Seven Mile

Comments

1. Posted by Kelly Lieberman | November 20th, 2007 at 7:23 pm

   Anyone following the auction on nis.com on http://www.sedo.com? $71,000, and headed North. A domainer somewhere doing the happy dance…

2. Posted by David J Castello | November 20th, 2007 at 8:53 pm

   This man can’t be serious.
   He said that Geodomainers mostly live in the city they own? He said that Geodomainers aren’t domainers? I had to read it twice.
   Most Geodomainers own multiple cities and may live in one of the cities they own. He talked to the owner of Austin.com who lives in Austin and onlyh owns Austin.com. Great. But did he talk to the largest Geodomain owners like Boulevards New Media, Skip Hoagland, Kevin Ham or us (CCIN)? No, he spoke to one individual and painted the whole industry with the same brush.
   And most Geodomainers are not domainers? Unreal. FYI: We also own Daycare.com, Whisky.com, Cost.com, Kennel.com and many more. Skip Hoagland owns Fishing.com, Hunting.com, etc. And you may want to ask Kevin Ham what other domains he owns.

3. Posted by AhmedF | November 21st, 2007 at 3:44 am

   Indeed I am serious.

   Yes you have quite a few domains. And yes so does Boulevards, and Skip, and Josh, and so forth. But a lot of the people attending the event (who own domains) don’t consider themselves domainers. Heck even Skip said he had no desire to attend to TRAFFIC et all because that wasn’t his thing - he didn’t consider himself a domainer. Austin.com was just an example.

   Kevin Ham, Shaun P, Rob M, etc - yes they are geodomain owners now, but they originally started off as domainers.

   I stated six different points (takeaways) from the geodomain. You are getting upset over one of them. Plus the fact that every single parking company I talked to said it wasn’t the most productive expo underlines the fact that most people there simply are not domainers.

4. Posted by David J Castello | November 22nd, 2007 at 12:37 am

   “Plus the fact that every single parking company I talked to said it wasn’t the most productive expo underlines the fact that most people there simply are not domainers.”

   Ahmed, you’ve just stated your philosophy in a nutshell: Real domainers park their names.

   In the Geodomain world, no self-respecting Geodomainer would ever park a major Geodomain. We develop them. The front page of PalmSprings.com alone makes us almost a million dollars a year in advertising revenue. Believe me, that page would never generate a fraction of that amount if it was parked.

   In fact, a parked city name cannot become a member of Associated Cities. Developing, not parking, is the REAL future of the domain name industry. And Geodomainers are the biggest proponents of it.

   FYI: The reason Skip Hoagland does not attend TRAFFIC is because of a falling out he had with Rick Schwartz.

5. Posted by tommy Butler | November 22nd, 2007 at 2:11 am

   Ahmed

   Not everybody has dozen straws up a persons backside.

   there is other ways of earning good money with out parking your names.

   its called building and developing a site
   can give you a sample of this

   I will not mention the company that this name was parked with but lets use this as as sample
   and lets see who is right.

   take http://www.glasgownightlife.co.uk a simple name that you would be lucky to get £20.00 for.
   Parked for 6 months with parking company and optimised total earning for 6 months $1.37 total amount of visitors average month 37.
   Now same name developed to local website listing nightclubs in glasgow
   now stats for 1 year are
   Total Visits 184935 Total Unique 69602 now the same name earns me average $260 a month.

   So parking to me is a mugs game only the parking companys make the money and the domainer gets the dogs bones.

   and its about time domainers woke up to being screwed by parking companys.

   My thoughts on it

   Now fire away

6. Posted by AhmedF | November 22nd, 2007 at 2:17 am

   Well underlying politics aside, Skip also said he had no interest in the other conferences

   I’m not sure why the disagreement - we agree on development and the [huge] upside on geodomains. I think parked pages are the absolute bottom - they have a long way to go up. I agree 100% that development is the way to go - when I talked on the Local Search panel, all I did was talk about taking it further than even the basic directory (which some do consider development).

   The kerfuffle seems to be around the term ‘domainer.’ Lets just say that if we had a venn diagram of the people attending GeoDomain Expo and the people attending TRAFFIC - the overlap would be relatively low. That isn’t a bad (nor good) thing - it is just an observation.

   I do pose you a question David - do you disagree with the rest of what I said?

