Monte chats with Mickie Kennedy
Monte chats with Mickie Kennedy
02/07/2007 Monte Cahn
Mickie Kennedy is an entrepreneur and a poet. Holding a Bachelors Degree from East Carolina University in English Literature and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from George Mason University with an emphasis in poetry, Kennedy feared a future where he would be a waiter or cook by day and poet by night. However, he turned his love of words, phrases and ideas into a livelihood in both public relations and domain names. Kennedy is the founder and president of eReleases, a leader in affordable press release writing and distribution services. Kennedy developed eReleases nearly nine years ago with the belief that publicity shouldn’t be restricted to the big guys. Most PR firms have no problem with small businesses. It’s the small budgets or a la carte projects that most PR firms find problematic, given their capital intensive business models.
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Monte: Hey, folks; welcome to Domain Masters. I ‘m Monte Cahn, your host and another great week is lined up. We’re going to have a great guest on – Mickie Kennedy, who’s an entrepreneur and a poet. He also runs and is a founder of a company called eReleases.com, which is a leader in affordable press releases and press release writing and distribution services. We’re going to learn about his success with domain names. He has about 8,000 of them. And, really talk about some of the domain names he’s been able to find, the diamonds-in-the-rough over the years and talk about what’s made him successful not only in business but also in his domaining practice.
Also, we’re just going to cover some of the events that have taken place since our InterNext live domain auction and we’ve been able to close about 50% of all those transactions and their sales and we’re on to the new auction in preparation for TRAFFIC East, which is right around the corner; March the 7th is the big day at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. WebMasterRadio.fm is going to be there live, broadcasting again, of course. And we’ll be doing a live auction, I think, from 2:30 to 5:30 Pacific Standard Time. And then, of course, running the silent auction for a week to follow after that event. There’s about six or seven hundred people that are expected to be there; it’s going to be a great event and we have some great names going up for auction there as well. So with that we’re going to take a few commercials, pay some bills and be back on with Mickie Kennedy. Stay tuned.
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Monte: . . . . [inaudible] with about 8,000 domain names. Mickie is the founder and president of eReleases, a leader in affordable press release writing and distribution services. He developed eReleases early, uhm, nearly 9 years ago and with the belief that publicity shouldn’t be restricted to the big guys [inaudible] and made an affordable press release company out of his company. He’s been able to accumulate about 8,000 domain names today, and we’re going to talk to Mickie today not only with his company, eReleases, but also with his domain ventures. Mickie, welcome to Domain Masters.
Mickie: Thanks, Monte.
Monte: So, give us a little bit of a background of how you got into the Internet in general, how you registered your first domain name and kind of what got you interested in intellectual property like this.
Mickie: Great. I guess about 10 years ago I was working for a PR firm in Washington, DC area and a trend that I saw when we were setting our releases, we would generally do fax releases as well as news wire postings. We’d get [inaudible] asking, calling us up and asking, “Can you email that over, ‘cause I’m going to basically use the bulk of it, but you massage it a little bit.” So we got a lot more email requests and I thought for a moment that heads are really cheap and efficient way to get press releases out there to [inaudible]. So, basically, I just started by registering a domain name and developing a database by asking journalists if they wanted to sign up to receive releases from us. It was a novel approach at the time so we got a lot of journalists who were willing to sign up with us. It’s getting harder and harder to get journalists to sign up for us, as a result of email and spam and things like that. But because we are a subscription database and we have a good reputation, we still do have journalists who do recognize the service we provide; so they sign up and continue to receive releases from us. And we sort of coupled that with a true news wire posting but you know, news wire feed with a news wire partner, it goes directly to news forums across the country.
Monte: Okay, great. So, how many current customers are in, ah, utilizing your services.
Mickie: Uhm, we have about 1,500 clients who use those and that’s on a regular basis. We have some smaller companies that may only send out one release a year, often coinciding with an industry event. We also have clients who use us, you know, three or four times a week. Occasionally, we have clients who use us more frequently, coinciding with trade shows and other events. So, I’d say we have about 1,500 core reoccurring clients, paying customers who use us on a regular but consistent basis.
Monte: And, how do you compare yourself with some other PR . . . other online PR companies on the Web, such as BusinessWire and PRWire and some of those?
