Domain Masters Radio Show

Domainer Ron Jackson

Domainer Ron Jackson
01/10/2007 Monte Cahn
Ron Jackson is the Editor and Publisher of DN Journal, the premier trade publication in the domain industry. After majoring in broadcast journalism, Ron began his career as a radio news director at a small station in Ohio. Within a couple of years, he moved on to television as a news reporter with an ABC TV affiliate in Florida. Two years after arriving there, Ron became the stations Sports Director when the previous Sports Director moved on to a bigger market. He later moved on to a Top 20 market himself, doing sports for the CBS TV station in Tampa.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another great week of Domain Masters. I’m Monte Cahn, your host. And tonight we are going to talk with Ron Jackson from DNJournal. As most of you know, Ron’s a frequent contributor to Domain Masters throughout the year, but we haven’t had him on in awhile and on DNJournal this year, or this week, is Ron’s famous recap of 2006 and what’s to come in 2007, where talks to several of the industry experts, about 14 – 15 total; I contributed to that article. And Ron has such a great perspective of the domain industry and the business because he talks to so many folks and covers so many of the industry conferences. And so we’re going to really talk about in great detail what’s been going on in 2006, some of the drastic trends and movements in our industry and what everybody’s looking forward to in 2007 and it should be an interesting dialogue.

We’re also going to briefly cover the upcoming, exciting Internext Domain Auction that is scheduled for the 17th of January. We’re just about through the final list and we’ll have it posted on our marketplace site and also at the Internext site, the AVM site, and let everyone know what the final list of about 3,000 domain names is going to look like and out of that 3,000 domain list will come the Top 300, which we’ll be auctioning off live, in front of the very first adult conference and should be a fun show. We have Joe Lingbaum, our famous auctioneer from the October auction, where we sold $5.5 million worth of domain names, attending that and conducting the auction along with me.

With that said, we’ll do a short commercial break and be back on with Ron Jackson from DNJournal. Stay tuned.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello; welcome back to Domain Masters. And welcome back to the show. As mentioned earlier – and my only guest tonight – is Ron Jackson, the editor and chief and publisher of DNJournal.com. This is the premier trade publication in the domain industry. After majoring in broadcasting journalism, Ron began his career as a radio news director at a small station in Ohio and within a couple years he moved onto television and news reporting with ABC TV affiliate in Florida. Since then he’s been involved in several TV and radio broadcasting career opportunities, and started the very first domain-focused journal for the Internet folks and started DNJournal.com and is also a domainer himself. And he covers the industry and helps promote the positive things that are going on in our industry and not only is he a good friend, but a great guest. And welcome to the show, Mr. Ron Jackson.

Ron: Thank you, Monte. It’s great to get back with you again. Some time’s passed, so we’ll have a lot to talk about tonight.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And one of the great things about tonight’s conversation is that it’s right after your recap of what happened in 2006, which you featured on the DNJournal site. And it’s a very interesting and very educational read for those of you who have not read it yet. If you have not read it, please go to DNJournal.com and look at the 2006 recap and the 2007 forecast from all the top experts and domain industry folks and it’s a very interesting read. Why don’t we pick through that a little bit and talk about the several experts that you’ve chosen to contribute and why you chose them and kind of what you’ve gotten out of that from a perspective standpoint.

Ron: Well, to set the stage for you, this is the third year that we did that. We’ve been doing it each January. And you know, honestly, from my days back in radio and television, I always hated the “year in review” things that the media did. We always did them but the only reason that we did them was because we wanted to fill time during the holidays, because you know, people, most of the staff was off, taking a long Christmas break, it would be natural for the TV stations and radio stations and newspapers to dig out stuff and talk about what happened the year before, and I always found that so boring because I thought if you’d paid any attention at all to what was going on in the world, you already knew what happned. So it was really kind of transparent that it was just a rehashing. So, initially, when I started DNJournal, I was thinking, no, I wouldn’t do that. But I took a different approach to it. And that was that rather than just recite what happened, that everyone already knew about in the past year, we would get experts to focus in on specific events or trends that occurred in the year and tell us what that meant to the industry today; how it changed how business was going to go forward. So that’s how we approach the look back at the previous year in these articles that we do and then of course, we also had them forecast what they see coming. So as I mentioned, we’ve done that with a different cast of characters each year that we’ve done it but we also bring a lot of the same people back because they have their hands in so many different pies and such a great understanding . . . and have been in it for such a long time, as you have; I think you’ve been in it every single year that we’ve done it and so have a few others. But the group that we have this year, I’m really happy with. We have . . . there are in the industry now, that’s mentioned at the start of that story, four what I would call “domain conglomerates” that are now doing more than $100 million worth of annual business. And we had representatives from three of the four – Bob Martin from iREIT; Paul Stifferous from Demand Media; and Andy Smith Marchex. And the only reason we didn’t have a representative from Main Media (which is the other one) because their CEO, Jeff Bennett, his father, unfortunately passed away last week just before our deadline, and as a result Jeff had to bow out, or we would have had representatives from all four of those in there.

Monte: Right, right.

Ron: Of course, from other multiple service companies, like Seavast, you were there; Tim Shumaker and Mab Bentley from Sedo are represented – of course they’re both involved in both the aftermarket and PPC industries. We have Ammar Kubba from TrafficZ and Ron Sheridan from Domain Sponsor, also representing PPC. We also have some of the largest portfolio owners in the world – Frank Shilling from Name Administration is in there, a guy who has often been referred to as the most successful domainer in the world today; Roy Messar, who just sold Vodka.com for $3 million; Rick Schwartz is in, who’s known to a lot of people now as the co-founder of the TRAFFIC conferences but Rick also has a great portfolio of his own. And we have some of the leading attorneys: Larry Goldberger from Esquire.com; Paul Keating from [inaudible] Ltd. And financing, we have Robert DelFano from Domain Capital talking about how that’s changing the industry. Representing the trade shows: Howard Neu is featured in the article talking about where TRAFFIC’s been, where they’re going to go in 2007; and in the registration field, we’ve got Freddy Shywack, the vice president of Euro DNS who took his time to talk a lot about the ccTLD field is starting to break out. So, you can tell from that list that it really is an industry all-star line up and I think if people take the time they’ll get a great understanding of where we’ve been the past twelve months and where we’re going to go from this group that we have.

Monte: Right. Definitely. And you’ve covered a lot of events in 2006 and there’s been a lot of breaking news and industry trends. What do you think stands out, just based on what everybody’s talking about? But what do you think stands out as the top 2 or 3 things that have really affected change in 2006 thus far?

Ron: Well, I think the overriding theme by far in this piece was consolidation and the industry. And actually, the second straight year that was the case. The first predictions that was coming was in last year’s article and we saw so much of that this past year. We had a major marketplace Afternic being purchased by Main Media; major registrars like e-Nom and BulkRegister went to Demand Media. Some PPC companies – Moniker was involved in a major merger, of course, that has made you a multi-service company. And everyone in this article is predicting we’re going to see more of that, because you have some extremely well-capitalized companies in this space now, and the race is really on to kind of reach the top of the mountain, so that’s definitely the by-word.

