The Affiliate Summit and SES Miami Show Wrap up show
07/12/2006 - Monte Cahn
Monte chats with Todd Crawford. As vice president of sales Todd Crawford directs the sales team and is responsible for increasing Commission Junctions market share and driving new revenues. His responsibilities also include overseeing the development of agency relationships and evaluating business development opportunities. Todd Crawford first joined Commission Junction in 1998 as vice president of sales, and during his tenure at Commission Junction he has held positions as vice president strategic initiatives and vice president business development, in addition to managing operations in the United Kingdom. Crawford has extensive experience in online performance marketing and speaks often at industry conferences and marketing events.
[Commercials]
Monte: Hello and welcome to Domain Masters. Sorry about the late start. Had trouble hooking up with our first guest, so we’re going to do our second guest tonight first and that’s Mr. Todd Crawford. Todd recently joined Digital River as their Vice President of Sales and Business Development, and he was previously Vice President of Sales at Commission Junction from 1998 until March of 2006. So we’re going to do a short break and then do a couple commercials and be back on with Todd Crawford and learn about Digital River and what they do and how they can help all of you do a better job at your business. Be right back.
[Commercials]
Monte: Hello, welcome back to Domain Masters and again, I apologize for the delay. We had a little mix-up with our first guest. But we’re very happy to have on Todd Crawford, who is now VP of Sales and Business Development for Digital River. Digital River is a global leader in e-commerce outsourcing and they’ve built and grown revenue for more than 40,000 clients including Motorola, 3M, H&R Block, Novell, ACT! and many others. Ah, Todd, welcome to the show.
Todd: Thanks for having me.
Monte: So I understand you’re a fairly new member to Digital River and you were previously with Commission Junction, is that correct?
Todd: That’s correct. I had been at Commission Junction almost eight years, since we started that company and kind of built it up and wanted to look for something new and took a little break and Digital River found me and I’m real excited to be there.
Monte: Okay; so tell us a little bit about Digital River and what network and what they do and how they really help impact customers and help them increase their revenue.
Todd: Sure. Well, Digital River got its start actually providing the download capability for a lot of the larger software publishers out there and you mentioned a few: Computer Associates, Semantic are some others. And they also provide the actual e-commerce engine, so they host the web store, they provide the shopping cart, they process the payments, they provide the customer support. So if you went to Semantic.com and went into their store, you would actually be transacting with Digital River on behalf of Semantic. And then around that, Digital River’s built a lot of marketing capabilities and expertise. So, email to the customer from the confirmation email to reminding them that its time to renew their subscription or to learn about new product launches to search marketing and site to site optimization and then finally, affiliate marketing, which is where we have the one network.
Monte: Right. Now, uhm, it sounds like it’s kind of like both an internal and outsource solution for a lot of companies where you kind of extend their ability to serve their customers and transact, you know, do transactions to help grow their revenue. Is that correct?
Todd: That’s correct. And there’s a lot of clients, so we don’t provide the full end-to-end service for all of our clients. Some are using more of a self-service model or a hybrid where they’re using some of our services in addition to doing it themselves.
Monte: Right, right. Now, we met each other at Affiliate Summit and this show is one of two parts of the Affiliate Summit and also SES Miami follow up and you know, show follow up. So talk about specific affiliate customers and domainers and how your experience and know-how and even as the company can really help benefit those individuals getting up on the Web and helping them generate more revenue and profit.
Todd: So, I know a lot of listeners are familiar with affiliate marketing and basically, what that network is, is an affiliate network; if you want to go check it out, if anybody wants to now or after, it’s affiliates.digitalriver.com and basically they can log in and join programs like Semantic and pick up links; they pay really good commissions because its software and its on-demand downloads, so conversions tend to be pretty high for the consumer, so that’s always good for an affiliate when you look [inaudible] every click to have as much potential of converting to an action that [inaudible] commission. You know, the things that we do for some of our top affiliates is help them with their search marketing efforts. They are really good at key word arbitrage and we buy hundreds and thousands even, of domains, primarily for them to use when they more of a branded term in the URL. So, Semantics is in the URL, like “thesemanticstore” we would buy that domain on behalf of one of our search arbitrage affiliates and they work to drive traffic to that site, which is basically like a mini-e-commerce site where the consumer can find Semantic products and buy them.