Mickie: Uhm, BusinessWire and PRWire are the [inaudible] and were up there and were considered to be a jalopoly of news wire services. They’ve invested tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure and dedicated feed going directly into newsrooms. We’ve seen a proliferation of websites and companies that have come out and calling themselves news wires and tacking the word “wire” to their names. But they’re not true news wire services. They don’t have the satellites feeds and the true dedicated wire feeds that go directly to news rooms. They basically put an online presence up and have RSS feeds and things like that. There are a few that have coupled with Bloomberg and other things like that but traditionally, pure news wire is still considered the main avenue for being a true news wire and getting a true news wire experience with your press release. Pyrenees Wire is actually our news wire partner, so the releases that go through us, uh, go through Pyrenees Wire news wire feeds nationally out to different news rooms depending on, you know, the industry categories and if it’s a recent release, of course, you know, it’s local, Florida Dry Cleaners, they want to sort of reach [inaudible] Florida or a major city or metro area. And we facilitate that in working with the news wire to make sure that it gets there. And then we also have our email distribution database that the releases go to.
Monte: Okay, great. And one thing PR Web does is I know they make kind of an SEO version of their news wire so that it’s SEO-friendly and that kind of stuff. Are you doing similar things that they’re doing in that matter? In that regard?
Mickie: Uhm, we are not. It’s an area that we get requests for but our basic, I guess, reason for being is to reach the media and we focus [inaudible] ah, reach the end users [inaudible] but that’s they’re focus, to sort of reach end users and customers, as well as the search engine component. Our component is to reach journalists and the whole ultimate goal with eRelease is to get print; whether its online print or newspapers, magazines, trade publications. We recognize that search engines are becoming more important. And the [inaudible] news wire, [inaudible] RSS feeds than they are available through Google news and Yahoo! news; all our releases are there. But our focus isn’t so much on the search engine optimization component as it is reaching actual [inaudible] hoping to leverage our contacts to get print.
Monte: Great, great. Let’s switch gears a little bit and move onto more of the domain side of your business and kind of how you got the interest in registering domain names, when you saw the future in it, uhm, you know, how long have you been investing in domain names?
Mickie: Uhm, about 9 years; I guess I’ve been buying domains initially for my PR company for later use or possible development. One thing I did was most country, uhm, wire dot com names I picked up, like CanadaNewsWire or – I’m not sure I actually have CanadaNewsWire – but I have a hundred and something different countries “newswire.com” or variations of that. And sort of looking at that as possible expansion, possible development. I sort of recognize that there’s not a lot of use in [inaudible] these names and locking them up. And that they do have some inherent value. And I did register some domain names in past and have attempted to develop some – uhm, ComparisonShop.com was a name that I acquired; it was just publicly available at the time many years ago, and we worked on developing it and it was, from a programming standpoint, it was a very difficult and exhaustive exercise every time a company like Amazon or somebody made a change to their database or their feed, we had to update that so that we would reflect the right pricing so, it turned out that for the money that we were putting into it, it just wasn’t a really good fit. And I have since sold that domain name but uhm, it was one that I tried to launch and it was just, you know, at the point where I, myself, and the funds that I had just couldn’t dedicate to it to be what it should be.
Monte: Oh, that’s great. And, uhm, so I understand . . . I know as a Moniker customer that’s been a lot more active recently with your domain purchases – do you see more opportunity today or a different type of opportunity today, than you did back five, six, seven years ago?