Monte: Right.

Ron: The other thing I would say is that everyone talked about is just a general sense of optimism; we’re continuing to see rising prices in the aftermarket. The fourth quarter was just unbelievable. That momentum just seems to just accelerate right through the holidays and I think that bodes very well for the upcoming year.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. And as much as consolidation that I’m seeing, I’m seeing also as much or even more, new players, new companies, new concepts getting into the business and you see, uhm, usually you see consolidation when the market is either at its very early stages or when it’s reached its maturity. In this case, I guess you could say we’re in uhm, we’re in our very early stages, but what’s unique about this industry is that its growing so fast as the same time it’s consolidating that there’s so many new offerings and new people getting in. The last TRAFFIC conference, for example, I think one third of the folks that attended where actually newbies or their first time, you know, first time attendees. Is that so?

Ron: That’s true. And actually, this particular article, Rick Schwartz is the last person we feature in this piece, and he talks at length about that. He said he has never seen anything like it in all the time that he’s been in this business. And of course, he has a really close look at that wave of new people coming because he’s seeing now pre-registrations for the TRAFFIC West Conference that’s coming up in Las Vegas in March and he says they’re getting flooded by new people that are pouring in. And he’s estimating that the number of people that are working in some capacity in the business could multiply ten-fold over the next year or two. It’s like a magnet, or bees being drawn to honey. So the growth is phenomenal. He talked in that article about how there are good things about that and there can be bad things about it as well, because anytime you have a situation where an industry is growing as fast as we are and there’s a lot of money there, you’re also going to draw in people who are going to try to use that market get-rich-quick schemes to gullible people and that sort of thing, so he has some concerns that it could worsen an image problem for the domain industry when that sort of, you know, carpet-bagger, whatever you want to call them, comes in. That’s something we’ll have to be on guard for. At the same time, of course, the new money continues to fuel rising prices and a spill over into areas beyond the dot com that can really spread a lot of health and continued growth through the business.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. And it’s always good to see some growth and some consolidation and some companies merging with others and also some investment capital dollars come into the industry, because it means it has legs and like we’ve always said, the more money that’s coming in from the outside, even if its competitive, is actually good, because its validating what we’re doing and what we started, you know, 10 years ago to be something that we believed in as a future business for all of us. And, you know, as you know, even in your own business, you’ve been the premier online media venue to report the news and report the daily sales and you know, there’s popularity in domain wire and I understand there’s a new hardcopy magazine that’s due out soon and I think overall this is really going to bolster education and of course, the numerous articles that are now being reported. Even some of the negative articles that are related to the industry are actually helping industry out, the click-fraud artitcles and they’re mentioning both positive and negative sides. That had to be really eye-opening to you as a journalist and also having one of the only domain media venues in our industry, to see some more coverage of our industry and also some of the new entries into the market to help get domainers and outside folks, you know, interested in our industry. What do you have to say about all that?

Ron: Well, I think that’s one of the very best signs of just remarkable growth in the business. Because, when I came in and actually started DNJournal with the idea that it would just be kind of a part time hobby publication, because it was such a niche industry. There weren’t more than a few hundred people really involved in it at that time and now, here we are four years after I started and we’re getting our whole entire media building up around this industry. You had mentioned the hardcover magazine, Jerry Nolte, who’s been in the business a long time getting ready to put that out. They’re planning to do a bi-monthly. Andrew Alleman’s doing a great job with DomainNameWire. There’s another, DomainNews.com. But it’s just phenomenal. And I’m kinda more at home in that because I came out of traditional media, working, my last station was in Tampa and we had like six TV stations that were all out there getting the local news every day and you had dozens of radio stations and newspapers and its just a sign that we’re thriving in great lives and the more outlets there are out there, who are putting the information out there, making it more accessible to mainstream, the faster the business the is going to grow. And I can tell you from having done it myself for four years, there is no way that any single entity can cover it all. Because there are stories everywhere, and news is breaking out everywhere; so it really is a healthy sign, in my view.

Monte: Yeah, definitely, definitely. And, uh, uhm, let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about, you know, some of the major domain sales that occurred in 2006 and what was different about this year versus last year and where you see that going in a little bit. What came across, you know, from your domain sales reporting standpoint, that stood out this year that made things different than 2005?

Ron: Well, there were quite a few more sales; the market has grown a great deal. We actually we just closed out the last year and I haven’t looked, haven’t had a chance even yet to look, ah, crunch all of the numbers but I did, at the TRAFFIC East Conference in October, in preparation for talking a few minutes there about the market, I had kind of done a quick tally of 5-figure sales and at that point, when we still had a couple of months to go, we were already about 40% higher in the number of sales that had occurred at that level and really closed phenomenally in the fourth quarter. I just could not believe . . . I kept waiting for that kind of holiday lull to come, when people are out of the office and you know, gone for long holiday stretches and it didn’t slow down at all. In fact, we had a couple of the biggest sales there of the year there in the fourth quarter, with Vodka.com and Cameras.com going for one-and-a-half million dollars. And so, it’s just like someone poured, like, a few gallons of gasoline on a charcoal grill; and again, that’s a sign of all the new investment dollars that are coming into the space. We’re getting closer and closer to that situation where you have investors who know nothing about the space but are, you know, hearing enough about it and coming to understand it enough to view it as a viable option, just like they would buy bonds or buy stocks or buy anything else.

Monte: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, you’re starting to definitely see a shift in investment strategy for both individual investors and individual domainers to major corporations, entities and [inaudible] to get domain portfolios or buy payment streams, and of course the popularity of domain financing is validation that domain financing can work, like its working in the mortgage industry. I’ve been involved in a hundred different transactions with domain capital, myself, or my company has with escrow and sales parts of those particular transactions and making sure that the prices being loaned are valid and acceptable in the marketplace and I’m really starting to see something that’s going to be very strong for the future, that’s for sure.

Ron: Well, that, the guys from Domain Capital, Robert Alfona and Greg Freeman where brilliant to step into this business when they did. They recognized an opportunity that no one else saw. And the way they were able to work is these guys are really smart businessmen. They had made their own fortunes before so they knew exactly what they were doing, and they had that capital there where they could. Still everyone, you know, there were people on the outside that thought they were taking a crazy list but right now, they remain pretty much the only game in town. It’s working out well for them; it’s bringing liquidity to the market and enabling more deals to be done. And they’re going to end up, you know, being giants again in this field. I love seeing that sort of thing happen, where entrepreneurs come in, recognize an opportunity and turn it into something and there’s just so many people that have been able to do that sort of thing in the business.

