Acro.net - Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

The day started with my usual cup of coffee and a surprisingly smooth commute on Interstate 4. This time around I found my way inside the Disney resorts without getting lost. I managed to arrive about 15 minutes before the sessions would begin. I ran into Donny from Parked.com who gave me a brief intro about what his 11am speech was going to be about.

Rick Schwartz kicked off Day 2 of the TRAFFIC conference with his keynote speech. He mentioned that while it’s time to slow down and assess the opportunities offered, we also need to be aware of the dangers that are rising in today’s economy. In the financial crash of 2000-2001, everyone seemed to run away from the online ventures, abandoning their assets. In 2008, everyone seems to be running towards the venues available on the Internet. Even though we are living in thriving industry times, it’s time to also be proactive during the equally challenging financial times.

Rick closed mentioning the Snowe bill and how it is a time for the domain industry that the fittest will survive, as the industry shifts and changes its focus.

Howard Neu then took the stand, unfolding the opportunities that all the TRAFFIC attendants have with the range of exhibitors, stressing how this is not a trade show but rather, a get-together of the best and foremost-thinking members of the domain industry. While forums and chatrooms bring domain owners together, in a real life event such as TRAFFIC people have the opportunity to facilitate deals and establish relationships at a personal level.

Michael Collins, executive director of ICA then talked about the challenges that the industry is facing with the introduction of the Snowe bill that stirred the domaining calm waters and created a lot of tension. As a result of ICA’s efforts with raising awareness, ICA membership doubled since February 2008. He stressed the importance of domainers being represented in an organized form, lobbying at Washington DC, ICANN and the media.

Phil Corwin, legal councel for ICA, then described in detail the legal aspect of the Snowe bill, that is being promoted aggressively against domain owners from a group of major trademark holders. Wrapped up as an anti-phishing bill, it attempts to hold domain owners liable for millions of dollars in damages, without limitations. He mentioned that the politicians must be educated about the dangers of this bill, while defending the domain industry by building stronger alliances. Finally, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft maintaining their separate existence serve a positive purpose to online advertising, as the industry needs transparency and competition, instead of monopolies.

Michael Gilmour spoke about the future of domain parking, stating that currently only 20% of the world’s population is using the Internet. The percentage is increasing in Asia, in such countries as China and India. In fact, the growth in Asia is quite explosive. In India, the market is highly educated; there are also more millionaires in India than in the US. He concluded that domain owners need to develop up to three domains as businesses and utilize the rest of their portfolio as a revenue generator from parking.

Donny from Parked.com gave us all a history lesson, citing data of PPC for a domains over the course of 4 years, showing in effect that advertisers currently don’t care about top placement in search engines like Google and seem content with second or third places which are more affordable. He also mentioned that parking pages in the future need to be more visually appealing and look more like “real” web pages.

This concluded part one of Day 2. We had a great lunch that helped everyone unwind and yet network even more. I met with members of Domainsponsor and TrafficZ that seemed to like eachother a lot, despite both being Los Angeles based companies.

The dessert was delicious, the coffee invigorating and …I will continue Part 2 of Day 2 once my laptop batteries get recharged.

Despite a surprisingly rainy morning that lasted until noon, Orlando was sunny and dry when I hit the road driving west, towards the Disney Resorts. After getting lost twice in the maze of entertainment parks that good old Walt Disney decided to build in the middle of the swamps in the 1960’s, I arrived at the Grand Floridian at around 1:30pm.

At the registration desk I met Christian Higgins of Parked.com who just happened to be there, sporting a “PARKED.com” shirt. After registering, I met Rick Schwartz who was busy making sure things were going smoothly.

Soon after, I met with other members of Parked.com, including Donny Simonton and Michael Ward. It was great meeting in person with people that in the past I only exchanged emails with (some of which were not so nice!) and we all headed for lunch at a restaurant within the resort. The Parked guys were all very friendly and energetic despite the 90 minute haul from Tampa and we had a nice conversation about - what else - domain parking. As an extra bonus, Donny paid for lunch and by 3pm we all headed back to the conference area.

Usually at that time, people that are newcomers to TRAFFIC were given some sort of introduction to the features of the conference; this time we were left to our own devices and met others as they were casually walking by. Sahar Sarid was just like in his pictures - all-smiling and friendly and very recognizable by most people. I met with Michael Collins, executive director of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) and co-founder of Afternic. We talked about the problems that the domain industry will be facing in the years to come and about potential methods that can be used to raise awareness in the domain community, in order to protect our assets.

