Monte talks with Bob Raines
Monte talks with Bob Raines
02/21/2007 - Monte Cahn
Monte speaks with Bob Raines, the Director of Online Marketing of CIDC about how he got into the business, optimization challenges that he faced, and what kinds of trends and developments are being made in the industry.
Also on the show is Jeremy Patawire, a Moniker customer with a collection of domains who specializes in creating collector-oriented websites and benefiting through paid click throughs.
[Commercials]
Monte: Hello, folks, its Monte Cahn, your host of Domain Masters. Thanks for joining in; sorry that we’re running a little bit late. I’ve been buried in 40,000 domain submissions for our upcoming TRAFFIC West auction. That’s happening on March the 7th, so I’ve been super swamped, going through names and names and names. We finally got our list down to almost 3,000 names and about 285 names that are going to be going for the live auction. The live auction’s going to be broadcast live, right here on WebMasterRadio.fm at 2:30 Pacific Standard Time on the 7th of March; so stay tuned.
I have two great guests tonight. One is a domainer, Jermy Patawire. He has a lot of great dot mobi names and has been successful buying and selling domain names. He’s going to be my second guest. My first guest is Bob Raines and Bob is in charge of and director of online marketing for CIDC, which is basically in control of all the online marketing, including website design, content management, search engine optimization, and so on. And current big client is Everest Poker. So we’re going to talk about the online gaming industry a little bit and also some great SEO optimization for domainers, other things we can do to optimize your website, and we’ll be on with Bob as well. We’re going to take a couple commercial breaks and be on with Bob Raines and Jeremy Patawire. Stay tuned.
[Commercials]
Monte: Hey, folks; welcome back to the show. And a short break. As I stated, my first guest, Bob Raines, is in charge or and the director of online marketing for CIDC. He was recruited to assume ownership of all online marketing, including website design, content management, search engine optimization, and advertising. Challenged to raise the search engine visibility, they deliver, increased organic search traffic, to a variety of clients across 16 European and Asian western markets. His main client, I guess, is Everest Poker. He’s also worked with Puma and several others. Bob, welcome to the show. To Domain Masters.
Bob: Thanks, Monte.
Monte: So, Bob, give us a little bit of an idea of when you got started in the business and when you go onto the Internet first.
Bob: Okay; uhm, well, I’ve been involved with the Internet for a long time, straight out of college; me and some buddies opened a website development shop above an Internet coffee shop in St. Louis, Missouri; so it’s been forever ago now.
Monte: Yeah?
Bob: Ah, back early nineties . . . and then I went to work with a few different advertising agencies in St. Louis and work more on the branding side. And about six years ago I was recruited as the director of marketing for a little company called Carmaloop.com, which was an online clothing store and that threw me right back into all my marketing. And by that time, SEO had come around, which I really . . . you know, back when I did websites, it was all about meta tags, so that’s about all I understood about SEO [laughs] when I took over director of marketing at Carmaloop.
Monte: Right, right. So, you also had some, uh, I guess some, uhm, you were famous for some work on some larger clients, so Puma, who’s now making a big comeback in the shoe and clothing market . . . what kind of work did you do for them?
Bob: My position there was Brand Advocate, which basically was the eyes and the ears for Puma in the market in North America, so basically, just kind of always keeping an eye on trends, helping find little known celebrities, up-and-coming artists and so on, and placing the Puma brand on their feet. And just integrating the Puma brand into cool things going on.
Monte: Now, uhm, so, were you partially responsible for this big resurgence and their great success in marketing?
Bob: Yeah; I think the overall team that I was with was definitely . . . I mean, they all but vanished, especially from the U.S. market, ah, towards the end of the seventies and then back in ’97, ah, Puma North America came back into business and I would say probably around 2000, they started showing back up and really, in 2002, 2003, just kind of took back over.
Monte: Right, right.
Bob: Or at least got Puma back on . . . into people’s consciousness in America.
Monte: Yeah, ‘cause they’ve really made a great comeback. Now you’re not cool if you don’t have Pumas. I remember I had a pair of two Puma tennis shoes, you know the big furry suede leather tennis shoe when I was in 7th grade and I just could not be cool unless I had a pair of those shoes. And then they just kind of died out. Now, they’re the coolest thing since sliced bread. They make all kinds of wild shoes and good clothes; and people are wearing them all over the place. And my wife got . . . made me get a puma kind of sneaker type shoes about a month-and-a-half ago and I love them.
Bob: Nice. Yeah, I actually just hooked Ran Fishman up with a nice supply of some fresh Pumas from some friends still at Puma.
Monte: Oh, great. That’s great. So tell us a little bit about some of your current projects, one of which is Everest, which is one of the largest online poker affiliate programs?