Monte: Yeah, definitely, definitely. Uhm, some of the other extensions played out very strong in 2006, also. Even our live auctions, there was a good degree of success and the cc . . . not the ccTLDs, although they did very good also through some of the sales that Sedo and some of the players that are more international did, but dot info and dot us and dot biz and a lot of those extensions; and of course, we had wonderful success at our live auction with dot mobi. What’s your take on all that and how it’s affecting the industry, ah, going forward?

Ron: Well, again, I think it’s a sign of a broadening of the industry. Dot com is a phenomenal brand and I don’t think we’re ever going to see anything that’s ever going to approach that. And it’s going to remain the gold standard. But there’s such a need for memorable domain names and there’s so many different levels of the market now where you have the smallest mom and pop businesses that want a memorable name. You’ve got people who want a name just to use for their email address. The day is coming where everyone is going to have a domain name for one purpose or another. So I think that there is . . . that’s opening the door for a lot of these other extensions and creating some demand there too. And even though it won’t be a market like the dot come market, it’ll nevertheless be a market and one that can be quite profitable for the people who play in it. I’ve always been someone who’s favored growth and promotion of all the extensions, because I think its better for the health of everyone involved in the industry. It’s better for registrars, they have more different products to sell; it’s better for the aftermarket, it creates more interest there; and what we’ve learned is that these extensions have no affect whatsoever on the dot com sales. So its really the best of all possible worlds. The Com stays strong and that’s the thing that people strive for. They like to have their keyword in that. But they may start with that keyword in, let’s say, a dot info or a dot us or whatever; and so those extensions are creating, or provide an opportunity, particularly for newcomers coming in to find a niche for themselves. And we’re seeing people making money in all these different fields. The IDNs are a real interesting area that I think has got great potential. Ron Sheridan from Domain Sponsor mentioned it in the article as an area that could really enjoy a breakout in 2007 now that Microsoft has a new browser out . . .

Monte: Yeah, yeah, definitely. In fact, I just completed a $35,000 domain IDN sale. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to report it and tell you what it is, but it’s probably the IDN being paid for sure. It’s a great name but I’m definitely seeing a great deal of popularity in the IDN offering for sure and we’re seeing a lot of registrations and transfers into Moniker as a result of launching our new IDN tool. So I know that that’s going to have a lot of legs and it’s a way to communication internationally to everyone else.

Ron: Well, I’m a big believer in common sense. And to me, it’s a very simple question: If you speak a different language than English, why would you prefer to surf them? Now, I’m not up on all the technical hurdles that need to be gotten over. I understand there may be a few of those. But you know it’s going to be done. So it’s just common sense to me that there’s going to be a lot of growth there. The mobis have been a big success story too. We’ll be reporting one in our next sales column Tuesday that will be the second largest dot mobi sale every reported that was just completed, and that will be behind only Flowers.mobi at $200,000. I’ll wait unitl our Tuesday night column to reveal the name but its well into six figures . . .

Monte: Great!

Ron: And we had one this past week that was on our mainstream or call our all extension Top 20 – Gamble.mobi went for $33,000 this past week. In this current article, uhm, Freddie Shywack, who’s in Europe with Euro DNS talked a lot about the dot eu. He even felt that, from their standpoint over there, that was the most significant event of 2006 and they saw a lot of big sales there. He’s kind of high on the .asia, which is supposed to be coming along this spring. There was some good news for the .us people that just came out last week. Some major corporations have adopted, I think the biggest was the Discover Credit Card, which everyone knows, they had been owned by Morgan Stanley, who spun that unit off into a company of its own and they’ve set up shop on Discover.us, which is a huge boost now because you’ll be seeing that advertising all over the place. BenQ, who’s a big maker of LCD Monitors and projectors, in fact I’ve got BenQ 19” monitor on my desk here, just opened their U.S. site. They’re a global corporation but they’re marketing in the U.S. on BenQ.us. And someone who was just in Las Vegas told me that they’re . . . all the taxis in Las Vegas have the BenQ.us URL on it. And Nestle just moved their Pure Life Water site to Nestle-PureLife.us. So, you know, there are more and more signs that this is moving out of the mom and pop stage into some corporation adoption and that’s the sort of thing that gets the national advertising out there and increases recognition. So, it doesn’t matter what front you look on, I’m just seeing, like, you know, growth in every direction.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. And we’re kind of excited about next week because the adult community is really very mobile ready as well and the .mobi names are happening to get a lot of interest because of its mobile application and we have a lot of interest in the domain names that are of the .mobi extensions, so it should be interesting to see if we can get any good sales out of that. But I think what happened at TRAFFIC and then since has generated so much interest in the dot mobi platform that it’s built a higher foundation and value just automatically out of the gate due to that auction, then what would normally be the start of any other extension, just as a result of that, you know, just to have some key names go for six figures at an event like that, and then high five-figures just out of the gate for the very first time as they’re being offered to the entire, you know, industry is pretty incredible.

Ron: It was phenomenal. I was there when it happened and I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, like a lot of people in the room, my jaw just dropped. It’s going to be really interesting. I just got Sedo’s newsletter today and they have signed an agreement with the .mobi registry to be . . . ah, to auction off 58 more of these reserved names, starting on Valentine’s Day, February 14th and they’ve got some killers in that group: Music.mobi, which is such a natural; and Photos.mobi. So I’ll be very curious to see in that open auction if those prices approach Flowers.mobi, because those names are on that kind of a par.

Monte: Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, Ron, let’s do a quick break and then come back and talk a little bit about what’s to come in 2007, since we covered 2006. And we’ll touch more base on the article and some of the stuff in the rumor mill and what’s going on and then wrap things up. How about that?

Ron: Sounds good.

Monte: Okay. Stay tuned, we’ll be back on with Domain Masters and Ron Jackson from DNJournal in just a couple minutes.

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Monte: Hello, folks, welcome back to Domain Masters and my guest, Ron Jackson, from DNJournal. We’re just recapping what a great year 2006 was and some of the big industry news making events that helped make the domain industry strong and vibrant and some of the news related and industry breaking records for domain sales and so on. Now we’re going to shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about 2007 and then I know, Ron, you wanted to ask me a few questions as well, so, give me a scope, based off of everybody, compiling everybody’s opinions of the 15 domain experts your had on for 2006 recap, what do you get a sense of how we’re going to do in 2007?

