I’m Still Alive!

Just read some comments over at MorganLinton.com asking where I had been and what was going on with myself and where I had went too. I use to post once or twice a day and I think my last post was in April so I can understand why people would be asking. I have been talking to many of my domain investor friends by phone and email in the background and they know what has been up but after reading the comments on Morgans site I thought I better put an update post out.

Well, I am still here. I just have not been blogging the past couple months based on a focused effort on getting our new staff up and moving and many things that been going on for our localsearch and online advertising business at Localtek. My blog posts would be lacking in quality if I had been posting the past few months so rather than put out daily posts that were not of quality I thought it better to not blog for a few months while getting people ramped up and moving.

At the same time I started focusing on getting myself back to the level of fitness I was at previous to starting the business. Previously I had been doing marathons, triathlons and other endurance events. After starting Localtek I changed drastically and had set a date directly after the Domainer Mardi Gras festivities to get myself back in shape.

We have had many great things happening for the company, we have our own radio show now (every other Wednesday on KREI 800 AM in the area I am in) and also have started to have articles in print media even. A local magazine (one of the few stable areas of print media is localized magazines) has started putting articles in monthly. We have been fortunate to have companies that would normally consider us competitors to realize that we can all work together to help each other.

Also, we recently moved offices, we are now at 119 E Columbia in Farmington, MO. The new space is over double what we had and is quite amazing actually and is in walking distance to my favorite coffee shop and restaurant (to anyone that is my friend on Facebook you would know those as 12 West or Bauhaus Kaffee).

As far as the fitness has went I have lost 42 lbs and have completed a triathlon and some running events since getting back into it and have another triathlon planned for July 18th. Anyone that knew me before starting Localtek knows how important biking and running and staying active is to me. It is nice to be back at it.

This week alone we have 5 seminars we are giving to local businesses, 4 in Kentucky which will be recorded and played on a local TV station as an actual show and then one in the local area we are at during a Chamber of Commerce meeting. These seminars really help to educate the masses on the importance of using technology to help their business now that the yellow pages and other legacy methods of business promotion are faltering while online becomes more important than ever.

Luckily the team that we have now has ramped up quite fast and I expect to be back to regular posting with even more info than before soon.

GeoDomain Expo Agenda Details Coming In

As the date nears for next weeks GeoDomain expo the agenda continues to firm up and it is looking to be a good one. If you have any interest in developing your Geo domains into money making properties this show should help you along the way.

You can see the agenda here:  GeoDomain expo agenda.

I look forward to being on the panel concerning developing any size city, large or small. With our development of Missouri.me we have worked hard to determine how best to monetize and develop everything from 1000 person community websites to city portals.

Looking at the agenda this is a conference that should really help companies looking to learn how to best market and grow their properties, as our geo properties grow in importance based on the failure of print media and the continued move of eyeballs to online media rather than print it is more important than ever for people to learn the best way to take advantage of this.

Also, an interesting addition to the agenda is that of Chef Patrick now of Oversee.net, this will be Patrick's first panel since joining Oversee. Nice to see him on the circuit:)

And yes, this expo is being held during Jazz Fest which means great entertainment and events surrounding the great opportunity to learn how to grow your business. Make sure you look at the agenda linked to above.

Me.Me Acquired By Yahoo

Great news for marketing folks that understand the value of the .ME brand, as is being reported on a few other domain blogs such as TheDomains.com and ElliotsBlog.com Yahoo has acquired me.me from the .ME registry. Sedo brokered the transaction between the two entities.

This is great news for the .ME extension as it shows continued awareness by major internet companies of the extension and its potential for branding and memorability.

Other major companies that began using .ME in various ways are Facebook with FB.me and Wordpress with WP.me.

I want to extend a big congrats to Natasa and Predrag from the .ME team, I know how hard they work to promote their brand and love to see when great things happen to good people.

Our Own Radio Show And Growing Momentum

People like to say "Isn't it great when a plan comes together?", well in the past few weeks every time I feel like the momentum has hit a peak I continue to be proved wrong. Sometimes that really is not a bad thing.

