Jothan Frakes and Brian Benko

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Monte: Hello. How're you doing, everyone? This is Monte Cahn. Welcome to Domain Masters. Another great week has gone by. We got a lot of activity going on, though. The eComXpo is going on right now, which is a virtual trade show. We had the folks from the show on a couple weeks ago and its going great. A lot of business being done on that show and a lot of virtual business so it's pretty cool.

Today we are going to have Jothan Frakes on. We're going to talk about Domain Roundtable that's coming up in a about a week and a half and go over some of the agenda and some of the exciting things that are going on with that show. And we'll also get an ICANN recap; some of the interesting things that happened at ICANN a couple weeks ago, where I couldn't make it because of my back injury. And back by popular demand we're going to have Brian Benko back on. Brian was just on a few weeks ago; he's with NoParking.com and has . . . wanted to be back on the show and a lot people said they got a lot out of that show and he's got some new revelations about being successful on the Web with domain names, so we're going to have him on the second half of the show.

I'm going to break for a couple commercials, pay some bills and be back on with Jothan Frakes. Stay tuned.

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Monte: Hello, welcome back to the show. This is, again, Monte Cahn, your host. My first guest, who actually has guest-hosted for me on my own show, is Jothan Frakes. He is the man in charge of setting up the 2nd Annual Domain Roundtable Conference in Seattle. That is the show that's going on in about a week and a half, from the 19th to the 21st in Seattle. He is also part of Name Intelligence; those are the folks that bring you WhoIs.sc, one of the most popular domain history, Who Is history engines in the world. Jothan, are you on board?

Jothan: I am, Monte, and as always it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Monte: Thank you. And I know we've been pinging each other back and forth ever since my injury, so I really appreciate your time tonight and want to hear about how Domain Roundtable's coming along and also what's going on with ICANN and what happened there, ‘cause I was, unfortunately, unable to make it again, due to my back.

Why don't we go over some of the interesting things on ICANN that are noteworthy or newsworthy first, because I know you attended a lot of the events there? What's . . . bring us up to date on what happened with ICANN Meeting.

Jothan: Well, it's tough to keep track of all these meetings and I'm still suffering a little lag because of the time difference.

Monte: Did you just get in?

Jothan: No, Monte, I'm been in a few days but I have a newborn baby, Alexander, and he doesn't help [laughs].

Monte: [laughs] Definitely.

Jothan: So, well, Wellington was beautiful. Keith Davidson and the folks at Internet NZ or NNZed as they say, they did a fantastic job supporting the meeting. There was a lot of big talk about, you know, the .com contract, poor Stuart Lawly over at .xxx unfortunately they pulled the .xxx off the agenda once again.

Monte: Now . . . now I heard it was not only pulled but it basically was ended right there, like they made the decision that this is not going to be going forward, is that the case?

Jothan: Ahhh, I think that the stories of his demise are greatly exaggerated. But I'd probably want you to talk to him directly about it, because, you know, that's something that . . . I didn't necessarily get the impression that that was the case. I know that the GAK sent out a communiqué about some of the issues that they would hope would be addressed. ICANN seems like they were moving forward with it.

Monte: Yeah, that's what I heard too, but then I got sent a, a . . . kind of an under . . . I guess it was an undercover . . . kind of alert that they basically shot it down – I mean, I'll find out the scoop, I guess . . . but they shot it down because there's too many governments against it so they used an easy scapegoat and shot it down under its current situation. So I'll have to find out what's going on and give everybody an update on that.

Jothan: I'd love to think I know everything but I could be wrong. I'm man enough to admit I'd be wrong on that. I sure hope not for Stuart's sake.

Monte: Yeah.

Jothan: So, moving on, there's was also a lot of talk about there's a kind of a trend that people in the industry, at least really close in the industry, are doing where . . . I guess the term has kind of come aboard with “domain tasting,” which is where registrars . . . there's a five day grace period where domains can be returned with no financial consequence to the registry . . .

Monte: Right.

Jothan: . . . and so registrars are starting to really ramp up their quantities of registrations as they check out the name for a few days and then they throw it back if there's no traffic . . .

Monte: Right.

Jothan: . . . and so there's no financial consequences. So the registries kind of came into the registrar's meeting and kind of spoke on how that's affecting their business and where the, you know, what the upsides and downsides are. I think the registries ultimately benefit because . . .

Monte: Oh, yeah, they sure do. As a matter of fact, I read an interesting piece from Stratten Slavos, who's a head of Verisign, it was about 3 or 4 months ago; it was about how much their business has grown as a result of this domain testing that's been going on and even though there's, you know, a small amount of registrations that are actually kept, the overall market, the overall increase in business has been phenomenal as a result of the keeping market, because some of those names would have never been registered.

Jothan: Well, that's the case.

Monte: And it's only .com and .net. I don't think .org or any of the other registries allow that grace period.

Jothan: Well, now, actually, they do and I got to listen to both PIR[inaudible] and also Ron Mohan, who's . . . you know, I respect the heck out him; he works over at Affiliate . . .

Monte: Right. .info.

Jothan: And they operate the back end for .org and also for .info. And you know, it is a growing trend among most registries, as well.

Monte: Okay, great.

Jothan: So, the . . . they talked about it. They vetted it pretty well in the meeting. I mean, ultimately, it sounds like they're not going to do something about it but they are watching close, because it does impact their systems a bit. But you know, some people would call that a high quality problem.

