Monte talks to John Bolden and an eComeXpo preview
Monte talks to John Bolden and an eComeXpo preview
Monte Cahn 10/11/2006
Monte talks first to John Bolden. John started buying and developing domains as a side project. In late 2004, he sold his primary business, a small commodity brokerage, and started developing and monetizing domains full-time. In addition to the time he spends working on his own sites, John also provides SEO and Internet development services for a small group of clients. Most of the domains in Johns portfolio are investment, automotive and sports related.. Monte also talks to John Grosshandler who gives us a detailed preview of the upcoming EcomXpo event
[Commercials]
Monte: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Domain Masters. I’m Monte Cahn, your host. We have another great week. And the final segment of our domainer success story series that we’ve been doing, in which we’ve been talking to a number of different domainers that have been established in the business for awhile and some that are fairly new. And talking about their strategies and basically, resulting in its . . . the conclusion that its not too late to get into the game, even the folks that have been just getting into the game in the last couple of years. Tonight we’re going to interview John Bolden, who is a domainer, has about 500 or 600 domain names and going to listen to his story about how he got into the business, what’s made him successful, what he’s learned from his previous business experience to make him a successful domainer and we’ll talk to him for about an hours, or 40 minutes. And then we’re going to have on John Grosshandler from eComeXpo; that’s right, there’s another virtual conference coming up, almost the same time that TRAFFIC’s coming up. So we’re going to talk about eComeXpo, its success, how you can access the tradeshow from your computer, and discuss and talk about and market and network with all the vendors and other attendees at the conference and so we’ll go ahead and have him on at the last half of the show.
We’re going to break for a couple commercials and be right back on with John Bolden; stay tuned.
[Commercials]
Monte: Master of my domain. I’m going to be the Master of several thousand domain names in a couple weeks; as you heard on the commercial, we are hosting the world’s largest domain auction, a follow up from our Las Vegas romp and stomp of domain sales, where we sold $2.1 million worth of domain names in 3 hours. The Gold Rush Show at TRAFFIC East at Hollywood, Florida on the 27th is to sell more than $5 million worth of domain names and boy, what a list we have. More information will be coming out on our website in the next week and of course, if you are not a member or registered for the TRAFFIC East Conference, go to TargetedTraffic.com and go sign up; you won’t want to miss it. The networking event alone, the rubbing of elbows with all the domainers and industry folks and of course, the domain auction will make it well worth every dollar that you spent.
As I mentioned before, my first guest, who is a fairly new domainer, is John Burden. In 2003, John started buying and developing domain names as a side project and in late 2004 he sold his primary business (a small commodity brokerage) and started developing and monetizing websites full time. John, welcome to Domain Masters.
John: Oh, thank you.
Monte: And, I understand that you have about 500 domain names currently. Is that correct?
John: I have 580 domains parked and about another 40 domains that have been developed.
Monte: Great. So give me a little background about your commodity brokerage/moving into the Internet; when you saw the future of the domain portfolios or the domain names you bought back then.
John: Well, uh, we started . . . I was working as a computer technician at a commodity brokerage in town and I did a website for them (inaudible) and things progressed and I decided, you know, to go out on my own and my wife was still working at that brokerage and I set up a website for her and lo and behold [laughs] within about 2 months she was bringing in more leads by herself through that website than the entire brokerage was.
Monte: Oh, really!?
John: [inaudible]
Monte: That shows you something . . .
John: Kind of a fluke? Yeah. And I found a good spot and so within about 6 months, we decided to open our own . . . with another broker we opened our own brokerage, employed, you know, about 5 people (including myself) and that ran pretty well for about 4 years. And, everybody . . . you know, it’s a hard business and there’s a lot of . . . you need a lot of turnover and so we . . . everybody just decided to go their own way and we sold the business. And I was doing domains and I just kept doing it, you know?
Monte: So, what was the very first domain name that you registered and why.
John: The very first domain name I registered was, uh, futuresguide.com. And that was for, on my own, I registered that for my wife, set up a website and just, you know, rolled with it from there. I think we registered about 6 domains at the time and we registered FuturesGuide, MarketHotline, GPFO.com, which was, you know, our brokerage’s name was Grants (inaudible) Futures [inaudible]. And, uhm, I don’t remember what else . . . oh, FuturesInvesting.com and a couple others. And, uhm, I think we got FuturesQuotes.com. And, uhm . . .
Monte: Just some great financial based domain names, obviously.
John: Yes.
Monte: Now, were they driving leads to your business . . .
John: Yes . . .
Monte: . . . where people were naturally typing in those domain names; you were picking up leads, you thought it was worthwhile because of that.
John: Right. Yes. And we didn’t do any type of . . . this was 1998; we weren’t running any type of advertisement. We were actually, uh, I wrote a program to scrape some financial data and we were providing end-of-day quotes free of charge (which we still do). And, you know, the traffic just kind of picked up and boom! You know?