Mickie: Uhm . . . I do. And [inaudible] because I’ve begun to recognize that there are a lot of opportunities with domain names. I stay predominantly with dot coms. I still think that they’re the preferred domain name for most companies. I do know that there are other opportunities out there with other extensions and I have dabbled a little bit; but, predominantly I stick with dot coms because I continue to see really good domain names that are dot coms that are becoming available, whether its people selling them before they expire on some of the domain boards out there; whether it’s, you know, names that drop and sells – they’re just publicly available to be snapped up. Or whether some sites like GoDaddy, which is, I guess, putting up for auction domains that are about to expire. And so there’s lots of different avenues and niches out there for people to sort of acquire domains at a relatively low cost. And, uhm, predominantly, up to I guess about a year ago, I was acquiring domains through some of those “snap names” and Pool.com and places like that – it’s at least $60 and [inaudible] just go to auction and I found myself . . . I’m a perfect customer for an auction environment; I get real competitive. And I literally bid up to the $5,000 or $6,000 for a domain name, which, while good, in the big picture, you know, I could have registered 100 names for the price that I paid for that one. And so, I’m not a good fit for an auction environment. I try to stay away from them because otherwise it’ll get too costly. And, so, I’m seeing a lot of opportunities. I’m buying a lot of domains. I’m trying to keep my cost of acquisition as low as possible. I sold a portfolio in May of last year and it was about 13,000 names and I suspect that, after taxes, I broke even on it. Uhm, it was a large transaction; it was a large deal for me. But a lot of those names included those auction names where I paid hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for some individual names, as well as, you know, some of the other ones that I did get at, you know, just registering them and things like that. So I got a little bit smarter at that point. And between May and December of last year, I built up another portfolio of 10,000 names and sold them. My cost of acquisition then was much lower so that, uhm, that deal was, I think, a bit more profitable for me. So right now I’ve built a portfolio up of just over 5,000 names and you can . . . if you go to eStartUp.com, there’s a list of them there and I’m just beginning to get it ready so I can sort of start marketing it around and see if, you know, if someone’s interested in purchasing it. I’m toying with the idea of breaking it out, maybe selling them by industry and trying to find a good fit there, so, like, aviation names to particular people who might be interested in aviation type names or assets. And, uhm, it’s a model that I never thought I’d be in, sort of packaging these large portfolios of domain names, but uhm, they’re a fairly easy sell. Uhm, before I was selling domains for like a minimum of a thousand dollars each. And I might only sell twenty or thirty thousand dollars worth a month, but if you’re spending as much money as I was spending, it was sort of a hard place to sort of profit from. Where, at this rate, if you sell a portfolio at an average of $100 a name, it doesn’t seem like you’re making much, but when you’re talking, you know, five thousand, ten thousand domain names, the profit’s easily seen there when you do the numbers. And, that’s sort of what I’m doing. There’s a few names that I pick up that I consider brandable or related to an industry or niche that I want to be at. And I sort of keep those occasionally; if I come across a really good premium domain name that I want, I’ll hold onto that. But by and large, I take what I consider good, brandable, generic, non-trademarked names and put them together in these portfolios. I’ve done it with two big portfolios, a couple smaller portfolios, and I’m thinking with this latest portfolio that it’ll do pretty well.
Monte: Oh, that’s great. You’ve had a lot of success with selling and buying portfolios, so give us a little bit of, you know, tips and tricks around how one goes about to compile a portfolio like you did, know where the opportunities are to sell and then properly positioning those portfolios or those names to the proper buyers to get that kind of return on your investment. Obviously, we’re all in to either see short term or long term, you know, returns on our investment, you know, as people in the industry and a lot of people are just now getting on the band wagon of domain names and so this is a very interesting perspective because you’ve been very successful compiling portfolios, selling them off and it shows here in 2003, 2004, you sold about $2 million in domain sales and in 2006, you did about $1.3 million in sales. So you’re selling lots of domain names and reaping the rewards from it, is that correct?
Mickie: Uhm, yes. I mean, ah, the $1.3 million sell, I kind of felt that was a break even transaction after taxes. There were some tactics there that I wasn’t aware of, uhm . . . [inaudible] I was trying to treat the [inaudible] as an asset deal and what I found out from my accountants and CPAs and things like that, it’s near impossible to get domains treated as asset, uhm, for the purposes of selling it. And, you know, doing a capital gains transaction. And so, that was a little disappointing and that’s probably where I probably just broke even on that deal. Uhm, as far as like packaging them and marketing them, it . . . you know, with the Internet being what it is, there’s lots of places, if you do homework; there’s investment banks, there’s you know, domain resellers. There’s lots of people who are interested in domain names. My domains are not traffic domains. I mean, they get traffic but I don’t really monitor . . . I mean, none of them are making like hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month. They’re, you know, just good, generic key word-like domain names, like ValuePublishers; HomeDetailing; SmallBusinessFinder.coms; things along this line that I feel like could be developed, could be used, either as a website itself or as, you know, in the cases of a lot of companies, they’ll purchase lots of domain names in their industry to use for marketing purposes or just point them to their existing website. And what I found is email works great; picking up the phone, calling people and finding out who the right person to send the list of domain names or portfolio, whatever, is a great way to basically, you know, get recognized or to talk to people. I found it fairly straight forward. I think I tried about 30 different companies and individuals and I’d say more than half of them were receptive to it, you know, especially, you know, if the cost factor addition is under $100 or approximately $100 a domain name; it seems really interesting, especially if you break it out, some of your premium names to them. And it’s . . . its not easy. But it is something that’s attainable. It’s basically just sort of positioning yourself as a value. And I suspect, you know, the people I sell my domains to are going to make a lot more money because they’re into this to reach end users and sell the domains for, you know, a few thousand dollars each. But it’s going to take awhile to do that. It’s . . . it’s a long term investment. And for me, I’ve got domains that I consider my long term investment, but by and large, these bulk deals are interesting because I love to acquire domains; I’m really good at it and finding, you know, key words and what I feel are decent domain names that are just dropping every day. They’re becoming available to people, you know, who don’t want domains anymore or have found that these aren’t traffic names so they really don’t want to hold onto them and are willing to sell them before they expire.
