At last month's Technology for Marketing & Advertising Show in London, Sedo surveyed 100 of the digital marketers on hand to gauge their views on how important domain names and websites are in determining the success of marketing campaigns. Sedo released the results of that survey today. 

73% of respondents said that owning the right domain name is a determining factor in the success of a marketing campaign. 70% of marketers said they use domains to build micro sites to support specific campaigns. In addition, in another sign that purse strings are starting to loosen up after a long recession, 52% of the respondents predicted that their marketing budgets will increase over the next 12 months.   

While the marketers recognized the importance of domain names, they had varied opinions on the best way to drive traffic to their sites. While a vast majority (78%) consider Google Adwords to be one of the most effective means of doing so, many also felt that LinkedIn and Facebook groups (48%), affiliate marketing (48%) and internet domain names (44%) were also useful tools in increasing traffic volumes. 

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Associated Cities, the association of geodomain owners that stages the annual GeoDomain Expo, has completed an important transformation. In the past AC has been operated by a 

for-profit partnership controlled by a limited number of founding shareholders. Today Chicago.com owner Josh Metnick, the man who came with the idea for a global association of .com city domain owners in 2003, said "Associated Cities, the world’s largest association of geographical domain (geodomain) owners, has reconstituted itself as a non-profit trade association.  With the fast growth in both the geodomain industry and local digital media, it became clear that the mission had outgrown the operating structure. It is important that all members have a voice.”

Since starting up seven years ago, Associated Cities has provided group advertising services to intuitively-branded metropolitan websites and over the years its membership has grown to include most major cities in North America and many throughout the world. 

Josh Metnick
Associated Cities Co-Founder

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The DOMAINfest conference series, presented by Oversee.net's DomainSponsor monetization service, expanded today with the announcement of two new one-day regional power networking events to be held in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and New York City. Each conference will also include a live Moniker domain auction.

The Ft. Lauderdale show will be held at the W Hotel on May 13, 2010 while the New York City event will be staged at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan on August 18, 2010 (immediately following the Affiliate Summit East conference in New York). Registration for both of the new DOMAINfest shows will be available online at www.domainfest.com starting Monday, April 12, 2010.  The registration fee will be $175 per event.

Earlier this year, conference organizers announced a DOMAINfest Eur ope show that will be held in Prague, Czech Republic October 6-7, 2010. Each of these new events came after a successful DOMAINfest Global conference in Santa Monica, California in January that drew the biggest crowd to date for a DOMAINfest show. 

The agenda for each of the new regional shows will kick off at 1:30pm with a free-flowing two-hour power networking session. The Moniker auction will follow from 4-7pm with with a private dinner party hosted by DomainSponsor closing the event. Details on how to submit domains and bid either in-person or remotely in any of the Moniker live auction can be found at http://domainauctions.moniker.com

Peter Celeste, the Senior Vice President of Oversee.net (and General Manger, Monetization Services) said “These one-day power networking events are specifically designed to encourage more participation from local and regional professionals who may not be able to afford the time and expense to travel to a distant city for a two or three-day event." 

Coincidentally the new shows were announced at the same time we have a Cover Story running titled The Rise (and Fall?) of Domain Conferences - For Years They Have Thrived But Can They Survive Oversaturation? That article explores the complete history of domain conferences and explosion of industry events over the past five years.  

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Sedo's parent company, Adlink Group has changed its name and will now be officially known as Sedo Holding. The company's two big brands, Sedo and Affilinet, will continue to function independently under Sedo Holding. The move away from they Adlink name comes in the wake of the company selling its AdlinkMedia display ad business to Hi Media. 

Sedo Holding will also trade under the new stock symbol SEDO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange starting in late May after a former stockholders meeting scheduled for May 19. Sedo officials believe this exposure on the stock exchange will give both Sedo and the entire domain industry much greater awareness among both the general public and potential investors. 