Bob: Yeah, yeah; a large affiliate program and as far as, like, player volume, they’re the Top 5 in the world right now. Uhm, when I started with CIDC, they are actually the software development company that built the software for Everest; they don’t own Everest. But, they built the software and pretty much, they built gaming and social networking and a variety of other platforms softfwares. And their clients, some of their gaming clients in Asia were coming back to them and saying we’re having a tough time marketing this on our own, especially with the translation bandwidth, you know? I think a lot of people have traditionally used Babel Fish-like software and some of the software packages that are out there to translate . . .
Monte: Right.
Bob: . . . and for a user experience online it doesn’t always convert very well, because, just like any site that you’ve seen, you can tell has been translated or converted into English, a lot of times it just doesn’t make sense. So, uhm, one of the things that the people here at [inaudible] tried to do was to try to, you know, go ahead and take over the websites of some of our clients and ah, optimize [inaudible] for their languages with native speakers and then they brought me in to kind of do SEO and also just kind of just build their brands for them. Before this, they were just kind of, you know, you’ve can play games here, you can play for money here and that was about it as far as their branding message. You know? Here’s your software, go crazy.
Monte: Right, right. So, how have the challenges with what’s happened with the United States, you know, ban on online gaming affected your business or the business for Everest? Just for an example.
Bob: Well, fortunately . . . fortunately for us, many of our clients decided early on that the U.S. marketplace was just too competitive for them, because they’re mostly Asian and European. Uhm, so it kind of . . . and in most case, like Everest Poker never really accepted U.S. play as far as I know . . .
Monte: Oh, really?
Bob: So, uhm, in a way the U.S. ban was terrific for us [laughs] because they weren’t really accepting U.S. play at the time, so uhm, we were already kind of in the catbird seat in Europe, so whenever, you know, the people at like Poker Stars, Party Poker and so on all of the sudden found themselves without the U.S., uhm, we were already pretty prevalent in Europe. Probably . . .
Monte: Now . . .
Bob: Yeah?
Monte: No, go ahead, go ahead.
Bob: Probably, the biggest challenge that it creates is that now you have all of these markets where it was pretty easy to optimize your site and have it rank well and then now you have, you know, some of the strongest SEOs in the world competing for your spaces.
Monte: So, uhm, so . . . it’s always been an International type business, which is good, so it hasn’t been affected dramatically by lack of U.S. players, so I guess going back to some of the SEO challenges, getting into different languages in SEO, how does that all work for you? And how do you best optimize a site that, uhm, has to translate into different languages and serve a global market?
Bob: The real trick has been kind of constant observance of each document, you know, each 350 or each page. And so we use native translators and they’re basically guided with the thought, like make sure that this makes the most sense, you know, look for the best usability for user experience. And then when come in and try to do SEO, of course, you’re looking at a totally different reason for content. It’s like, okay, I’ve got 350 words – how many times can I get “poker” to show up in here?
Monte: Right, right.
Bob: Uhm, so for translation, I think, one of the things that has made us the most successful is just working individually with the translators; just talking them through it. Uhm, identifying the right keyword list. I mean, in the U.S. it’s really easy to take a look at keyword value, volume, and the idea that this is the money list. But other countries, it’s a lot more difficult. And then also making sure that those terms show up in the content once you’ve done it, especially like Asian character sets, where you can have, you know, a word or a two-word phrase expand into, you know, fifteen or twenty words. . .
Monte: Right, right.
Bob: . . . it depends on how you use it.
Monte: So, what are some of the other SEO challenges in the gaming arena, and you know, knowing that it’s a, you know, it’s a . . .a . . . an arena where people are playing from all over the world and its going crazy. I don’t know if you’re running into, you know, getting blocked by certain engines. What are some of the optimization challenges?
Bob: Uhm, some of the . . . one of the biggest challenges, honestly, has been trying to stay “white hat” and look for long haul, you know? And look for long term [inaudible]. You see a lot in the gaming industry, there’s a lot of “black hat,” a lot of burning URLs like crazy . . .
Monte: Uh-huh . . .
Bob: And trying to optimize a site that can compete with that kind of thing but then at the same time, not be “black hat.” And because, you know, obviously for the core brands to be banned would be a completely different thing than to have, you know, some random URL that you created.
Monte: Right. So you’re biggest challenge is trying to compete with “black hat” techniques and stuff, where will obviously get you ranked up there quickly and fast and then when the URL burns out because it’s blacklisted or whatever, you know, they move onto a different URL and do the same thing . . . Correct?