Monte: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Hey, Mickie, we’re going to break for a quick commercial and I’d like to get into some more details about, you know, why and how you’re moving so many domain names and some of the criteria you’re looking for, uhm, in terms of looking at, you know, premium values and one-word domains versus multiple word domains and kind of how you’re PR background is helping you in your domain business as well and some of the other items; okay?
Mickie: Sounds good.
Monte: So hang on for a couple minutes. We’ll be right back on and cover some of those topics.
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Monte: Hi, folks; Monte Cahn, welcome back to Domain Masters. Again, we’re speaking to Mickie Kennedy who’s the founder and president of eReleases and, which is a leader in affordable press release writing and distribution services. And Mickie is also sharing with us some of his great success and background with domaining. Now, Mickie, let’s get back to, you know, some of the investment strategies that you’ve been using over the years and how you’ve been changing those up for, you know, what’s going on right now in the future. You’re sweet spot seems to be in marketing and packaging domain names and putting them together. What are the best ways that people can do that, going forward?
Mickie: Uhm, there’s lots of different, I guess, avenues; uhm, you can . . . there’s a lot of domain boards out there in which you can, you know, make your portfolio known. Sometimes that results in tips and people passing along to interested people. What I found was just, you know, research – going to search engines, finding companies that are purchasing domain names as assets; companies that are selling domain names to end users and may be interested in a portfolio; and you know, just looking at people for whom you feel this would be a good purchase. And, I’ve been surprised at some of the people who are interested in, you know, portfolios; other entrepreneurs and people who are looking to get into domain names. There’s a lot of activity there. What I haven’t had to do yet is to do any actual print advertising. That’s one of the goals for the next portfolio, you know, raising the price that I’d like to get for this portfolio and perhaps seeking out some advertising in Barrons and The Wall Street Journal and see how that goes as far as piquing some interest among the investment community. My sense and my feelings that I’m getting is that the investment community is paying more attention to domain names as assets; that there are companies as well as individuals out there who are looking to acquire and are now actively acquiring domain names. Many of them are using the SnapNames and the Pool.com websites out there to facilitate that and you know, they’re acquiring domains that are at least $60 and in many cases are a bit more. So having a portfolio would be of interest to them. My portfolio’s across all different industries and all different types of subjects and that’s a pretty good fit. However, if I had a portfolio (and this is something I may consider) is breaking it out by industry so if you prepare a list of aviation-type domain names, you might give that to people who are interested in the aviation field, be it, you know, contracting or people who provide services to the aviation field or whether its marketers who market to the aviation industry. There’s lots of avenues for sort of getting that . . . those notices out to them. Uhm, things I have used is writing letters, faxes; email and telephone has worked really well. And, it’s definitely sort of how I go about introducing myself and the portfolio out there. And many times people are receptive or they pass me along to the right person in the company who would be interested. I have used PR for individual domain name sells; I sort of experimented with that. Last year or it may have been late 2005, AffiliateDirectory was the domain that I was putting up for sell and there was this sort of auction format . . .
Monte: Right.
Mickie: . . . and so I did a press release just on that domain name.
Monte: Right. So the unique thing that you have is have the unique advantage to put out some press releases regarding the sale of a particular domain name. Do you find that . . .? You know, a lot of people are starting to do that. Do you find that is an effective way to get people’s attention? And what are some of the real tricks to getting somebody’s attention in a press release? Whether it’s a domain sale or some kind of offering like that?