Ron: The general consensus across the board is that it’ll be another very big year. Having said that, when things have gone so well, and we’ve been in a strong bull market for two or three years, you know, you start looking around for signs of a slow down or something that could upset the apple cart; that’s just prudent when you’re investing a lot of money in a certain space. Aside from the general sense of optimism, some of the areas that some of our experts pointed at that people need to be aware of: one in particular was the situation with trademark-sensitive domains, which was talked about specifically by Ari Golderberger and Paul Keating in our article. With this boom in the domain market, a lot of people have made money from typo domains for many years. But with the boom, there is coming a recognition from those trademark owners that those names have value and that traffic could be and should be coming, you know, directly to their site. So this is triggering a lot more lawsuits, a lot more UDRP procedures and its getting much more dangerous to dabble in that area, which, you know, is a gray area at best and black at worst; you could get into some really hot water quickly, so you really need to clean up portfolios and re-evaluate where you are if you have anything in that area, because its not something that people are not going to be able to skate by on in the future. Another big danger that was cited and one that I’m probably more concerned about than anything else, is this shift within ICANN where they seem to have made a marriage with the registries and they’ve handed over these one-sided contracts to the registries that give them huge price increases. They would have given them the ability to do variable pricing and charge anything they have wanted to charge if it weren’t for a huge outroar from the domain registrant community. But I used to look at ICANN as kind of this benign organization that governed domain names that we didn’t have to pay too much attention to but that whole situation shifted this past year and we realized that’s no longer the case. They’re going to have to be watched very carefully so that all these hard-earned gains that people have made investments over the last decade aren’t lost. And, I mean, this is, you know, the registries have a lot of money, lobbies in Washington and so on, and the only way we’re going to be on an even playing field is we have equal fire power. And very fortunately there’s an organization that’s just been founded called the Internet Commerce Association that we also write about in the article that some of the biggest players have gotten behind and put funding into. They already have a full time legal counsel in Washington, DC on staff, an attorney, Thor Corwin. They’re getting ready to hire an executive director and they’ll have a representative representing domain owners at all of the ICANN meetings and we’ll let them know that we’re watching very carefully to keep them from stepping beyond their mandate and taking away assets or gains that don’t rightfully belong to them. So I would say those are the two key concerns. But everything else pretty much tilts back to the positive side, which is understandable when look at just the vast flood of advertising money that’s leaving traditional media and coming online because naturally the ad dollars follow eyeballs and one of the biggest manifestations of that this there was that in the total sales volume, retail sales volume on the Internet, it jumped 26% this year, while you’re brick and mortar retail just stayed flat. I mean, it’s just so obvious that, you know, there’s no way around it. We’re in the center, at the heart, of the growth in commerce and the world today.

Monte: Yeah, definitely. And another interesting study that came out which is part of my presentations now, is the new Website Story study that came out just a few months’ back – I don’t know if you remember the Website Story study where it showed how many people actually typed in a URL into the browser as opposed to going to a search engine to get to their ultimate destination. And back in 2003 when they did the first study, it showed that 47% of folks typed in where they wanted to go directly into the browser instead of going to a search engine. So you would think with the popularity of Google and Yahoo! and search engines in general, that more and more people would be using search engines to get where they wanted to go but in fact, the study showed that more than 70% of folks that typed in domain names directly into the URL line to get to their ultimate destination. Which of course, enhances the value of domain names and even typo domain names, whether its, ah, whether its generic typos or whether they’re brand typos. But what’s happening is the general population educated in the Internet or not educated are going to their browser first, typing in and assuming they’re going to get to the site they want to go. And sometimes they mistype or whatever. Now, that also includes people typing in Amazon and eBay and CNN and so forth; but also, more generic things like Autos.com or StockWatch or stuff like that, that they may not know its there but hey, there’s something there that they may want to do.

Ron: It’s a well documented behavior and I don’t see anything that would really change that and there’s actually so much simplicity in that. You can put a term in a search engine and you’re going to get all these results to wade through but in the mind of some surfers, if they stick Autos.com in the URL, they’re going to get one result and you know, more often than not, they will get something relevant, even if it’s a landing page, its going to have highly targeted links. They’re going to take them on to what they’re interested in seeing. So, there’s a huge amount of value in that and that’s being recognized now.

Monte: Right, right. And then of course, I believe in 2007 what’s going to be happening here is there’s about, what? Two million people that get on every 35 or 40 days, they say, new people onto the Internet and of course, our children are getting onto the Web earlier. They’re teaching web design and web development and coding and stuff in elementary and middle school now. I don’t think I touched the computer until I was 26 and I certainly wasn’t really web-enabled until I was in my 30’s. And now they’re doing it at five and six years old; and then of course high school classes and curriculum are designed around being Internet educated and doing business on the Internet. And so what you’re going to find is our industry is going to continue to explode because we’re all going to need unique identities and be able to service those folks that are getting online and then you have the international communities that have been restricted from even being online now getting online in the masses, like in India and China and other large growing international communities and vibrant, you know, financial communities. And its just going to be, uhm, it’s going to have a lot, a lot of legs going forward.

Ron: Well, yeah. I think a lot of people, with the success we’ve had in recent years, are saying, wow, are we getting near the top? Are we going to run out of fuel? But you look at the figures, the thing that’s fueling it all, of course, is the advertising dollars coming in. But still, despite the spectacular growth and online, we’re still sitting at single digits as far as our share of the entire ad budget, globally. The amount of growth that’s still there to be had is phenomenal. So, I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of the cycle. I think it’s going to run many, many more years.

Monte: Yeah, yeah. For sure. And the online advertising community is definitely getting it, obviously. I mean, we’re having first-time presentations on the domain industry and its value to their particular space. You know, I’ve spoken at, you know, SES; I know Dan Warner has spoken at Ad Tech. And I speak at WebmasterWorld and I’m speaking for the first time at the Affiliate Summit and it’s their first introduction to their community on how valuable domain names are to affiliate sites and micro sites and protecting their brands and all that stuff. And so, as more and more people get educated, obviously, it’s going to help increase and solidify our industry and get a lot more people and educated people into the business of domaining that have been very successful with individual website and micro site and affiliate type, you know, construction and success. That’s one of the reasons why we spend some time with the adult industries, because they are the kings at customer acquisition and overcoming challenges and rules and regulations and staying and complying within those rules and regulations and still acquiring customers and making money, and a lot of their techniques and their foundation education has helped every domainer and every website developer be successful. As a matter of fact, Amazon and eBay use many of the techniques that were originally designed for the adult industry to acquire customers. And so when more and more of this happens, uhm, we’re going to have a lot more solid foundation and obviously a lot more revenue and profit in the industry, and a lot more people are going to be successful at it.

Ron: I think another thing that’s really exciting and that is an opportunity that is almost mind boggling to think about – we think today in terms of PPC but something so many of the experts talked about, and they think 2007 is the year we’re going see a lot of this, which is an evolution beyond simply a parked page where you have elements in there of particularly lead generation, which is talked a lot about. So instead of getting a dime for click, you might get $30 from a completed sale, which comes from the single click. And more things where relevant content is plugged. I know it’s been talked about for a long time but we’re actually seeing these automated sites developed. Marchex is very big on that. They bought a content company that is filling their sites with relevant content. But Frank Schilling talked a lot about it, Ari Goldberger did as well about new business models for the landing page that’s going to make each page generate so much more revenue than it does today, as these things come into play. Rick Schwartz talked recently about something he’s working on. There was another individual that was working on something they planned to announce that does this kind of thing where it melds a lot of different elements together. I think that could be one of the most exciting things we’ll see in 2007 for every domain owner.