Bob: And so, you know, when they first brought me this challenge . . . you know, these SEOs to try to rank for keywords like “poker” and casino” in you know, sixteen, twenty languages, as an SEO I just had to take that challenge. And one of my first thoughts was, you know, okay, let’s cloak; let’s do something crazy. Let’s do the dirtiest tricks out there and do it and take over. But it only took me a short time to realize that that wouldn’t work for a brand’s longevity and we owe it to our clients that we’re actually helping them build their brand.
Monte: Right; ‘cause it is long term.
Bob: Yes.
Monte: So, uhm, what about keyword density? ‘Cause I know it varies by industry, what kind of keyword density you should be aiming for from an SEO standpoint. How does that work for the gaming industry?
Bob: Yeah, it’s one of the things, you know, actually Bruce Clay, I had this conversation with him at Webmaster World Vegas (not this year but last year). And really, each industry dictates what the proper keyword density is. And so for the gaming industry, it’s obviously going to be higher. You know, we’re easily . . . you can see sites that are 10%, 12%. So for something like online printing or something like that, that would just be considered keyword stuffing, you know, you could potentially get in trouble for that. But for this industry, it seems to be more commonplace. And then of course for each market it changes a little bit, based on the competitiveness and the SEO savvy of that language.
Monte: Yeah, definitely. So, uhm, so, the combination of, uhm, buying keywords and then what are some of the things that you have to do differently on a natural basis, if any?
Bob: Uhm, on a natural basis, one of the things that I least expected was, uhm, you know, to get localized to make sure that (and keep in mind we don’t do . . . like, I don’t do anything for the affiliate programs or anything for their brands; I’m just optimizing their websites so it’s kind of separate) so then you’re always kind of having to monitor the linking structure of what’s going on with the affiliates and the great partners that Everest has established because you never know what they’re doing. So there’s always kind of this interesting link structure investigation; you always have to be monitoring and you know, how many links does this guy have that he’s pointing towards us, what are these links, where do they go? As Google gets more involved (Google specifically gets more involved) in Europe, you see them really stepping up their spam prevention game and so in that industry, you really have to monitor what’s going on behind the scenes of the site at all times.
Monte: What kind of trends and developments are in the industry currently?
Bob: Ah, I think we’ll see in 2007, 2008, a lot of people going multi-player across multiple platforms. You know, I think one of the things that have been instrumental in the success of poker online has been the multi-player experience. And then when you think of online gaming prior to, ah, 2005, or 2004, you really think more of casino and most casino games, they’re not very multi-player platform. It’s usually you are sitting at a blackjack table by yourself . . .
Monte: Right.
Bob: . . . or your favorite slot machine. I think we’ll see a lot of people doing multi-player stuff, which I think should be very interesting. Which, you know, the SEO [inaudible] will be, you know, they’re going more for like social media within the game, having more of that social network aspect to it.
Monte: Now, what kind of domain strategies do you use for your clients in general that really boost and help SEO? And let’s get into some details, because there’s a lot of domainers that listen. And how can they increase their rankings, their search engine position, they’re strength on the Internet by having a domain strategy?
Bob: Uhm, well, one of the things that I thought was really important for the Everest brand was really expanding their overall domain list to protect . . . if you’re going to build a brand, you better make sure that you can own that brand online. [inaudible] I think you and I chatted just a little bit about this at the party at the Hugh Hefner suite, the Yahoo! party at Webmaster World last year on the patio.
Monte: Yes, yes.
Bob: Ah, one of the major errors that I see made all the time and this is from partners and brands, is, you know, building a great site and not thinking about the, you know, hyphenated keyword varieties; the other countries. You know, the future of the brand they’re building, because I think in a lot of cases, I’ve heard horror stories of people forgetting about one country brand and then having to go out and spend $2,000 or $3,000 to get that URL off someone else that’s building it.
Monte: Right.
Bob: That’s always amazed me. And I think a lot of cases, people think, if we could . . . I don’t want to battle with these people, I think I can, uhm, just pay them off. And I think when you think of the cost of URLs in bulk, it just doesn’t make any kind of sense not to expand your URL list dramatically at the start.
Monte: So, get specific, though. Besides that, I mean, what . . . should you be covering yourself in every extension? How are you using the domain names to really increase the, you know, SEO position on, you know, Google and on Yahoo! and how does it vary?
Bob: Unfortunately, for the average brands a lot of what we’ve done hasn’t been so much trying to expand their position by using the domain names as much as just, you know, doing standard redirects and protecting the brand. One of the best methods for using multiple URLs, I think, in the gaming industry is providing different kinds of content and uhm, like a perfect example is everyone sees there’s dot net on almost every gaming site . . .
Monte: Right.
