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In
addition
to a
new
Cover Story marking DN Journal's
10th Anniversary (a date we celebrated
on New Year's Day), I have been
featuring
some of the key people and events we have covered
over the past decade in a series of Lowdown
posts over the past two weeks. I touched on 2010
Wednesday. Today it's on to 2011. When
I started DN Journal at the beginning of 2003 a
few people told me, "it's really
interesting but you are going to run out of
things to write about in a few
months!" Fortunately, those concerns
proved to be unfounded as this industry wound up
having far more interesting back stories
than anyone (including me) could have ever
imagined. In fact as we went through our 9th
year in 2011 I was able to turn up some
of the best personal stories we've ever
published. Those
started with our March 2011 cover piece - The
John Ferber Story: How The Secret Millionaire
Sold His Company for $495 Million and Why He
Loves the Domain Business Now. The
personable Co-Founder of DomainHoldings.com
(and star of a moving episode of the ABC-TV
reality show The Secret Millionaire)
brought a welcome jolt of energy and
innovation to our industry, with both his
sunny personality and the new company he staffed
with an all-star roster of domain veterans.
DomainHoldings.com
Co-Founder John Ferber with
fiancée Jenna Wehner and some of their
feathered friends! We
found another remarkable human interest story in
Elephant Orchestra Founder Jan
Barta whom we profiled in May 2011.
The dynamic young entrepreneur from the Czech
Republic is making his mark in multiple
industries, not just in his home country, but
around the world.
Jan
Barta (center) with domain industry veterans
Mike Fiol (left) and
Merlin Kauffman (right) at the 2009 T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Amsterdam conference in the
Netherlands. In
2011 we also gave you an up close and personal
look at one of the industry's most well-known
figures - Marc
Ostrofsky - the man behind the
famous $7.5 million sale of Business.com
and the best selling author of Get Rich
Click!, a book that earned him some
coveted invitations on the national TV talk show
circuit where he spread the good news about
domains and making money on the Internet.
Get
Rich Click! Author Marc Ostrofsky on
ABC-TV's The View (June 9, 2011)
(L to R in the photo above): Whoopi Goldberg,
Joy Behar, Marc Ostrofsky,
Sherri Shepherd, Elisabeth Hasselbeck
and Barbara Walters. Speaking
of TV, has there been anyone bigger than Oprah
Winfrey on TV over the past decade? Would
you believe that the domain industry is home to
one of the original producers of Oprah's
massively successful TV show (as well as mega
hits like Jeopardy! and Wheel
of Fortune)? It's true and to top it off
David Sams has one of the most
interesting personal stories you will ever read
- a story we told in a September 2011 piece
titled: Blessing
in Disguise: David Sams Was a Huge Success in
Hollywood But An Unexpected Setback Put Him on
an Even More Rewarding Path.
David
Sams and Michelle Bekeza at home in Tennessee 2011
was also a year that some viable alternate
monetization methods started coming into
their own to help offset the ongoing decline in
parking revenue. Braden Pollock was the
leading proponent of one those - lead
generation - and he told us all about it, as
well as how own fascinating back story in the
year's final Cover
Story.
Braden
Pollock
and his fiancée, best-selling author, attorney
and TV personality Lisa Bloom. Next
up - down the stretch in 2012 - the year
DN Journal completed its first decade.
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