Mickie: I think having . . . developing a press release to speak to the proper buyer. What I think a press release would be less effective for portfolio sell unless it was industry audited because a press release, what I found, is you want to speak to an audience; and in the case of the AffiliateDirectory, we went up to online marketing advertising trade publications, websites, magazines and things like that and it was out there on a lot of discussion boards in the affiliate world: people talking about the availability of the domain name and the domain did sell at auction and it did exceed the reserve price, so it did work. You know, it is an avenue, PR, for getting it out there. And it’s real strength is in the online world where people can react rather quickly and can get the news rather quickly. Traditional print media, it’s still a little slow and it’s sometimes hard to explain. Being in the PR world, we get press releases throughout the month of December for holiday gift ideas and you know, you have to explain to some of these customers is they’re already putting up the January print magazines in the newsstands, so you’re going to be in the holiday gift guide in a magazine and in so many cases, newspapers as well. And I guess what people don’t realize that, you know, you don’t’ sent out a press release today and it hits the newsstands tomorrow. With the online world, that capability is there and so using a press release with the goal of sort of influencing online and web media and news outlets, it’s a really great avenue for press releases and a really good fit.
Monte: Right, right. Uhm, when is a press release not effective? You know, you see . . . for instance, I look at . . . of course, I look at our industry and GoDaddy has some kind of press release, like, every single day; it’s gets tiring after awhile to see all the stuff that they put out, because its just [inaudible] . . .
Mickie: That’s the risk that you run. When you send out releases extremely often, it’s not a newsworthy announcement; you run the risk of creating a “noise factor” and the media isn’t as responsive to it. I guess, in other instances where a press release isn’t a good idea is when there is an ischemic factor. We all [inaudible] the pixel website, the pixel copycat websites that stream after that and I think that we got probably like 15 or 20 press releases trying to follow the coattails of the original, you know, buy a pixel space for X-amount of dollars. And, I guess, if you follow the coattails or follow the pack mentality you’re really not novel; you’re not new. And in most cases you’re just wasting your money on that sort of thing. What you should be focusing on is [inaudible] unique, something that’s potentially newsworthy. The newspapers are in the business of selling advertising, so you [inaudible] position your content so that it stands on its own; otherwise, they’ll just refer you to the sales department. You want to make sure that what you’re saying and how you’re saying it is a good hook and would be interesting to readers in that newspaper or publication or [inaudible] website.
Monte: Right, right. So, looking at where things are, not only with your portfolio, where do you see the horizon for the domain industry? What are you starting to see in the industry? And where do you see it going?
Mickie: Well, I guess one thing that I’m seeing in the industry is that there’s a lot of registers now who are [laughs] not letting domains expire; or at least not like they used to. We’ve got GoDaddy offering expiring domains on its [inaudible] website. We’ve got eNom with its pre-release auctions. And [inaudible] is doing some things on sort of a pre-release basis. So, I guess the cycle of domain names and how they expire is changing a bit, and that’s kind of interesting and also kind of overwhelming, I guess, for some people who are trying to follow the domain name and maintain interest in it. There’s a lot more work involved in tracking domain names and where they end up and you know, it’s not as easy as putting your name in SnapNames and [inaudible] it’s probably going to get picked up. But you’ve really got to do a lot of homework if you’re interested in one particular domain name. But if you’re like myself and an equal opportunity opportunist who’s out there looking at all different places, there’s a lot of names that just sort of come from many different avenues and I think that these domain boards that people have, bulletin boards, I’ve seen a lot of people who are selling their domains at very reasonable costs – you know, five, ten bucks, because its expiring in a few weeks. And I think that’s great, ‘cause you hear they’re monetizing names that didn’t work for them. I find a lot of people who are traffic names people and they’re all interested in names that have traffic are selling their domains before they expire and that’s a great way for them to, you know, get rid of the name but also for someone like myself to acquire some names at a really good cost that [inaudible] . . .
Monte: . . . you probably see, just because of your background, you see more potential than just the traffic aspect. You see more of a branding opportunity and the words and what they really mean [inaudible] . . .