Soon enough, our small discussion circle broadened as others joined in while we were anticipating the 5:30 cocktail party. Bill FitzPatrick, president of Boston Domain Exchange described the challenges of monetizing themed domain portfolios. Michael Gilmour of ParkLogic came to Bill’s rescue, discussing the methods and features that his company uses to generate revenue for its clients. Divyank Turakhia of Skenzo talked about how the current range of domain conferences around the world require him to fly for 18 to 24 hours at a time, something that he seemed to handle pretty well.

Ron Jackson arrived with his wife, and at long last I had the opportunity to meet him after 6-plus years of online interaction. Ron publishes the most authoritative source of domain sales at DNJournal, along with very well-written articles portraying icons and pioneers of the domain world.

Despite our late lunch, everybody seemed to be getting hungry and at 5:30pm the main exhibits lounge opened up, serving a variety of buffet delicacies and drinks. Finally I got a chance to have a full picture of the attendants and the exhibits and to further discuss industry matters with fellow domain investors. Ron Jackson sported a brand new Sony camera that gave him a hard time only for a short while, before he proceeded to take pictures of the event. The exhibit booths were colorful and each one had its own distinct corporate color and identity. It wasn’t hard to walk up to virtually anybody and strike a conversation - although at some point the three-member band playing live was a bit too loud!

I met with the people behind Domainer’s Magazine and discussed the opportunities that exist in the domain market for real print publications. They seemed to be very excited and aware of their contribution to the industry via a printed medium.

Market Leverage, one of the web’s largest “Cost Per Acquisition” (CPA) networks that enables web Advertisers and web Publishers to harness the power of performance marketing, featured a great-looking booth and very friendly hosts. The company is based in Lake Mary, FL and despite the fact that they originate from an industry not directly related to the domain market, they were eager to be present in such a big domain event. Sal Guarino, president of Market Leverage, had the cunning ability to tell that I am Greek, simply by looking at my name on my business card!

I must have walked several miles in that exhibition lounge, as my feet started to hurt! To my salvation came the 8pm bell, which marked the beginning of the Moniker domain auction. We all moved to the auctioning room that featured round tables and comfy chairs - along with the opportunity to do more networking before the auction started. I sat at a table with Bill FitzPatrick and four folks from Grimbsy, England who claimed their small town was probably unknown to the rest of the world. Except that an old friend of mine lives in that town, so naturally a new conversation about 8-bit home computers, Sir Clive Sinclair and Crash/Sinclair User/Your Computer magazines brought back great memories!

The auction started with several low-priced names ending up in the hands of new owners, some after several rounds of competitive bids. Monte Cahn of Moniker and the auctioneer in charge were able to keep up the spirit of everyone, thus motivating more bids at this relatively low profile auction. My domain Julio.net was sold for $3,500 (pending verification) and that added up to my personal excitement.

The clock was ticking past 9pm when the day ended - but not without yet another surprise for me. After meeting with Dr. Christopher Hartnett, chairman of Tedhens Limited he introduced me to a fellow Greek who owns Lease Domains, manager of a large domain portfolio. What are the chances that two Greeks meet at their first TRAFFIC conference? Let me tell you, less than having three instead - and yet, that one in a million syzygy became a reality when Nick Spanos, president of Bapple.com joined us for a loud-mouthed conversation in Greek!

It was the perfect ending for a great, busy and rewarding day. Looking forward to Day 2, tomorrow.

You can view some quick snaps from Day 1 here.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA - May 19, 2008 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Acroplex® launched today its newly redesigned corporate image, including a new web site at www.Acroplex.com. The launch is intended to coincide with the Targeted Traffic domain conference (T.R.A.F.F.I.C.) which takes place in Orlando, Florida from May 20th until May 24th inclusive.

Theo Develegas, General Manager of Acroplex LLC will be attending this exclusive domain event, in order to further establish business relationships and to seek new strategic alliances with other members of the domain monetization community.