Monte: Right.
Todd: But we do have a lot of other affiliates that drive sales otherwise in other ways, you know, through rebates and coupons sites as well as just product reviews and recommendations and things like that.
Monte: So, one of the things that we preach and one of the big questions that come up at some of the big domain conferences and also at SES, WebmasterWorld and the Affiliate Summit, which we found just at this recent meeting, is that there’s a lot of people that have large portfolios of domain names and they only use a small percentage of them. Now, when I got to the TRAFFIC show, most customers are using all their domain names for parking pages and now are starting to gauge on some of the build out of some domain site, some web sites, and also some affiliate sites. When I go to the Affiliates conference, there’s a smaller percentage of domain names that are being used for the affiliate sites, and a lot of the names are staying stagnant, like, not in use. Why do you think it is that there’s different areas in the market that use the domain names differently? And what kind of things does your organization doing to help them get those domain names up and running?
Todd: Well, I think anybody . . . I can feel the pain if somebody owns a lot of domains because, you know, its hard to do something with every one of them and you know, sometimes parking them is kind of the easiest way; maybe putting a few links of there, whether its AdSense or other affiliate links but you know, if you’ve got some really great names and people are willing, are typing those in right into the browser, especially if they’re related to a lot of the things that are kind of in the news or in people’s minds when they’re surfing the Internet, like Internet security, spyware, virus protection, you know, we’ve got tons of products that are around that and you know, I’ve seen guys that create more of a template, kind of like the parked domain templates, but they go ahead and build it out so it’s a three or four page site and you can go online (there’s plenty of places where you can hire people who write ad copy for you, whether they right product reviews or information about spyware and you know, how to protect yourself online or what to think about to list some of the top products); so now you’ve got, you know, some templates and you basically pay people – I’ve heard you can get you know, two, three pages of content for $50. So you get somebody to write that content for you and you get that on those sites. So you’ve got great content and sometimes, you know, that’ll help with the organic listing as well with those sites, so they’re not just typing them in the browsers. And I’ve seen a lot of successful affiliates doing that. And, you know, it doesn’t take a lot of effort once you kind of get the first few done, ‘cause you really work off a template and you just provide unique content into each of those templates based on what the domain name kind of is best suited for.
Monte: So you’re saying the best thing that you can . . . its easy to get somebody to write some of that ad copy or is there some automatic generated content templates out there already by other companies? Or is it something that you guys refer to? Or what would you recommend?
Todd: I know there are; I’m sure someone could Google it and probably name 20. There are people out there that do have pre-generated content that you can buy. You know, the only risk there is that you may run into is that you’re sharing duplicate content and you could get kind of dinged by the search engines. But again, there’s several sites out there where you can hire freelance writers and they’ll, you know, you basically say what you want written, they show you samples so you’re kind of assured that they know what they’re doing and they write up some unique content for you. And like I said, that’s worked really well for a lot of affiliates that really want to either offset some of their dependency on doing SEM, ‘cause a lot of affiliates do focus on that and you know kind of Google all the keys there, and in MSN and Yahoo!. Some of them are looking to diversify and I think that’s kind of a smart way to do it, just ‘cause you’re getting into website content.
Monte: Right, right. Now, so, if somebody has . . . if some of the domainers in the audience want to start this process and you know, have some names that they would like to move over from parking pages over to some of the affiliate sites, you know, what’s the easiest way to get started? Look for somebody who could do the ad copy first? Take us a kind of step-by-step approach about how you would go about getting a couple of the sites up and running and start to generate some money right away.