Monte: Yeah, yeah; for sure. And, you know, every industry withstands a couple setbacks and then readjustments and then to get stronger and move forward, you know. A lot of people question the whole entire industry when the dot com boom and bust occurred. But really what it did, for those of us who made it through all that stuff, it made us stronger and had us learn a lot about our businesses and the type of customers we need to retain and target so that you can be successful and withstand any kind of adjustment in the industry and I think what will happen is there’ll be some adjustments; there’ll be some changes and click fraud and other things, due to the article coming out. And then what will happen is that quality of traffic will continue to increase and PPC revenue will continue to increase and as I predicted, or as I shared with you on my article-on your article on your site, I do believe that there’s going to be conversions of what’s happening at TRAFFIC Conferences, which is the gathering of domain owners, which are assimilating to the raw property owner, you know, the bare land property owner that puts up billboards on their property to make money while they’re deciding what to do with it, whether they’re going to build a hotel or some kind of housing development or some kind of retail store. That’s kind of what the current domainer is doing now, is they’re putting up billboard advertisements using PPC; then you have Webmaster World community, which are the contractors and the developers that are building websites, doing customer acquisition, so on and so forth. And then you have SES, which is search engine strategies, which is enhancing customer acquisition and top search engine placement and being better markers online, and being more successful at that. And then you have the Affiliate Summit, which are helping to multiply your revenue streams by having very successful affiliate programs and customer acquisition programs on your sites and conglomeration with, you know, Google Adsense and Yahoo! advertisements and all that stuff. And so people are now starting to cross over to these shows and get educated and I think its going to be very, very good for the industry.

Ron: Well, you know a bit more about that than anyone because you go to all of them. You’re the only professional I know in the industry that hits every single one of these things that a lot of domainers aren’t even thinking about yet. So you’ve got a window into that, that even, you know, I follow the business a lot but don’t really even know what’s going off in some of these ancillary areas that are all coming together. So, I know you have to be excited about that because you have a front row seat on it.

M; Yeah, well, not only are we excited because we have a front row seat, but we spend a lot of time talking to the show coordinators and letting them know how important it is to educate their audience about domains and that’s why we’re getting on the speaking docket to help the whole industry out, so that not only the educated . . . I mean, for example, the folks at, you know, let’s just pick a couple of the niches – for instance, the adult industry; they’ve been probably the most successful domainers with their individual brands on acquiring customers and you know, and you know, on their particular sites. But they have thousands of domains, you know, and many of the domains that are not live sites, just sitting around not doing anything. They’re not even using PPC. So to educate them on that functionality and that usage of their unused domain names is really going to help their business out and it’s going to help the overall domain community. The same with the affiliate guys. They have tons of domains sitting around that aren’t on their affiliate sites waiting to be developed and they could be sitting them in baseline foundation programs that will help increase the value of their domain names and maybe they’ll find that one of the domain names sitting parked is actually more valuable than one of the ones that they have, you know, live acquiring customers and supplying information to the customers. And so when you go to all these shows and you see what’s happening on the online business in general, you’re able to package it all together and speak to those folks and educate them better and then you acquire those customers; you know, that’s why we’re there, obviously, as a registrar and also as a domain aftermarket player, is to acquire all those niche, educated, successful business customers that have portfolios of domain names that may not be using them to the best of their potentials. So, I’m learning a lot by going and our staff is, and luckily we’re able to educate the community and what happens is, you know, if you’re a GoDaddy customer, they buy more names at GoDaddy sometimes and sometimes they come over to Moniker or whatever; but the good news is they’re investing more into the business. And that’s what’s really important.

Ron: Right. And I think this next TRAFFIC show in March is going to be kind of the first one that’s going to bring two different elements that have always been separate at their own conferences together. I know their theme is going to be “Development of Domains” and try to make an effort to introduce developers to domain owners, so perhaps they can partner, and do new things with their site and unlock value from them. And I’m sure we’ll see more of that cross-pollination that you’re seeing as you go to these different shows where all these elements will congregate and deal some really powerhouse new businesses for the next decade.

Monte: Yeah, I actually talked to Rick and Howard about piggybacking; the possibility of piggybacking a TRAFFIC conference with a WebMaster World Conference, because, heck, you know, some of the domainers, like Sean Pilfold, who’s actually on the forum and on the chat board right now, was at Webmaster World for his first time and you know, they were looking for specific, you know, specific guys to help them develop some of the portfolios or some of the domain names that they spent a lot money on at the last auction to make them successful. And that’s the right strategy, is to diversify the investment; not just have a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand domains sitting around. But take a couple strategies and diversify the investment portfolio and develop them; let some stay parked; let some become full websites with full offerings; maybe get them on the affiliate networks or micro site strategy where you can, you know, reap the rewards of partial income or revenue shares or customer acquisition income versus, you know, advertising PPC click through revenue. And what happens is you’ll find that some domains will just perform better by being PPC pages than developing a full fledged website that’s very focused and targeted and niched. And the only way that you can determine all that is to put your foot in a couple different puddles and find out what works best.

Ron: Right, exactly.

Monte: Definitely. Definitely. Uhm, anything else you have to share or [inaudible] . . .

Ron: I’m just making one other point. I made a note here and it was in the article that I thought it was . . . I got kind of a kick out of. Paul Stahura, from Demand Media, who’s early in the article, was talking about he thought .TV could be a hit this year. You know, that’s kind of been hanging around forever and had never really taken off. That’s actually the Tuvalu country code that people have always envisioned would be, maybe, become successful some day on the Web as a video format. Well, now that YouTube became so big last year, that kind of gave that a little bit of emphasis. And Paul’s kind of taken that as his pick hit. Now, it’s true that he’s got a vested interest because eNom has taken over management of the .tv’s under a deal they did with Verisign; but at the same time, you’ve, uhm, they’re popping up on different television stations using them, so there may be something to it. But the reason I got a kick out of it was if you were at the – and you were at the TRAFFIC Conference in Hollywood, Florida in October, when Tom Gardner of the Motley Fool was the keynote speaker and I was at the front table with Tom and he told me, “When I get up here I want to do something . . . I want to make a prediction that’ll really kind of catch people off guard;” because he didn’t know a lot about the domain business but he kind of studied up on it for his speech and he told me, “I’m going to predict that .tv is going to be the big thing in 2007.” And I looked at him and said, “Gosh, Tom, I don’t know if you want to do that. That’s not going to go over real well here.” Because at that time, there really still wasn’t much happening. But he went ahead and did it, and I mean, when he made that prediction at the end of his speech, there was dead silence in that hall with about 500 people, because they’re going, man, this guy could not be further off base. And, but now, here we’re what? Only two or three months later and now you’ve got, ah, eNom has cut that deal; you’re got people like Stahuras saying it could be the big thing. And video is becoming a big thing. I mean, the jury’s still out. We don’t know yet. But it’s just kind of a sign of how quickly things can turn in this industry. And it’s something I really love about it. You can never be bored here because you don’t know what the landscapes going to look like 3 months later. But all of a sudden, you’ve got something that looked like an also-ran, maybe it’s going to go somewhere.