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Verisign, who operates the .TV registry dropped a bomb over night - but it was a smart bomb, one that should sow dividends rather than destruction for the registry, registrars and new .TV registrants (it may however be a different story for existing .TV "premium" registrants 

- something we'll address in a moment). As most of you know, .TV domains have been unique (in my opinion, in a bad way) in that terms the registry deemed to be "premium" names carried hefty price tags and far worse, those same prices had to be paid every year when the domains came up for renewal. 

Now, I mentioned in the first paragraph that current holders of premium .TV domains may not be as cheerful about today's announcement as others because those who registered their names prior to March 19 not only paid a higher price but apparently will continue to be stuck paying that same high price over and over again at renewal time. I don't really see how that policy will be able to stand in the long run. Those early adopters should be rewarded with the same break at renewal time that the premium buyers who came long after them are getting now. 

Demand Media VP Chris Sheridan

I'll be surprised if Verisign doesn't extend equal treatment to those older registrants in the near future. Aside from that sticky wicket, I like Verisign's new direction with .TV and expect it to give the extension a nice boost.  

Chris Sheridan, a VP with Demand Media (the parent company of one of the biggest .tv registrars, eNom.tv) likes it too. He said "The updated pricing structure for .TV premium domains is a great response to the market.  We expect that significantly more customers will now enter the .TV market, and that existing .TV customers will add names to their portfolios.  As such, these changes mark an extremely positive and welcomed step in the right direction for the .TV community."

You can read more about eNom's take on the new .TV policy in a press release they put out soon after the news broke.

Paul Goldstone
DomainIt.com Founder & CEO

Goldstone said, “We think there are some significant opportunities being overlooked in the current business climate. Bringing Victor on board was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. He will be working on some exciting new business ventures, where his leadership experience and industry connections can benefit DomainIt tremendously. We fully expect him to hit the ground running.”

DomainIt is an ICANN-accredited registration and hosting company that was founded in 1996. The company developed the first ever domain search interface to determine if a particular domain was available for registration. 

As a domain investor with more than 1,000 names in his portfolio, Goldstone said he knows what a professional domain investor is looking for in a Registrar. In addition to running DomainIt, he also operates DomainSearch.com  

and domain industry directory, iGoldrush.com. Goldstone is also a  member of the ICANN Registrar Stakeholder Group. He designed and maintains the official ICANN website for that group. 

Sedo COO Jeremiah Johnston

Sedo's Chief Operating Officer Jeremiah Johnston said, “Descriptive and numeric domains are some of the most valuable and sought-after online destinations and there are many excellent .tv choices in this auction. Sedo is honored to work with VeriSign to give the business community, content creators, portfolio managers, and online marketers the rare opportunity to register these .tv domain names at affordable price points.”

VeriSign’s .tv Product Manager Tom Correia said, “VeriSign is pleased to offer these highly desired .tv domain names through auction. These web addresses have tremendous appeal, as they are industry neutral, with a great number of possible applications for each name. We selected Sedo, an industry leader with a large global reach, to be the auction platform for our first-ever .tv Registry auction.”

Aron Meystedt
Current owner of the first .com domain 
ever registered - Symbolics.com.

Mainstream media is also paying a lot of attention to the fact that today (March 15) is the 25th anniversary of the first .com domain registration back in 1985. That domain was Symbolics.com, a name that Aron Meystedt of XF.com acquired from the original owner last year at an undisclosed price. Meystedt, who was profiled in our September 2009 Cover Story, now uses Symbolics.com for an industry blog. 

This story at CNN is just one of the many appearing in mainstream media today to mark the historic occasion. In our September article Meystedt told us, "Owning the first registered domain name is very special to me and my company. It’s the first of nearly 200 million names. That will never change. No alternate TLD, legislation or technology will change this fact. There are no comparables for this name. The name is Internet history. To me, this is the crown jewel of our portfolio."