Bob: . . . and, you know, traditionally this is for, you know, in the U.S., people use it for . . . we want to do advertising on television but the stipulations say we can’t so we’ll do the dot net and we’ll build a learning site. And in Europe, you see this a lot. But what you don’t see is anybody really expanding dot net and expanding dot TV and really building more and more content, uhm, that can be specialized and optimized for a different segment of an industry. Using poker as a reference, you know, setting up affiliate programs with chipset providers. Doing your own kind of café-[inaudible] stores. There are a lot of things you can do that can support maybe an affiliate program that you’re working on by delivering traffic from that to a gaming provider but then at the same time you can be, ah, gleaning revenue from a store perspective and just you know, just making the most out of various affiliate programs and the traffic you can get by ranking well.
Monte: Right, right. For a novice person just getting up on the Web and also for the ones that are the most advanced, from all your experience, all your, you know, knowledge of the SEO industry, what are two or three or four things that people don’t generally know about that can really help advance their business from an SEO standpoint? Or from any standpoint that you’ve learned from working with some of these large organizations, some online gaming industry players and just in general from all the people that you’ve worked with?
Bob: I think one of the biggest things that I see is poor [inaudible]; poor site structure. People out there that just don’t take advantage of site maps and don’t build a site that’s easily spider-able. I mean, it’s amazing how many sites you can find, especially big brand sites that you can find, that have tremendous content – they should be the go-to guy in that industry but there’s just no way that a spider can make it through their content and they just can’t be indexed worth anything. Uhm . . .
Monte: So, so . . . so just diving into that a little bit, what are some of the things that are must-haves?
Bob: Yeah; like, for example, you know, in the sneaker industry, you see so much Flash and there are so many great ways that you can build – a mirror site and 301; you can disallow your core Flash site and build a content version that links back to it.
Monte: Now, Flash is okay, right? Because, Bruce Clay was . . . I had him on the show, I guess it was several . . . a few months ago – and he built his entire website in Flash, apparently, and says you can do it and rank well with it and the new technology allows that to happen – is that correct?
Bob: Well, I think that as long as you are using your tags properly and that the content exists, other than inside a graphic, as far as I understand, the Google box still can’t read any flattened, graphic text that hasn’t been tagged properly.
Monte: Right.
Bob: I don’t want to contradict Bruce Clay; I mean, he is Bruce Clay . . .
Monte: Right, right. He’s SEO [laughs].
Bob: [laughs] But as far as I can tell, you still see a lot of sites that are all Flash heavy that haven’t been tagged properly ranking very well, Uhm, I think it’s just the nature of how Flash is built.
Monte: Right, right. Okay; so now, you mentioned . . . you talked about site maps just a little bit as well . . . so everybody should have a site map and have it accurately dictate what’s going on in the website because that gives the spiders direction of where to go, correct?
Bob: Right. And, you know, it’s like, sitemaps.org, for example – how often do you see so many search engines collaborating together on one project. I mean, it has to have tremendous importance for them to do that. I mean, they . . , you know, I think its part of the competition between search engines also. They want to provide the best results and the uniform site map is one of the key ways to do it. Make sure, you know, you’re really making all of your content available to them. You know, going back to the days when Meta tags were a big deal. Why were Meta tags a big deal? Because, you needed to instruct the bot where to go and where your content was and give them some clues as to what that is. The same thing’s with site maps today.
Monte: Right. Okay, and what else besides site maps and the basics?
Bob: Uhm, refresh content. I think a lot of times you see big brands – look at their website like a print ad, as this thing, oh, we need to build this site, uhm, and sure, they’ll have their current events area and maybe a PR area and current offerings area but a lot of their core site stays pretty stale for a number of years. And I think, you know, one of the biggest things that bigger brands often miss out on is just adding fresh content as often as possible, just keeping it fresh.
Monte: Great. Anything else you can give in terms of, uhm, just maybe some tips that people don’t know about? SEO related or not.
Bob: Uhm, well, I’ll to throw . . . I’ll try to throw some tips [inaudible] . . .
Monte: Give me some really good . . . give me some SEO secrets that no one would know about.
Bob: ahhh, yeah, I think you’d might have to come to Casino Affiliate convention in Amsterdam to really get the good ones.
Monte: [laughs] Well, give us some second good ones then, that no one’s hearing about. [laughs]
Bob: You know, it’s not as much SEO . . . it’s as much SEO as it is usability, ah, using native speakers to translate your content is worth every nickel in the world, I mean . . .
Monte: Oh, so that’s a good point – so instead of trying to use translation software, get somebody who’s really a speaker of the language, because it comes out differently.
