What a week, this is one of those weeks where I had a thousand ideas for blog posts then everything became a whirlwind and it became heads down and focus time.

First off we got confirmation on a top notch customer we had been working on and they actually purchased a multitude of services and advertising for several of their businesses, I love marketing packages versus pure advertising, it really helps pull everything together when you can do everything from the demand creation to landing page and conversion, especially when you can wrap it all up in a neat package for multiple businesses. Those deals excite me.

The other thing that made it an exciting deal is it is a multiple web property deal showing that value add properties can help win niche business along with a more traditional advertising approach on our key Missouri.me business.

Also, we confirmed (actually last week) that we will be attending the DNCruise, my wife is going although the first thing she said was "I don't have to listen to you speak do I?" Seems she gets tired of hearing me talk about domains, Localtek, SEO, local search and everything that is in my head everyday. Great job by Chef Patrick to create such a unique combination of business and pleasure.

It looks like I have another great trip to talk about in June as well, I look forward to sharing the details once I get all the details worked out.

We have a crazy next week ahead, we have two seminars to do along with a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce and economic development group in a fast growing area of Missouri who after seeing what we have done for local business has asked us to create their web site and marketing, this is the second community to do so. Great news.

On that note, I must say that I am loving partnerships with legacy marketing firms, earlier this week we had a call from a large legacy marketing firm who needed help promoting a project of theirs online. They had all the creatives worked out but really needed to understand how search and social could play a role. I see more of these types of partnerships in our future.

On a smaller note, the drop name God shown down this week and I managed to grab the few names I was after with little fight. I love those weeks, one of my employees comes from a seminar background so I can see good things for RetirementSeminars.com ahead.

We also made our latest hire this week, someone to help me on the marketing side, she comes to us with a great background coming from many years at AT&T and has great energy which is going to be very important as we move forward with our growth plans for the year. We needed a marketing coordinator but finding someone with the energy and drive can be tough to find. And why is this so important?

Well, even though I do not want to go into details, a few months back we had been contacted by some large investment firms about growing faster. Even though we did not go down that path for now we did find ways to keep things moving in the direction we would like and worked with a very solid group of investors who want to see us grow even faster in our current model. With the success we have had gaining customers and having success for our customers it was nice to see people have that faith in our plan to take it to the next level. Thanks to them, the first steps happened this past week with much more to happen in the near future. Great news yet again.

Now, on a personal note, 12 lbs gone! I got tired of making excuses and decided it was time to get myself back. The obsessiveness with being healthy, eating right, and exercising often is back.

Oh yeah, thanks to TheDomains.com , Fusible.com, ChefPatrick.com, DomainNameWire.com and MorganLinton.com for the link love this past week (if I missed anyone I am sorry).

As a believer in .ME and someone who has actually spent time with real people other than those in our industry talking about the extension I can say from first hand experience people get .ME, and more important remember .ME. And as such I was happy to see the .ME team announce an auction being run by Namejet.com for first name and last name .ME domains.

I own Bruce.me (will be rebranding my blog to this in the near future) and Marler.me and actually bought several other first name .ME domains when they were released in the past. There are many I will be grabbing from this auction as well and look forward to adding to my first name portfolio.

I personally look forward to re-branding my blog to Bruce.me because I think when it comes to personalization and branding .ME does it better than any other. Bruce.me just works.

That said, here is a sampling of the more than 300 names being released on April 5th:

Andrew.Me

Adam.Me

Brian.Me

Daniel.Me

Douglas.Me

Eric.Me

Jack.Me

James.Me

Jason.Me

John.Me

Kevin.Me

Lindsey.Me

Maria.Me

Paul.Me

Peters.Me

Scott.Me

Shawn.Me

Steve.Me

Ryan.Me

William.Me

Here is the full press release for your enjoyment:

LIKE YOUR NAME? HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO OWN IT ONLINE

More Than 300 Names & Surnames Up for Grabs in the Next .ME Auction

Podgorica, Montenegro – March 2, 2010 – The .ME Registry and NameJet announced the Internet’s largest online auction of personal names today. If you’ve ever wanted your own name as a domain, now is your chance! More than 300 personal names and surnames with a .ME extension are up for auction, starting April 5, 2010.