Monte: So I assume that’s when the light bulb went off, that you better, uh, you better get into it.
John: Not actually; I’m kind of a slow learner. [laughs] And I kept working with the brokerage. Our business had kind of slacked off after 9/11 and I was, I think I was in an auction for CommodityBrokerage.com and we were trying to decide whether we were going to go on, go forward or whatever and I was in this auction and at the last minute, somebody outbid me and there was no extension; this was at Pool at the time and there was no extensions and they won the auction. And I was kicking myself later that day because, you know, just the type in traffic from that domain would have been worth a lot of money to us. And, so at that time I took a really serious look at what we had . . .
Monte: Hm-mm . . .
John: . . . and the traffic that we had and, uh, started buying a couple of domains. I bought . . . didn’t really know what I was doing. I bought [inaudible] Classifieds.com; put it up, started to get a few trickles. Didn’t really know how to monetize it and was talking to a friend. The guy offered to buy if from me. I said, fine; he was a friend. I sold it to him fairly cheap. Uhm, and you know, he kept it for about 3 months, uh, got upset about it because, you know, he couldn’t make any money on it and he wanted me to buy it back from him. And, I said, look, before I do, let’s just try one thing. Google Ads had just come out. We put Google Ads up on there and uhm, he was making 2,500 bucks a month within about . . . I mean, in the first month he made like $2,500. Ah, and he was shocked; I was shocked. I immediately raised his hosting fees [laughs] and you know, I thought, well, you know . . . So I registered several other similar domains. And, started putting websites on them. And then started looking at other ways to monetize the domains; got into it. Found a partner that was back East. We were talking about it. We both put in . . . a lot of money. We bought a domain that didn’t go anywhere and uh, it was just dumb that . . . the success that I’d had up to that point. I wasn’t using any methodology, you know, I was just registering domains. So we went to Pool and we spent . . . I think the first name that we bought together was AutoCollector.com.
Monte: That’s a nice name.
John: We paid about 2,500 bucks for it and you know, it just did not monetize well for us. You know, I just parked it. So we got to thinking . . . we thought up a business model like that and went on and went on. And we both realized we had a whole lot of domains that weren’t doing anything; that weren’t really making any type of return for us. And, so we sold off what we could. I put websites on some other ones and I got traffic to them and did some search engine optimization; as they came up and were getting traffic on that, I was able to sell them for about a year’s income and make up most of our money. And then we . . . I looked at it and said, why are these names making money. And then somebody told me about the Overture numbers, you know? I learned that I think on the e-Nom forum or DomainStake and I started, you know, going through the appraisal threads and watching what people were doing and realized that, you know, a brand, a brand name domain – a domain that’s a brand, as that, that’s fine. But you have to promote it as a brand and if you’re looking for a domain to get traffic, you ‘ve got to find some way to select the domains that are going to have type in traffic.
Monte: Right.
John: Right, and so, that’s what I started to do. I started using Overture, started using Google, you know, the bid rates that people were paying for per click, to decide where I was going to invest my money; tried to find a couple of niche groups and you know, there we are. And, uhm, so, I don’t buy a lot of domains anymore. Uhm, I, ah . . .
Monte: So, you have your portfolio right now; it seems to be performing. Now, you’re doing this full time now as a domainer? Or you still have your . . .?
John: No, I do it full time. What I’ve done is I’ve set up . . . what I’ve basically done is I set up a business plan for myself, which is what we should have done in the first place – a real business plan. It’s nothing elaborate. But, basically, what it is, is it has a set of goals at the top and a bullet point list of tasks that we have to perform at the bottom; and I have a budget. And when I say I don’t buy a lot of domains anymore, I mean, I don’t go out and buy . . . I mean, I was registering, you know, a bunch of silly domains (like a lot of people do) that weren’t of any value at all and I remember one time I posted. I asked somebody, well, what do you think of this name? And they said, it’s worthless; I wouldn’t give you [inaudible] for it. And it made me mad. Well, why not? [laughs] And, then somebody says, look, if a domain is still . . . this is, you know, 2004 or whatever it is . . . if a domain is still available . . .
Monte: It’s not worth anything.
John: You better ask yourself why. You know? And, I’ve taken that to heart. [laughs] So I purchase domains that . . . I try to purchase domains that have value. And you know, I shop every day. And I look for domains that are good deals and those are what I try to purchase.
Monte: Well, that’s great. So, you apparently spend, what? $10,000, $15,000 on domain names?
John: Yeah . . . [laughs] I think I . . .
Monte: I thought you were a full time domainer making a living on your domains currently. Correct?