Morgan Linton (left) interviewing 
Rick Silver (N49 Interactive) for 
his Domainvestor TV series.

Linton said he has put together a team of industry experts for his magazine that will provide detailed insight into markets very few people have experience with. He plans to publish weekly at ccTLDInvestors.com at the start to give readers the opportunity to interact directly with the writers through an online comment system making the magazine more accessible. Linton also plans to continue to add more writers throughout the year to reach even more markets. 

This is the third media project for Linton who has already made a splash with an ebook titled Domain Flipping: How To Profit From The Domain Name Boom and a series of Domainvestor TV video interviews with industry leaders that are available at MorganLinton.com.

Elsewhere, ICANN closed its 37th international meeting in Nairobi, Kenya today by announcing the organization would maintain a Trademark Clearinghouse database that ICANN says will improve trademark protection on the web. During this week's meeting ICANN also rejected a proposal to implement a system of "Expressions of Interest" (EOI), which would have been a pre-registration process for those wishing to apply for the new generic top-level domains they expect to roll out one day (the process has repeatedly been delayed). The Board also decided to postpone action on the controversial .XXX sponsored TLD they previously rejected but are now reconsidering. 

Host Zbar said "Pape has created a powerful business model and career opportunity for people ready to build an online universe with their city or region at its center. ShopCity is a franchise-like system where owners manage the community, leverage relationships to line up local marketers, and support the model with online and traditional marketing."  

Now, you might think that will be more than enough to talk about for an hour, but it looks like they will have even more ground to cover.  I've learned about a new initiative from Pape and Mountainview, California based ShopCity that has not been make public until now. It is called "Work from Phone" and it is a program that Pape says is aimed at giving Americans "a career opportunity that requires nothing more than ambition and a mobile phone."

"With over 20,000 cities soon to be launched — and sites already pre-populated with leads — there are terrific local territory ShopCity partnerships available to first responders who can leverage existing relationships into a lifetime income stream. As a ShopCity Partner, participants 

receive tools, training, support and marketing resources including a unique iPhone application they can use to launch or help build a thriving shop local campaign," Pape said.

Pape added, “Many of our partners previously worked in companies where the perception was that it took years, millions of dollars and tremendous manpower to build an online presence and

acquire enough customers to drive success. So they have insight and perspective to feel, sell and believe that the solution they represent truly levels the playing field for the little guys."

If you want to hear more about Colin and ShopCity check out Friday's 12 Noon (EST) Domain Success show. Free registration is all that is required to sit in and you can sign up for your seat here. 

In another news note, Monster domain registrar GoDaddy .com announced that they crossed the 40 million registrations mark today.  The company said that for the past two years it has 

been registering, renewing or transferring a domain name an average once every second! They are adding about 1 million registrations every month and now hold almost 50% of the domain registration market. That is mind boggling and has to be a great point of pride for GoDaddy employees. By the way, if you would like to work there, the company is growing so fast they are looking to fill more than 100 job openings.

In other news today, the .CO registry, .CO Internet S.A.S., announced their upcoming launch plan for the re-purposed extension. .CO is Colombia's country code, but it is going to be opened up to worldwide registration with expectations that the CO initials will appeal to many buyers as an abbreviation for "company" (as well as corporate, commerce or community). 

The Sunrise period (in which eligible trademark holders can apply for the .CO domains that correspond to their marks before registration is open to the general public) 

will run from April 26 through June 10. Land rush (open to anyone interested in acquiring higher profile names at a higher price) will be from June 21 through July13, then general availability starts July 20. 

We have learned that Moniker.com has completed the sale of Guns.com for $800,000 to an unidentified buyer. That ranks as the highest .com sale of the new year and is the third highest 

sale overall, trailing only Poker.org at $1,000,000 and Credit.fr at €587,500 ($851,875). Quite an odd twist to have the biggest .com sale of the year ranking only third among all extension sales. You can review all of the Year To Date Top Sales here. 