Monte: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I mean, Verisign was complaining about that stuff a long time ago when you would do the adds and deletes at a high frequency and they used to send out warning notices and now they don't even bother anymore. It's kind of crazy.

Jothan: Well, you know, the thing with that is really there's sort of a mandate that everybody gets [inaudible], equal opportunity to provision and so what happens is, you know, there's registrars who, you know, might get closed out because the system's are overwhelmed or something like that. So they work really hard to make sure that there's equity of the system.

Monte: Right, right.

Jothan: But there's something [inaudible] around that obviously, right? More registrars equals more connections.

Monte: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Definitely.

Jothan: [inaudible] . So the other big stuff was a talk on IDN TLDs. That's really . . . there's a lot of wood behind that era. There's a lot happening to kind of push that forward, both industry-wise and also it seems ICANN is really keen to accommodate that. So, in essence, right now there's a situation where different TLDs have non-English characters or non-Roman characters, you know, to the left of the dot but the top level domains still, you know, it's like a .com or a .net and there's talk of setting up a system whereby there would actually be IDN on both sides of the dot.

Monte: Oh, really?

Jothan: For people who compose characters in their local language, you know, its actually kind of difficult. There's a few keystrokes you have to hit to switch back to Roman characters. You know, for somebody who's doing Arabic or Hebrew or, you know, Chinese or Korean, you have to hop back and forth between keyboard settings and so to type in a URL is really problematic, so you want to kind of have a good flow, a good user experience and the TLDs, doing it that way, it seems to be the way to do it.

Monte: Right, right. That's good.

Jothan: They're still inventing a way to exactly how to do it, but, you know, I would encourage (here's my plug for the Domain Roundtable), you know, pretty much everyone who's involved in that working group at ICANN is going to be in a special session on IDNs that we're having at the Domain Roundtable Conference. You know, we've got [inaudible] from .jp, Ron Mohan from Affiliates and Michelle Sunyard actually from Microsoft, who's the basically the guy who has been pushing forth the IDN standards in IE 7 . . .

Monte: Right, right.

Jothan: . . . so that's going to be a great one. But back to the ICANN update, there's more and more sort of security and stability advisors going out. There's a weighted performance distributed denial of services [inaudible] DNS and its actually hit a couple registrars. I think, unfortunately, Network Solutions fell prey to it through some of their main servers that were hosted in [inaudible] and then I think the registrar Joker.com also [inaudible] . . .

Monte: [inaudible]

Jothan: . . . [inaudible] sort of thing. So, its important to kind of follow those issues, too. It's really impacted your business.

Monte: Yeah.

Jothan: So, other things. The local hosts did a fantastic job of welcoming people into New Zealand and it's a beautiful . . . Wellington is just such a beautiful city. It's ocean front, its probably very much like Miami but not as hot.

Monte: Right, right. And I heard it was kind of rainy while you guys were there too.

Jothan: Well, it was. You know, I'm from Seattle so my . . . it's all relevant. .

Monte: Oh, yeah. That's right. It rains like 11 months and 29 days there a year, anyway, doesn't it?

Jothan: Yeah, exactly.

Monte: [laughs]

Jothan: Yeah. Well, it was a big advantage to have a local museum called . . .

Monte: That's why you guys are so productive over there. You just stay behind your computers and just stay white and inside and just program all day and do business all day ‘cause no one can go out in the sun.

Jothan: [inaudible]. Exactly. I look out the window, I feel like less of mole because I'm sitting behind a computer, you know, ‘cause its crappy outside.

Monte: [laughs]. Right.

Jothan: If its hot I want to be out on my bicycle, you know?

Monte: Right, right, right.

Jothan: Ah, the . . .

Monte: Well, that's good. It sounds like a good meeting and too bad I missed it. But I heard its going to be a lot hotter in Morocco, isn't it?

Jothan: Ah, yeah, you know, Morocco in the summer. I think we're looking at 110+ Fahrenheit.

Monte: Yeah, that should be really pleasant. What a perfect location.

Jothan: Well, you know, the folks that are actually hosting the Marrakech meeting were actually exhibiting at the . . . in Wellington and they are neat folks, really; sounds like it's going to be a great show. It's an awful lot of travel but sounds like it's going to be well worth it.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. Well, I ‘m going to try to make that event. Alright, lets roll into Domain Roundtable. Looks like the show's come together quite a bit and why don't we go over some of the exciting highlights of the show. I hear, the rumor mill has it there's going to be between 250 and 300 people there.

Jothan: We're right on target for that. We're already just approaching 235 and you know, if all the projections go, I may even bust 300. But the . . . just a lot of interesting and cool developments as far as since the last time I was on, you know, we did have Vint Serf doing a keynote in the morning of the second day of the conference and he's the co-inventor of PCPIP and he's also chairman of the board of ICANN and he works for this little company called Google that, ah, searches stuff. He's their chief Internet evangelist and he's a vice president there.

Monte: Google; I've never heard of ‘em. [laughs]

Jothan: Google, yah. Somebody told me they're going to be big. And then Mark Ostrofsky with Internet REIT . . . you know, most of your listeners tend to be a little bit more sophisticated on the domain markets; I may not need to say who Mark Ostrofsky is, but I do for the benefit of people who might be picking it up beyond domains. He's, you know, legendary, for coining the phrase “Internet Real Estate,” and he made a real mark on the industry, pardon the term, with Business.com's purchase and subsequent sale.