John: Yeah; I mean, I don’t make a fortune on my domains as of yet. You know what I mean? I make enough money to reinvest every month, uhm . . . I pay all the . . . all my domains pay for themselves. I have several domains that don’t make any money but I have them for a reason. Uhm. But, yeah, I make money and I’m in the green every month. You know? And I put that money aside and I reinvest it. Ah . . . I’m not dipping into my savings or anything like that to buy domains. Occasionally, I take money out of the company bank account to purchase a domain but you know, it’s . . . you’re buying an asset at that point and those funds either go back or ah, you know, the company owns the domain so its okay. You know what I mean?
Monte: Right. Right. So . . .
John: And its something where I say “budget,” I mean “budget,” you know? I have a note right here on my desk that says “don’t backorder any domains without Overture numbers;” just as a reminder to myself.
Monte: So, the one thing that I think people would be interested in hearing (because a lot of people don’t do this for themselves) . . . I mean, we did it, I did it, because I started with business names, but you started playing around with names; but you said something that was very important and that was you developed a business plan for yourself.
John: Right.
Monte: Perhaps you could walk through some of the basic steps for people to put that type of a plan together, because the majority of people fly by the seat of their pants. You know? They’re buying domain names, they’re making some of the same mistakes you did early on, but when you get really focused, you know, like we did as a company, get really focused on what you want to do, what you want to try to accomplish, set your goals and objectives right, then its amazing because you accomplish them, uhm, for the most part. And so, how did you rein yourself in, being in the commodity business and then really got focused around the domain industry – what are some of the top three or four things that someone really needs to do to get focused and create this business plan so they can get even more successful and maybe break away from their career and do what you’re doing?
John: Well . . . any business plan starts with a realistic set of goals. I mean, this has to be something that you want to do. Uh, if you’re buying domains for your business, uh, and you’re looking for domains for your business . . . you know what I mean? Start there. If you’re looking for domains as a business as themselves, for yourself, you’re going to make a living either developing or selling domains, then choose. You know what I mean? You’re going to set up a business plan. You’ve got domains that you’re going to buy for traffic; you’re going to park them and that’s all you’re going to do, and may develop a few; or you’re going to buy domains, uh, that for some reason, for some purpose, either the search engine optimization or uh, as a brand, or you just like the way it sounds, you’re going to park and sell it or develop it and make a business out of it. I mean, so there’s your business plan right there. What am I going to do? Why do I want to do . . . why do I want to be involved with the domain name? And then, you know, set yourself a realis . . . you know, in 5 years, am I going to be, you know, working for myself every day or am I going to have a company or am I going to be phoning it in? You know? And, uhm, a business plan is nothing more than a set of goals and a set of rules to follow. I mean, I don’t know how to make it . . . I don’t write . . . I’d never write an extensive business plan. I mean, basically, you’ve got a set of goals, a set of rules, you’ve got a budget (and don’t go over your budget) and work as hard as you can to reach your goals. And that’s . . . but use your common sense.
Monte: So . . .
John: Research!
Monte: Yeah, research. So give us an idea of what your typical day is today, uhm, as a domainer.
John: Okay. I get up. I read my email, just like everybody else. And then I’ll pop over just to check, you know, just to see how much money I’ve made on my parking, you know, I’ll check my parking space. I’ll look at . . . I’ll go to SnapNames and I’ll start – I use DomainTools.com – and have, you know, everyone uses the same drops. I mean, you’ve got SnapNames, you’ve got Pool and you’ve got eNom, uhm, Club Drop.
Monte: Mm-hm.
John: And, uhm, DomainTools . . you’ve got GoDaddy now, too. DomainTools lets me search, uh, domains that are for sale. Domains that are going to come up for auction and so if I’m looking for a particular thing, I usually start my day as the main tool. Uhm, I have a list of domains that I want to buy and that I’m monitoring and that I’m either negotiating for them or trying to trade a service for them or trying to get enough money to buy them. And I have a set of keywords that I use to search for domains. I basically . . . my criteria for purchasing a domain is how old is it; how many words is it; and what type of Overture numbers does it have. If its got an Overture number and its never had a domain on it, just been parked or not resolved in a couple of years and its got an Overture number, you can pretty much bet that’s going to be a decent domain to buy. And then I’ll backorder it and I’ll decide how much money am I going to spend on this one and you know, it’s hard, because the competition is stiff.
Monte: Right.
John: You know . . .
Monte: Can you share, like, your budget is – your daily budget, a monthly budget – how are you monitoring your budget versus your spend? And are you hitting your budget restrictions? Or are you – do you find yourself going over or under?
John: I’m always bumping up against it. And if I do, I just off-spend.
Monte: So you’ve drawn the line, you’ve snapped the line – if you’re at your budget, you just stop. And so you’re following your rules, you’re not breaking your rules and its still working out to be successful for you, right?
John: Yes. Yeah. I think if you go . . . you know, I’ve gotten myself into trouble where I’ve, in the past, where I’ve had to turn around and sell a domain that I’ve got that’s made . . . there’s a [inaudible] that I have that’s making money or making traffic, turn over quickly, take less money than what its worth in the long term so I can, you know, recover my . . .