You might recall that Guns.com was in Moniker's 

live auction at the DOMAINfest Global conference in January but did not meet reserve. After that event Moniker brokers continued to work hard to close a deal for the category defining domain and have now succeeded. The name was transferred on Friday and the WhoIs record currently has privacy listings. 

One other note today, the 37th international ICANN meeting is underway in Nairobi, Kenya. Computer World reports that 800 people had registered by this morning, about 20% less than the usual 1,000 attendees. The fall off has been attributed to security concerns after the Al Shabab terrorist group based in Somalia issued threats against the conference venue. The meeting will run  through Friday and new gTLDs are expected to be a prime topic at the meeting.

One other note to pass along before we head into the weekend that will be of special interest to our Canadian friends -  MyID.ca has aunched a comprehensive .ca domain marketplace that is offering tens of thousands of .ca ccTLD domains for sale. The marketplace is devoted exclusively to Canada's country code domains - the first marketplace of this size to ever focus on a single extension.

The site's domain inventory spans more than 40 categories and covers a wide range of pricing from less than $100 to more than $100,000. If you are interested in .ca domains you will want to bookmark their URL, http://domainmarket.myid.ca.

Mount Kilimanjaro

Last week I told you about the two dozen domainers who were climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa to raise funds for the Water School. The climb team led by Gregg McNair and Rick Latona started the climb to the 19,340 foot peak on Monday (March 1). Today I got a text message from McNair telling me they were about to make the final assault on the mountain top.

McNair wrote, "We are at summit base and will attempt the final assault at midnight - climbing in the darkness for 7 hours, then beginning the descent by hiking another 7 hours! The whole team appears to be OK so far but we are bloody exhausted after 30 miles of incredibly difficult trekking. Still, the worst is yet to come."

I am impressed and amazed that these people put their bodies on the line like this to raise money for a cost effective water purification program that is saving lives in Africa and other developing nations around the world. You can still donate to the cause (any amount will be appreciated) by going to this page and selecting a climber to sponsor. If you just wish to make a general Water School contribution, that can be done here.  

We are looking forward to hearing that the climbers reached the summit and have all safely made it back down the mountain. They are expected to reach the finish line on Saturday (March 6).
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DomainSponsor announced today that they will stage a DOMAINfest Europe conference in Prague, Czech Republic October 6-7, 2010. A number of sites have reported that this will be the first DOMAINfest in Europe but that is not the case. Before the first DOMAINfest Global conference was held in Hollywood, California in January 2007, DomainSponsor had started the popular series with a pair of regional events, one in Los Angeles and another (in July 2006) in Barcelona, Spain. I was not able to attend the DOMAINfest Barcelona show but Jothan Frakes was there and described the event in a post on his blog a few days after it ended. 

Since those early shows DOMAINfest has grown by leaps and bounds and they just completed their fourth annual Global show with record attendance in Santa Monica, California in January. The Prague show at the Hotel Intercontinental will likely be at least ten times bigger than that friendly gathering in Barcelona four years ago. A return of DOMAINfest to Europe has been expected ever since November 2009 when DomainSponsor announced the establishment of a European head office in Frankfurt, Germany.

Peter Celeste
Senior VP, Oversee.net

Peter Celeste, the Senior Vice President of DomainSponsor's parent, Oversee.net (and General Manger of Oversee's Monetization Services) said, “DOMAINfest Europe is an excellent opportunity for European publishers, online marketers, and domain-related service providers to meet and discuss ways to increase the value of domain names, which we like to refer to as Internet real estate." 

"The DomainSponsor team looks forward to becoming more engaged with the European domain investor community, and this forum is the perfect venue to exchange ideas and build relationships.  As with all DOMAINfest events, we will be offering affordable registration rates to encourage maximum participation from a wide range of talented professionals from both inside and outside our industry.”