Monte: Yeah, well, it is . . . I was at the table with you and he was like, yeah, YouTube is going to spark up, you know, video on .tv . . . I guess the ultimate prediction, which is probably true, is that your television will be a giant media center, which will include not only regular TV channels, your cable network channels, your satellite channels and of course, your Internet channels. And, uhm, as more and more entertainment type shows, scripts, blips, blurbs, you know, real time video shows get captured on the Web, you’ll be able to flip through channels, at, you know, whether its on, you know, not from your computer necessarily but in your media or entertainment room right on your television and so that’s why he, you know, he made that prediction and you know, all you need is a little, you know, a little idea like that and it can take off if enough people jump on it. I mean, you know? Look at what’s going on with .mobi and of course when .tv first launched, that was their whole scheme, is that it’s the television, you know, extension and you know, when it first launched, and I was there in the Ideal Lab office when they created the extension and partnered with the King of Tuvalu and worked that thing out, they were in their little cubbies; they were a little tiny, cubby – like six people all crammed in an open cubby next to the folks at Jewelry.com and I think, even Pets.com were right on the corner of their area. This is now back in 2000. You know, they really believed in that extension taking off and it did, you know, for awhile, until, you know, until the whole dot com crash. [laughs]

Ron: I think the big element now is that under eNom’s management field, they’ve slashed the registration price and set up a separate site at eNom.tv and I think they’re only charging 20 bucks or something; that’s something they needed to do. But, you know, it’s again, it’s going to be interesting. There’s just so many angles you can go off on. There’s so many opportunities. People – that’s the other question that always comes up, is this the only way I can make any money in that business. I mean, all these guys have done really well. But there’s just so many niches and so many opportunities, so I think the answer to that is, you know, definitely, yes, there’s opportunity there.

Monte: Yeah, for sure. Well, before we wrap up . . .

Ron: Your out of time before I got to ask you any questions.

Monte: Oh, well, shoot away. We’ve got a few more minutes.

Ron: I was going to start, like, from the beginning but we’re going to be too short of time to do that. So let me say this to kind of cut to the chase. Ah, I was going to go through your bio and all that but we did a cover story with you, one of our earlier ones at the end of 2003, so I’ll skip the archive stuff where you kind of, you know, grew up in Ohio and Cincinnati; I’m an Ohioan too, from Columbus; went across the river to U.K., University of Kentucky and had some business success before you got into domains. All that’s in that cover story which, if people go to our archive and then click “Cover Story Archive” it’s actually the very last entry on that page, and you can read all of Monte’s background and early business history in there. And also how you got into domains. I was going to talk a little bit about that tonight, but again let’s just go right to today. And one of the things I was really curious about is your live auction platform. You guys rolled that out in, first time was in October 2005 at TRAFFIC East when it was really an experimental thing and you learned so much from that and you know, you could just . . . it was so exciting just to be a part of something that never happened before. Then just a few months later, you’re at TRAFFIC West in Spring of 2006; you do $2 million worth of sales there. And then six months later, you’re at TRAFFIC East, you do over $5 million sales. I just wondered if when you guys came out with that idea, if you ever thought it would explode in the way that it has?

Monte: Well, when I . . . I thought of the concept and how we could take something that was more of a . . . you know, if you go to . . . if you attend a Christie’s or Sotheby’s auction (which I had before), you know, you’re looking at something that’s physical, something that may have some historic value, something that has intrinsic value or famous or one-of-a-kind item. And so I used some of that. You know, you’re not looking at a domain name because it’s not a physical entity; it’s a piece of intellectual property and obviously, it’s a piece of property that you can’t really see or touch but it is something that could be very valuable. But the commonality is that it’s something unique. And since the domain business was on a rise, I, you know, of course took a chance and you really talk to Rick and Howard and I said, hey, I have a great idea; I think this will really work. If you remember, that very first domain sales thing they did on the board was not that very . . . was not that successful; there was like $45,000 in sales and it was kind of . . . you know, for a first time event, I guess, it was okay. But I thought through it, you know, for a couple months and how you could make . . . bring a supply and demand market into a room and have some fun and create, uhm, you know, some excitement around buying and selling domain names, which is exactly what was going on in our sites and Sedo and Afternic, kind of remotely (and even eBay, you know, eBay was becoming popular). And so why not bring it live like you were in a top quality auction. So, I did think it was going to be successful. Uhm, I didn’t think . . . you know, my goal of the last auction was to be at about $3 million or $4 million and we hit $5 million and uhm, now this little niche, this auction that we’re going to do at the adult conference at Internext could be very, very big, but my goals are a little bit less than what our last TRAFFIC auction was because it’s the first time event in their particular conference and it’s a niche market. But I think the next TRAFFIC conference has the potential to being something, you know, between the $5 million and $10 million, if not greater. And of course we’re going to start introducing the concept of selling portfolios at that conference, like they’re being bought on the Web and get them out an advance so people can study them and make sure that they’re doing their homework on them prior to getting to the show, and we can start selling some portfolios of these things. So, I have some very high expectations of for the remaining, well, five auctions; but the four after Internext that will be occurring this year. And I think that it’s going to be very successful and its going . . . we’re going to get some corporate players into the room, like we did at the last conference. If you remember, the folks from Flowers.com were there; they didn’t get Flowers.mobi that they wanted ‘cause the price rose too high but there were a couple corporate folks in the room and I think there’s going to be a lot more in the room in Vegas.

Ron: Well, this is a totally different platform within the aftermarket that you’ve come out with. How do you see it in the future, against or in terms of how it stacks up against the traditional way that people guy in the aftermarket and drop services, or people list a name [inaudible]? Do you see it reaching a par? Or how do you see it fitting into the whole panoply of the aftermarket?

Monte: I actually think it’s going to help the entire aftermarket. I mean, if you go to a TRAFFIC conference or an Internext conference or whatever other conference we’re going to present this vehicle at in the future – and they have to be, you know, really planned out, you know. They’re a lot of work to put on because you’re wading through tons of submissions and you have to match up the quality of names. You know, I tell you a little bit of what we go through. You know we take, you know, this last . . . the TRAFFIC East conference we had close to 50,000 or 60,000 domains submitted for consideration. Only 300 make it to the live auction and another, at that event, we had 4,000 or 5,000 in the silent auction. So you’re literally tearing down lists of names and of course, trying not to offend anybody, but you’re taking down lists of names and trying to get it to a reasonable level, and letting other experts, obviously, the people attending the show to try to vote on what they’re interested in seeing, uhm, what they want to bid on. And then getting to a decent group of names that you think are going to sell. We sold 33% of the names presented in the live auction and in total we sold 400 names in the live and silent auction; so it was a huge success in terms of number of names. I think that we set new records and you set new average sales for certain quality of names in different industries, it helps the entire aftermarket and also, due to the success of the press we got on that auction and all the names that were in it – all kinds of magazines, journals, online and offline, it opened up a lot of folks eyes to, uhm, how valuable the domain names can be for their business and why they’re not there. So I think it’s going to play a very good part. I think it’s going to help Sedo’s business. I think it’s going to help the new BuyDomains/Afternic sales vehicle. It’s going to help our new marketplace that we just launched and it’s live and silent conglomerate of events and its going to help drive more traffic revenue, because it’s going to encourage folks to get their domain names on our Traffic Club programs, so that we can validate stats and if they’re not on Traffic Club, at least get them on somebody’s parking program and so its going to increase PPC revenue, it’s going to increase the foundation value of domain names and I think it’s going to be very good for the domain name industry as whole.