“We’ve had phenomenal success working with NameJet in the past. Their online auction platform is a perfect venue for this upcoming auction of personal names -- the biggest online auction event the .ME Registry has ever held,” stated Predrag Lesic, Executive Director of the .ME Registry. “The popularity of social media makes this an opportune time to create a personal presence online and, as we’ve told the world from the start, dot-ME is as personal as it gets. Dot-ME is all about YOU!”

Here’s a glimpse at some of the many popular names available in this auction:

Andrew.Me

Adam.Me

Brian.Me

Daniel.Me

Douglas.Me

Eric.Me

Jack.Me

James.Me

Jason.Me

John.Me

Kevin.Me

Lindsey.Me

Maria.Me

Paul.Me

Peters.Me

Scott.Me

Shawn.Me

Steve.Me

Ryan.Me

William.Me

For the full list of available first names and surnames, go to www.PersonalNames.Me.

“This is the first time in the history of domains that more than 300 premium personal names have gone to auction at the same time. It’s so rare to gain control of your very own name with any domain extension. Imagine having it with a dot-ME – the ultimate personal domain,” said Steve Brown, General Manager of NameJet.

“Dot-ME is the ideal personal Web site domain,” noted Lesic. “Imagine the power of being the ONLY person in the world to own your first name or last name through dot-ME, even though millions of others have the very same name.”

.ME is proving to be extraordinarily popular for so many reasons. More than 350,000 .ME domains have been registered in the two years since the domain extension’s launch and a number are used for online call-to-action and catch phrase branding by businesses worldwide. One noteworthy example is Facebook, which is using FB.Me as its URL shortener. For other examples and articles about the many clever uses of .ME, visit ExploreTheWorldOf.Me.

To learn more about the .ME Registry, developing a .ME business idea through non-auction allocation of a .ME domain, or to find out how to register a .ME domain, go to www.Domain.Me.

About the .ME Registry:

.ME Registry (the d.b.a. of doMEn, d.o.o.) was chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new .ME domain name extension. .ME Registry partners include ME-net, GoDaddy.com and Afilias Limited. Me-Net is located in Montenegro and its principals have been leaders in the ICT sector in Montenegro, including the privatization of its largest ISP. GoDaddy.com is located in the USA and is the world’s largest domain name registrar and the largest paid hostname provider in the world, according to Netcraft Ltd. Afilias Limited is headquartered in Ireland and is a leading registry services provider, supporting more than 15 million domains worldwide.

About NameJet:

NameJet^® is a domain name aftermarket auction company that consolidates an exclusive inventory of expired and deleted domains from top domain name registrars and makes them available to their customers. NameJet's auction services include the ability to place backorder requests on any domain name and a "last minute board" that allows customers to closely watch an ending auction.

One of the frequent conversations I had at the domain conferences was about developing websites. Due to the Missouri.me launch and some of my other projects many people had questions about how to develop the sites, tools used, where we get content, etc. I am always happy to share as much as I can but there was something that I would preach to anyone who would listen and it seems to escape many.

There is a huge difference between building a website and building a business. In most cases people can have many great ideas about what they would like to do with their great domain name, they may even have all the technical abilities to create an amazing e-commerce site or content rich geo site but in so many cases there is no plan for what to do once the site is up.

If you put 50K into a wonderful website, do all the hard SEO work, if you do not have a plan on how to generate revenue after the site is up it is really just a website, not much different than a parked page, I can imagine if you spend 50K or even 10K on developing the perfect website you would want to have a plan for something more than Adsense for revenue.

So, when talking about domain development you need to think about taking it past the web development phase and how to get it into the business development phase.

To understand what I mean take a look at what the Castello Brothers have done, they understand business. With sites like Whisky.com and PalmSprings.com they have created businesses. I have really enjoyed my conversations with Michael and David and love the fact that they focus so much on the business rather than just the website. That is the difference between successful domain development compared to someone just building a website.

Now, everyone has different skills, I know many people much smarter than myself that can create amazing web sites but they lack the skills necessary on the sales and marketing side. This is where partnerships come in. If you have a great idea and have all the skills to implement the product and technical side then you may want to look for partners for the sales side. I know I could not of come close to creating everything my development team did on our state geo platform.

So, what is the point of this post?

