Wow – this week flew by! I went to sleep at around 6AM so today has been a bit of a blur, now I finally have a break in the action, and a minute to reflect on DOMAINfest 2012. The conference was absolutely incredible this year, and as always I am very interested in understanding where the industry is headed.

I’ll be doing a much more detailed post about the conference on Monday but wanted to share my reflections on DOMAINfest while they are fresh in my head.

• The sale of Moniker and Snapnames was big news and Oversee and their new executive team looked incredibly prepared to take the company to the next level. In business sometimes the hardest thing to do is identify failure and make a chance. With an increase in focus I think Oversee will be doing some very exciting things this year.
• WordPress is hot – I heard more talk of development this year than ever before and WordPress is definitely a major focus. As a big WordPress fan I can completely see why so many Domainers are gravitating towards the platform.
• Tim Ash gave a great talk about Landing Page Optimization – I’ve seen him speak before and read his book, still every time I see him I pick-up something new. Tim’s the reason I added the “Featured In” section at the header of my blog. If you missed the talk or my coverage of it you can read about it in my summary of day two.
• Live auctions sure don’t bring the kind of liquidity that they used to, or at least not nearly at the same prices. I think it is clear that 2012 is still a buyers market, and there were some stellar deals in the auctions. I do really like the auctioneer that they use, he keeps it fun and entertaining. I think the challenge live auctions have is fairly simple, the buyers are Domainers. If you have your names priced at wholesale prices, you can probably make a sale, but end-user prices rarely yield bids. More thoughts on this coming-up on Monday!
• Domainers know how to party – the nightlife at DOMAINfest was a blast from the nightly parties to some very fun after parties. As you all know, I don’t blog about parties or nightlife so you’ll have to attend a conference like DOMAINfest to experience them for yourself. I have some great friends in the industry and it’s been awesome to catch-up with everyone and enjoy some adventures in LA. Overall I think the #1 piece of feedback I heard from people was the fact that LA nightlife ends at 1:30. I know, it’s pretty lame, I apologize for LA, but our weather is perfect – you can’t win them all!
• Biz Stone gave one of the best keynotes I’ve ever seen. My favorite quote is – “creativity is a renewable resource, it is something that you can always tap” – so true and so inspiring!
• I remember sleep – but vaguely…it’s been over a week since I’ve had a full night’s sleep, while I had a blast, I’m looking forward to some R&R. Until Tuesday when I go to Boston, and Wednesday when I go to NYC. Yes, there never really is a dull moment!

Stay-tuned, more to come!

2011 was plagued with some fairly disappointing auctions so I was pretty excited to see how we kicked-off 2012. There were some absolutely phenomenal names in the auction but as we’ve seen in the past, the key is pricing. Also, plenty of the highest-value sales happen after the auction so it will be interesting to see what moves over the coming weeks.

DNN did a great job as usual of live blogging the auction so you can see all the results of the auction on there. I’ll be highlighting some of the top sales and hopefully providing some entertaining pictures so you can feel like you’re getting one step closer to the action!

Empire.com sold for $135,000 after it started with an $100,000 initial bid. In my opinion this is a stellar price for this domain and I’ll definitely be paying attention to what the buyer does with this gem.

iCard.com caused quite a bidding frenzy moving from $5,000 up to its final selling price of $26,000. This is a great name to monopolize on the upcoming trend of processing payments using SmartPhones and I’ll be very interested to see what happens with this name.

Next up was Drill.com which fetched $42,000 but fell below the reserve however given that their reserve was between 25K-50K there’s a good chance this name will sell after the auction.

After Drill.com Democracy.com was able to get up to $125,000 however fell below it’s reserve which is somewhere north of 125K but below 250K. My guess is that this name was priced in the 200-250K range so it may be a stretch here but there’s definitely interest.

QE.com sold for $89,000, a good deal in my opinion for a two-character .COM which I always think of existing only in the six-figure range.

QR.com took the cake selling for $325,000. QR codes are in, but the question is for how long and what could a website on this domain do to make money? While I agree this is a great name, I still can’t quite see how this would be monetized, but like many of the names selling, I’ll be watching!

Okay, that’s all for me folks, time to head home and get ready for the big bash tonight at The House Of Blues! As you know I don’t blog parties so you’ll have to just assume that we’re all having a blast!