Since we started bringing on more resources and starting making plans for the next set of hires we have really started to see what happens when we implement the plans we have laid out to investors (and to ourselves for that matter).

In the beginning of the Localtek and Missouri.me launch we had worked towards bringing on specific types of partners that could help us launch into regions where we currently did not have a presence. That plan is taking shape and after our seminars in Dexter, MO we have a new telecommunications partner who has 118,000 subscribers and multiple states where they are located. They are already planning additional seminars to help us push our services out to their business customers.

What is best about this partner is they started working with us based not on us approaching them but on the recommendation from current customers and partners. As  a company that just launched last year we are very happy to have partners such as this coming on board and supporting us in our growth plans.

In another surprising but VERY exciting partnership we have starting working with a key regional player in the radio space. We are working with this group of stations to both increase their social media and search presence. It is very nice to see a company that would typically be considered a competitor to someone helping businesses be found online rather than offline work with us to prove out the holistic marketing plan we speak of. They really do get the need to tie their voice on the airwaves to their online presence and social media presence as well.

After much discussion it was decided that I will also have a voice on the airwaves, we will have 2 technology and online marketing tip spots daily along with 2 separate radio shows focused on the same subjects, this is all on different stations so we get a large market presence in a very key area of Missouri.

Very exciting and something I really look forward too. We will have the ability to replay the shows to I expect to have links to them on the blog here as they play. For our company this is really a great thing.

In other exciting news we have started working closely with the city we want to move to and have been spending quite a bit of time exploring new office space and also spaces that may built from scratch to suit our needs. The community we are moving to has been a big supporter of ours and due to this we want to move from the current city we are in and into a city that really understands how to support local business.

On that note the city we are moving too has even sponsored one of our largest seminars to date that will be given May 5th at their city hall. When a fast growing, very progressive community supports you and helps promote you to their businesses that is as good of a vote of confidence as you can get.

Now, on a personal note since I had so many emails after putting this in last time, I should be down 30 pounds by this time tomorrow, I started back on my old healthy lifestyle the day after Domainer Mardi Gras ended (Feb 15th). More than halfway there!

Working With Local City Officials To Increase Brand Awareness

One of the great things about the seminar plan that we have used here at Localtek and Missouri.me is that it allows us to get direct reaction from customers, consumers, and local government officials. This can really work to your benefit if you are developing a geo domain as a vote of confidence from local government officials can really strengthen your companies standing in a community.

I have noticed that across the state of Missouri links from local libraries, city websites, etc have increased as we have went on even without our requesting, that is great news and I expect to see it continue as we start phase 2 of feature development for the site.

Well, we have taken it one step further with one of the most progressive business communities in the state which is Farmington, MO. The area is growing fast and has continued to do well even in the down economy. We were fortunate to have the economic development director attend one of our seminars last year and he could immediately see the value of the education received from the seminar could be of real value to the businesses in the community.

One thing he could see, as well as many others, is that many business owners knew they needed to care about being online, needed to care about things like Facebook, but most did not even know where to start or had seen a good example of use. Our seminar had shown that, after speaking to him we decided to work together to put together another  seminar in the area promoted by the city and to be given at city hall.

Well, this week it was confirmed and an email went out to all subscribers of the city newsletter. I think this s a great example of what having real feet on the street people to promote your online services can do. Education is key, I tell people all the time as much as I want them to buy from us at the end of the day the more people that are educated on how marketing is changing the more we all benefit long term. You can only educate if you are out there with the business owners and city officials.

And also, for those that think online marketing is just about advertising online, our seminar shows it is not. There is a holistic plan you must use to market online, things are changing everyday as people use their mobile phones and social networks to get the info they need.

So, I wanted to say thanks to the city of Farmington for their support of what we are doing.

We have some other very interesting joint promotion concepts that we will be announcing soon as well. Lets just say sometimes your competition can actually be your best friend....

Localtek Hires As Legacy Media Declines

March 26, 2010, Desloge, MO - LocalTek, LLC, an innovator in local search and advertising solutions for businesses across America, announces plans to aggressively hire more sales staff and web developers to meet the growing needs of their rapidly expanding client list.