Monte: Yeah, definitely.

Jothan: Ah, we've added, since we last talked, Matt Bentley who's the chief strategy officer from SETO, who'll be speaking lunch on the first day. And Paul Twomey, the CEO and president of ICANN, graciously accepted and is going to be speaking the opening keynote. Now that's just great because, you know, I even went to the mike in Wellington to compliment them. They do so much around the world, ICANN does, to get all these different stakeholders together; its just daunting. It's just macro issues. And to ferret in and do the industry participation where you're ultimately talking to the consumers of all that process. I think it'll be neat to hear what he's doing and some of the milestones they're hitting.

Monte: Right. I think the more important thing is that, you know, having attended a couple ICANN meetings myself and how bureaucratic and it has been and you know, there's a love-hate relationship between registrars and ICANN in some ways and I kind of like some of the new folks that are there – Tim Cole's a great guy – and once you get to know some of those guys in person, they really are out to see that the industry stays successful. You know, they could lose a lot of some of the bureaucracy and some of the things that are going on, but what's really interesting, what's really good about them attending the show is that they get to see what's going on on our side of the fence a little bit. Not only from a registrar's standpoint but with the customers, the domainers, the folks that are speculating, the folks that are making money on traffic. This is what's driving the industry right now and its very, very important for those guys at the top of ICANN to see what's going on so that the future decisions that are being made don't affect, in a negative way, what's making the business so attractive to both inside and outside investors.

Jothan: Completely agree with you. And you actually that was one of the things that made it attractive to Paul Twomey. And he actually told me that in person that he's very keen to hear how the industry's working, you know, I guess from the ground.

Monte: Yeah.

Jothan: And, I don't always exercise this but he said something very wise. You know, we're born with two ears and one mouth and you know, I often spin my mouth and don't use my ears enough. And he said that he's glad to speak and he's very interested to hear more about the industry from other players. So its something that was really kind of neat. A really neat and interesting guy and it'll be interesting to hear from him that morning.

Monte: Yeah.

Jothan: The big thing that I want to talk about (‘cause I'm excited about it) is this silent auction that this company called Moniker is doing in partnership with SETO and AfterNick at the Roundtable. We're putting together a pretty interesting event. We're . . I should be posting the list of the domains that are going to be up for silent auction shortly here on the Roundtable website.

Monte: Yeah. I owe you, from us, some . . . actually go through or screening or weeding out of the list that we have to get some nice names in that mix for you. But that's an IOU on my agenda. [laughs] But, yeah, we're pretty excited about it, about the silent auction. But why don't you tells some more about how its going to work since we all planned it together.

Jothan: Yeah, so, basically, we're going to list names up on the website for sale and I think, you know, some of the . . . I'm not sure if AfterNick or SETO was going to list them ahead of them. But basically the names will be exclusively available at the show. It'll be a silent auction process whereby, you know, we'll have the names all listed with the sheets underneath where you can sign and bid. We'll list a reserve price so you'll know what the minimum bid and we'll list an incremental price. So, you know, if you're bidding on a name that starts at $250, lets say, it says, you know, increments of $5 or $10 and if it's a domain with more digits, say 10 digits, a domain name, that the increments go in $500 at a time, what not.

Monte: Right.

Jothan: But . . . we're going to basically have a ceremony on the second night of the conference on Thursday night where people can go and place their bids for the first hour and then we'll announce all the different bids afterwards. So, it'll be a neat event. It's unlike anything that's been attempted but it should be very close to, you know, some of the silent auction benefits might as parents for your schools or for other good organizations.

Monte: Yeah, yeah. It's going to be a real exciting event. It'll be the first silent auction of domain names in history.

Jothan: [inaudible]

Monte: A first under your belt there.

Jothan: [laughs] You know, we've got tons of other really great sessions. Fantastic intellectual property people who are very experienced with domain names: John Berryhill, Ari [inaudible], who else? Derek Munon . . .

Monte: Paul Keating's going to be there as well. Paul's a great guy to have speaking as well. He's still coming, correct?

Jothan: Oh yeah.

Monte: Yeah?

Jothan: Oh, yeah. He's coming and he's actually giving a presentation. His company is really good at helping to kind of structure a corporation into your tax planning . . .

Monte: Right; offshore corporations is his specialty, by the way.

Jothan: He's brilliant.

Monte: Yep.

Jothan: He's just brilliant. There's a lot on ccTLDs for people who are looking at, you know, growth areas. ccTLDs will be very well represented. I will have a colleague, Anthony Vancourvering; he's kind of my . . . one of my favorites. He actually started a company after the last Domain Roundtable, called the [inaudible] that does . . . he kind of helps corporations figure out what they're doing with their domains and marketing strategy . . .

Monte: Right.

Jothan: You know, the light bulb came on over his head after the last Roundtable, after sitting in on the intellectual property session. So we've got intellectual property focus, people who are portfolio holders and looking to monetize and grow their search revenue. We have registrees and registrars . . .

Monte: Yeah, I see one of the new top level domain sessions or the top level domain should be a very interesting session. Of course, .jobs has been out for a little while and .travel has and the one that I'm kind of very excited about is .mobi; I had a chance to speak with Neil Edwards on Monday night at length while he was traveling, going to SITA. But he's really pumped up about that .mobi; .mobi's going to be one of the cool new extensions, even though I didn't like the name in the beginning, the application that that domain names going to come with is going to be really killer for mobile devices and cell phones.