Wednesday night was a blast beginning at the Petersen Auto Museum and ending at the Viper Room in West Hollywood. Surprisingly we still managed to get more than six hours of sleep which is a rarity at conferences but leaves us with lots of energy for the last party of DOMAINfest taking place tonight at the House Of Blues on the Sunset Strip.

We started-off the third day of the conference with the keynote address by Biz Stone, the Founder of Twitter. DOMAINfest has always hit it out of the park with keynote speakers and I couldn’t think of a better choice than Biz. While there is no replacement for being here in person you can read a brief summary below:

• Biz grew up in a wealthy Boston suburb and ended-up starting a Lacross team at his school. From this experience he learned that opportunities can be manufactured.
• Started tinkering with electronics at a young age – Biz would tell his Mom, “I’m going downstairs to invent things.”
• Biz always worked, even when he was 10 he would go door-to-door asking neighbors if he could mow their lawns. After that he worked at the grocery store but he didn’t look at work as a way to make money but instead just as something that you do.
• In High School Biz decided that he would not do homework, told his teachers that he would listen in class but he wasn’t going to do homework.
• Went to college at UMass where he was able to get a job as a designer which was an amazing experience and gave Biz the opportunity to learn graphic design. The most important thing he got out of this experience was that creativity is a renewable resource, it is something that you can always tap.

• Biz had worked with Evan Williams at Blogger and Evan had the team brainstorming new ideas. Biz came-up with an idea called “Side Blogging” where short, SMS-like messages could be displayed on the side of the blog. This continued to evolve and became Twitter.
• When they were thinking of names “Jitter” was one of the first ideas however they felt this had too frenetic of a connotation. So they decided to look at other similar names, looking through the dictionary they found Twitter and the name was picked. Initially they didn’t buy Twitter.com but as things started to take-off the approached the owner who was using it for a site with bird photos on it. They were able to acquire the name for $7,500.
• As things really started to take-off and Twitter was a real success they met with Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook in Palo Alto. Sitting with Mark he said, “I don’t like to talk about numbers,” but asked them to throw-out a number, so they said, “500 million” thinking the number would be far beyond what they could get.
• In the end Facebook came-up with a package that met their number but Biz and Mark decided not to sell. Evan believe that if people valued them at 500 million, they were really worth a billion.
• Biz and Evan started a company called The Obvious Corporation, a company with the goal of making systems that help people work together to improve the world.
• They realized that while they loved hearing pitches, funding companies wasn’t the right fit for them. So they changed the focus to mentor and help companies by providing them with office space, marketing, and the support they need to really make something great.
• The next phase of the internet is I + U = A, which means information + understanding = action. The future really is the digital leaping into reality. Technology can now really impact world events.
• The next phase is – what does innovation look like on top of a globally connected world? Biz feels this means people will actually be able to learn more and stay connected in ways they haven’t been able to before.
• The future metric for success is what kind of positive impact are we making in the world, are we getting smarter, etc.
• “To succeed spectacularly you have to be prepared to fail spectacularly”

I also took a couple of great videos which I will be posting on You Tube soon. This was definitely one of the best talks I’ve ever been to at any conference, Biz is energetic, inspiring, and most importantly – he truly wants to make a difference in the world. It can be easy for all of us to get so involved in our work that we forget the social consequences or impact that we can have. We all have the opportunity to do something great, not just for us ourselves but for us as a global community.

As day two winds down I made my way to PITCHfest, one of the coolest events at DOMAINfest! Entrepreneurs have the chance to pitch their ideas in front of a panel of expert judges. The first company to present was Akashic, a cloud computing solution looking to innovate in the space. Next up was Wealth Investors who unfortunately, even after watching their presentation I couldn’t tell you what they heck they do!

StratoSquare was next introducing a solution for helping people better understand their investments and identify options that might be a good fit for them. Babafoo took the stage and introduced what they are calling “Linked In For High School Athletes.” Their site has been up for three months so they’re just starting to understand how people will use it and where they need to improve the system.

Following Babafoo is one of my favorites – Protrada. As you all probably know by now I’m a huge fan of Protrada and Troy Rushton, their CEO gave a great pitch of what they are doing to help people acquire, manage, and develop domains. Prenostik, the next company pitching is helping companies understand how ad spending translates into sales.

