Daily Domainer

For those of us who missed out on the March 2007 Las Vegas T.R.A.F.F.I.C Conference & Expo, DNJournal has published a comprehensive recap. The event was fun and informative for all of the 600+ domainers that did manage to make it to the event. Here's a quick summary.

• Event kicked off Monday March 5, 2007 with cocktails and networking; of course some also ventured outside of the hotel. The casinos and shows were a blast. Ever seen the Blue Man Group? Several domainers, including Ron Jackson of DNJournal, did!
• The Internet Commerce Association became official as the association members signed a “Domain Owners' Bill of Rights”. Finally, there's an official organization to fight for domainers!
• Tuesday’s panel discussion on domain development compared to parking was right on the money. As with any panel, the opinions were mixed on the best way to go to earn top dollar with domains. Some said, “develop” while others said, “Diversify! Develop, buy / sell and monetize!” but the trend definitely seems to be towards development.
• A definite hit of the conference was a domain development newcomer called Pricester.com. With a large portion of the conference focusing on development to help domainers increase revenue, the company peaked quite a bit of interests in domainers, not just because of their development capabilities but also because of the low annual $300 (hosting + development) price tag.
• One of the keynote speakers of the 2007 Las Vegas T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference & Expo was Income.com founder / CEO John Reese who provided insightful advice on how to keep the dough rolling in from domains.
  1. Reinvest. Use the profit off of your first domains, no matter how small, and invest in other domains. If you keep recycling the money in that way, your cash stash will continue to grow!
  2. Outsource. Pay others to help you get the work you need done to promote your domains and you’ll profit in the end.
  3. People are power: Keep your business mailing list updated and keep it growing so you’ll always have potential buyers when you’re ready to sell.
  4. Grow your lists. You should be using your domains to build consumer lists for each of your domains. You can build that list by offering site visitors something and having them sign up to get it. Once you have the contact information, you can contact them from time to time to keep them coming back to your site!
• Some additional advice on developing domain names was given by Lou Doctor, managing director of Arbor Advisors. He suggested that domainers not get too gung ho about developing domains one right after the other. Instead, he suggested that we pick out top domains that are likely to bring in the most cash from development and take our time developing just those domains, not all the domains that we own.

Those are pretty much the highlights of the conference. Of course, the event didn’t go by without the usual domain auction, which collectively transacted more than $4.26 million in sales! The next T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference is scheduled for June 19 – 22 at the Grand Central Hyatt in New York City. Register here.