Todd: Well, again, Web templates are a dime a dozen on the Internet as well. There’s some great sites out there. I think Pinecone.com (I’m probably not remembering if that’s the exact URL, but I know she does some great templates there). You pick up some templates, you know, restyle them to how you want them and then you basically are ready to start populating them with links, navigation and the content. And, you know, once you get that then you go and you sign up with the . . . you find which products you want to promote, obviously, first. So if you’re going to focus on, let’s say, spyware, or virus protection or firewalls, then you’d go and you’d look for those programs to join them and get the links for them. You know, there’s test links, there’s banner links, there’s product and box shots of the product and, you know, if affiliates want help, we can get them the product descriptions and things like that. They’re also available on the website. And you just incorporate that all. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be a real heavy site. You know, you don’t have to build out a 40 or 50 page site. Having three, four pages where you kind of focus on the different products and things like that links off to where they can buy them. And the other thing’s that’s interesting is if you build out, say, dozens of sites like this, if you can link them together, because they should all have somewhat unique content and be somewhat related, you can obviously create better relevancy for the search engines, ‘cause they’re going to see them linked together as well and that way, people, when they click off your site, they click off on the products, then they click off to one of your other sites that’s somewhat related.
Monte: Right, right. Now, a lot of people out there use LinkShare and Commission Junction and some other larger sites. We talked briefly with Shawn Collins, uh, I guess it was two weeks ago when we had him on the show when we talked about the Affiliate Summit a little bit. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a large house, a large affiliate base, you know, site like Commission Junction to help with the affiliate marketing side, or a smaller house in niche markets?
Todd: Yeah. So, one network obviously is niche. We focus really on software. The beauty of that is software has much higher margins than, lets say, you know, going out and shopping for clothes or electronics, consumer electronics and things like that; they have smaller margins. You also tend to have higher returns with products like that. Someone buys some shoes or some clothes, and when they get them they either weren’t quite the right fit or they didn’t look as good on them as they thought and so they’re going to return them and so affiliates obviously don’t like to see that. With software, you know, once someone gets it and downloads it, they know that’s the product they want and they’re going to download it. A lot of the products that we have are offered as trial ware so the consumer, after clicking through from the affiliate site, can download it, try it before they buy it and what we do, on some of those products, we imbed the affiliate link into the software. So they don’t have to worry about cookies or anything else getting in the way of capturing that sale when that end user/consumer upgrades to a full paid version. So that’s some of the advantages there. And again, I think software tends to have a better conversion rate as well as long as the traffic is targeted, obviously. So those are some of the things that I think . . . it really depends on the domains that you own. you know, if you own, RedTennisShoes.com, you probably are not going to link to some software titles. You’re probably going to want to do something around shoes or apparel.
Monte: Right. So, now you worked for Commission Junction for a long time, so I mean, who is the best, I mean, since you’re not with them anymore, but I mean, is Commission Junction like the king and then everybody else plays second fiddle or is there some really good players out there that can help in case you don’t have software related domains?
Todd: Well, I think, you know, the nice thing about all the networks is they all have . . . they list the products. They have category taxonomy, so you can browse pretty easily [inaudible] search engine. So if you had a domain, RedTennisShoes.com, logging into the various affiliate networks you can easily go into apparel or shoes and start looking for the right, you know, offers that you want to build a site around. There are a lot of sites out there that offer good educational information. AffiliateClassroom.com; they were at the show in Orlando. They’re building out extensive online training for affiliates and webmasters. So that’s a good resource. You know, Shawn Collins has AffiliateTips.com and he puts out, you know, bits and pieces of information. There’s a lot of message boards out there where affiliates hang out. Revenues is a great blog that talks a lot about affiliate marketing and search marketing. So there’s a lot of good resources out there. And, you know, at the end of the day, some of the best affiliates figure a lot of this out by trial and error and then they try not to tell anybody and hope nobody finds out, right?
Monte: Right.
Todd: Because they want to have the edge as long as they can. So, some of the kind of the newer, bleeding edge stuff you’re not going to see a lot of information about that. But this is a pretty tried and true method. I’ve known affiliates since ’98 that have owned lots of domains and when the ones that don’t want to build sites, a lot of what they’ll do is actually if they have a good name – you know, if you had, I don’t know, SpywareAlert.com or something like that, you could literally direct that right to a product page through an affiliate link, so the consumer never goes anywhere but to a product page for Semantic or you know, computer associates that are selling spyware. And [inaudible] affiliates have a lot of success with that as well.
Monte: Right, right. Now, give us some tips on the best way to negotiate the revenue share part of it. Now is the revenue share standard in the industry? Do you have more leverage when you have more traffic, more conversions? I mean, speak to us from the other end. If you’re an end user, give us some inside tracking on the best way to negotiate with the affiliate network so that you get the highest payout.