Eye-Predict wins my award for the most entertaining pitch and a pretty cool solution for optimizing catalogs. The founder did a great job of keeping this pitch fun and adding some humor to the presentation! FilmBreak calls themselves a dynamic online funding and distribution platform for independent filmmakers. Think of this as AngelList for the entertainment industry – very cool!

The last company to present is Splashoo, a social network for ratings. People can vote on things like who will win the Super Bowl, to your favorite restaurant, to your favorite professor. The idea is to allow people to share rankings and connect with other people who have similar interests or views.

After the pitches, the panel of investors had the opportunity to ask entrepreneurs questions about their businesses. At the end, audience members were able to vote for the best combined score with Babafoo taking the cake with 26% of the votes. After the audience choice award comes the judges choice…and the winner is – Akashic!

Now that PITCHfest is over it’s time for the second party of the conference taking place at the Petersen Auto Museum. This is a very cool spot for Domainers to network and check-out some of the coolest cars on the planet. As a big auto geek myself I am really looking forward to this one!

As you all know, I don’t blog about the parties so what happens at the Petersen Museum, stays at the Petersen Museum…right?

(Photo Credit)

Day two of DOMAINfest 2012 started-out with some big news – Snapnames and Moniker are being sold to Key-Systems, the same company that purchased NameDrive. To some this news came as a complete surprise, but to many this was a logical next step as Oversee continues to find their focus.

I personally see this as a very good thing. Oversee is working hard to take tools like DomainSponsor to the next level and with their own brands seeing major traction online there’s a lot of opportunity.

Today saw an active seminar schedule as the morning kicked-off with a session on keyword research followed by advanced PPC techniques. Just like yesterday I was running around from meeting-to-meeting all morning so my first seminar was Tim Ash’s talk on Landing Page Optimization.

One of my favorite speakers that I’ve ever seen at a conference is Tim Ash from SiteTuners. Tim gives high-energy, information-packed seminars that I always leave more excited than ever! So of course I was very happy to see that Tim was speaking at DOMAINfest, and if you’re not here I can at least share some of the great information to inspire all of you! First let’s get two things out of the way:

• Always ask yourself – How can I add value to actual people?
• Important to be able to admit that your baby is ugly, i.e. your website may be ugly, sorry but it’s true!

Problems commonly seen on websites and landing pages:

1. Make your Call-To Action Clear – what do you want the user to do here?
2. Ask for Less Information – don’t ask for too much information right-away.
3. Cut Down Your Text – people don’t read on the web, using less text will increase retention and conversions.
4. Keep Your Promises – if you tell your visitors your are going to do something – do it!
5. Make Your Trust Visible – this is actually very relevant to MorganLinton.com and it is this exact advice I received from Tim Ash that caused me to add the “Featured In” section at the top of my blog!

“The #1 driver of conversion in matching people’s intent.”

How to become a conversion ninja:

• Use CrazyEgg to track in-page analytics, mouse movements, scrolling, etc.
• CrossBrowserTesting.com can help you test different browser configurations
• AttentionWizard – simulated visual attention tool, creates “attention heatmaps” of web pages
• MockFlow – design interactive UI mockups for Desktop Software

I’ve decided to split my review of today into two parts so you all get two more digestible chunks to keep on top of the latest action and excitement here at DOMAINfest! Coming-up very soon is PITCHfest and I can’t wait to share some of the cool companies that come and pitch what could be the next big thing!

Day one is winding down after a great day of seminars and networking. I spent most of my morning hopping from meeting-to-meeting and then headed over to the seminars for the afternoon. DOMAINfest brings Domainers and Domaining companies in from all over the world so there are some incredible opportunities to make deals whether you’re buying domains, selling domains, or developing software in the space.

 As usual there are some very exciting companies sponsoring the show and the booths were packed with Domainers learning about different solutions that might give them an edge in 2012. For anyone who thinks these booth areas are dead during a show – think again! The booths were buzzing and business was getting done! Below is the Above.com booth – if you don’t know Above they are a very cool service that can help you A/B test different parking services to optimize your parking revenue.

After hanging-out with some of the cool companies that are here I headed to a very interesting seminar all about mobile – below is a quick review of the talk.

Mobile and Local Opportunities for Publisher and Advertisers
Very interesting seminar on a topic that really should be at the front of all of our minds, mobile! More and more people are browsing the web on their mobile phones. There were some very interesting points that came-up during the talk, some highlights are:

• Test your site on a mobile phone – see what the user will actually see!
• Optimize for mobile and create a specific site for mobile users to improve usability
• Mobile security is important
• Complexities dealing with Android vs. iOS devices – optimizing for both

The main point of this seminar made a lot of sense, if you’re not thinking about mobile, you are missing-out! There are great opportunities both for Publisher and Advertisers but it takes doing things differently than you would for a standard website.