Well I have heard so much talk of domain development, as we all have heard over the past year or so, I want to see people be successful. In most cases people will not be able to do it on their own, if you plan on building your domains into real businesses and not just websites you need to evaluate what you are good at and determine what pieces to build a business are missing from your skill set. Find people that you can team up with to fill those gaps. You may find that 1+1=3 when you do this.

Anyone that pays any attention to the search engine optimization world knows that real time search is a hot topic and Google is getting VERY good at picking up on trends and enabling their scrolling news section in the middle of their normal search results.

The part that many people miss is that social media streams are one of the ways Google picks up on trends and links that should be included.

Although there are things that happen everyday I do not like to do a test unless there is something actually relevant to write about when testing the real time search results. Yesterday during the Hawaii tsunami warning though I caught the mention of HITsunami.info on CNN and thought it was a great use of a .info domain name and after seeing the timeline between registration and mention on CNN I thought it was a great story so I blogged about it and also realized that there was a chance, like on my Google Superbowl Commercial post, that it would be picked up in the real time search results.

Click here to find my Hawaii tsunami warning and the HITsunami.info post.

So, all that said, I started by determining the most keyword rich but non-spammy title I could use, you will see it if you visit the post. I truly thought it was amazing how quick John Garcia took the domain to full site and mentioned on CNN so fast, truly amazing. I am a big promoter, user, and all around lover of all things social media so taking advantage of all those aspects was pretty awesome to see. So I wrote the post to be relevant, do not go spammy when trying to take advantage of this, Google is not stupid.

So, after doing the post, it was indexed and getting traffic, this is not a joke, in one minute.

Below I have a ton of snapshots of what real time search results can do, Google is getting very good at this and it is amazing to see how they are picking up trends and changing the structure of their results in real time. If you do not think real time search matters then you need to think again, determining how you can use this to benefit your sites is very important, and myself, as a geo developer, really can think of ways to make sure that we are always on top of what is happening and providing up to date data.

You can see in the below pic that my post showed up on the first page for the term "hitsunami.info" when search in Google, as we all know a good portion of people do not go to the browser address bar when searching for a site, they go to their default search bar. I am amazed by this but it can be valuable as well:

And in this version, timeline 2 minutes since I posted, I was in the top couple results for searches for the site, keep in mind this was the 39th most popular term overall on Google at the point:

And here is the example of the link scrolling through the real time search feed. As you can see much of that is powered by info being gathered from Twitter:

And one that was really nice, top of real time search for Hawaii Tsunami Warning

And the kicker, the term Hawaii Tsunami

And here is a look at the Statpress from my blog for a bit, I did not catch it at the beginning but still shows what was happening:

Wow, was just watching the Hawaii Tsunami coverage on CNN and Fox News, one thing that caught my eye was the CNN Internet/social media guy talking about a great site that came up called HiTsunami.info.

Normally you see some types of domainers try to take advantage of a natural disaster such as this but in this case kudos to John Garcia who quickly put up a site focused on providing valuable info to those interesting in the event.

Someone did already own the .COM, but I think this is a great use of a .info domain.

The site features Ustream video, preparedness kit info, twitter feeds, etc. Even though the tsunami in Hawaii has not been a huge problem it was great to see someone use a perfect domain name, get it ramped up quick into a real website and have it mentioned on CNN so quick. Has to be a record for time from purchase to time to mention on a major media channel.

In the past several months I have spent most of my time focused on the bigger business we are growing rather than flipping domains and growing my traffic domain portfolio. Typically this would mean sales have been few and far between and admittedly for a couple months there were fewer than typical.

But, in the past couple months I have seen a sharp trend upwards in offers even with out any active promotion on my side, although DomainGang.com a great spoof promotion for my domain ExGirlfriend.us, and for those that did not get it, it was a joke although the domain is for sale:)

Not sure if every one is seeing this but the offers on both my exact match keyword domains and on my traffic domains have both been coming in pretty consistently. In the past week alone I had 4 deals closed. Once again, with zero promotion. What is really interesting is I recently shrunk considerably the number of names I actually have for sale due to a separation between company and personal domain assets. So percentage wise it looks even better.

What is really nice here is that 2 of the 4 deals this week were end users that had actively sought out the domain, one a dot com , one a dot net.

Are you seeing the same thing? Feel free to post your current experience with people actively looking to acquire your domains, how has the market been for you?