Todd: Well, what every affiliate wants to look for is not only high commissions but obviously good converting programs. But even more importantly, I think, are end user offers. So having the coupon, having the free shipping, having software bundled so that you’re getting two pieces of valuable software for less – those are the things that actually increase the conversion and attract the consumer, because a lot of times, that’s what they’re looking for. They know the product exists. They’re looking for a deal. But when it comes to the affiliate commissions, it really depends on the vertical. They tend to kind of . . . you know, if you go into hardware and consumer electronics, you’re going to see maybe one to three percent commissions. You go into software, you’re going to see ten to seventy-five percent commissions, because once software’s written, every sale is incremental revenue, where hardware has a fixed cost to it every time. So, you know, that’s one thing that’s attractive to affiliates, is the higher margins.
Monte: How do you go about, though, taking that 1% and making it 3%? Because that’s a 66% increase to your favor. You know, that’s a . . . well, actually, that’s 3 times your expected revenue. Once you’ve negotiated 1%, you get the 3% - or like you said, from ten to seventy-five. Does is vary on product line? Or is it something that you could negotiate with the actual company, like a Digital River or a Commission Junction? Do you have any kind of leverage at all? Or do they lay down the law and you just have to fit into that payment schedule?
Todd: Most often it’s going to rely on each individual merchant, because they’re going to know what their margins are. And they’re willing to pay affiliates more, you know? Everybody wants to . . . if it’s a valuable affiliate, I’m going to want to try to keep them, retain them. It’s not just about attracting them with a good offer. Now I’ve got to retain them. Because once they start having success with me, they could very easily go have success with one of my competitors, right? From a merchant. So I want to retain them. So you will see merchants willing to do offers. I mean, obviously, they can only go so far and it is competitive out there, you know. I mean, you know, I always [inaudible] competing for every square pixel of real estate on affiliate sites and every other advertiser that can gain interest with them. So, you know, part of it is performance. If you’re doing well . . . some programs have automatic peers, right? So if you’re selling a hundred sales a month, you might automatically get a higher commission. So, but, you might also go in there and say, look, I’ve consistently done a hundred sales; I want to be at an even higher rate, because, you know, I think I’m worth it. Again, it comes down to the merchant. Some are very open and responsive to that, and some, you know, it’s like pulling teeth and you know, they might not do it.
Monte: Right, right. Now, you’ve had a chance to see thousands of different approaches online using, you know, the affiliate strategies and both from a Commission Junction side and now from Digital River – what are the top two companies in terms of performance and what do you think makes them successful?
Todd: You mean affiliate networks or affiliate . . .
Monte: The end user, like, the individual sites that’s hooked up to one of your networks and they’re just kicking ass; like, they’re just well ahead of everybody else because they’re doing certain things that are just performing better than the next person selling the same products and services.
Todd: Well, right now the buzz word in [inaudible] search, paid search; and a lot have built great websites and uhm, are specific to a handful or a thousand or tens of thousands of keywords and they go out and buy those keywords and arbitrage them on the CPA offer. It is a science. You don’t want to just jump into it and go spend a thousand dollars through Google and find out that you didn’t get any conversion. But the guys that are doing that are doing really well. It’s probably one of the top ways that affiliates are making money right now. And as a matter of fact, Digital River is incorporating this product into one that will allow affiliates to do bid management with software campaigns right through the interface. So you set up your accounts in Google and Yahoo! and then you log into one network and when you get this tool, you can actually pick a campaign, upload your keywords on it, make changes to those keywords and then you get all the ROI tracking. So you know what you spent and you know what you made. And you can get that in real time. So that’s going to be a really important tool because most of the top affiliates that are doing this, are having to figure this out themselves. They’re going out and getting a third party or building some kind of bid management tool or spreadsheets and they’re just kind of winging it that way. And the ones that are good have definitely figured it out. But the guys that want to get into it kind of don’t know where to start. And this tool’s going to give them that.
Monte: Now, is it going to help with that arbitrage piece, though? The piece that people are really capitalizing on - does it have that kind of sophistication? Or is it just to help you manage the keyword buying better?