Monte: Reinvest.
John: Yeah. If you get in trouble, you . . . that’s what I’ve done to cover myself, you know? I try not to do that. I try to keep . . . okay, I’m not going to . . .if I can’t buy it, I can’t buy it. I’ll wait ‘til next week. I’ll shop for [inaudible]. Sometimes you miss out and you’re kicking yourself. Sometimes you get . . . you know, you’re dancing. You know, you just can’t believe the great deal you got. And, uh, that’s just the way it goes. It’s just an up and down thing every single day.
Monte: Right.
John: And, uh, you just have to look everyday; you have to be sharp. You know, there’s a lot of people looking so . . . and uh, don’t go over your budget. Because if you do, well, I don’t know. I’ve seen people who have hundreds and even thousands of domains who are borrowing money to pay for the registration fees and you know, that’s just not good. It’s not a way to [inaudible].
Monte: Right. And in that situation where you have to quickly sell, do you have a network of folks that you can call right away and they’ll just take it off your hands? Are you using the forums to . . . ?
John: Right. Yeah . . .
Monte: Okay . . .
John: I, uh, the last time I did that I had a domain, uhm, you have, you know . . . and I sold it on . . . I think the fastest place to sell a domain in a hurry, if it’s a quality domain, is like, one of the forums. I don’t know if I should say a name or anything, you know what I mean?
Monte: You can say it.
John: Well, ah, DomainStake, for me. You’ve got serious people there who are, uhm, they’re there to buy and sell domains and deal with it all day long. I mean, they’re doing the same thing I am and you know, if I put up a domain there with traffic and I’ve got the stats and there’s somebody there who will buy it or you know what I mean, if the price is negotiable, but they’ll buy it. And, of course, if you’ve got a bunch of crappy domains, you ‘re going to have a hard time. You know?
Monte: Right.
John: But you see it all the time. You go to the forums, you’ll see, you know, guys listing what they call premium domains – they’re three word impo’s, two word impo’s or whatever, you know. They’ve got, ah, 150 domains in a list and most of them, you know, they’re just completely worthless. They’re asking, you know, silly prices for domains and there are still other extensions, you know what I mean?
Monte: Yeah.
John: There’s still domains available in other extensions; those are the types of things that you have to take into consideration and, ah, you know, the key is the generic – if you want type-in traffic. You don’t have to have a dot-com; dot-nets are good. Dot-US is my other favorite and they work, you know. And if you’re looking at a brad, you don’t have to have a dot com. If I have a couple of domains where the dot com is owned by MarchX or UltimateSearch and I was able . . . I got the dot-net, I know I’m sending them traffic but you know, the dot nets still valuable; it still works for me. You know?
Monte: Right, right. As a lot of people know, we sold quite a few dot net names. They’re actually raising a bit and sold the largest dot net name ever for $450,000 at the last live domain auction, which was Sex.net.
John: Yeah, that’s a pretty good network.
Monte: And just so everybody knows, who’s listening, dot nets are pretty names if the dot com’s successful on the same name. So, if there’s a successful dot com name and the dot net is open, it’s a good strategic registration for people to buy it. The reason why is a lot of Europeans don’t type in dot com, they type in dot net and some of the other extensions naturally, when they’re trying to go places. And also dot net is the number extension for DNS servers. And so, like Microsoft – even though Microsoft.com is the main site, all they’re name servers are on dot-net servers. And not dot-net technology servers, I mean dot net DNS servers off the domain name Microsoft.net. Uhm, Citrics. All the major infrastructure companies are using servers, DNS servers that are dot-net based. That creates a lot of natural type in traffic that is not usually thought of for dot net names, by the way.
John: Right.
Monte: So that’s why dot net are a little bit more popular now and started to gain in popularity because of their availability and they used to be #2 to dot-com and so there’s still some great opportunities in the dot net registrations.
John: Not only that but I think Americans are still . . . are still more familiar with the dot net than they are dot-US; that’s just my own personal opinion.
Monte: Americans are what?
John: Americans are more familiar with the dot-net than they are with the dot-US.
Monte: Oh, definitely; because dot-net . . . really, dot-net, dot-com and dot-org were created as the U.S. based commerce, network and organizational type U.S. extensions. They were U.S. created extensions. Really, our extension is really dot-com as the U.S. based extension and then of course, the country code dot-US is floundering behind currently but gaining in strength because of availability issues and because new businesses – hundreds of thousands of new businesses are getting online everyday and they need an extension and a lot of availability of the other extensions and dot-US being one of them. Especially if you’re only doing business in the dot-US.
John: And if you’re looking for domains as an investment for the future, I thing the dot-US is a good deal right now.