7. Posted by David J Castello | November 22nd, 2007 at 4:38 am

   Actually Ahmed, I agree with everything you’ve said. And I believe that your assessment of the 2007 Geodomain Expo hit a very important nerve. Your perspective is correct. Parking IS the name of the domain name game and these parking companies are the greatest sponsors of these events (TRAFFIC, Geodomain Expo, DOMAINfest, etc). In other words, parking companies are the cheerleaders of our industry and the greatest supporters we have.

   However, I also believe that the 2007 Geodomain Expo will be looked back on as a watershed moment in our industry. Never before has a niche market of domainers put development as, not an option, but as the only real option for financial security. Developing domain names is the future of our industry and I believe everyone, parking companies and domainers included, will eventually evolve with it. It is no coincidence that TrafficZ, one of the most popular parking companies and the main sponsor of the 2007 Geodomain Expo, is also our partner in developing Cost.com.

8. Posted by AhmedF | November 22nd, 2007 at 6:24 am

   I want to clear up something - I make < $20 a month from parking. I buy and develop. It is what my company does. And a large part of what we do is in the local space.

   Really this is some mis-directed and mis-understood anger

9. Posted by Patrick Carleton | November 22nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm

   GeoDomain owners have transformed into developer first, domainer second…

   As Executive Director of Associated Cities, I make it a point to study each of my members – their plans for the future, what they are currently working on, and a very complete history of how each of them got involved in the industry. I have made it a point to visit many of their offices (7 thus far) to further learn how their company operates. When a new member of Associated Cities first joins, I collect information about the new member, compose a brief on them, and introduce them to the existing membership which is currently over 110 member sites. Having looked through the list of our members, over 95% of them began as (and still are!) domainers. There are only a few exceptions to the rule, such as the real-estate agent who purchased his GeoDomain to capture more and better leads for his business (who has since developed the site into a city portal, purchase others, and joined the ranks as a domainer).

   I can’t think of any “domainer” that I have met at the 8 TRAFFIC/DRT/DF conferences that I have attended who does not have aspirations of developing their prime domains. As Ahmed points out, at other conferences (and throughout the industry blogs) we have “heard ‘we want to develop’ for the last 3+ years.”

   There are media owners of GeoDomains who, as many Associated Cities members have been, were way ahead of the curve in realizing the future value of GeoDomains to the success of their businesses, such as the Miami Herald (Miami.com), Boston Globe (Boston.com), Hotels.com (Orlando.com & MiamiBeach.com), etc., but to make a generalized statement that GeoDomain owners are not domainers, and are provincial in nature is inaccurate and misleading. Perhaps a better statement would be that very very few GeoDomain owners are not domainers. It would be more accurate to say that most GeoDomain owners have begun a while ago what most domainers have aspired to for years – morphed into developers as their core business, secondarily as domainers. I know domainers who have purchased GeoDomains which they have developed, simply because they want to be part of the work-tank that is Associated Cities, and begin breaking away from the traditional domainer routine of purchase – park – $$$ - purchase – park – $$$ – purchase … as profitable as it has been for them, its excitement is wearing, and their enthusiasm for the future that is development is ever budding. When the TRAFFIC/DRT/DF attendees begin focusing more of their energy on development, and less on domaining and parking, does that mean that they can no longer be classified as domainers?

   To say that there was no market was not there for a Parking company is also inaccurate. Between the three parking company sponsors of the 2007 GeoDomain Expo, TrafficZ, Parked.com, and Fabulous, only Parked.com focuses solely on parking. TrafficZ now has a new development arm, and LeaseThis, their domain leasing company. Fabulous.com also has a domain aftermarket system and a registry. On top of that, 20% of Fabulous.com’s portfolio of over 550,000 domains are GeoDomains. Does that mean that they are not domainers? I don’t believe that there an argument that “the match wasn’t there” for any of the sponsors of the expo, including the Parking companies.

   There were tons of attendees at the Expo who have decent sized portfolios outside of their GeoDomains, and have not had the time to develop much past their prime GeoDomains. Thus, all of the attendees at the GeoDomain Expo would be in need of a good parking company.

   Ahmed, you have a great product, and we certainly appreciate your sponsorship, participation, attendance, and panel participation at the 2007 GeoDomain Expo. I have had a great experience putting together a partnership with iBegin, and look forward to working with you in the future.

   Patrick Carleton
   Executive Director
   Associated Cities

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