Bob: Yeah, it’s the same thing that happens whenever you receive an email that you can tell has been translated by a software tool rather than an individual that’s fluently speaking; it just . . . I think when this matters is when it comes to conversion, you know? You finally got them to your site; you’ve ranked well, you have your keyword density right, your link structure’s great, you have great leads, you rank well; they click on you and they come to your site and it just doesn’t feel convincing enough that they’ll put a credit card down. And then you don’t get the conversion. I think if you took Site A and Site B and Site A was native speaker and Site B was translated with a tool, you’ll find that Site A converts better every time.
Monte: Okay, great. Well, Bob, that was great to have you online on Domain Masters and I’m sure that people picked up some really good points, uhm, from you and everyone who’s interested, one of the largest gaming affiliate gathering is going to be in Amsterdam at the CAC, which is the Casino Affiliate Conference in Amsterdam. I believe that runs the 2nd through . . . ?
Bob: The 2nd or 3rd through 5th of May.
Monte: Through 5th of May. I’m speaking on domains there and Bob, I assume you’re speaking on some SEO stuff there as well, right?
Bob: Yeah, we’ve got a great panel set up with myself and Mede Adonis from Germany, who’s a really great “black hat” guy and we’re going to talk about “black hat” and “white hat” SEO techniques and why each one works and what the similarities and differences are. Should be pretty interesting from an SEO perspective.
Monte: Alright, great. Well, I’ll definitely see you in Amsterdam; I’m heading out for AOE Telemedia conference the weekend . . . or the week before, so I’m going to be out there for about 10 days and we’re going to be at both conferences and as a matter of fact, Bob, we’re going to have a silent domain auction at CAC for gaming industry names, so there’ll be a lot of poker and a lot of gaming names that’ll be there and all the attendees will be allowed to participate in the auction, both selling and buying domain names.
Bob: Sounds great.
Monte: Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun. Well, thanks a lot for being on Domain Masters and I look forward to talking with you again and I’ll see you in May.
Bob: Sounds good.
Monte: Okay, Bob, take care.
Bob: Take care, Monte. Bye.
Monte: Alright, special thanks to Bob Raines, who’s an SEO guru, works with Everest Poker, helped Puma get famous again on the U.S. market and a lot of good content there. We’re going to take a commercial break and then come back on with our second guest, which is Jeremy Patawire. Stay tuned. We’ll be on in a couple minutes.
[Commercials]
Monte: Hey, folks, welcome back to Domain Masters. Thanks again to Bob Raines from CDIC for being our first guest.
My second guest is Jeremy Patawire and he is a Moniker customer who has lots of domain names. Jeremy was born in 1973 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. He went to the University of Texas in Austin and went to law school in Tennessee. I don’t hold that against him because I’m a Kentucky Wildcat.
Jeremy: [laughs]
Monte: During law school and business school, I guess he started an online business that specialized in creating collector-oriented websites and benefiting from paid click-throughs. And so from there, I guess, he got a lot of experience, started registering a bunch of domain names and he ended working at Mattel in graduate school and he’s got a bunch of domain names now and been very successful on the Web and actually has some great .Mobi names. Jeremy, welcome to Domain Masters.
Jeremy: Thank you very much, Monte. It’s so great to speak with you.
Monte: Yeah, it’s nice to have you on board. So give us (besides my abbreviated version) a little bit of history about how you really got started on the Internet and specifically in the domain name market and you know, some of the opportunities that you saw.
Jeremy: Well, ah, thank you very much. Yeah. I’ll tell you, I took the non-linear path to this business, because it was always sort of the second thing on my list, but it ended up being the most profitable thing. In the mid-1990’s I graduated from the University of Texas and I jumped into a JD MBA program. Truly, one of those kids that got out of school and didn’t know what to do with my life, so that’s the reason why I did both. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a plan in terms of paying for it. So I took out a lot of loans and so here I am in mid-1996, staring at a lot of loans and trying to come up with a hobby that might generate some revenue. Around that time, I was watching television one day, as college students and graduate students tend to do a lot of, and I saw where this lady had been creating a collectible website and actually achieving some level of traffic and creating a community and basically with that community, achieving Pay Per Click. And at the time, I mean, it was so early that the Pay Per Click came through direct relationships with larger entities. And so I decided what I would do is I would take advantage of Yahoo!’s alphabetical search engine and come up with a bunch of collectible websites with the first name “Absolute.” So I had, at the time, AbsoluteBeanies.com (which by the way, if you go to now, who knows what’s there) as well as a whole bunch of collectible sites where you could basically buy and sell on a real simplistic template that I had set up, almost like a guestbook. And I got a tremendous amount of traffic and ended up monetizing that. About that time, I realized that there’s got to be something to idea of generating traffic through domain names and I bought 60 generic names and I actually was saying to Jeanie yesterday (one of the people on your staff) that I was one of the folks that was early-in on the game but I never really monetized from a click-through generating revenue perspective; I just sold my names. So, of the 60 names that I purchased in the mid-nineties, I ended up selling them all by 2001 and completely getting out [inaudible] . . .
