Last spring I told you about a terrific new book that had just been released by .CLUB Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Sass. With an attention grabbing title - Everything I Know About Business and Marketing I Learned from The Toxic Avenger - and great stories from Jeff's previous career in the movie business - the book quickly became a hit. 

Jeff was so happy about the book's success he decided to celebrate one of his favorite holidays - April Fool's Day (if you know Jeff and his sense of humor you this will not surprise you!) - by giving away free Kindle copies of his book this weekend only (Saturday & Sunday, March 31 an April 1, 2018)...and No, despite the April Fool's tie-in to the giveaway, this is not a joke! All you have to do is go to the Amazon order page for the book and you will find the price set at $0.00 those two days. After that the price reverts to the usual $4.99 (Kindle) or $9.99 (paperback), so it's a no brainer if you want some great tips on marketing that Jeff delivers in a very entertaining way.

Before you head over to the order page to download your copy you might also want to check out this video Jeff made to promote the 48-hour giveaway (you know a guy lives and breathes marketing when he puts this much effort into something he isn't even trying to sell - he just can't help himself)!   

A lot of Disney lovers  would like to find a way to magically reduce ticket prices to the wildly popular Disney World theme parks in Orlando (that include EPCOT, Disney's Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom alongside the Magic Kingdom). Well, if you are planning to go to the 2nd annual MERGE! conference coming up September 15-18, 2018 at the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista Hotel, show Founders Jothan Frakes and Ray Neu have some good news for you. They have gotten Disney World to sprinkle some of their magic dust on entry fees to any of their four parks - and not just for the four conference days - for a full week before and after MERGE! in case you want to transform your work trip into a dream vacation.

Disney has even set up a special webpage to make it easier for MERGE! attendees to take advantage of the offer. Knowing that show goers will be spending at least part of each conference day at MERGE!, Disney came up with flexible options that allow you to only pay for the part of the day or evening you want to visit a park. If you don't want to go over until later in the day

(when Florida's hot summer temperatures begin cooling down) tickets starting at 5pm (to any one park) will be just $59.15 (+ tax). If you want to go earlier, you can get in to a park starting at 1pm for $88.26 (+ tax) - or select a 1pm Park Hopper pass for $139.90 (+ tax) if you want to freely travel between all of the parks the rest of the day and night.  Another thing that will make this deal especially attractive is that the widely acclaimed Epcot International Food & Wine Festival will be going on at the same time as MERGE! (and yes, you can use the discounted tickets to go). 

Some of the most fun I've ever had at a conference was at the 2008 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Orlando event that was held at Disney World's Grand Floridian Hotel. Now, in 2018, after debuting at the Orlando Marriott World Resort last year, MERGE! is moving right next door to Disney World with their new venue at the Hilton in dining/shopping/entertainment mecca Disney Springs. That will put attendees in the middle of everything Disney World has to offer, including free transportation to and from the parks. While I plan to put in a full workday every day at MERGE! when the suns starts heading down I'm going to re-live some of that fun we had a decade ago when domainers ruled the (Disney) world! 

Above: At the 2008 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference at Disney World, Dr. Chris Hartnett 
leads a band of domain buccaneers into the Pirates of the Caribbean shop.

Below: In another photo from the 2008 event in Orlando, this group - with Directi Co-Founder Divyank Turakhia in the front seat - emerges from a wild rollercoaster ride through the darkness of Space Mountain. By the way - that guy in the seat furthest back is MERGE! Co-Founder Ray Neu who is set to lead the way back to the Magic Kingdom in 2018!

For more details on MERGE! 2018 including show registration and room reservation visit the MERGE! website here.

Another new gTLD  will be arriving next month and while .icu (shorthand for "I See You") will be a new option for domain registrants, the people behind it are old hands in the domain/tech industry.  .icu is being operated by the Luxembourg based ShortDot SA registry whose management team and board of directors consists of Lars Jensen, Kevin Kopas, Mogens Nielsen and Michael Riedl. They have selected CentralNic as the backend service provider for .icu  which will go live with Sunrise April 24, 2018, followed by General Availability May 29.

