar experience. I mean, they had to wait like two full years before it got approved, but Jason Handleless, who created the concept of this .xxx thing actually has been waiting since late 2001 or so; he envisioned this whole thing going on back then so in any case I'm sure it'll all work out one way or the other. Now, we have a couple big domain conferences coming and hopefully the listeners know what those are; but we have the Domain Name Roundtable, which is going to be in Seattle April, I think . . .

Ron: April 19th to the 21st.

Monte: 19th to the 21st; that's in Seattle. And you can go to domainroundtable.com and sign up for that. And also we have TRAFFIC West, which is going to be a huge bash in Las Vegas and that's gong to be May 2nd to the 5th.

Ron: Right.

Monte: What are you hearing from each of those shows that are going to be different and unique that have not been done before?

Ron: Well, the . . . we just published a preview on the Domain Roundtable Conference; an interview with the program director of the show, Jothan Frakes, that's really interesting. It goes into a lot of detail on what they're doing. One interesting thing: they're going to have four separate keynote speakers and they're all big name people. So I think that's going to be fascinating. NetSurf will be there who a lot of people look at as the father of the Internet; and then Vint Cerf of TCP. To me that's going to be exciting because I've never met him. Paul Twomey going to be there, the head of ICANN. Jothan's group has always been tied into the governance side of the Internet and the ICANN people, so they've got a lot of those folks there, a lot of people you don't see elsewhere; so I think that'll be a highlight. Matt Bentley is also going to be one of the keynoters there, and Mark Ofstrofsky . . .

Monte: Right.

Ron: So that's going to be . . . I think that's going to be a very education seminar and it will be an opportunity, like I said, to meet a lot of folks in certain pockets of the Internet I haven't had an opportunity meet yet, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Monte: Have you heard any of the news about IREIT and Ofstrofsky and this .eu situation, ‘cause I'm hearing about it on the chat room for the first time but I was not aware – have you heard anything about that?

Ron: Well, I've just seen what's been posted in forums. They positioned themselves to get, apparently, a large quantity of the .eu domains and I think some people were upset about it but they didn't do anything outside the rules. You know, those are sharp guys there, so they look at, you know, what they can do to get to where they want to go. I guess it'll still be interesting to see how the registry rules on some of those things; we don't know yet who's going to actually end up getting a lot of these different domains but I probably don't know any more about it. I haven't talked to Mark in awhile now, so I don't know anymore about it than anyone else does . . .

Monte: Right. Right.

Ron: . . . than anyone else in the forums.

Monte: Right. And .eu's a land rush for everybody that's listening is April the 7th, Moniker is going to be all ready to go, so if you have your .eu land rush domain names, come to Moniker.com and you'll get a great deal and have the first dibs in to try to get any of the .eu names open for land rush. Now, how about TRAFFIC West; is it going to be a big . . . a big conglomerate? It's going to be the largest show yet. I'm hearing numbers of, like, close to 500 people are going to be attending.

Ron: Yeah, its just amazing how that show has exploded since the first one in Delray Beach. I just completed an interview with Rick Schwartz that we'll be putting together into an article as a TRAFFIC preview that should be out by this weekend and Rick is always just fascinating to listen to. I could throw this guy, you know, a sentence on any subject and he can hold your rapt attention for an hour, because he really . . . he has a viewpoint that very few people have. And so you have to . . . you know, a lot people think that what he says is outrageous, but the thing about it is, you have to listen and consider everything he says, because he's been proven right where others have been proven wrong so many times over the last 10 years. He's been a real visionary. So a lot of the comments that he made, not just about the nuts and bolts of the show, but what it means to you and to your business, will be in this article. And I always find, you know, reading his comments and hearing what he has to say kind of an energizer that really gets me pumped about the business and just keeps things really exciting for me and that translates into the kind of show that he and Howard Neu put on as well. Just like an electric atmosphere and I always come away from those shows wishing that I didn't have to wait three months till the next one came around.

Monte: Right, right. Well, that's great. Well, Ron, we really appreciate your time tonight and that's a great update on what's going on in the industry. Some new and wild stuff going on with the .ca names and hyphenated names and IDNs selling for record-breaking prices and next week, I promise, you'll have a nice mistype that you'll be able to report that you're going to be pretty surprised about as well [laughs].

Ron: I'm looking forward to hearing that. I could just have 20 seconds, I want to throw one more piece of news in that I just got today. I don't know if you saw this or not, but the Internet advertising bureau in the United Kingdom reported that Internet advertising spending jumped by 65% in Great Britain over the past year and they're now predicting now that within 2 years, Web advertising, the spending on it, is going to surpass print advertising – newspaper, magazines, which to me is mind-boggling. Those are media that have been around for centuries and now here's the Web getting ready to pass them in spending. So, right there is the . . . that's the main reason these advertisers flocking, we're seeing domain sales go through the roof.

Monte: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I agree and of course there was a big article in the Boston Globe this morning about domain names and domain appraisals and donations and we were quoted in that along, well, with some of, along with C-view and some other folks, too. So a lot of this stuff is coming around, that's for sure.

Ron: Right.

Monte: Alright, Ron, well thanks for being on the show and we look forward to seeing you and talking to you in the next coming weeks and we'll start to open up some of those show specials and have some live broadcasts from each of those events.

Ron: Looking forward to it.

Monte: Okay, great. Thanks for being on the show this week.

Ron: Sure thing.

Monte: Okay, take care. Alright, guys, I got to wind it up. Power Source is next; please stay online, stay tuned. You're going to learn a lot of stuff from the Yahoo! guys and I'm being basically shoved out of here so they can come onboard and have another great show. So with that, I will leave you with another great week, and another great week to come. Same time, same place next week, live on Domain Masters. Be the master of your domain. I'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

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