Monte: Wow! So, so, so . . . what kind of revenue was generated from the sale of those domain names in total?
Jeremy: Oh, it was great. Really, close to a million dollars. The #1 name was Act.com, which all by itself sold for five hundred thousand and you know, Lou Richards was my partner on that name and yeah, it was just a great sale, especially for someone who was still trying to figure out, in terms of loans and everything else. So it was a dream for me. Uhm, so, you know, basically some of the other names that I sold were Arrange.com, Allege.com, Marshmallows.com; a whole bunch of names like that. I mean, really generic names, one-worders that today would probably sell for 10 times what I got for them in 1999, 2000.
Monte: Right, right. Well, one would say that was kind of the height of the market, the first go-around for the market, and now we’re on a gradual climb on something that may not ever end, in terms of depreciation . . .
Jeremy: Right.
Monte: I mean, I ‘m sure we’ll have some market set backs but uhm, overall, I’ve seen all indications that everything’s still moving forward in a positive direction.
Jeremy: Well, the good thing now is the valuation is truly based upon fundamentals that you can touch and feel, whereas at the time, people were still buying names, really just for the branding opportunity or a few very, very intelligent people at the time where buying at the time understanding that they could get a tremendous ROI by buying generic terms. But really, I mean, even as you got into early 2000, the idea of generating money in most categories of business would have been very difficult for people to conceive of. I mean, gambling and the adult channels were obviously generating money; but I didn’t tend to participate in that area too much. So . . .
Monte: Okay, so, you actually . . . after this initial sale of your entire inventory, then took a little bit of a hiatus, ah, . . .
Jeremy: Six years. [laughs]
Monte: . . . [inaudible] out of the market, so tell us about that a little bit.
Jeremy: Well, I had gotten very good at going to school and then coming home and working in my underwear at twelve o’clock at night, going through a dictionary looking for names and selling them . . .
Monte: [inaudible]
Jeremy: So I knew how to do that. But I wasn’t so sure that I had put my $200,000 of out-of-pocket expenses for academics to the test. And so my goal was to get into something that was a little bit more tangible. And so I got into a traditional consumer package goods, after grad school; and I worked for Mattel for about 3 years, where I was a brand manager on Hot Wheels, and Masters of the Universe, and a lot of entertainment brands . . .
Monte: Mattel’s out of Cincinnati, right?
Jeremy: Mattel’s in Los Angeles. It’s actually in El Segundo. And then basically after my stint at Mattel I was brought over to another company that’s publicly traded to the third largest toy company called [inaudible] Specific and here I head up all the boy’s entertainment division; so anything that has to do with movies or TV, ahm, I’d manufacture, produce and market the toys and do the deals with the licensors. And so it’s an interesting . . . having the domain name background has given me a very interesting perspective on promotional marketing that I think that a lot of my colleagues may start . . . may now . . . are barely starting to understand. But, yeah, it was a great run. And so now I’m still involved in the toy industry, I’m still with Jacks, I’m still heading up the entertainment brands here, including WWE and Pokemon and all these other kids’ brands that kids and some collectors know about. But also, in mid-2006, I heard about dot Mobi and that very much stimulated my interest.
Monte: Cool. So you’re still having fun in the toy industry and then you started reinvesting back in the domain names. So tell us about the new resurgence and what you see in the market today that varies from what you saw in 2000 and 1999.
Jeremy: Well, you know, in 199. . . I mean, really, as far back as 1997 and 1996, the market was . . . you know, there were folks in the market who understood that generic domain names held a valuation. They understood that they were generating traffic and that traffic, whether it could be converted into revenue immediately or could be converted to revenue later, uhm, they knew that they had value. When I left the domain name industry in 2000, late 2000-early 2001, my perspective was that basically that I thought, A) who knows what was going to happen to the whole domain name world in general, and I wish I didn’t have that perspective at the time – sincerely incorrect that something was going to occur to shift the Web; but B) I promised myself if there was ever a mobile naming registry, uhm, I would jump in; I’d jump back in. And so when I heard that there was a domain name extension that was positioning itself as a mobile registry, uhm, I thought it would be very important for me to jump in and play immediately. And that’s what I did. So, in about July, I guess I put around $30,000 into pre-registrations and I think I pre-registered probably close, I don’t know, eight hundred, nine hundred names; maybe a little less than 800 names. And I ended getting about a hundred of those. And then as soon as people had Mobi names, I went to work on the secondary market and bought up another hundred. And so my total expenditure was in the, you know, one twenty-five to one-fifty range and since I’ve sold 12-13 names and I’m very close to breaking even. So it’s been . . . I mean the ROI on this investment has been tremendous and now I’m sitting on 185 generic names that, you know, may or may not be worth, you know, sincere money one day; but we’ll see.