Jothan: That is totally true. They've got some neat things they're doing to kind of standardize all the different technology with style sheets and I mean, the whole preposition behind it is just fantastic. I think that .mobi is going to be very successful. I talked with Ron Adriff and .travel. He's going to be in that new [inaudible] session. We're going to have people talking actually about, you know, how Sunrise works in new TLD launches. I spoke with people. It sounds like a 90% that I'll have .tel and .asia in attendance at the conference. So I'm trying to get all the new sponsored palpable domains there.

Monte: Right, right. Great.

Jothan: It's just a great session. It's going to be, you know, for people who want to follow the news, its going to be there. Monte, I'm hoping that you'll heal up fine and be out in the conference to do your web cast.

Monte: And I'm trying to shoot for it. The doctor's given me thumbs down right now but I'm doing whatever I can to try to make it out there, ‘cause I know that I'm on your agenda, like six or seven times, talking myself and but I have my team out there and I think we'll be okay either way. But, Jothan, I tell ya, I'm working my . . . I'm not working too hard to . . . so I won't make it but working hard so that I will by not hardly doing anything but typing on a computer. [laughs]

Jothan: Excellent. Now are you attending that eComXpo right now?

Monte: Yes, we are. It's very, very cool. My guys are on it. I'm not actually in it right this second but I was in it yesterday. My guys have been on it all day. We generated a ton of business. It is a cool concept for those of you that have not visited this thing, you need to go to eComXpo.com – its free to get in and it's going to a virtual tradeshow. I mean, you can see booths, you can see attendees, you're talking, you're chatting, you're doing business, you're asking questions, you're networking. There's great . . . there's some great content, you know, session material. There's all kinds of stuff going on there; its pretty cool.

Jothan: Yeah, its like, ah . . . it brings schmoozing to the couch potato. You know, for me, its been great. There're actually a couple people on the rolodex to call about the Roundtable that were standing in booths that I was able to talk to and traded numbers and we're going to talk after the conference.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. It's a pretty cool concept. A pretty cool concept.

Jothan: Well, thanks for having me on, Monte.

Monte: Yeah, I really appreciate it. And we look forward to the Domain Roundtable and everybody who's listening or in the chat room, you really need to consider going to Domain Roundtable and the other conferences that are coming up. We have a very busy travel conference schedule, for those of you in the industry, that you should be considering. I know they're all kind of back to back but besides Domain Round . . .

Jothan: Monte, not to interrupt you . . . I'll do something, you know, for your listeners. If people come and register at the website, I think the price right now is $1,395 to register and I'll go ahead and I'll set up a code. When you register for the conference, if you haven't already, if you type in “Monte” and then the “@” moniker when you register, put that in the VIP section, I'll knock $300 off the registration, so the registration . . .

Monte: Oh, that's great.

Jothan: . . . will be $1,095.

Monte: Oh, so everyone will save $300.

Jothan: Yeah. And I'll do that clear through till the 15th of April.

Monte: Oh, that is fantastic.

Jothan: [inaudible]

Monte: So “Monte@Moniker” is the code and you will get $300 off of the admission.

Jothan: Yes. That's gratitude to your wonderful listeners and to you, Monte, for all your support of the Domain Roundtable.

Monte: Well, I really appreciate that, Jothan. Thank you very much.

Jothan: Okay . . . [inaudible].

Monte: Well, I look forward to seeing you in a week and a half, hopefully and we are getting ready to support the show and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Jothan: Oh, its great. Domain Sponsors got a great event set up, too. It's going to be good stuff.

Monte: Well, they are party animals. They do throw some of the best parties in our industry, that's for sure.

Jothan: They had a great set of poker games down at ICANN, I'll tell you that.

Monte: Yeah, [laughs] definitely. Okay, Jothan, thank you very much for your time tonight and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Jothan: Thanks, Monte.

Monte: Okay, take care. Alright, thanks to my guest, Jothan Frakes, on the ICANN update and also Domain Roundtable update. Again, if you are considering any of these conferences, like I was saying before, there's a number of conferences that are coming up here that are important for those of you that are in the business or wanting to get in the business or learning more about the business. Domain Roundtable, of course, is one of them; AdTech is a good show to attend – that's in San Francisco the 22nd, I think, of April. TRAFFIC West, which is in Vegas from May 2nd through the 5th, is going to be a fantastic domain conference, as well. There's going to be 500 domainers there as well. It's going to be a huge show. Ah, Web Master World in Boston, which is actually conflicting, unfortunately, with Domain Roundtable, but we're flying to both places and doing the cross marketing approach, by going to both conferences but its definitely a great show that should be attended as well. And of course, then we roll into the summer shows as well, which is SES and some of the other good shows.

Anyway, I'm going to take a little bit of a break and do some commercials and we'll have Brian Benko on from NoParking.com. Stay tuned.

Monte: Welcome back to the show. Thanks again to Jothan Frakes for being on and giving us a run down on the Domain Roundtable. I look forward to . . . or we look forward to be attending. I just hope I can get better by then to make it on that trip.

My next guest, who I just had on not less than . . . just about a month ago, I think, started and launched NoParking.com, which is a very interesting concept where they participate in the co-development or the development of domain names that have a great potential and they take partial ownership of the names for doing that. Brian Benko is also the president and founder of Bay Back Ventures and Brian wanted to be back on the show and I got such great feedback from our last show that he was on that I thought it would be great to have him back on. Brian, welcome again.