Monte: Yeah, I agree with you and so are some of the newer extensions; dot-info has been very successful due to very aggressive pricing and price specials. We have a price special on it right now. And of course, the launch of dot-mobi happened today and with the unique application for mobile phones and mobile devices, its actually . . . it has a great future as well. It’s something that I feel is going to be a very strong domain name in the future as well.
John: I don’t think so; I think it’s mixed on that but we’ll see how it goes.
Monte: Yeah.
John: I think it would have been better if they just made it dot-M.
Monte: Uh, well, they actually tried to make it dot-M but the IANA does not allow single letter domain names to be active on the market, except for a handful that got pre-approved back in the early nineties. And so, they weren’t able to get “M” approved, unfortunately. But the future is bright on some of the single letter domains in the future as soon as they get some of the technology questions answered. Uhm, we have a customer that owns I.net and some other single letter domain names and they’re very unique and very rare. There’s only been four or five of them ever approved. So, that’s the reason. So what was your spend in the month of September on domain names, just to get a gauge on what you spent on domains.
John: Oh, let’s see. I spent about $8,000.
Monte: And, how . . . since we’ve gone through the month of September and we’re halfway into October, how many domain names did that encompass and how many of those would you say are good buys and how many are paying for themselves and how many weren’t.
John: Let’s see . . . I only got about 4 names for that amount; for that . . . one was a dot-net. The other was a dot-com . . .
Monte: Was this all in the drop? Was this all in the aftermarket? Did you negotiate with the names for sale?
John: I bought one on the aftermarket at BuyDomains; I bought . . . the rest were all drops. I bought one . . . all but one – the other one was a private party sale. I got a good deal from a large domain guy. And, so, that’s . . . I think they’re all valuable and they’re all doing okay. They’re not making me a million dollars but I bought them with a long term goal in mind and one of mine I wanted for quite awhile. And the other one I’d actually leased it for a couple of months so I could tie it up [laughs] until I had the money to pay for it. And, so, that’s what I did. And I got a . . . I actually sold a domain, CommerceGuard, and I used that money to go over my budget, to boost my budget and buy the extra domains.
Monte: Right. So, as we wind up, a little bit about you, just from your perspective, maybe just go over a couple things that maybe you learned the hard way that really will save people some time on getting started and being successful in the industry.
John: When you’re just starting out – the #1 rule is [laughs] “Don’t buy silly domains.” If they don’t make sense to you when you say them, nobody’s going to ever type them in. You don’t need to buy a domain to get search engine optimization; you can do that with any domain. Uhm, when you’re, uhm (I’m a little nervous; I’ve got some talking points here but) . . .
Monte: No, that’s okay.
John: Yeah, uhm . . .
Monte: Well, you mentioned a budget and stick to it.
John: Yeah, yeah and you know, research what you’re doing. Don’t just jump into it. Look at what you’re doing. And be careful. Talk to people. People at DomainStake are very friendly; they’ll help you out. Use some common sense. If it doesn’t . . . find out at Overture what Overture is, how to use it. Uh, when you’re buying a domain, ask yourself why is it available. Is this a drop? Are you buying it from a private party? Is it just a domain that nobody’s registered? Ask yourself why. And don’t buy it unless it fits your business plan. And, you know, that’s really about it. Watch your budget; that’s the most important thing I can say. Just watch your budget. Because those domains come up every year and if you’ve got, you know, even just 200 domains at the end of the year that you’ve got to renew and you end up holding those domains for, say, three years, by the end of that 3 years, you’ve spent maybe 800 bucks or something like that and that’s just money that’s been wasted. You know, go ahead, bust out the credit card if you don’t have any cash and research a name and go . . . you’re better off going out and buying a domain and spending $5,000 on a good domain as opposed to spending $3,000 or $4,000 on a bunch of different domains that really aren’t going to do you any good; that aren’t going to make you any money.
Monte: Mm-hm.
John: So, you know, when you write . . . when you’re doing your business plan, you know, what is your goal? What are you going to do? What are you going to use these names for? You have to have an idea . . . you have to know what you’re going to do before you do it. And don’t be afraid to spend the money. Uhm, you know, seize the day but just make your seiz . . . you’ve got a tight grip an dyou know what you’re grab . . . you know what you’re holding on to. Because, you know, in the end run, if you don’t know, you’re better off taking that money and going to Las Vegas and having a good weekend. Right, something – going to the beach, going to the river or just taking a two week vacation some place, you know? If you’ve got 500 domain names or a thousand domain names and they’re not making you any money and you know, three years later you’re looking at, you know, taking a loan out on your home to pay for the domain names, there’s something wrong. You know? You really need to rethink your plan. And, uh, that’s the best advise I could tell anybody. You know, I was lucky. I taught myself what I was doing before it got too serious and I was able to turn it around by being disciplined and I think that goes true with any business that your in: work hard and you know, work your plan.