Monte: Right, right. Well, at least you see the market and if anything, you know, if you’re first trial into the market proved anything, it proved that you had some foresight and some insight into what was going to happen and some uh, uh, some, you know, confidence that something was going to return something back to you and look what it did. So, I too, am a believer in the dot Mobi market a bit, and I think it has a great application and a great, you know, it’s a great new extension that has its own applications, its own, kind of, back bone that makes it unique and different. So, what, uhm . . .
Jeremy: [inaudible]
Monte: What’s, like, you’re top name in your . . . in your opinion, that you have currently?
Jeremy: Well, some of the top names are, uhm, Vehicles.mobi, Condominiums.mobi, uhm, Vet.mobi, PhD.mobi, LawSchool, MedSchool; I mean, there’s quite a few. Backgammon, SmartPhones, uhm, I could go down a list and I think that one sounds better than the next, to me. But, yeah, my take on Mobi is that dot com has come to a point where its relatively easy to gauge the valuation because you can look at the Pay Per Click; you can project that a trend within an industry might actually give you a higher yearly multiple with another industry that might be dying . . . You can do the analysis to make a dot com name make sense if you’re using it to create long term value. For me, with Mobi, my gut estimate is, and this is just coming from now being involved with consumer package goods for seven or eight years, plus having had the domain name experience, is that consumers tend to behave how they’re directed to behave. And I’m saying that they don’t have a mind of their own, because they absolutely do, and certainly with the communities that have been established online, even more than ever. But there’s never really been a precedent set for how to surf the mobile Web. Just like, in the mid-90’s there was not much precedence on what to do on the wired Web. And I think it’s very interesting. It’s a very interesting time and I think that a sociologist right now could write an entire doctoral thesis on how people are going to behave with the mobile Web and how might someone who positions themselves as a important player within that industry, how they might actually become what they say they are positioned to be. So it’ll be very . . . I think within the next couple years, we’re going to see some interesting movement in mobile and Mobi could very well be at the heart of it and just . . . it just is my guessing game right now.
Monte: Now, you have . . . have you bought any dot coms or are you totally 100% in dot mobi right now?
Jeremy: Well, you know, the only dot com that I have is Jeremy.com, which of course is my first name and purely, I think, half out of narcissistic needs and the other half because I realize that maybe the most important brand that you can ever manage is your own. So, managing myself in the business world, it’s very easy for people to get in touch with me, just by emailing me at Jeremy@jeremy.com or getting in touch with me on the Web. And frankly, now, in the job that I currently have, uhm, you know, my business is pretty large and I use my own personal website to cross over to communicating with the tens of thousands of collectors there are that collect, you know, the action figures that we sell.
Monte: Right, right. So you’re using the power of the Web anyway.
Jeremy: Definitely.
Monte: So, based off of your great experience in taking a risk, you know, buying a bunch of domain names, having it pay off all your college loans and being in a pretty vibrant toy industry market and also in the domain business and having some new insight on some of the new extensions, like dot mobi, what are some of the tips and suggestions that you have for those that are listening that people may not think are the obvious, and they could be very successful at what they’re doing with their domain names?
Jeremy: Well, you know, I think that my suggestion in terms of the domain name industry right now would simply be, from a dot com perspective, I do believe that for the most people have “mined the mines.” You know, if you’re going out there and you’re looking for names that are associated with existing industries that may provide legitimate long-term value, I think that’s going to be more difficult. On the flip side, if you try to do that with dot mobi right now, there is no short-term benefit from a Pay Per Click perspective is there is no . . . the awareness is still building and it’s very low right now – in terms of the traffic it’s very low. So, my tip would be, I would . . . if you’re not involved in the domain industry right now, if you have money, go after the two-worders that exist in high end PPC industries. Like, for instance, if you went after a credit consolidation type industry or a credit improvement type industry . . . maybe you could find someone that has a two- or three-word name that gets five or six click throughs a week and they’re not even doing anything with it and they have no clue that maybe the name they bought in 2002 could generate a couple thousand dollars a year in revenue. So, my gut instinct right now is if you’re in dot com, uhm, to basically go after high end industries and go after relatively obscure two- or three-worders. If you’re in dot mobi, my take on it is, uh, the best generic terms have been probably been taken, outside of what’s being held, uhm, withheld by MTLD, which is the registry (which by the way, I think they’ve done a tremendous job in terms of their roll out of Mobi), so my tip to those consumers is, you know, go to the secondary market and be willing to spend a couple grand on some good names. Because I do believe that long-term, as you see in any market, the great, great premier prime area of the market will separate itself and will provide tremendous returns, whether it’s from someone who’s looking to brand within the mobile industry or its looking for someone who’s looking to benefit from Pay Per Click advertising.