The next seminar was right up my alley with a nice focus on affiliate marketing. Below is a quick summary:

Affiliate Lead Generation Best Practices
Affiliate programs can offer some great options for lead generation and improving your revenue moving from PPC to CPA. DOMAINfest brought-together an expert panel to share their advice for being successful in the space.

Sites to know that will help with affiliate tracking and monetization support:

• OfferVault
• VigLink
• SkimLinks
• AffMeter
• Tracking202
• Bevomedia
• AffiliateReporting.com
• ForMeToCoupon.com

Anyone with traffic can monetize their traffic which means that in some cases merchants can also become affiliates themselves. Mobile Affiliate programs are getting hot, the main player in the niche is Ring Revenue.

What Domains Owners Need To KNow About Lead Gen In Ten Minutes

• Domainer Lead Gen Mindset – adding value to something you bought, taking beautiful domains and making them better. So why isn’t it more popular?
• It’s hard and it’s a completely different mindset
• A lot more money in lead generation than parking, but a lot more work
• You will be dealing with fewer people but making more money per person
• So what can you do?
• Educate lead gen guys and sell your names for good money
• Find partners with lead liquidity -> ping tree, buyers, etc. and become an affiliate
• Do it yourself
• What to ask yourself
• Do you want to be an affiliate? (good for those with less tech and time, smaller investment, smaller payouts)
• Do you want to build a business (good for those with more tech, time, and capital)
• Getting there
• WordPress has unlocked easy content creation and management
• Simple and powerful software plays a nice role, tools like MailChimp, Unbounce, Formstack, etc.
• Wide range of aggregators who can offer outsourced sales and manage the relationship/tech hassles

Okay, now I’m off to my last meeting for the day and then back home for a little R&R before the Sedo party tonight! As you have all probably learned by now, I don’t blog about parties so if you want to join in the fun, you’ll have to be here!

If you head to Santa Monica right about now you are bound to bump into a Domainer, or two, or ten. That’s right, Domainers have converged on Santa Monica as DOMAINfest 2012 gets ready to rock tomorrow. So what’s ahead for tomorrow? I thought I’d give you a quick look at what’s ahead.

Tuesday Morning

• A good day starts with a good breakfast! Breakfast will be available in the Wilshire room from 7:30AM – 9:00AM.
• Learn about New TLDs – the first session is all about the new TLDs, this has to be one of the hottest topic of 2012 so I’m sure this workshop will be packed!
• Welcoming Remarks – the new CEO of Oversee, Debra Domeyer will be welcoming the crowd to DOMAINfest for the first time as the new CEO!

Tuesday Afternoon

• The Internet Vital Signs talk at DOMAINfest is one of my favorites. Bring note paper because you’ll probably learn about some very interesting data that will make you see the Internet world a bit differently!
• Next there is Mobile and Local opportunities for Publisher and Advertisers. Let’s face it, Mobile is changing things and learning how to make money from this trend rather than just hearing about it is what makes this session so important!
• The afternoon ends with a panel discussion on Affiliate Lead Generation Best Practices, need I say more? This is damn cool!

The day ends with five-minute intro pitches from the sponsors followed by Sedo’s Opening Night Party. It’s going to be a blast and as always I’ll be taking all of you along for the ride so if you’re not here, I can at least bring you one step closer! Get ready, it all starts tomorrow morning!

Photo From Our Hike In The Palisades This Afternoon

Wow – what a weekend it has been! Last check out MeetUp group had hit 109 RSVP’s and DOMAINfest 2012 is only a day away! This has been a busy weekend with lots of work getting ready for an action-packed week so I’m really going to keep this short and sweet this time!