In the words of Rick Schwartz, TRAFFIC co-founder:

” As an event that is by invitation only, TRAFFIC sets a standard that cannot be matched. That is why TRAFFIC has become such an important part of doing business for those that own domains, buy and sell traffic, have parking and PPC companies, search related companies investors and all the way down to the store on Main Street. TRAFFIC brings the biggest and the best together. It’s just that simple. We keep the noise out and the business in. “

As I am multi-tasking away in the 25th hour of the day at my computer, my email notification “dings”; is it yet another Viagra spam or an offer from an automated user of the DRT software?

I take a sip from my Gatorade bottle - lemonade flavor is my new favorite - and I switch over to Eudora. No Outlook for me, thanks. I’ve been using Eudora since I got away from Mail and Pine, both residing in the heart of the then Unix - now Linux - operating system. That was 15 years ago; if Eudora were a teenager, she’d be looking like Miley Cyrus by now.

I delete a few obvious spam emails that somehow made it through the server’s firewall and the spam filter; the Hoodia peddlers are getting craftier these days. I scroll down to what appears to be a series of messages from eNom, a reminder for tomorrow’s meeting and…an offer from Sedo.

A click later, the subject line seems to contradict the domain referred to in the message itself. But, we’re all human and make mistakes: Matt at Sedo is a nice guy that I’ve talked to on the phone a few times. Very polite, easy to relay my concerns to. He’s now trying to broker through an offer for a domain that I own.

I gawk at the amount. It’s $2,200 - for a domain that Sedo themselves recently appraised at more than $5,000. What the fuck is going on???

Flashback time.

The same domain of mine has been getting a lot of inquiries recently. Some come from anonymous cowards that attempt to exploit their apparent advantage of hiding behind an offer with no signature. Like that guy from Norway who made a $60 offer, then accepted my $75,000 counter-offer, only to conveniently claim it was accidental, two days later.

Whatever, bitch.

I don’t get worked up much, unless shit like this happens, when a company that wants to be taken seriously, such as Sedo, fucks up in their own modus operandi.

More flashbacks.

After that $75k “deal” was annulled faster than Britney Spears’ first wedding (poor chick, she has a nice ass but no brains) I received a direct offer in my email. A few email exchanges later, I was talking on the phone with a potential buyer; to whom I mentioned my firm asking price of mid 5-figures.

The potential buyer then pulled back, to discuss their options. Fair enough.

A week later they emailed me, with a double-whammy: an offer within 10% of my asking price (a winner, in my book) and a paid appraisal from Sedo. Curious as I am, I opened the Sedo Adobe PDF; only to almost piss myself.

OK, I’ve been in the domain business since February 1997, that’s when I bought my first domain. Even back then, I would not be as clueless in order to valuate domains based on some random jumbling up of similar words in comparable sales.

Each domain is different; it has its own features and characteristics beyond the traffic and revenue it might be generating. There is also the age factor; in my book, a 10 year old domain tips the virtual scales more than a 2 year old.

Sedo’s appraisal was such a joke that poor old Matt heard me getting all frothy and furious on the phone, unlike other times. I’m a nice guy - I don’t cuss, unless someone pokes me hard in the eye. I don’t punch, unless someone tries to grab my ass.

First of all WHAT IN THE G-D DAMN sake does Sedo think, when they offer $39 appraisals to Joe Blow, for a domain they don’t own, which is actively parked and brokered through Sedo themselves? When that very same Joe Blow comes to me - all smirking - with an appraisal from Sedo and shoves it down my throat, saying “This is how much your domain is worth, this is how much I will be paying” - what can I say back, when I am using the very same broker, Sedo, in order to commence a profitable sale?

I don’t know what I said to Matt, I was seeing red during my conversation. My voice was spewing dragon breath, not mint and niceties.

So, I’ll say it again: STOP UNDERCUTTING us, Sedo. Stop offering domain appraisals, as if you were GoDaddy or Network Solutions or Jim Bob’s Domain Appraisal Store on eBay. Think for a second what it’s costing us, the seller that uses your services, then think what it’d cost you - the broker - in lost fees. Your brokers and valuators just plain SUCK ASS.

This time, I took two mid-5-figures sales outside of Sedo.

Sorry, but although I like the efficiency of their process, I have had it, man! I don’t want the kind of shit that creates more problems than solves. I am tired of being told by morons, that Sedo appraised my domain at $5k, then receive brokered offers for half as much! Jesus f-cking Christ! Does Sedo keep track of a domain’s history in their German databases? I thought Germans were organized, all the way down to the fall of the Berlin wall.