Well, in the past week or so the options for domainer forums and hang outs has increased by two. Everyone seems to have their favorite forum and it becomes a religious discussion many times on which is better, who is better, blah, blah.

Looks like a couple folks decided a couple new options were needed, with one being specifically targeted at a new and growing niche, domain development. Or as I like to think of it, business development.

Here are the two new domainer forums:

Dev.TiaWood.com

This new forum, ran by web developer and domainer Tia Wood is focused on creating a community of developers focused on development of their domain names. We all know this is a hot topic these days and having a place devoted to domainers focused on developing their properties is a great way to get tips and tricks from those in the know.

DomainDiscussions.com

This forum, which has the goal of being censor free, was started by Andrei from DomainingTips.com. I have already seen a few posts of people testing the censor free concept so I am sure if you want a good argument with lose moderation this will be the place to be.

That said, in full disclosure, I did agree to sign up to be a mod there. I like open discussion and alternative thoughts being out there on forums and think this could be a great experiment.

Check out the new forums, you may find you have a new place to hang out.

It seems I have been in a conference blur the past few months starting with Affiliate Convention and ending with Domainer Mardi Gras but one that I am hoping my schedule opens up for is the GeoDomain Expo. My life/business revolves around Geo domains so this conference is one that truly interests me. From talking to many that have been to previous Geo Domain conferences it sounds like this event is about as good as it gets as far as learning and gathering insight into monetizing domains goes.

The keynote speaker which has also been announced today is the co-founder of Hotels.com, David Litman.

A few quick notes before all the details in the press release:

The conference will be held from April 28th through the 30th in New Orleans during JazzFest. So after intense networking and sessions all day you will be able to enjoy some great jazz music in the Big Easy. Nice.

As far as pricing, there is a nice discount for booking early:

$795 until the end of February

$995 until the end of March

$1195 until the day before the conference (April 28)

$1395 on the days of the show

-          General Information

-          Registration link

-          Hotel link

-          Keynote link

Here is the press release:

ASSOCIATED CITIES SELECTS THE ROOSEVELT NEW ORLEANS, A WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL, AS VENUE OF 2010 GEODOMAIN EXPO®

St. Louis, MO, February 23, 2009.  Staying true to the spirit of holding the annual Geodomain Expo® at a hotel representative of the host city, Associated Cities has selected The Roosevelt New Orleans, a Waldorf Astoria Hotel, as the site of the 2010 Geodomain Expo. The industry conference and trade event will take place from Wednesday, April 28 through Friday, April 30, 2010, coinciding with the 40th anniversary New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Recently reopened in July, 2009 after having been closed for nearly 4 years following Hurricane Katrina, a $145 million restoration has returned The Roosevelt to its place as the premier luxury hotel in New Orleans.

Speaking to the hotels phenomenal history, legend has it that Governor Huey P. Long built a 90 mile long highway in the 1930’s and 40’s directly from the state capital in Baton Rouge to front door of the Roosevelt.  The hotels’ world-famous Blue Room hosted the times greatest musicians including Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Marlene Dietrich, and Sonny and Cher.  The Sazerac cocktail made with absinth, known as the first cocktail invented in America and now the official drink of New Orleans, was popularized at the Hotels’ Sazerac Bar.

In parallel to the reopening of the Roosevelt and its historic Blue Room and Sazerac Bar, modern amenities abound including a 12,000 square foot world-class spa and fitness facility and the opening of Domenica, internationally acclaimed chef John Besh’s newest restaurant bringing his elegant take on the unique cuisine of rural Italy.

Hotel rooms for the 2010 GeoDomain Expo may be reserved at our negotiated guaranteed lowest rate of $229/night by visiting the online booking engine or by calling 504-648 1200 and referencing the GeoDomain Expo group rate.

The Geodomain Expo offers opportunities for operators of local- and destination-focused geo websites to share information, exchange best practices, learn about industry trends, meet vendors and form friendships with other operators. The program will include speakers and panels related to the evolving business of operating geodomains, as well as social and networking events, a trade show and opportunities to purchase and invest in geodomain properties.

Media Contact: Patrick Carleton, Executive Director, Mobile: 314.705.3000

patrick@associatedcities.com

Geodomain Expo is a registered trademark of Associated Geos, LLC.