Brian: [inaudible] How're you doing?

Monte: I'm doing okay, hanging in there. Trying to get healthy.

Brian: Yeah. I hear ya, I hear ya.

Monte: [laughs]

Brian: [laughs]

Monte: So, what's going on with you these days. No Parking's kind of taking shape and you're learning some things. What's the new revelations that you have to share with everybody.

Brian: Well, I wanted to let you know that your show has really created a ton of requests and phone calls to NoParking.com, so you have quite the following.

Monte: Well, hopefully, that's a good thing. [laughs]

Brian: Oh, yeah [laughs], yeah. Definitely a good thing and its also been pretty entertaining, too. We get a . . . I get an email about once a day from a domainer with a portfolio that, you know, says he heard about NoParking.com through Web Master Radio and typically the email might contain a few domains but it always contains a question – what types of domains are you looking for to develop? And I think . . . and the reason why I asked you or I wanted to talk to you about this topic is because everybody loves their domains, right? Regardless of, you know, whether it's a domain like Wireless.com or Cars.com or you know, something less valuable. Everybody loves their domains and thinks they're extremely valuable. And so they want to know are the domains that they own, you know, going to work for a relationship with No Parking.

Monte: Right.

Brian: And the question is how do I, you know, how do you express that to someone who has domains that aren't, you know, at a level that makes sense to develop. And so I wanted to just talk about some of the risks associated with buying domains that aren't so valuable and what do you do with them if you're not going to develop them and you can't find somebody to develop them.

Monte: Right.

Brian: So, its sort of the responsibility as an investor in the domain space and because our industry is so new, there's, there's not all those small type print that says, you know, consider carefully the validity and reliability of investment information obtained from all sources and you know, at every registrar you can, you know, register a 26-character domain with, you know, a bunch of hyphens and no ones telling you that that's not a good domain to register.

Monte: Right, right.

Brian: So, there's a lot of people that are caught up in the hype of the industry that we're in and there's nothing wrong with that. The concern I have is that there's a lot of people, a lot of people that don't understand, you know, what is a good domain and then how do I go about monetizing it if it's not getting any parked revenue and what are my options, right? And you know through Moniker you guys obviously do the appraisal value. . .

Monte: Yeah, we're appraising domain names. I mean, the appraisal orders are just taking off like crazy right now. So, yeah, the appraisals have picked up quite a bit because people are now, of course, this whole trend of what's going on in the industry and the higher price in domain sales, what people are doing in terms of the development and then of course the things that you guys are doing over there and what the IREIT guys are doing and the Internet Real Estate folks doing. It's pumping up the market quite a bit, so appraisal orders here have just like doubled or tripled and we also had a story run in the Boston Globe about some of the appraisals and donations of domain names as a newfound vehicle for, you know, saving taxes and stuff. That's picked up quite a bit.

Brian: Yeah, I was just reading that. That was great.

Monte: Yeah. So, what . . . you know, we talked about looking at alternative domain names when .com is available and you're starting to see some trends on saying, you know, maybe its not always the best idea or the best alternate is to just register another name as an alternate without really doing your research, is that correct?

Brian: Well, no; I think . . . I think what's important is to understand the difference between a good domain and a bad domain. And I know that's a very gray area but at the same time you have to apply some you know responsible investment approach to buying a domain if you're not getting any parked revenue from it and it certainly not going to be developed because you're buying it to sell or buying it to hold. And so there's nothing wrong with . . . take a domain like Handbag.com, which is a great domain, right?

Monte: Right. Handbag?

Brian: Yeah, Handbag.

Monte: Right, Handbag.

Brian: Right. I don't own Handbag but just as an example.

Monte: Right.

Brian: It's a great domain. There's nothing wrong with Handbag.net, .org, .info, .us; you know, those are all decent domains for different purposes, right? And some people will then say . . . well, I what happens is people get caught up in the hype and they say, okay, Handbag.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz – they're all taken so let me grab Hand-Bag.com, Hand-Bag.net, Hand-Bag., you know, org and it just keeps going, right. So, there's the person that's the earliest . . . you know, the person that got there early who got the great domains or the good domains and there's someone who got some of the second tier domains that aren't so bad and then you get . . .but you are going to get a significant number of people coming in to the third and fourth categories, which are certainly not the greatest approach, right? So maybe its “LeatherHandbag.com,” is a great domain and LeatherHandbag.net and .org are arguably good domains and you can go on down the line. But then when you get into Leather-Hand-Bag.com, you know, you start, you know, its questionable whether or not that domain is something that you're going to either be able sell at a future time or is it worth developing.

Monte: Right, right.

Brian: And that's, I think, its almost . . . I almost feel responsible . . . I fee that, you know . . . sometimes I feel like you have to explain it to some of the people that email me, saying, hey, listen, you've got, you know, 5,000 domains that you really shouldn't have registered and you know, how do you communicate that to that person without insulting them. And I just think there has to be . . . I don't know who . . . how you could possibly create a vehicle to explain to people what, you know, where there is some value – our industry is so new, right? ‘Cause you'll see a hyphenated domain sell for, you know, $100,000 or tens of thousands of dollars and then so they, you know, they get, well, their argument will be this domain with a hyphen sold for $50,000 so what's wrong with my domains and why don't you want to develop them. So, that's . . . that's all . . . I think its an important topic to discuss and then there's also the issue with people registering super, super niche domains that maybe look or sound valuable because they're in a great category and a great industry but they're so damn niche that what can you do with it? So, take a domain like BusinessSchoolGraduationDayGifts.com [laughs].