Monte: Well, great. Well, John, it was great speaking with you about your story and we wish you the best of luck and I ‘m glad that you’re a Moniker customer and that you have turned what was a vision and a dream into reality and it sounds like you’re doing a great job and it’s never too late to get into the business.
John: It’s not. It’s not.
Monte: It’s not too late. Well, thank you very much and have a great evening and I appreciate your time tonight.
John: Take care, Monte.
Monte: Okay, thank you. Thanks to my guest, John Burden. Another successful domainer and some good points and topics that he laid out for us as a fairly new newbie in the domain industry and hopefully everybody got a little piece of some things they didn’t think about before. I think the key walk away message here is that if you’re really getting into it and you’re starting to accumulate a lot of domain names, get a business plan around what you’re trying to do, set some definite goals and objectives and then march to that; stay focused. Set your rules and don’t cross your boundaries. Like he said, you know, when you hit your budget, stop; even though its tempting. Or step up on one big domain name; don’t be cheap. And get what you need to accomplish your business. Don’t be afraid.
We’re going to do a short commercial break and then get on with John Grosshandler from eComExpo. Stay tuned.
[Commercials]
Monte: Hello, welcome back to Domain Masters. My next guest is John Grosshandler. He’s the founder and event director for eComExpo, the virtual tradeshow for e-commerce marketers. He has overall responsibility for this twice-a-year event, and before founding eExpo, he had twenty years of sales and marketing experience with high technology firms. John, welcome back to Domain Masters.
John: Monte, thank you for having me.
Monte: The last time we spoke, I was on my back, flat on my ass with a bad back. I just blew out my back and I still did my radio show. I think it was like, four or five days before I did show and we talked about the very first eComExpo and that was back in March. That was the very first one . . . I guess that last one that we attended.
John: Yeah, so that was back in April. It was our third one but was the first time we had Moniker as an exhibitor and we’re very happy to have you back as an exhibitor for our next event later this month.
Monte: Yes, definitely and we ‘re happy to be back and unfortunately, its also competing with our . . . with the TRAFFIC Conference which we’re holding a big domain auction and all that stuff, but we’re going to split up our staff and handle all the amplitude and the great sales and networking opportunities that are, you know, given to us by being at the event. So, this is a pretty cool conference, because its virtual and if anybody hasn’t been to this virtual conference, I invite you to go and I encourage you to go to eComExpo. Tell us a little bit about how one goes about going to the show, what to expect once they get there and why they should attend.
John: Well, that’s a lot of questions and I’ll do my best at answering them. I would start by saying what eComeXpo is, ‘cause to this day people have really trouble, Monte, grasping it. I remember when we first started talking about it, it was sort of a typical conversation where we happened to be at a physical trade show when you and I met and started talking about it and I think every one has very sort of clear understandings of what a trade who is and that you need to do it in person. And in fact we’ve been to re-create at least some part of that experience online. So, eComeXpo, which call the Virtual Tradeshow for E-Commerce Marketers has all the things that you would expect at like a WebMaster World or an SES or AdTECH, in the sense that its got exhibitors and attendees and presenters and that people go for the same reasons they go to San Jose or New York in terms of lead generation, networking, you know, having some fun, education. The difference of course is that its completely online and virtualists; completely free to attend. Folks only need to go to www.ecomexpo to register for free and then the event, which is October 24th through 26th, basically, the experience would be as an attendee you would go maybe for 5 minutes the first day or for 5 hours; we have it all over the board. And when you actually enter the show, you would see over 300 exhibitors. You’d be able to go into their booths. You’d be able to chat with their booth personnel real time. You’d be able to see over 40 educational presentations by top presenters. You’d be able to try your hand at winning a prize. And its really neat because if you imagine the coolest graphics you’ve ever seen on the Internet, that’s what we’ve been able to harness in recreating a virtual tradeshow environment. So you actually feel that you’re in a tradeshow.
Monte: Yeah, definitely. And, it is literally kind of virtually moving through the show kind of like an online virtual game, almost in like 3-D, because you’re like in your computer and you’re moving around the booth and you see the booth and you kind of hear the audience and hear the stuff going on and its pretty cool. And then you can chat with people using chat browsers and all kinds of stuff. Right?
John: Yeah, its neat in the sense of the real time communication, whether its with exhibitor staff or with other attendees or with presenters, uhm, we had over 100,000 business cards, electronic business cards, exchanged at the last eComeXpo, so I think there’s a lot of pent-up desire by this community, including your audience, who would love to be able to interact with folks in a way more rich than just email or reading newsletters or that once-every-six-month phone call. And this is an opportunity for people’s home or office from their PC to be able to easily find other folks at the show that maybe they already know or wanted to meet and interact with them either with chat or email or exchanging electronic business card. You can Skype them; you can pick up the phone. And we actually give people extra points for doing those activities that help them win great prizes, including the one that you sponsored last show, which was a trip to the Carribean.