Traditional legacy media has come under fire during these difficult economic times with massive layoffs and corporate downsizing. With a consistently shrinking market share, newspapers and other forms of print media are closing their doors and causing their unemployed workers to seek jobs in an increasingly smaller job market. LocalTek aims to hire these former legacy media employees to expand the company’s thriving online presence.

“We feel that people who have experience in selling media would be a terrific asset to our company,” said Bruce Marler, founder of LocalTek. “The unprecedented growth we’ve had has led to an immediate need to add more employees to our line up.”

The surge in local search has grown significantly over the past year and with the current economic downturn many people are looking to their own community for their needs and services. LocalTek has developed a strategic business plan catering to these needs and has provided their clients with websites that have substantially increased local traffic and customers to their client’s business.

LocalTek has discovered an economic solution in its business practice by reaching out to small businesses that were previously untapped by larger marketing companies. By providing cost-effective web development, local search & SEO, social media promotion, and targeted location based services that virtually any business can afford, LocalTek is providing a variety of small businesses the opportunity to compete competitively with the same resources used by large corporations.

LocalTek’s business model has met large success and the company has been featured in international news with its innovative community portal, Missouri.me, which serves over 1,000 communities in Missouri. Missouri.me offers visitors local information about news, businesses, weather, and classifieds in their community.

About LocalTek

LocalTek provides cost effective, locally targeted, online advertising, and website solutions for a variety of business types throughout the United States. LocalTek solutions are targeted at specific geographic areas, which allow businesses to focus on the customers they find most valuable.

Headquartered in Desloge, Missouri, LocalTek is rapidly expanding its service offering in over 20 markets nationwide. For additional information, please visit us at www.localtek.com.

Localtek Launches Redesigned Corporate Site

One of the strange things about starting a company is that you soon find out that your own corporate site tends to take a back seat to customers and to direct revenue producing properties.

I must admit when we first launched Missouri.me and Localtek I had a "It won't happen to me" attitude about our own corporate site falling behind but it did, but we have fixed that now. Although I still have several content tweaks to make around local search and social media the overall redesign of our site is now complete.

Although the core of what we do as a company has not changed since we launched our message has became more clear and as such we wanted to start moving towards offering a corporate site that allows people easier access to information. I expect to have considerable more content over the next few weeks going deeper into our areas of service now that the redesign is complete.

Check out the redesigned site at Localtek.com

Interviewed On DNW Radio

I know the blog has been a bit quiet this week, we have been heads down on strategic planning meetings all week long (I remember hating when people scheduled week long meetings before I owned a company, now look at me doing the same... Live and learn). Anyway, I must say thanks to Andrew Allemann at Domain Name Wire for the interview he did for DNW Radio.

Here is a link to the show:

Bruce Marler interview on DNW Radio

Symbolics.com Turns 25 Years Old – The Domain Name That Started Commerce On The Web

It is ironic that I am likely the last to post a story today about Symbolics.com, I was with Aron Meystedt the day he bought it and had a very fun dinner with him tonight after a very fun and crazy day for him. As most have heard today is the 25th anniversary of the registration of Symbolics.com, who would of known when I first did the interview with Aron that he would end up picking up this very key name in the history of the internet.

To me this domain name, if it was possible, would be featured in the Smithsonian (of course that is not possible), although people like to point out that Nordu.net was registered before Symbolics.com, no one can argue that when it comes to the billions (trillions???) of dollars that will be transacted over the web this .COM domain name is the one that started it. The internet has changed the way we communicate, shop, research, and pretty much do everything in our day to day life. I would consider the first name to have a level of historic importance that ranks pretty high.

For domainers it was great to see the story featured on everything from CNN, Mashable, to Wired.

Aron is a great guy and to see all the great stories today about the 25th anniversary of Symbolics.com, I am still amazed at how calm he was about it all tonight. You would of never known he had been interviewed across the country and had stories coming in off alerts all day. Just another guy eating a burger at a a local restaurant tonight. And that is why I consider him one of the good guys.