Todd: Well, it’s going to allow you to upload your keywords and make changes to your keywords, the bids, and pull keywords out or put new keywords in. You know, everything that you would do with a normal bid management tool. But they’re tied to the tracking links through the affiliate network, so all the ROI tracking . . . so you go out and spend $100 on keywords to drive them to one of your, you know, many web pages for, uh, say, Norton AntiVirus and you will see what traffic clicks through from your jump pages, from your landing pages and then what they convert to and how much money you made. So you may have spent $100; you may have made $120 in commission, so now you’re $20 ahead. You may be . . . you know, you may have made $200. But that’s what its going to let you know. And you’re going to be able to see by keyword which one’s driving the ROI. So you may be paying more for a specific keyword and your not getting conversions on that and that’s lowering your overall, you know, return on ads spent, so you might stop buying that keyword – now all of a sudden you’re making money.
Monte: Right, right. What are some of the other techniques besides the arbitrage operation that can really help out? That really sets a successful affiliate site apart from, you know, everyone else in the field?
Todd: Well, in my opinion, content is king. You think about, you know, using the Internet yourself. When you’re searching for things, you know, and you’re interested in something, you want content that delivers, that actually explains or answers what you . . . your questions. And the sites that have built out good content in niche verticals have gotten great traction. You know, I always think of, you know, if you’re a geek and you like to build computers, you know, everyone knows Tom’s Hardware and that’s like the place, the de facto place to go to learn about how to, you know, all the pieces that go into a computer if you want to build one. And they’ve got a lot of people that contribute to making that valuable. And, consequently, he has a lot of ad space now on his site. Now that’s a very rich and developed site and it took years to get there, but a lot of . . . again, content [inaudible] from a search engine’s perspective, when you look at search engine optimization, natural search, that’s what the search engines are looking for too. So there’s a reason for that, because that’s what the consumer wants. The content is always great. And you can do product reviews; you can do, you know, informational sites; you can do product comparisons; you know, you can do coupon and rebate sites so that, you know, people like to come back there. The other, probably, niche that’s out there for affiliates are the rewards and cash-back sites. So, like, the eBates and the Fat Wallets where people go and not only look for coupons, they actually have accounts where every purchase they make they get cash back. Those are probably some of the most popular affiliate sites out there.
Monte: Oh, yeah. So, I heard, I guess, the guy last year that won the award for Affiliate Summit or won the award for . . . that he was from Fat Wallet?
Todd: Yeah, the CEO of Fat Wallet, [inaudible] . . .
Monte: And what do they do again? They’re a cash rebate site?
Todd: They’re a cash rebate and coupon site. So if you go to FatWallet.com, you’ll see probably thousands of offers for getting coupons, if the merchants are offering coupons or rebates. But you can also create an account at a site like that and then you can, every time you buy through your links through that website as a consumer, you get cash back into your account. UPromise is another really big one. People probably see that. Even at the gas pumps you can get UPromise credit cards and things like that and those all go into an educational account . . .
Monte: Is that UPromise, that’s spelled the letter “U” and then “Promise.com?”
Todd: Right, right. And parents, obviously, will shop through that as soon as they have children or even when they’re pregnant because all that money later in life can be used on their children’s education and it’s a tax sheltered account.
Monte: Right, right. And, now, one of the other things that comes up all the time is, you know, how much time it takes to really dedicate yourself to the affiliate sites. If you’re a domainer or you’re somebody that has the domain and you want to come up with affiliates – you know, one of the easy things or the great things about having your names parked, you don’t really have to do much. They park; they, you know, if the traffic’s there, you’re going to make money and you’re going to be able to, you know, be able to just sit back and collect your check. I would say that affiliate marketing, or affiliate sites, would be somewhere in-between the parking business and fully developed website with an e-commerce solution and you know, selling an actual product or service that you’re dedicated to – is that correct?
Todd: Yeah. I mean, it certainly, you know, there’s always an easier way to do things but you know, its kind of like you get . . . the old adage that you get out of it what you put into it probably holds true too. I don’t have insight into what kind of revenue parking domains, parked domains, can earn but I know that there are affiliates that are earning tens and even hundreds and millions of dollars a month acting as affiliates. Uhm, you know, we just got, at Affiliate Summit, we were the platinum sponsor there, Digital River was, and we hosted a party on the first night and we gave a check away for $50,000 to an affiliate that won that as a bonus above and beyond the commissions that they earned because you know, as a network we run sales contests so all the affiliates that are able to drive [inaudible] products; we set up product-specific contests and things like that. The ones that hit those numbers get automatic increases in commissions and we write checks for forty, thirty, twenty, ten thousand dollars. In this case, the biggest check for last quarter was $50,000.