Monte: Yeah. Something like that – crazy. [laughs]

Brian: Yeah, so, but, there's a whole bunch of people out there who have hundreds and thousands of these domains that think they're extremely valuable and I know you have a registrar, Monte, [laughs]. I'm not trying to keep people from registering domains but at the same time I think its important, you know, that people understand the value of domains, at least . . .

Monte: Oh, yeah, I totally agree with you. As a matter of fact, our whole premise as a registrar, you know, Moniker's is . . . we're a domain asset management company. It does no good for us if you just register a domain name that's going to go away next year. We want you to register names that are valuable and are actually doing something for you, earning you money, providing information, has a future investment value. We're not into the register a 100,000 domain names and delete . . you know, because you didn't do something with them, you're now going to delete 90,000 of them. And then all of a sudden, your whole business sways.

Brian: Right.

Monte: Our customers keep 95% of their domain names year after year, so our business model's completely different. We want people to actually understand that their domain names are an asset and worth money, you know.

Brian: Monte, let me ask you a question. How are you handling some of the appraisals that you get of domains that may not be very valuable?

Monte: Well, I mean, we're . . . we're honest because our appraisals are being submitted to the IRS and we're honest about it. I mean, I appraised a couple .com names the other day that were under $200 and the, you know, the registrant, you know, didn't think that that was the case, thought that they were worth, you know, five figures. But, you know, we have the advantage of looking at the same types of measurements and the same types of value indicators as a real piece of real estate does . . . as real appraisers do for like real pieces of real estate, and that is, we have a huge domain sales database; I mean, even though there's not millions of domain names sold, there are, now, close to 40 or 50 thousand domains that are in our database that are sales that we have record of. So you're starting to get a nice comparable database where you can say, okay, does this name have this . . . or give me all the names that sold with this keyword in it, you know, because this keyword is also in the name of the name I'm appraising. So, when did it sell, what market is it in, how strong is that market, you know and then of course all the other indicators. Does it have Google page rank? Does it have any links? Is it a live site? Is it, you know, what's it doing? You know, all these things go into the appraisal and if a name's not worth anything, uhm, we . . . we put that on paper. It doesn't mean that someone's not going to pay more money than the appraisal . . .

Brian: Of course.

Monte: And it doesn't that someone's not going to offer less money than the appraisal. But that's real life property as well. Somebody who really wants a house really bad, I'm hearing more and more, at least did about 6 months ago, people paying over the listed price for a house instead of negotiating it down, because the real estate's gone crazy in South Florida and they just wanted to secure their, you know, their dream house forever.

Brian: Right, right.

Monte: So, they're paying up on it instead of paying down on it.

Brian: Right. Do you have . . . do you know of any . . . or do have any recommended sites that you suggest to people that are trying to determine what they should register or what they should buy or where to determine whether or not their portfolio is worth anything; aside from parked revenue. Of course, people that park have an idea based on what they earn every month.

Monte: Well, I mean, I think it's a good indicator to keep track on what's going at DNJournal . . .

Brian: Yep.

Monte: Because then you can see what names are selling and for what and when you can see that, you get an idea what some of the names in this particular categories are going for. Like, you know, we announced the sale of a misspell of the word “mortgage,” it was mortag; it was a $240,000 sale.

Brian: Yeah.

Monte: It was the first time a misspell attracted that kind of a price. That tells you about that particular market, the keyword value of mortgage and how many times that name is misspelled, without the “g.” And how people can show how they can convert that into business.

Brian: Yep.

Monte: Those types of things are really important trends that people can start seeing and last week, you know, there were a couple names in there with dashes that sold for 5 figures.

Brian: Oh yeah.

Monte: You know, I think we're starting to see some trends that we never saw before. One, because there's now a demand, a supply and demand ratio that's driving up values just like in the housing market; two, we're in a much more mature market than we were a couple years ago, and there's a lot of outside investment coming in and people want to jump in and throw casting nets over, you know, portfolios with names; and three, they are truly assets and not commodities anymore.

Brian: Right. And I do, before we go, I do want to make it very clear to anyone who's interested in working with NoParking.com that we don't . . . we're not going to tell you to go away and don't send us any more emails or not come back; you know, we're more than happy to take a look at your domains, let you know if we like anything and then, if we don't like it, don't get discouraged; just come back, you know, the other half of your portfolio and let us know what you have and usually we'll find one or two gems that we may want to work with and just like you mentioned, there's misspellings and hyphens. We're more than happy to develop a misspelling as long as it not a trademark issue.

Monte: Right. I think people also have to understand what you're business model is, too. I mean, people should not get offended if you choose not to go, you know, develop their property. You, I assume, have to be very selective on the partners you're going to go down that path with, because you're taking part ownership of name. I mean, you're going to be . . . the only way you're going to make money is if that domain name and that web site that you're building is going to make money. You certainly can't do it all. You're not going to do every one of them that are submitted to you.

Brian: Not . . . no way.

Monte: Yeah, so, it just . . . it's just common sense. It's a . . . it doesn't mean that someone's name isn't bad or good, it just mean that you . . . you have certain bandwidth, just like I do in my business, you have certain bandwidth and you've got to make sure you make the right choices. You also are a new start up in this particular segment for the outside world; you've been doing this with your own names for quite sometime, but you know, now you're starting to develop other people's property.