You can also check out the Verisign site celebrating the 25th anniversary at 25YearsOf.com.

ccTLDInvestors.com Online Magazine Launches

Big congrats to my good friend Morgan Linton for the launch of ccTLDInvestors.com which will be a great new blog focused on investing and developing ccTLD domains. As someone who has developed and has invested in a few different ccTLDs I look forward to seeing what Morgan has in store and actually look forward to contributing (sorry for the delay in sending the bio Morgan!!!).

With the ccTLD domain market being an opportunity, and as such, a growth area for domainers this I expect this site to do quite well and generate a lot of great interest.

BTW, a quick note, Chef Patrick is running a contest at Name.com that allows you to grab .ME domains at a GREAT price and if you use his coupon code of chefpatrick you get entered into a contest, check out more about the Name.com and Chef Patrick promo.

Below is the press release:
IN SEARCH OF THE NEXT .COM: CCTLDINVESTORS.COM FOCUSES ON TAKING DOMAIN NAME INVESTMENTS GLOBAL

Online Magazine Targets Global Domain Name Market
LOS ANGELES, California – March 11, 2010 - Linton Investments LLC announced ccTLDInvestors.com today – an online magazine dedicated entirely to investing in ccTLDs. Country Code Top Level Domains (commonly called ccTLDs) are the extensions dedicated to a specific country online such as .co.uk (England), .ca (Canada), .in (India) and .me (Montenegro).“The market is there, we’ve already seen some huge sales this year, the problem is that there are very few resources for ccTLD Investors,” says Morgan Linton, the creator of the magazine.
The Domain Name Investing market has grown dramatically over the last few years, and with sales like Toys.com for 5.1 million dollars and Candy.com for 3.0 million dollars it is clear the market is hot. In 2009 ccTLD sales doubled making it the quickest growing segment in the Domain Investing space! With sales like Credit.fr for $851,875 and Free-SMS.de for $162,150 already this year, the ccTLD market has the potential to appreciate just like the .com, .net, and .org markets have over the last fifteen years – but at an even faster pace!
While there are ccTLD sales every week, .com continues to take the limelight in the Domain Investing world. “For some markets there is almost nowhere investors can look to find-out more information about a particular Country’s TLD,” says Linton who is passionate about giving equal focus to oftentimes overlooked countries and regions. “The idea is simple – more people around the world are using the Internet every day – in the United States .com is the focus – in Canada owning a brand means owning the corresponding .ca domain, in Germany it means owning the corresponding .de domain. ccTLDs give investors the chance to buy-into a market before it takes off!”
Markets like England’s .co.uk and Germany’s .de have already seen strong attention from investors and enjoyed excellent sale prices over the last few years. Other markets like .in and .mx are just starting to see some larger sales but have mostly stayed below the five-figure range.
Linton has put-together a team of industry experts for his magazine that will allow it to provide detailed insight into markets very few people have experience with. “Just think, at this very moment India already has more Internet users than the United States. In India, .com is not as strong as .co.in or .in but the market for buying and selling these domains has just started…just like .com did in the nineties!
ccTLDInvestors.com will be published weekly to start and gives readers the opportunity to interact directly with the writers through an online comment system making the magazine more accessible. Linton will continue to add more writers throughout the year to reach even more markets. “The idea is to make ccTLDInvestors.com the online source for information about ccTLDs – this is day one!”
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Linton Investments LLC was founded in 2007 as a Domain Name Investment company. Over the last two years the company has grown their portfolio to encompass over twenty TLDs spanning the Americas, Europe, and Asia. With a strong focus on development, Linton Investments turns their domain names into search engine-optimized web properties that generate a consistent monthly income.
The company’s founder, Morgan Linton is also the author of the book – Domain Flipping: How To Profit From The Domain Name Boom as well as Producer of Domainvestors Television. Morgan runs a popular blog – MorganLinton.com where he discusses domain investing, monetization, SEO, and of course ccTLDs.
If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an appointment with Morgan Linton, please call 1-800-274-6440 or email Morgan@LintonInvestments.com.

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