Monte: Who won that check?
Todd: His name is Tad – and I’m just drawing a blank on his last . . . Masey, Tad Masey.
Monte: And what affiliate site did he have? Or did he have multiple sub-sites?
Todd: He was actually doing keyword arbitrage and it was really interesting because I was chatting with him while we were kind of before the party started and asking him just, you know, what was his background and he’d been in IP all his life. You know, he’s an older guy; he’s not one of these young, you know, twenty-something guys. And he’s got a son in college. And he said, you know, he’d just been through a lot of downsizings over the years and thought, you know, maybe I ought to start looking to kind of own his own destiny and wanted to . . . started reading up on affiliate marketing and I said, that’s really interesting. I said, when did you get started? And he said, December 17, 2005 . . .
Monte: Oh, really? [laughs]
Todd: So he’s been doing it 7 months and he’s just got a $50,000 bonus check. So . . .
Monte: On top of what he earned. And what did he earn in the regular period anyway?
Todd: I don’t think I . . . that’s probably a little confidential [inaudible] . . .
Monte: Okay; well . . . the bonus is just a percentage of his overall earnings, I guess.
Todd: Exactly. I mean, $50,000 is a percentage increase, so yeah, he did really well. And obviously through arbitrage he’s spending money to make money, so you also have to [inaudible] . . .
Monte: You have to have a little bit in the bank to play that arbitrage. Now, I have just a couple important . . .
Todd: . . . [inaudible] . . .
Monte: First of all, what product or service – he was selling software stuff?
Todd: Yeah, this is all through Digital River’s one network, so he was only working through us, ‘cause we’re the ones that gave him that check and he focused, you know, on several of our products – some Semantic products and some of the computer associates. We have Pinnacle; uhm, a lot of really cool products that are, again, these software companies, you know, they’re carving out really neat niches. Pinnacle just came out with a product that will actually . . . it’s called mobile media (I probably have the name wrong) but it allows you to take DVDs and rip them to mobile devices like the video iPod . . .
Monte: Yeah, yeah.
Todd: Anybody that’s been tracking how many video iPod’s have been sold, you can imagine how many people are thinking, wow, wouldn’t it be neat; and I can just rip my DVDs that I get onto my iPOD so I can watch it when I’m flying on planes or taking the train into the city.
Monte: Right. Right. Now, the arbitrage opportunity (its arbitrage, obviously, because you’re buying low and you’re selling high and you’re taking advantage of the space in the middle) do you feel that in the near term and long term that this arbitrage opportunity between . . . in the keyword business is going to last? Are the arbitrage opportunities going to get bigger or are they . . . is it going to shrink down to where arbitrage really isn’t going to play a part in the future based on, you know, what Google and Yahoo! are trying to do with their networks?
Todd: I mean, you look at it from a merchant perspective, they’re also running their own, you know, search campaigns. And you know, they’re spending money to make money. So it does get competitive. But you know, there’s this kind of a saying, the long tail. There’s millions and millions of keywords that get searched on. Some get searched, you know, maybe one or two searches a day for a month, but they may convert really well. And by owning or bidding on tens of thousands of those, you know, low volume-low cost keywords, the conversions can be, you know, still generate positive revenue. Where that’s going to go in the long run – I mean, Google’s a pretty big company and they make a lot of money from people buying keywords so I don’t think they’re really interested in stopping that. But you know . . .
Monte: Right, right. That’s great. Any other key points or topics before we wind up the show?
Todd: Well, obviously, if anybody wants to follow up, I can be reached at TCrawford@digitalriver.com. I’ll be happy to answer any questions or if somebody is interested in getting started and wants some help, I can certainly refer them to one of our affiliate recruiters, and they’ll help show them the ropes and give them some tips and show them what they need to do to get started.