• It’s awesome to see all my Domaining buddies come in from all of the world, while this has definitely not contributed to helping me get a ton of sleep, it is great to connect-up with everyone before the show.
• There’s a buzz in the air. 2012 just feels different, people seem more excited than ever, something tells me DOMAINfest is going to kick-off one kick-ass year in Domaining!
• The weather in LA is amazing right now! I went for a great hike today with a few friends from out of town this afternoon, both of them live in places where it’s snowing. If you like summer, come to LA, we really d have summer all year round and it couldn’t be better for this week!
• I can’t wait to see how the DOMAINfest auction goes, last year was tough for live auctions and I’m really hoping that this year we see a nice trend reversal. As I said in my post from yesterday, it all comes down to pricing the domains the right.
• Domain Development is In! That’s right, I’ve been saying it since 2007 when everyone teased me for not parking…but really, it’s finally in now! If you take a look at the agenda for DOMAINfest you’ll see some really strong talks about Domain Development from SEO to Site Tuning!
• If you want to survive the lack of sleep and shaking a million hands without getting sick I highly recommend Emergenc. If you haven’t heard of Emergenc it is this very cool packets of fizzy goodness that pump your body full of vitamins. I use this on all my trips around the world and have found it great to staying healthy and, er, recovering from a intense night on the town…of which there are three coming-up at DOMAINfest!
• Time to get back to work – lots of exciting things going on next week and I have to get ready for some great meetings and the beginning of some exciting new partnerships for the year. More to come but I can’t ruin all the surprises now!

Oh, and now to address the little “Free Beer On Me ” piece in the title. If you read my blog and have commented before, and you’re coming to DOMAINfest, come find me and I’ll buy you a beer. Every single person that has shared their opinion on my blog absolutely deserves a beer, right? So come find me, I’ll be…everywhere, or trying to be!

Tomorrow is going to be a day to remember as our little MeetUp group, which started with about ten of us meeting in a bar in downtown LA. Now more than three years later we are excited to have our largest MeetUp ever with 100 people RSVPing as of today!

This is also the first MeetUp that we’ve had a Domain Investing sponsor and a drink sponsor. The Protrada team has made the journey across the Pacific and will be sharing some very cool things with the group tomorrow. Our innovative drink sponsor u4rik will be coming up from San Diego to pour some incredible vodka and tequila drinks for attendees.

Can’t wait to see everyone in Santa Monica, I can tell you it will definitely be a night to remember!

With DOMAINfest 2012 only three days away the auction is already getting some good press as people start making their predictions. There are some very solid names in the auction so it will be exciting to see which end-up selling next week. I think when you look at these auctions you have to look at yourself, as a buyer, and what your goals are for the domain.

A domain auction is a great place for an end-user to get a domain that could dramatically change their business. A good domain name can save a fortune in marketing and provide an instant connection with your users. In 2011 conferences had a lot of trouble finding success with auctions.

Now in 2012 it will once again come down to the buyers. Domain Investors are typically looking to buy domains at wholesale prices. I think the issues that auctions had last year really had to do with pricing. DOMAINfest does a good job of bringing in a large and diverse group so it will be interesting to see if there is a good match between buyers and sellers pricing expectations.

Okay, enough about 2011, this is 2012 and our first live auction of the year! My top picks are:

Bargain.com – this could be a great name for the next eBay. Nobody could forget a name like this and we are at a time when “Deals” are in, bigtime. The pricing is definitely reasonable for an end-user that could use this name to brand a multimillion dollar business.

iCard.com – with Google wallet and the growth of nearfield communications it’s only a matter of time until our cards go 100% digital, becoming well for lack of a better term iCards. Okay, I guess that’s just one possible marketing pitch, either way I like this name and it looks like it is priced right.

Drill.com – short memorable .com with a reserve under 50K. This could be used for just about anything just like Amazon and Kayak, nobody is going to forget Drill.com.

Unplugged.com – another nice one-word .COM and one that I could see an entrepreneur from the entertainment industry in LA doing big things with.

AdvertiseHere.com – online advertising is winning in a major way, there are going to be a lot more sites like BuySellAds.com cropping-up. With a reserve under 25K many new startups could easily afford this and build a great business on it.

QR.com – this is definitely one of the names that many people are paying attention to. QR codes are big, two-character .COMs are big, so this could be big, right?

AppSync – perfect for a startup that is working on something related to managing updates on your smartphone. This is actually a problem that does need solving as many of us pack our phones full of apps that need frequent updates.

Okay, now for the grand finale, the domain I think will take the #1 spot in the auction…

I think that Bargain.com will take the cake and come in as the highest selling domain in the auction. Now it’s your turn, what domain do you think will sell for the most in the upcoming DOMAINfest live auction? Comment and let your voice be heard!