Mickie: Right. I’ve had people, you know, who have looked at the portfolio and then asked for the stats; then looked at the stats and said, “Well, this portfolio, it’s only worth about $30,000 or $40,000.” And I’m, like, “Well, it’s 13,000 names; I spent seven bucks for registration; you’d be looking at $80,000, $90,000.” You know, I’ve had to educate them and said, well, you know, traffic and traffic revenue is not everything for a domain name. A domain name that might make a $150 a month in, you know, traffic revenue, if its developed and monetized fully, it might be producing $15,000, $20,000 a month. You can take a name like “eReleases” which is the name of my company; that name had no traffic. It was just something I thought of about ten years ago, like, ah, electronic releases, e-releases and just went and registered. And, now, it’s a business that does over a million dollars a year in revenue and it has value, and that domain name has been branded. There’s lots of opportunities that go just beyond natural type in traffic. And I suspect that we’re going to see a lot less of that, you know, type in traffic and there’s still going to be residual traffic for domain names that expire for existing websites. But I think that the type in traffic and the traffic revenue aspect of domain names, while it’s an important factor, I think that [inaudible] people are placing a little too much importance on it right now.
Monte: Huh. Alright, great. So, what recommendations do you have for new domainers that are just getting in the business in terms of leveraging, you know, leveraging their assets to acquire portfolios?
Mickie: Uhm, I would say to, uhm, don’t ever [inaudible] yourself. I’ve done that. [laughs] Last year when I sold that portfol . . . a large portfolio, about 13,000 names, I basically had to and I didn’t like being in that position. I got a little overextended, a little too excited at some of these SnapNames and Pool auctions and I think just recognizing that there are opportunities that are out there. You don’t have to take out a home equity loan or use a credit card to do that. There’s names that are dropping every day and being creative with names is a great way to, I guess, develop a portfolio. And one of the things that I’ve done is I’ve experimented with not necessarily parking or traffic revenue, is finding at what place do I get more leads for sells. I, you know, [inaudible] at one place and I did about 3X the parking revenue of the place that I’d moved from, but the sells just dried up. And the inquiries I got through their, I guess, ways that you would acquire a domain name for sell, I just wasn’t getting any leads and so, when you’re doing $23,000 a month in sells, and all of a sudden, you have four or five thousand dollars in sells, it doesn’t matter if your parking revenue has tripled. What matters, for me, is the sells. It might be just the opposite for someone else who might be doing twenty, thirty thousand dollars a month in parking and only three or four thousand dollars in sells, or maybe no sells at all. I guess find your niche; find what works for you. Find a philosophy that works for you. For me, the philosophy’s always been the name; the name itself has to stand on its own. Does it have merit? Is it, you know, a key word name? And, the traffic, you know, if its not there, it will come after it’s developed. And that’s sort of the approach that I take. I’m convinced that if you take any . . . if you have a made up word and you develop a website around it and you put . . . you do what you have to do, whether its RSS feeds or it’s a blog or something, the traffic will come. I mean, the search engines are out there looking for sites that have good content, have good value, and are doing something unique. The important thing is to have a domain that’s brandable and user-friendly and memorable. And, you know, until those demands just disappear completely, you know, its still a really strong market. I personally am not too excited with a lot of the extensions that are out there. I do, you know, look around and dabble a little bit. But I don’t throw, like, a lot of my financial weight into the new extensions because its just too big of a risk to lose it. For me, it’s too much of an unproven. With dot CD, dot EUs, I see the occasional sells, but I just don’t see the ones that I see consistently for dot coms. So I’m pretty loyal to dot com. And, that’s where I stick the bulk of my money.
Monte: Right, right. And what about dot MOBI? Do you have any kind of a thought or [inaudible] on that?
Mickie: Uhm, dot MOBI, great marketing, great PR. Uhm, I don’t know . . . personally, I don’t know if the extension is . . . I personally just don’t see myself buying thousands of dot MOBIs and sort of leveraging that. I think that as websites grow and develop with new technologies and PDAs and other applications grow and become more smart, I think the need for a dot MOBI is going to become less and less. You know, websites serving themselves up I think will be recognizing that this is being requested as a mobile format and so, I have less enthusiasm for the dot MOBI format. And there’s a lot of people out there who are really thinking just the opposite and yeah, that’s just a philosophy and that’s just sort of my perspective on it. This has got a lot of hype and a lot of interest, but personally, you know, other than a couple of domains that I did register as dot MOBI, I’m not putting in a lot of stock in it, uhm, and didn’t really expect to see a lot of . . . I’ve seen a lot of [inaudible] of key words were available. I suspect that they’re not [inaudible] extensions become available, you know, there’s a lot of people out there speculating that those extensions will do well or at least they want to lock up a lot of key word names and you know, they’ll do well I suspect eventually, if not in the immediate future. But for the average person, I’m not sure whether I would, you know, put much of an investment in something that’s, you know, at this point sort of unproven.