Monte: Right. And then again, if you have software related domains or it’s primarily software? Or what are the second tier and third tier products you guys work on?
Todd: Right now, we’re 100% software but we’re looking it integrate some computer peripherals in the near future so we’ll have some hard goods as well. But, again, you know, the digital download is really digitally the sweet spot right now and that’s, again, going to get you really good conversions because the person gets the product right then and there.
Monte: Right. How big is Digital River? How many employees?
Todd: It’s a thousand employees; publicly traded. So if anybody wants to do a little research, their ticker is DRIV . . .
Monte: How’s their stock doing . . .?
Todd: It’s a global company, too, so, you know, we’re all over the globe, from Asia to Europe to . . . so, again, a lot of opportunity. A lot of our affiliates are doing search in Germany and France and Asia.
Monte: Ah, okay; well, that’s great. And, if anybody has digital . . . if anybody has software related names, it sounds like Digital River is the place to go and again, let’s contact Todd and he’ll get you to somebody that can really help out. Todd, we really appreciate you driving and pulling over and taking the call early and again apologize for the screw up on the time and . . .
Todd: That’s okay.
Monte: . . . and I’m glad we had a chance to talk to you and learn more about Digital River and some of the successful ideas and tips that some of the domainers can use if they decide they want to use some of the affiliate site networks for their business.
Todd: Well, I really appreciate you having me on, Monte, and good luck with your show and if you want me back, you know where to reach me; I’d love to come back and do some more stuff.
Monte: Alright, thank you very much, Todd, I really appreciate it.
Todd: Alright.
Monte: Alright, take care.
Todd: Alright.
Monte: Alright, bye-bye now. Alright, that wraps up . . . I guess we had a half a show this time and we’re going to have to reschedule with Christian for next week because the folks at the WebMasterRadio studio are pretty exhausted – they’ve been there for a full day. We’ll do a SES wrap up next week and hopefully be able to reschedule with Christian then. I really want to have everybody listen to that interview as well. Christian is . . . has been working in the online web design and online media and education market in Latin America for the last 10 years and he actually spoke at a domain-related panel in the SES show in Miami and that’s why we wanted to have him on the show. And, he owns about a thousand domain names himself and he’s been a keynote speaker at over 50 conferences and really knows the Latin American market. We’ve talked about it a couple times in previous shows about how hot the Latin American market is in the domain community and he can really give us some input on being successful there. You know, some of the big questions are, is it better to own a Spanish, spelled-out word with a dot com at the end or is better to own a country code domain spelled in the same word or an English word. And there’s all kinds of different variables and varying extensions and translations in our dictionary and in the Spanish dictionary that can be confusing. And so, he is an expert in that area and can really help us out. And of course, the Latin community is one the fastest growing online communities in the world, just behind China. So, it’s pretty important to have him on.
And, also, just a reminder, last week, which was July 5th, the day after July 4th, it was a pretty light listening audience or light audience in the chat room. I had an interview with Bruce Clay from BruceClay.com and Bruce is considered one of the godfathers in the SEO industry. As a matter of fact, he actually invented the term “SEO,” and he was an excellent interview. I suggest that all of you go back and get in the archives because there was some really good points brought out about domaining and key points about search engine optimization. And some of the new trends that are going on right now and online website optimization that you guys should listen.
And another reminder is that SES in San Jose happens on the 8th through the 10th of August. For the first time, there will be a domain panel, on the first day. I just sent everybody the link in the chat room. It’s on the first day; I believe it’s on the 9th. Or it’s the 8th, I think. You can go to JupiterEvents.com and then you can see the format and the show conference for SES San Jose. But anyways, for the first time, they’re going to have a domain-related panel. I’m leading the panel and doing the big overview and intro on domaining and what it means today compared to where it was and there’s going to be a direct navigation, pro-side and negative side or against side and then Google and Yahoo! are also going to be present on the panel to talk about how valuable domain related traffic or direct navigation traffic, what it means for their businesses, so its going to be a really good conference, I believe, and a good session.
With that I will wind up this week’s show. Again, sorry for the confusion at the beginning of the show and we’ll be on live next week, hopefully with Christian VanHurst and we’ll have him on. See you then. Be the master of your domain. Bye-bye.
[Commercials]
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