Monte: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. So you mentioned to me about the presentations. Uhm, I saw that you have over 40 presentations at this event. Who’s presenting? Like, who’s the top four or five presenters and what do they . . . what are the presentations like, since you’re visiting it virtually?
John: Well, the growth of the show has been one of the most exciting things in a sense that we’ve gone from 1,600 attendees at our first event to more than 7,000 at our next. And I think the biggest reason has been the educational content. And as the show has gotten more and more successful, we’ve been able to attract better and better presenters. And so for example, at the event happening later this month, we’ll have three keynotes: one is by Google – they’re making a product announcement around their analytics product; another is Steve Denton, who’s the president of LinkShare, one of the leading affiliate marketing networks; and then the third is a conversation between two really interesting best-selling authors, Chris Anderson, who has a currently best-selling book called “The Long Tail.” He is also the editor of Wired Magazine and he’s having a conversation at eComeXpo with John Patel. John Patel, as you know, best-selling author currently of a book called The Search (all about Google) and he just happens to be the founder of Wired Magazine. So we were able to bring these two folks together.
Monte: That’s great. I had John Patel on last year on my show, and as a matter of fact, he’s scheduled to be back on Domain Masters, I think, in a month or so, to talk about what’s going on since then.
John: He is the Cat’s Meow and I just want to say about the presentations – that everyone will have interactive questions and answer sessions after the presentation all streamed via WebMasterRadio.
Monte: Yeah, its great. It’s great. Uhm, and, what . . . how have you gone about marketing the event to everybody. Now, I know I see you at tradeshows all the time, so you’re there live, on the floor. Are you doing anything else besides being at, you know, the Affiliate Summit, SES, WebMaster World and all those?
John: Yeah. So, you know, there’s different audiences that we market to. There’s perspective exhibitors that we market to and that’s why you see me at the physical events. Uhm, I sort of have this thing where I prey on the exhibitors. I sort of wait for the second day, I got up to them at the end of the day when their feet are more sore and they’re sort of questioning . . .
Monte: And you’re giving away your secrets of preying on the exhibitors, so . . .
John: Exactly. I’m open about my tactics and people are welcome to steal them and try to defend themselves. But its impossible because I come the second day, they’re tired, they’re thinking about the 20 grand they spent to get there and I talk about a different way to get in front of a larger audience for much less money or effort. And to be clear, it’s not a substitute for those great events, but it’s a really nice compliment. So that’s been very effective in helping us go from 92 exhibitors at our first event, to over 300 at our next event. But I think your question was probably more about how do you get the attendees to the event, because ultimately, if you don’t get the attendees, the exhibitors aren’t going to want to be there. And so we do all the things that you would expect a physical tradeshow to do in terms of direct mail and email marketing and website marketing and press releases and telemarketing and full page ads in hard copy magazines, display advertising. But our secret sauce is that we go out to our 300 exhibitors and we give them a media kit that makes it easy for them to promote their participation our event to their list of 10,000 people, whether that be, you know, affiliates or publishers or search marketer folks or members of their association. So we’ve got this whole viral, word-of-mouth thing going.
Monte: Right, right. And, so, that’s good for the exhibitor side. Now, if I’m a customer going through the show, what am I really going . . . what am I really going to walk away with, you know, as an end user that’s going to visit the show to try to see what’s going on and out there? You know, what am I going to learn? Obviously, I’m going to get some value, valuable content from the online presentations. But, what else am I going to experience as someone that’s just attending this conference and going around seeing what the booths, seeing all the booths?
John: Absolutely. Well, the show is primarily aimed at attendees. So whether its web masters or domainers or search folks or affiliates, anybody who is at all involved with this industry, the show is really geared towards them. So the education, which you mentioned, is all free. So stuff that you would normally pay $1,000 to see in person or hundreds of dollars to, you know, maybe view online, is all free. So that’s probably the biggest single thing. The next would be, I would say, the networking. So whether its with folks you already know or maybe met awhile ago or brand new people who you might be able to do some business with or learn from, the networking is a real core component. And then finally there’s the tradeshow floor, where, again, more than 300 exhibitors, whether it be domainers like yourself or uhm, ah, affiliate networks or search, you know, SEM or SEO firms, etc., etc., you know, the engines are all there – Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Ask – so this would be an opportunity for attendees, you know, from the comfort of their home or office, in maybe a couple hours on one of the three days of the show to be able to go into all those booths, sort of check out their offerings, see the cool graphical things they’ve done with their booth, perhaps most importantly be able to chat real time with representatives of that company. So I think often, you know, people might find it hard to have a real time interaction with the head of LinkShare or an executive at Google or Yahoo!. Here, they’re staffing their booths, ready to take your questions.
Monte: Definitely. Now, do you envision this at one point taking over what a traditional tradeshow is?