Monte: Right, right. Anything else, just in general, in business, that you’ve learned for people that are getting in industry or have been in it for a long time?
Jeremy: Uhm, you know, I would say, just in terms of people that are in the industry right now, uhm, the only thing I can say is congratulations for having the foresight to stick around and to basically buy in the 2001 to 2005 years because now you’re sitting on a virtual goldmine. For those of you who are potentially interested in investing in a new area, like a dot mobi. Don’t allow the potential, you know, don’t allow the hype of others to make you overspend and don’t basically read between the lines when you’re hearing someone tell you that it’s absolutely not going to work as well, because I do believe that a directed consumer approach on the mobile industry, where consumers are still learning to search the mobile Web, could potentially result in a true benefit.
Monte: That’s great. Well, Jeremy, we really appreciate having you on the show and we’re happy to have you as a customer. And your success in the industry and also in the mainstream world is certainly valuable and I think you brought a lot of good insight for everybody that was listening.
Jeremy: Yes.
Monte: I appreciate having you on Domain Masters and I look forward to continuing to work with you.
Jeremy: Well, thank you very much. It’s a real pleasure and obviously I’ve been aware of you for a long time and thank you for all you’ve done for this industry. I think it’s been very important.
Monte: Thank you very much. And, by the way, just so you know – you know we’re having the next live domain auction on the 7th of March and dot mobi has released some of the most premier names yet to us for auction at that conference. So, we are going to be auctioning off names like Pizza.mobi, Eat.mobi, RealEstate.mobi, Directions.mobi, LoanCalculator.mobi, Models.mobi – a bunch of great names. So, the dot mobi list is going to be released in the morning, I believe, so it’s all going to be set.
Jeremy: That’s tremendous. I think RealEstate.mobi is a potential, absolute diamond mind. I think that one could change someone’s life if they’re willing to invest.
Monte: Yeah. Definitely, definitely. There’s some great domains coming. We have fifteen of them that they’ve released to us and I’d say ten of them are probably very premier. So it’s going to be very good. You can actually come to TRAFFIC auction and bid on them, or you can put in a proxy bid for them, too. If you’re interested.
Jeremy: Tremendous. Alright, well, watch for me, then.
Monte: Okay, I certainly will. Thanks a lot, Jeremy, glad to have you on.
Jeremy: Okay; thank you, sir. Thank you.
Monte: Take care.
Jeremy: Alright, bye-bye.
Monte: Alright, well my . . . I want to thank them again, my special guests, for being on Domain Masters – Jeremy Patawire, who has reinvested in the marketplace on primarily dot mobi names. He sees a little bit of the future and if anybody has a belief in the market and what happened the first time around when he sold close to a million dollars worth of domain names after the first investment he made and was able to use that money to better himself and better the market and better his business. He’s not invested in dot mobi names. And, also, Bob Raines, who we had on and who’s on the SEO side and helping the gaming industry with SEO and who we’re going to see out in Amsterdam at the CAC conference. Just a reminder again, we’re going to be broadcasting live from TRAFFIC West in Las Vegas. The show starts on the 5th of . . . or the conference starts on the 5th of March and runs through the 8ths, so we’re going to be doing . . . well, our live Domain Masters show. We’ll be actually the domain . . . the live domain auction on the 7th. It will be broadcast here live on Domain Masters, on WebMasterRadio.fm and you can listen to the show live and the auction live. It’s going to be about 3 hours long, 3 ½ hours long. There’s going to be about 300, or 250, domain names auctioned off live, and there’s also a silent auction that’s running for a week afterwards, through the 14th. So we’ll have more information about that. We’ll continue to have live shows and live conveage while we’re at SES New York in April and also AOE and CAC in April and May. And, we’re going to be all over the place, basically. So, with that, we’ll be live next week with another great show. We’re actually going to have the head intellectual property attorney on for Microsoft; he’s going to be the guest on the show next week. His name is Aaron Kornblum. He is going to talk to us about what Microsoft is doing about protecting their brand and interests, especially their domain name bus . . . uhm, uhm, their infringing domains and the domains they’re trying to go after for their brands. And I’m sure it will be an interesting show since there’s going to be a lot of insight on how to protect oneself from companies that are claiming their domain names and also those that are interested in how to protect themselves from registering names that could be trademarked. So we’re going to talk to Aaron Kornblum about that and probably have another domainer on as well.
With that, I will see you next week, live on Domain Masters. Be the master of your domain. I will see you next week. Take care.
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