When ICANN opened their new GTLD program in 2012, .icu was applied for and delegated but ownership was recently transferred to the ShortDot registry who will now carry the flag forward.  Kopas, Co-Founder and COO, joined the .icu effort after previous stints with Moniker, Radix and PIR (administrator of the .org extension). He told us, "I’m excited to be part of shaping the future of this industry. Many years ago, I started as a broker and I’ve seen the best and the worst of what we can offer end users. New domains are moving this industry forward by allowing branding opportunities across the globe, especially within

Kevin Kopas
.icu Co-Founder & COO

startups and small/medium businesses. Our goal is to reconnect with registrars, show them we have skin in the game and simplify their sales processes. When we accomplish that, we’ve made it."

Additional information from the company details how they plan to differentiate .icu in a crowded market, noting, ".icu is not just a domain registry, with our innovative and global marketing plans we are transforming .icu into a true media company.  We help and encourage our end users to promote their businesses in all social networks using the hashtags #icu #iculive. We are keen to promote our end users’ businesses globally and thus created a 21 day manual for .icu end users on how to run their social media and attract the target audience. Our marketing strategy involves a powerful boost of promotional campaigns for registrars and end user outreach with the goal if driving end user interest back to the registrar, essentially driving business up the sales funnel and creating more end user demand and usage."

.icu expects to be live and available for registration at most internet registrars around the world and to be priced below most other extensions on the market. In the Sunrise period trademark holders will be able to register a .icu domain that matches their existing trademark, then when General Availability begins anyone can register .icu domains. For more information about launch dates, pricing, availability and more visit www.nic.icu. .icu can also be found on Facebook here.

A very interesting new article about the Crypto.com domain name and its owner, written by Adrianne Jeffries, was published at TheVerge.com today. I found out about it when Adrianne contacted me shortly before publishing the piece to get some background on current market conditions for cryptocurrency related domain names. As you all know they have become very popular with some selling for millions of dollars (like ETH.com for $2 million last fall). 

Matt Blaze, an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading expert on cryptography (he has a Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton and over 41,000 followers on Twitter), happens to own what may be the best domain in the entire category in Crypto.com. With the boom in cryptocurrencies Blaze has been besieged by people trying to buy the domain from him and he is not happy about it -  especially since

Crypto.com Owner Matt Blaze
(Photo from Twitter)

he insists the name is not for sale at any price - and especially not to anyone who would use it for cryptocurrency purposes. Blaze even has a warning notice on Crypto.com stating "Many cryptocurrencies are scams, and I strongly advise against their use as investment vehicles."

India's DomainX  conference will be returning for its 5th annual event this summer and for the 3rd consecutive year it will be staged in the nation's capital - New Delhi. The two-day show will run August 4 & 5, 2018 and its focus will be expanded this year with Web Hosting and Cloud topics joining Domain Names on the agenda. 

The hotel for 2018 has not yet been confirmed but show registration just opened with three ticket options priced (in rupees) at 99, 1999 and 2999 (the dollar equivalent at the current exchange rate would be $1.52, $30.77 and $46.17 - rates that have made DomainX one of the world's best conference values).

A scene from the 2017 DomainX conference at ShangriLa's Eros Hotel in new Delhi, India.

The 2018 agenda and speakers line up will be finalized in the weeks ahead but there is already a preliminary list of expected speakers on the DomainX website. DomainX organizers Manmeet Pal Singh and Gaurv Kohli launched the conference with a 2014 event in Hyderabad, followed by the 2015 conference in Bangalore (that we attended) then 2016 and 2017 shows in New Delhi.

In one of our  weekly domain sales reports in June 2017, I wrote about plausible but unconfirmed speculation that the Ring video doorbell company had paid $1 million to buy the Ring.com domain name in 2014. That number has now been confirmed. As you probably heard Amazon bought Ring a few days ago in a deal valued at more than $1 billion. Thanks to eagle-eyed domain investor George Kirikos, I  learned that shortly after the sale, a mutual friend, Digimedia.com President Jay Chapman, tweeted out a link to a podcast interview that Danny Fortson did with Ring CEO & Chief Inventor Jamie Siminoff in August 2017. About midway through that 43-minute interview Siminoff revealed that he had indeed paid $1 million to acquire the domain name.