St. Louis, February 23, 2010 – Conference producer Associated Cities announced today that Hotels.com co-founder David Litman will deliver a keynote address at the Geodomain Expo®, to be held this April 28-30 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

David Litman is a serial entrepreneur.  He has spent the last 25 years founding, building and growing 5 successful companies with his partner, Bob Diener.  Together they grew their best-known venture, HRN (later Hotels.com), from scratch to become the world’s largest hotel website.  From a $1200 investment they guided the company to be one of the Internet’s primary sources of discount accommodations and an industry innovator and leader.  They sold the company in 2003 at a business valuation of more than $5.5 billion. They have recently launched Getaroom.com, an innovative hotel booking site focused on handpicked hotel values in major cities.

###

About Associated Cities

The Associated Cities network consists of the most intuitive and compelling dot-com city brands online. Every Associated Cities dot-com city site offers targeted local content and functionality for travelers and residents. Our mission is to provide a single, reliable source allowing advertisers and partners to reach consumers in each market we serve. In this capacity, Associated Cities currently represents over 150 city partner sites in 18 countries, 32 US states, and the District of Columbia.

###

About the Geodomain Expo

The Geodomain Expo offers opportunities for operators of local- and destination-focused geo websites to share information, exchange best practices, learn about industry trends, meet vendors and form friendships with other operators. The program will include speakers and panels related to the business of operating Geodomains, as well as social and networking events, a trade show and opportunities to purchase and invest in Geodomain properties.

We domain investors tend to not talk about the domain names we have acquired in our blogs but one that I am happy to talk about and discuss why is WirelessISP.net.

The Wireless ISP business is set to boom even in this down economy due to the 7.2 billion dollar stimulus package the government is allocating as I type. The package is for the rural broadband build out I have blogged about before and something I had spent quite a bit of time researching due to the fact the industry I was in before was set to benefit directly from it.

One of the things that stuck out to me on this name was the fact that many Internet Service Providers tend to still use .NET names which makes this name really click even more so.

In most rural areas it is not feasible to run fiber or higher quality copper to each home or neighborhood so wireless becomes the faster path to success for many providers getting funding. I have spoke to several and the overwhelming thought was wireless is going to be a BIG portion as far as access technology goes.

So all that said, I have managed to pick up some nice domains lately but this one sticks out. We tend to not talk about why we acquire names, but I thought I would do something a little different and talk about something I acquired.

Now, the question becomes to develop or sell.....

As I mentioned in my Smartname Content Site review the other day I had also been testing the Ecommerce templates from Smartname.com as well. As most people know the majority of their domains bring little traffic if any (Smartname, in their webinar, shows a 90/10 split), and it is impossible to fully develop hundreds (or even dozens) of sites without a large amount of capital.

Even at 200 to 400 dollars per site it becomes almost impossible for most domainers to justify developing more than a few sites to even a minimal level. Affiliate stores and other rapid development solutions are great, but if you have 1000 product names can you really develop them all?

So, if you cannot afford to develop all of your names but want traffic to them so you can justify holding them what is the answer?

Well, I must say, so far I am really happy with the Smartname Shop sites, although I just started working with them recently so I cannot speak to revenue over a long period of time, I can say that the potential is really good based on the results I am seeing.

Why? Well the sites are ranking extremely well in the search engines, not bad for something that takes less than a few minutes per site to turn up.

Here are four examples:

BMX Freestyle Bikes

Low Cost Laptop

Maternity Pillow

Cotton Bed Sheet

Yahoo is sending a nice amount of traffic to 3 of the sites now and I expect the same soon for the fourth. I am also seeing terms in Google sending traffic as well for long tail terms and the exact match terms are moving up as well.

Did I mention long tail? That is the trick here, by developing the site you are able to gather traffic from related product terms.

Although the revenue split will not be the same from doing an affiliate relationship direct with someone it is also not reasonable to think you could mass deploy either.

Now, I will say that if a domain name already has traffic I would likely not do this, but if it is minimal or is a product related name that would do well as a shop these sites are well worth considering.

As I said in my previous post, this is NOT A PAID post, this is my opinion and I really like where this is headed. Between this and the content sites I think there is real value being added to domains that previous received little or no traffic. And with the ability to insert your own Google Adsense ads you can also take full revenue from that while sharing the revenue on the products. Not a bad deal.