Ron: If we’ve got a couple more minutes here, another thing I was really curious about – Moniker, who’s a stand alone company for so long; you developed this great reputation for being the most secure place you can hold domains, you’re a preferred registrar with professionals; you have your aftermarket site. Then, in this big wave of consolidation that we’ve seen in the last couple years, you became part of it in merging into the Seavast network. And I’m wondering how, if at all, how does it change your business or the way that you do business and what positives came out of that or negative? Because, you know, so many companies are in the position you were in and are now part of a greater whole that’s involved in every corner of the market and I wonder how it affects a single business like yours.

Monte: Well, it was important for us, when we went through that transition, to not have it change things much. And as most of our customers know, uhm, it didn’t change things negatively because we, you know, I stayed in control of the company along with my partner, Eric, and we stayed independent, we’re in the same offices. We’ve expanded and grown and you know, doubled our business yet again from 2005 to 2006 and we’re on our way to another banner year in 2007. Uhm, you know, there were some synergies and then there were some areas in which we weren’t going to be synergistic. So, we were able, in a short period of time, I’ll tell you one of, I guess, one of the areas where we were able to leverage each other as a conglomerate company, or as an independently held company with a parent, uhm, is that when we had to come out with this live and silent auction system, uhm, uhm, within a short period of time, we couldn’t do it all in-house. So we hit the Seavast developers who were very good at, uhm, at, uhm, you know, development of their particular platforms, which are in the PPCs and customer acquisition field and they really stepped in and did a great job of helping us get to the deadline and coming out with an auction platform and a way to do it. And of course it’s going to be better the next time, and better the next time, to do that. So from that standpoint, we were able to merge and leverage our technology resources together. Obviously, things like Human Resources and Finance and stuff can also be managed more efficiently, so you don’t have to do that in the office, but sales and management of our independent business and focusing on domain asset management is something that we’re continuing to focus on and I think you’ll see something very exciting about us coming out this year because as independent that we are, we’re also looking to do some exciting things in the industry and you should see some significant news coming sometime in the next six to eight months about us.

Ron: Do you see more acquisitions for the whole Seavast family, expanding into other areas then?

Monte: Well, there could be some spin-outs, there could be some acquisitions, there could be some other opportunities as well. So, we went into it with a set plan and we’re going to come out with a set plan in achieving our goals and objectives, so that’s the good news.

Ron: I would think, yeah. I would think you’re biggest problem would be keeping all those Seavast folks who are up in Upper New York State from moving down to Florida and [laughs] hanging out in the office all the time and sleeping on your sofa?

Monte: Yeah well, we only have one who moved down with us and his name is Mike White and he’s been a great, great help. As a matter of fact, he’s been an integral part in helping getting the names submitted in the auction system; he played a valuable role in helping us weed down the list and getting all the spreadsheets conglomerated and put together and he spent many days and hours with me, late night, going through the last auction list and he’s really been a huge help to the organization, so we’re glad to have him down. But, yeah, they do make a couple trips down here and there, but they go right back up home. [laughs].

Ron: [laughs] There’s no explaining some folks. Once you’re in sunny Florida, I don’t know any go back up there, especially this time of year.

Monte: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Ron: Well, another thing I was going to ask you about is one of the quotes in our story was from, I think it was Frank Schylling had said that what we refer to as the secondary market, the aftermarket, is actually going to become the primary market. In other words, he thinks that we’re getting very close to a point where more dollars will be spent on buying old registrations from other people who own them, rather than new registrations. And you’re on both sides of that fence as a registrar and an aftermarket – do you see that possibly playing out?

Monte: Oh, for sure. As you know, we’ve always played both sides. We were the only registrar back in 2002 that actually had an aftermarket integrated into our primary market, because we did believe that. If you take all the top names out of the picture and the top names happen to become owned by other people, you don’t have a choice but to try to make a way to offer the top names either for sale in the aftermarket or other types of combinations or variations of those names available in the primary market, so when you go onto Moniker.com for instance, and you put in a name that you want to look at, uhm, you want to type in a name and if its not available it gives you an option to go into the aftermarket and seeing what other names with those same keywords are available and at what prices and whether to buy now or put a bid on them or request an offer and we’ve always had that kind of a play in our mentality, because we’ve always looked at domain names as real estate, as assets. And so I do believe that it is one big market, whether you’re getting it new in the primary market or in the aftermarket, for sure. And I think it’s going to continue to go that way. Uhm, obviously, there’s a 110 million domain names registered to date; 60 or so million are .Com, .Nets, you know, .Orgs, so most of the good .Coms are taken. But, again, with our live auctions and what’s going on at our site and other aftermarket sites, you can get some very good names at still some very reasonable prices and even at some premium prices that will look cheap in 10 years, uhm, if you really are dedicated and going to have a long term business in this industry. I recommend that everybody not try to settle for something that’s second or third best when you can afford something that’s first best and pay a little more today. Because you’ll look back 10 years with the way this industry’s growing and you’ll kick yourself for not getting the name you really want or need for your business.

Ron: You can look one year or two years, if you look through our archive of prices, ah, you know, you fall off your chair and go, wow, I could have bought that for that price like 2 years ago? The escalation has really been phenomenal if you look at it.

Monte: Yeah. As a matter of fact, I’ve had a unique thing happen with customers. I’ve had four or five customers just in the last couple of weeks say, you know that name I was looking at last year or last couple months, or I saw you at that conference and you said, hey, you should get that now because in a couple months it’s going to be worth more. And they turn their heads and they did a 180 and they’re like hey, I want to get it now. Please help me get that name. You know, they’re convinced. And so I’m going to . . . I think we’re all going to start seeing more and more of that and that’s why you see names like Cameras.com going for $1.5 million at a live auction and you know, Vodka.com, which is, you know, something that’s going to be here forever, you know; a generic brand, you know, a generic industry brand of vodka for that Russian million-billionaire and to buy that as a Russian vodka distributor. He’s going to be, you know, kissing himself all over the place, with his family and his generations of that business and how long it’s going to be that he’s going to own Vodka.com. He just put a cap on the market and locked out his competition, which is really great.