Monte: Right, right. Well, that’s a good perspective. Hey, just before we leave, overall in your business and starting eReleases and having success in the online business – what are a couple of really important tricks and tips for the listening community that maybe somebody doesn’t know about, to be successful in business in general or had you succeed in a mission that you’ve set out to do.
Mickie: Uhm, I think part of the biggest lessons for me is ROI. Only invest in marketing and advertising that you can sort of quantify and determine whether you’re going to get a return on your investment. Uhm, it . . . I’ve been approached by so many different websites, current publications, even, you know, phone books and yellow pages and I’ve been pulled in so many different directions. And in most cases I’ve tried everything and I’ve had mechanisms in place for almost all of them to determine whether the result sells revenue and most of them have not. And I get a lot of people saying, well, your competitors spend a lot of money with us. And I said, well, that’s great that you’re taking money from them, because I’m not seeing a return on my investment. I suspect that they’re not even tracking their return on investment. I think that’s the important thing. When you get to the online world, there’s lots of avenues and different places pulling you to take your money. And you sort of have to put someone in place or put yourself in that place in order to determine if, ah, I do a $50,000 ad campaign here, is it going to help my business and am I going to be able to track what that campaign has actually done for my business. You know, any company that you spend money with and you track and you determine you don’t see a return investment, they start bringing up works like “branding.” Branding’s just a word for taking your [inaudible] if you’re a small or medium sized business. If you’re a large business like Yahoo! or Microsoft, yeah, you can throw money towards branding. But branding won’t pay the bills if you’ve got them and you don’t have money in the bank to pay them. And that’s sort of a wake up call for me; is to search, to find the places out there that do help contribute to your sales and the biggest, I guess, mechanism, that eReleases has for getting sells is word of mouth. I’d say that more than half of our customers come from other customers, and people who have used us or heard about us or read about us from someone else. And, I think that speaks a lot to the testament to the value that we provide. For a lot of people out there, it’s hard to determine what is it that you get through eReleases for $400 or $600 that you’re not getting with a service that’s free or $30. And there’s a bit of education out there, you know, as to what we provide and how beneficial we are as opposed to another service. Basically, being able to diffentiate yourself from the marketplace and explain your advantages is one of the key things that we try to do at eReleases and one of the things that we are going to have to spend more time doing, you know, as a lot of new websites and [inaudible] competitors pop up. And, you know, its something that you have to stay on top of. The online world is constantly changing, whether its domains or PR, and I think it’s a great place for new opportunities and finding [inaudible] and jumping on them. And sort of playing with opportunities to find something that clicks and works for you.
Monte: Yeah, that’s great. Well, Mickie, I really appreciate your time tonight on Domain Masters and your insight and your tips and tricks that you’ve laid out for people, and your success for selling domain portfolios are very enlightening and I’m sure it’s been helpful for those that are listening. I posted your email address – I hope that’s okay – for people to get in touch with you . . .
Mickie: Sure.
Monte: . . . and use your service. And also, to get in contact with you in case they want any other information regarding the domain name sales, or eReleases as a company. It’s MKennedy@eReleases.com and I posted on the forum and on the chat room of WebMasterRadio.fm.
Mickie: Thanks, Monte.
Monte: Well, thank you very much for being my guest and thanks for being a great customer as well. And, we wish you the best of luck.
Mickie: Thanks, Monte.
Monte: Okay.
. . . . all portfolios and monetizing them and brand values of domain names; registering and buying names [inaudible]. We’ll be on live next week with another live show of Domain Masters and my guest. Also, please put on your calendar the live auction, live from Las Vegas, at TRAFFIC East, uh, TRAFFIC West in Las Vegas on March the 7th, from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., Pacific Standard Time. I look forward to seeing you next week on Domain Masters. Be the master of your domain. Take care.
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