Enough of this.

In two weeks’ time, I will be seating my ass on a fat “wallet” and maintaining a stronger relationship with domain outlets such as Escrow.com, Moniker and AfterNIC. Too many slip-ups by Sedo and there is always the proverbial straw that somehow broke the camel’s back.

I said camel’s, not camelto.es

In my early domaining days I was simply pointing my domains to a web form for visitors with an interest in purchasing, to leave their contact information. This went on for several years and I can easily say I lost several thousand dollars this way. In 2004 I shyly started using the parking service of Sedo.com, slowly adding more names until my account was upgraded to Sedo Pro.

Now, I sometimes have the reputation of an outspoken guy in online forums. That’s true; I will stick to my guns until the battle smoke clears up, but I always strive to be objective and accurate to the circumstances surrounding my point of view.

Sedo’s services and interface have substantially improved over the past four years. They offer a variety of templates with a customizable image and the editing is quick. There are some drawbacks that I should mention first - just to get them out of my system.

• Sedo does not support meta tags, such as description and keywords. It really hurts a domain in the long run, especially one that competes in Google for term relevancy. Sedo made a statement that Google asked them to do that and I simply cannot believe this statement.
• Adding domains is easy as long as the WHOIS info matches that of the account. For the most part, it works well. Sometimes, especially on a Friday afternoon, the domains will be delayed and added to the account the following Monday. Unless that Monday is a public holiday in the US, the UK or Germany.
• Changing the domain keyword is a pain; it takes up to 3 days for that to happen as they are manually approved.
• Google feed. Sometimes payments are extremely low, sometimes they are decent. Fluctuation has earned Sedo the term “yo-yo revenue”.

In mid-2007 I started using Parked.com right at a time that their feature list exploded: Custom templates, full-featured meta tag customization, addition of custom content including images & video. The guys at Parked.com really listen to what domainers need. Did I mention that their keyword parser - the code that splits a domain name into intelligible words - has no close competitor? I fed it the domain NATIONWIDEMORTGAGELICENSINGSYSTEMANDREGISTRY.COM and it properly split it into “Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System And Registry“. By the way, this is my longest domain and it does get type-ins.

Parked.com has some negatives, so I will list them here:

• Yahoo feed seems a bit sketchy after they implemented the “TQ” factor, some oddball quotient that pretends to judge the quality of traffic, awarding accordingly more or less money per click. I branded “TQ” as “Thieving Quotient” and it’s one Yahoo feature I clearly dislike.
• Template flavors seem to alternate unpredictably between single-click and two-click; the former awarding more money per click than the latter.
• Downtime. Sometimes it’s unplanned or with short notice, but it happens more often than necessary. Compensation does occur though.
• Donny’s special attention to all things Parked seems to backfire when criticism reaches a certain critical mass. He just takes things personally and the various such threads, mainly on DNForum.com become true battlefields. Still, he said once he’d buy me a beer so I think he’s a cool guy after all.
• No escrow services.

The things I like about Sedo include their unified approach as a company: nobody takes things personally, they do care about the customers despite certain complaints. They are very cordial on the phone - and trust me, I am not always the most soft-spoken person on a business call. Sedo offers great escrow service that almost never fails to deliver for both parties. Anonymity is implemented but for obvious reasons of not bypassing them, but why would one bypass the security of an affordable escrow service? Once one gets the hang of what keywords work best, it’s easy to change multiple domains via forms. Sedo pages load fast and certain template schemes seem to be really popular with visitors.

The things I like about Parked include the exquisite template customization, ability to add content and images, the intelligent keyword management and the visibility it provides in search engines via the meta tag management. Addition of domains and keyword modification is instant! Customer service is prompt and quick as well.

So, to recap: Sedo or Parked? I use both and it seems that domains that get lots of visits but few clicks at Sedo can be customized and perform well in Parked. One should try both PPC companies and preferably, split their domain portfolio among both. Currently, Sedo has a great geo-auction that will last for a total of 7 days, aptly titled “Around the World in 7 Days”. I have listed two of my domains there, Constantinople.com and Aegean.info - both with a reserve that matches the quality of the domain.

Now let’s go out and make some money!