Registration for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference coming up in Milan, Italy April 27-29 opened today with some exceptionally low early bird prices offered to those who are quick on the 

draw. A rate of €499 ($679 at today's exchange rate) will be given to the first 50 people who register for the offer that expires March 15. Those who plan to attend both the Milan show and the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference that will be held in Dublin, Ireland August 24-26 can get an even better early bird deal - tickets to both shows for just €749 ($1,020). 

You can access the Milan/Dublin offer by clicking the Buy Now button next to the $1,020 price on this registration page. However, we noticed this evening that a link to the Milan only early bird rate is not in place yet. A show official told us that link will be up tomorrow.

Just six weeks after the Milan show, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. will return to this side of the pond for its first Canadian show - T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Vancouver, coming up June 8-10 in British Columbia's scenic capital city. The Vancouver area has spawned many domain pioneers including Garry Chernoff, Frank Schilling and Dr. Kevin Ham to name just a few. The city just finished hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics so many of you have already been given a sample of the spectacular Vancouver scenery that was featured nightly on TV screens around the world. Better yet - it will be much warmer in June than it was during the February games.

PrescriptionDrugs.com isn't the only major project Zapolin has underway. Many of you have heard about his InternetWarrior.com website that is designed to teach people the ins and outs of the domain business. The site offers Zappy's Internet Warrior hard cover book, two tutorial DVDs and an annual membership to the website for $39.95 (+ $9.95 shipping and handling). A free domain appraisal and a three-month trial membership to the InternetWarrior.com Insider's Club is also included. Insider's Club benefits include access to live coaching calls with Zapolin.

I just received a copy of Zappy's book (written with Alys R. Yablon) and after I read it I'll follow up with some impressions of it for you. 

Zapolin has been involved in the sales and/or development of some of the best generic domain names on the web, including CreditCards.com, Computer.com, Telephone.com, Diamond.com, College.com and Beer.com to name just a few. 

As you may have heard, Bido.com sold UDRP.com for $16,500 last week. Considering the important role the UDRP process plays in the domain industry and the fact that each side in a single UDRP dispute typically spends several thousand dollars for legal services I thought 

someone got a good deal on that domain. As it turns out the buyer was both a domain investor and an end user - noted domain attorney Ari Goldberger (who was profiled in our June 2006 Cover Story). Ari has been the winning attorney in some of the most important domain cases of all time, Including NewZealand.com and Mexico.com.

“NewZealand.com was the first case of a country trying to claim its domain," Goldberger told us. "The owner’s entire business could have collapsed if this case was lost, so the pressure was on big time.  It was a wonderful victory, particularly since the panel found that the Complainant engaged in Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.  The funny thing is that the case was in the name of HRM, the Queen of England, so CNN.com had the headline: 

Ari Goldberger

“British Queen Loses Out on Cyber Name.” Mexico.com was another case where an individual had invested a lot and worked very hard could have lost an entire business if I had not won.”   

Elsewhere today, the special $795 early bird registration fee for the 2010 GeoDomain Expo - coming up April 28-30 in New Orleans was supposed to expire yesterday (Feb. 28), however since the deadline fell on a Sunday, show organizers decided to extend it through today. Starting tomorrow, the price goes up to $995 where it will remain until April 1 when it will go up again.

The show is going to be held at the historic Roosevelt Hotel, a showplace that just reopened in July 2009 after damage from  

Hurricane Katrina had shut it down for four years.  A $145 million restoration project has returned The Roosevelt to its place as the premier luxury hotel in New Orleans.  

The hotels’ world-famous Blue Room has hosted some of the greatest musicians and singers of all time including Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. The Roosevelt's Sazerac Bar is also known as the source of the first cocktail invented in America, an absinth powered concoction that is now the official drink of New Orleans. 

Room at the Roosevelt can be reserved at the show's guaranteed lowest rate of $229 per night by visiting the online booking engine or by calling 504-648 1200 and referencing the GeoDomain Expo group rate.