Ron: Exactly. And [inaudible] Scheleras did that with Cameras.com in your auction in October to [inaudible]. That was the highest validate at $1.5 million, but to me, that was one of the great bargains of 2006. I mean, cameras; what a category that is and you own the category on the Internet with that name. I mean, it’s just really mind boggling.

Monte: Right, right. And there’s a couple industries that have . . . you know, there’s some industries that have a lot of top level domains. Like if you go into finance industry, for instance, you know, you can get “finance,” or “stocks,” or “bonds,” or “mortgage,” or “loans,” and all that stuff. And you can all say that the top names in the industry. But you go to cameras and you’ve got, you know, you go to the camera or the photography industry, there’s maybe a couple names that are the top names. You know, one of the names that Rick Schwartz owns, which is Candy, I think is one of the most valuable domain names in the industry today, because “candy” is the #1 term in the confections business. No one types in “confections.” They don’t know what confection is. It’s candy. And not only that, but you acquire a customer with candy at the very earliest ages, when they’re children. And then it just so happens that those children grow up eating that brand of candy and then all of a sudden, they feed their kids the same candy; and by the way, those candy companies happen to be big conglomerate companies, like Hershey’s, Nestles, Cadbury, that have cereal, tobacco products, ah, liquor and tissue paper and all kinds of stuff and all of a sudden the whole house fills up with that particular conglomerate’s brand of products and services. And that’s why they acquire you at an early age throwing candy down your throat. And so to own a name like that is huge. And so, you know, Hershey’s or someone needs to buy that name, you know. And the same with Diamonds and you know, all these other big names that are in the industry that are top level domain names that people just don’t get right now that are very vlauble are extremely valuable, you know, long term customer acquisition type names that will be, you know, more and more valuable as we move forward.

Ron: That was, I think, the liveliest seminar at the last TRAFFIC where the Madison Avenue panel was there and the domainers just couldn’t understand why they couldn’t understand the value that was in that. But remember one of the participants from Madison Avenue said, well, the generic, that’s the exact opposite of what we are. They think brands only. So, they’re thinking, we don’t want to just be candy; we want to be Hershey’s Chocolate or whatever. But they don’t see that if you define your category. If you’re Hershey’s you want to be known – we are candy. We are it. And like you said, you can use that as a portal, a gateway to all your different products. But Vodka.com was, you know, a brick out of the wall where this guy got it. And he won’t the last one who’s going to get it either. And I think we’ll see more and more of that as we go forward.

Monte: Yes, definitely. Definitely. I agree. I agree.

Ron: How are we doing on time? Are they going to let us stay on tonight?

Monte: Uhm, I think they want to wrap up so maybe one more point and then we can get rolling.

Ron: I thought we had those guys enthralled in the Control Room , that we could just, ah, we could go as long as we want.

Monte: Well, I just got a message from Fast Eddie, saying, hey, how’re we doing? Which means we’re getting tired, we need to get home. [laughs]

Ron: [laughs] It’s definitely been an interesting conversation. I think one of the most fascinating ones we’ve had in the times we’ve been on. It’s great to have the time to stretch out like that and I always found it amazing I can, in fact, I try to avoid getting on the phone, now. Because I can get on the phone with somebody, a reporter, maybe a reporter from The Wall Street Journal or someone who asks one question; we can be on the phone for an hour, two hours and the time goes so fast. It’s like you blinked your eye, because there’s so much to talk about. And even tonight we probably barely scratched the surface of what’s just such a great industry. I pinch myself everyday and count my blessings that I was lucky enough to find my way into it.

Monte: Yeah, yeah. Me as well; me as well. It’s still fun and I think its going to be fun for many, many years. And again, I think . . . you know, when I had Zappy and Andrew Miller on from IREG, you know, they said, you know, we feel like we’re in the very first inning of a very long baseball game that’s going to go a lot of extra innings and I agree with that. You know, it’s at the very early innings. We’re barely at the first inning, you know. It’s only 10 years old and if you look at how old real estate is and other industries that are similar to this, investment type industries or things that have grown in value like this, we’re not even, you know, you know, I’ll be dead and my children will be dead and this thing will be rockin’. You know.

Ron: Yep, I’m old enough to have seen this happen in our industry. I remember the early cable TV investors sat there for over a decade and nothing happened and they all sold out. And it was the next wave that came in and said, oh, this is really great but it’s time just hadn’t come and there were, like, billionaires made in that industry. Ah, television started in the 30’s, but it didn’t really get big until like the mid-50’s, when I was a kid. Most of these things take 20 -25 years to play out, so you’re right, it’s, you know, this is still the seed germinating here, but we’re a long way from seeing the whole flower in bloom.

Monte: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, Ron, I think we’re going to wrap up things and let the folks at the studio go home and I want to thank you so much for not only your contribution tonight but also your contribution to the industry and for those that don’t know it, Ron Jackson was also voted into the Hall of Fame for the WADON Conference, which is the TRAFFIC Conference and that’s a great honor to have when you’re voted in by your peers, and you certainly deserve it. You’ve done a great job of covering the industry, helping it grow and be strong and being very, you know, unbiased when you’re covering your stories. And you’ve really helped out the industry in giving your perspective.

Ron: Well, thank you; I appreciate that.

Monte: And I’m glad to have you on and I look forward to having you on in the future. And I look forward to seeing you at TRAFFIC and all the other conferences that we’re going to see each other this year.

Ron: Absolutely. Thank you so much and we’ll see you soon.

Monte: Okay, thanks a lot. Thanks again to Ron Jackson, the editor-in-chief of DNJournal. I highly recommend everybody go there. It’s a great site to educated about the domain industry. It covers every aspect of our industry, including domain name sales and what’s going on in our industry. And the show and the conference overviews and recaps and the important things that are going on in our industry and so on. Just a friendly reminder, next Wednesday we will not be doing a show on WebMasterRadio.fm. We will be broadcasting the domain auction live on another network, ah, because we’re going to be at the Internext Conference and it’s going to be adult related, so we’ll give everybody information about that shortly. We will be back on the week after, I believe, live from the Affiliate Summit and so we have back-to-back conferences in Las Vegas. We’re going to be out there for 10 days working our tails off and helping educate folks about the domain industry and hopefully we’ll have some great news to report from next week’s live domain auction at Internext and that will be at 7:00 o’clock . . . ah, no, sorry, 3:00 o’clock Pacific Standard Time until 7:00 o’clock Pacific Standard Time, live from Las Vegas and Internext and we’ll have the results posted up on our website and a bunch of news about how you can get access to hearing that show and that broadcast. With that, I’ll let everybody go. Thank you for listening and joining in. Any feedback, please send to Monte(M-O-N-T-E)@moniker.com. Archives are available at WebMasterRadio.fm and also on Moniker.com’s website. Be the master of your domain. See you in a couple weeks. Take care.