Brian: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And without a doubt, ‘cause we don't want to partner with someone and have them go away with a bad taste in their mouth. It's very important that the domain owner makes a significant amount of money or at least a significant amount above and beyond what they're making now. So its very important that both parties, you know, come out on top when the relationship is . . . comes . . . is started. So you're absolutely right.

Monte: Right. Now what are you seeing in terms of . . . of . . . I mean, can you share with us some of the key developments that you're working on now? What are some of the names that you think are some of the shining stars that you're allowed to talk about?

Brian: Uhm, the one I will talk about is we're working on it's going to be Automobiles.com.

Monte: Oh, wow. That's great. I met that guy at the . . . at TRAFFIC West. So, you obviously made a connection with him.

Brian: Yeah, definitely. He's a wonderful individual and has a great piece of property, of course, and I have some experience in the outer space since about '99, so it's a good fit and its obviously a great domain and, and, more importantly than the domain and my skills and his skill set is that, you know, we see eye-to-eye on the business relationship and how it should work and how the relationship will develop over the next few years. And that's as I said at the conference more important than anything.

Monte: Right. I think that's a kick-ass . . . that's a kick-ass name that you're working on, I mean, because we sold Autos.com back in 1999 for $2.2 million to Cars Direct and you know, the auto . . . online auto industry is going to come to life in a big way, I think. I think there's a couple industries that people are going to go more online and shop than they did before. Autos, I think, is going to be really big. I also think healthcare is one of the areas of the future that people are going to go online and be able to shop healthcare, look for physicians and you're kind of in that space with your Find A Doctor or you know, the dentist, the doctor and physician sites that you're working on but I think . . .

Brian: Yeah, find a surgeon and find a dentist, it all . . .

Monte: Yeah, find a surgeon. But I really think that as . . . I think healthcare is going to be a much more online business than it is today. You're going to be able to find your doctor, shop rates online on who's going to take care of you at what price and you know, look for advantages and ratings and all kinds of stuff that way.

Brian: Yeah, no, I agree, and you obviously have a lot of experience in that space, so you have any insight that a lot of us don't.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. Uhm, what about . . . okay, so that's one name that you can discuss; you can't talk about any of the others that you're . . . how many names do you have under construction right now?

Brian: Well, we do have . . . we did grab a portfolio of some second tier domains that are sort of in the .org space. We're working . . .

Monte: Uh-huh. Now, you're calling it second tier because it's .org or you're calling it second tier for another reason?

Brian: Ah, we call it second tier for .org because there's very little type in traffic and I only call it second tier because there's no type in traffic. I would call it . . . I would call them, you know, marquee domains because they're generic and they're .org and there are a lot of one word terms but I guess I'm very used to, you know, speaking to the traffic crowd who is, you know, the only thing that's worth anything to them, really, is type in traffic, so I apologize, I'm not trying to minimize the value of a .org or any other extension. But its usually . . . usually the other extensions don't carry a significant amount of type in traffic. Of course, other countries . . .

Monte: Now, what would you . . . what would you rather develop, a .org or a .net?

Brian: Ah, you know, that's always . . . you know, that's a very common question and I personally would rather develop a .org and its sort of an elusive quality. You can't really pinpoint the reason why but I just think that a .org just carries a certain value to it that a .net doesn't have. I mean . . . but I'm not saying that a .net is any more or less valuable. And it certainly, when you take a domain like Physicians.org, right? Certainly, it even carries a different value than Physicians.com, right? Some will allow you that a .org in certain categories are more valuable. Take, for example, Healthcare.org; you know, would you rather develop Healthcare.org or Healthcare.com?

Monte: Or Healthcare.net.

Brian: Right.

Monte: So, I think you're right and you know, .org did a good job of putting themselves into a nice little niche where they weren't going to go down the route of being non-profit, an organization only but they were going to allow profit to occur and really kind of made themselves . . . put themselves in a little bit of a lead area where they could be second tier to .com.

Brian: Right. Yeah, I know, you're exactly right. So we have a portfolio of a little over 100 .orgs that we're looking at and we haven't signed a deal yet but we're very close.

Monte: And what's you're on the .eu situation, given that its kind of a unique, you know, domain name extension – give me your take on this whole .eu land rush, the sunrise period, the hype about it and where's the potential? And how far away?

Brian: Well, I think . . . I have a different perspective. It's a little bit . . . it's obviously opinion based, of course, but I think the .eu extension is extremely valuable. I think it has a sexy appeal to it, in my opinion. It's all encompassing. It is, I think, with the Euro being pushed to several European countries and most of them have been adopted, I think that there's even some value in the .eu being associated with the semantics of the Euro and I just think that it has the top potential to be a strong player in the space and I would even . . . I would even speculate that its going to be stronger than any other European extension out there. But that's my opinion and I know a lot of people are cringing but . . .

Monte: Well, I mean, its kind of hyping itself up to that, you know. But it is a unique extension, because it's not a country code either. It's like a region.

Brian: Right.

Monte: The first region extension. I had Jothan Frakes on, you know, right before you – I don't know if you listened to it . . .

Brian: Yeah.