Even more interesting are the details Siminoff revealed about the purchase in a five-minute stretch of the interview that starts at the 26:15 mark. If anyone ever wanted to make

Image from Bigstock

a case for the enormous value of a great domain name in building a business, Siminoff does it in those five minutes. Siminoff revealed that in 2014, with his company then known as Doorbot, he only had $187,000 in the bank when he approached the owner of Ring.com (then privately held by a Minnesota doctor). When the doctor told him the price Siminoff said "I don't have a million dollars but I will give you $187,000 now and another $825,000 in two years for the domain" (which would be the $813,000 balance and an extra $12,000 in interest). The doctor accepted and Siminoff lived up to his word (we have charted the sale on our 2016 Top 100 Sales Chart - at #5 - since that was the year the final payment was made). 

Popular domain registrar and hosting company  NamesCheap's 6th annual Move Your Domain Day will get underway Tuesday night (March 6, 2018) at 12 midnight. During this 24-hour event anyone can transfer domains into NameCheap for $3.98 (and that includes a free year of private email and SSL). .Com domains cost registrars nearly $8 each wholesale, so NameCheap will take a sizeable loss on every name transferred in. Even more so because they will donate $1.50 from each of those $3.98 transfers to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a highly respected organization that works to protect online freedom and digital civil rights.  

NameCheap started doing this in 2011 in response to the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill many felt threatened people’s right to privacy, anti-censorship and a free and open Internet. Sensing a need to mobilize the community, Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall launched the first Move Your Domain Day. Seven years later, Namecheap has used its platform to raise awareness about other dangerous bills like the Protect IP Act (PIPA) as

Rick Kirkendall
NameCheap CEO

well as the continued battle to save Net Neutrality. Since  starting their event they have raised more than $350,000 for EFF. Kirkendall said, "Our passion and dedication to Internet neutrality and freedom cannot be overstated. Namecheap’s long-term commitment to these principles dates back to the founding of the company. Our pledge to stand with organizations such as EFF, in their fightto keep the Internet open and free, is the reason why Move Your Domain Day is such an important initiative for Namecheap." 

EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry added, "EFF is grateful for the support from Namecheap’s Move Your Domain Day. We’re fighting to protect online innovation and creativity. With the help of supporters across the web, we will continue standing up for Internet users in the courts, in Congress, and around the world."

Domaining Europe  conference founder Dietmar Stefitz will present his 10th annual show June 7-9, 2018 in Valencia, Spain but the event will run under new ownership having just been acquired by NamesCon. Stefitz will still be on hand to manage the upcoming conference that has been renamed NamesCon Europe 2018 with the assistance of NamesCon producers Terri Potratz and Tania Kabantsov. Stefitz also plans to remain with the organization as its Brand Ambassador for the European show.

Stefitz said, “After 10 years of hard work I am thrilled to find a new home for Domaining Europe. NamesCon is the only entity to carry on this conference in the spirit of all involved, be it attendees, sponsors, or speakers. I want to thank all participants of Domaining Europe in the last years and wish the team of NamesCon Europe all the best for the future.”

NamesCon President & CEO Soeren von Varchmin added, “We are very excited to contribute to a successful NamesCon Europe 2018 under the direction of founder Dietmar Stefitz. Europe is an important forum for NamesCon, and as we enter into the 10th year

Dietmar Stefitz
Domaining Europe Founder

of Domaining Europe we look forward to honoring Dietmar’s legacy and bringing even more value to the event for both attendees and partners.”

Rolf Larsen, who runs the Europe based .GLOBAL registry, also commented on the change, noting, “The initiative to create NamesCon Europe as a successor to Domaining Europe will likely benefit the domain industry in much of the same way NamesCon Global has done in USA. The industry needs events that has a primary focus on commercial use and ownership of domain names. Naturally, an event like this becomes a melting pot for meetings between all layers of the domain industry."

NamesCon Europe is celebrating the news with a 50% off promotion on tickets to the June event that will be in effect until March 16.