John: Well, you know, its funny. A lot of folks, when they come to the event they’re, like, this is really cool. I’m . . . you guys are going to take over the physical events and all the rest of it. And in fact, it’s not that at all. We are a compliment or a supplement, not a substitute. And the reason is, as big a fan of virtual events as I am, there’s no substitute, Monte, for when I met you and I shook your hand and I looked you in the eye and we went to dinner. And I’ll never, never be able to replace that. Uhm, ah, the deep nature of that type of interaction. Having said that, a virtual event’s a really nice extension because although the interactions are not as deep, you actually typically have more of them. So, I would think in your space (that being domains and webmasters, etc.) it’s really important to know a lot of people and to sort of keep those relationships alive, not only having, you know, three people you talk with really deeply. So in that sense, the event from a networking perspective has been an effective way to extend the value of the AdTECHs, SES’s. What’s interesting is that we actually have a number of physical tradeshows who are sponsors of ours. So AdTECH, Affiliate Summit, Internet Retailer, Direct Marketing Association, Shout.org – these guys all have large physical events and they were certainly concerned that maybe we were competitive. But when they actually sort of looked under the covers, they saw not only weren’t we competitive but we could help them. And as a result, they’re sponsors of our show.
Monte: That’s great. That’s great. So, give me an idea or give the audience an idea, when the next show is and how much it costs to attend.
John: Absolutely. So the next event is October 24th through 26th; that’s Tuesday through Thursday (just a couple weeks away). It’s completely free to attend. People just need to go to www.EcomXpo and register for free. They’ll get a reminder email right before the event. The show is open 24 hours for those three days. So if folks have a day job and they want to look at it at night, etc., they can. We also have an educational archive – we call it EcomXpo University – which is about 175 presentations from our previous events that are archived and available for a small fee. So day or night during those three days, and even afterwards, people can check it out.
Monte: That’s great. That’s great. Well, anything else you’d like to add about the show itself or anything that we should be aware of?
John: Uhm, no, other than, again, to have Moniker back as an exhibitor and to have WebMasterRadio, such a very important sponsor of ours. They’re going to give us almost 3 days of programming, streaming live all the interactive Q&A from the presentations. I’m just glad to know you guys; I appreciate the opportunity to spread the word on your great radio station.
Monte: Well, thank you very much. And I’m sure the listening audience will be interested in attending, especially since its free. They can get a lot of the show. And as a repeat exhibitor, we definitely found it worthwhile being there interacting with other exhibitors and also with our customers. So, it’s a great idea. It’s a way for you to be at your office leisurely at your desk or at your house, sitting in your underwear even and go visiting a tradeshow and networking with everybody and doing business.
John: Monte, thanks so much for the opportunity.
Monte: Yeah, thank you, John. And I look forward to seeing you at the next convention, also.
John: Virtually and . . . will you be at AdTECH in New York, by the way?
Monte: I am not going to be at AdTECH. I was supposed to be but we’re just getting done with this live, huge domain auction at TRAFFIC and I’m going to be busy processing all the domain sales. But I will be attending WebMaster World and the Gaming Summit that’s going on at the same time in Las Vegas. Will you be at WebMaster World?
John: I will see you there and so much great luck with your auction. I’ve been hearing a lot about it and I wish you the best of luck with that.
Monte: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Take care, John.
John: Bye-bye.
Monte: Okay, take care. Okay, just another reminder for folks. The live domain auction is going to be broadcasted live from WebMasterRadio.fm on a special Domain Masters edition. We are also going to broadcast live Domain Masters radio show on Wednesday of TRAFFIC, which is going to be the 25th, I think. And we’ll have some exciting interviews and some things to reveal about the conference. The conference is going to be huge. It’s at the Diplomat Hotel, one of the Top 5 hotels in the entire country and its located in Hollywood, Florida in between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. Those that are wanting to attend can get more information about the show or the auction can visit www.TargetedTraffic.com or just email me (monte@moniker.com) or anybody at sales@moniker.com. If you want to submit names for the traffic auction, our cut-off date will be next Wednesday, which is the 18th and then we’re going to start sorting through the tens of thousands of domain names, getting down to a final list – names like Auction.com, DSL.com, HomeRun.com, HMO.com, FreeSongs.com – all available for sale at this auction. And its just going to be a kick-ass event and we’re really fired up and excited and working our asses off getting the list ready and getting ready for the event. With that said, I want everybody to have a great week. We’ll be on live next week with another great Domain Masters show. As a matter of fact, we’ll have Howard Neu and Rick Schwartz, the Traffic . . . Targeted Traffic forum and TRAFFIC East and West coordinators and the ones that have started this concept of domainers getting together and networking. We’ll have them live on the show next week, talk about the whole event, what’s going to be different about this event versus the other ones, talk about the upcoming conferences that they’re going to have and then we’ll go from there. With that, I’d like everyone to be the master of their domain. I’ll see you next week, live, on Domain Masters. Take care.
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