Monte: . . . but he's going to have the folks from .asia on; you know, .asia is supposed to be the next region type domain name that's supposed to go up and it'll be interesting to see. So now we're not . . . we're getting out of, you know, moving in and out of countries and now going into regions of countries and trying to put, you know, bundle groups of countries together and trying to make it a marketable place.

Brian: Right.

Monte: And, you know, it can get kind of confusing when you think about it because, you know, com is for commerce, been around the longest but when it all runs out, I guess the supply and demand curves says, hey, we need some more extensions that need to be regionalized and give people their chance of getting their names up on a . . . at least on a regional extension if they can't get it on their .com or even a country code extension.

Brian: Yeah. You're exactly right. And again, I'm just very bullish on the .eu. That's just a personal opinion and I just . . . I'm fond of the .eu extension.

Monte: Now, what about .mobi; do you know much about what that application going to have? Because its kind of a unique extension that I'm kind of bullish on.

Brian: Yeah, no; I'm aware of it but I'm not overly familiar with some of the things that you and Jothan mentioned in the last interview but it sounds very exciting.

Monte: Yeah, what its going to have, basically, is kind of, with the domain name, you're going to have kind of a little application that you have an area to fill out as part of your registration form, the type of mobile device that you carry and then the site or layout of the particular extension automatically conforms to your cell phone or your mobile device, so that you'll be able to type in “Moniker.com” for instance and see a full version of our website, on . . . miniaturized in the proper format on that screen.

Brian: Wow.

Monte: Which is kind of cool. So if anybody kind of looks at the way that they look at the websites now on your cell phone, you have to scroll all the way across in order to see all the links and buttons and sites and you can't see the full picture of the website unless you're on a WAP, some kind of WAP sub-site of that particular website.

Brian: Right.

Monte: But, this .mobi extension's going to allow you to see it in the proper format and allow communication across, also, phone networks in addition so that you'll be able to see it all around the world on various types of devices and be able to do business. So . . .

Brian: Oh, that's very exciting.

Monte: . . . one of the things that we're going to do is we're partnering with the .mobi and we may be, probably, the first registrar up on that platform and allow people to register domain names on their mobile devices. Not necessarily a .com but a .mobi device, so it'll be kind of cool.

Brian: Good for you; that's fantastic.

Monte: Yeah, its what we're working on now.

Brian: And obviously with Wi-Fi being enabled, it'll be a successful extension.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. What other . . . any other last hot things in the industry? I know we have TRAFFIC West coming up. You're going to Domain Roundtable, right?

Brian: Yeah, I'll be speaking there and look forward to, you know, attending that conference for the first time; it sounds like its going to be pretty exciting and obviously I can't wait to get to Vegas. That'll be a good time.

Monte: Yep.

Brian: And, you know, I don't think the industry can get any hotter.

Monte: Yeah, its on fire. It's definitely on fire. So that's great. Well, I'll post up on the chat board . . . what's the best place that people can submit the names to you? Again, to NoParking.

Brian: They can go through the site and contact us through the forum or they can always reach me via HYPERLINK "mailto:brian@noparking.com" brian@noparking.com. There's also a phone number there to reach me any time.

Monte: Well, Brian, as always it's a pleasure talking to you and I look forward to working with you as well, and hopefully, we'll see you at one of the upcoming conferences. I'm really trying to heal up so I can . . . my goal is to make it out into one of the next two shows, so . . .

Brian: Yeah.

Monte: If not, TRAFFIC West is my . . . I should be able to travel by then for sure but I'm hoping I can make it.

Brian: I hope you feel better, Monte.

Monte: Hey, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Take care. Well, alright, thank you to my guest, Brian Benko from NoParking.com and again, if anyone is listening to the archive and to the show, please go to NoParking.com or contact Brian at HYPERLINK "mailto:brian@noparking.com" brian@noparking.com if you have some interesting domain names that you think may worth him to co-development with you. They're doing a fantastic job over there. And also, just another reminder about the upcoming events, as we get closer to these events, we're going to start not only broadcasting live from the events but also filling everyone in on the agenda. Domain Roundtable is on the 19th in Seattle; go to domainroundtable.com. Jothan said if you throw out . . . if you put in the VIP section “Monte@Moniker” as your code name (that's “Monte” with the @ sign and Moniker) you'll get a $300 discount on attending that show, which is great. We have AdTech in San Francisco and we'll have a booth out there. That's right after Domain Roundtable. We have a booth at Web Master World and are speaking there; my partner Eric Harrington will be speaking the first day of that event on a domain panel and then going out to Seattle for Domain Roundtable. And then TRAFFIC West is occurring on May 2nd through the 5th; that's the largest gathering of domainers in the entire world. There's going to be close to 500 people at this show. It's going to be fantastic. We're doing a live domain auction there with an auctioneer. Should be selling over $1 million worth of domain names, so it should be pretty fun. And, and, what other show am I missing here? I'm missing . . . I don't know. Well, anyway, definitely go to, also, eComXpo and take a look at this virtual show that's going on right now. It's kind of . . . its very cool and you can get some work done there as well.

In any case, I will see everyone later next week. Hopefully, we'll be online with no interruptions and actually, next week is Passover. I will not be on the air next week, but my sales director, Victor Pitts, will come and fill in for me, and it'll be a great show, I promise. But for those of you who are celebrating the Passover Holiday, I wish everybody Happy Passover for next week – eat lots of matzo and memorize your Ten Commandments. Anyway, with that, have a great week. Be the master of your domain. I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

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