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.
Headed Back To New Orleans For the GeoDomain Expo
Well it is official I have booked my hotel and travel for the trip to New Orleans for the Geo Domain Expo April 28th through the 30th. I am really looking forward to this conference as it hits the core of what we as a company do and that is develop geographically targeted domain names.
With a great agenda lining up this will be a great place to network with other people specifically in this segment of the domain industry, you can see the agenda here.
After meeting with Patrick Carleton who leads the charge for the GeoDomain Expo last week I can say that I am very excited to attend, if you want to learn more about how to best monetize your geo domains do not miss 0ut and book now.
One thing no one can argue with is the success of many of the top Geo domainers that attend this conference, when it comes to developing key properties Geo domainers seem to have a knack for it. Hope to see you there!
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.
GeoDomain Expo In New Orleans – Sign Up Now
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
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
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.
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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.
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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.
Missouri.me Gets A Facelift
When we launched our favorite Missouri website we knew the community pages really needed to have a much different look than the very front page of the site. The site is all about the communities and our front page really did not make it obvious how to get to those communities. It really was just a mix of community information.
We knew we wanted to do something different with the main Missouri.me page but we really were not sure what, keep it simple or make it a content rich page. After much discussion and talking with some customers that we have go to know well we decided the keep it simple rule would win and as of today we have that in place for the main page of our site now.
The community pages are all the same for now although we have many changes planned there as well (already have implemented a few performance enhancing changes).
We will be adding some content to the main page later but not until we know we can keep the same clean look we have now. Take a look at Missouri.me now.
On a side note take a look at the Local Search vs. White Pages story as well, the numbers behind the decline of White Page acceptance is mind boggling.
Surprise Traffic To A Domain Name From An Unlikely Source
Recently we acquired a medium sized town / city .COM on drop, I think it slipped through since some people call the city one thing yet the official name is another. I chose to pick the name up because after doing some research (one of my employees used to live in an adjoining area) I determined the official city site plus other governmental sites all used the name of the city plus the word city in their domain names. As luck would have it though they developed the .ORG which makes sense for them.
Now, as you know I make my living from developing alternative extensions and have not had any issues doing so but the occurrence I found today was actually quite interesting, forget all the discussions about traffic leaking to the .COM if you develop something other than a .COM. That is something that will be a discussion for the years to come and really cannot be argued, the only thing that can be argued is how much.
But how about links being pointed to the wrong place, link leakage. Now, as I say that there is no way for me to know if that is what happened here but from what I can tell no major development happened on this domain name. I had it parked for a few months but never really checked where the traffic was coming from (yes it gets type in traffic) but recently I put a small development on it, to be honest it was just a place holder site until we got ready for the next step but when I went to check if there were any terms ranking yet I noticed something. Several hits from the local police station website.
What happened? Well I went to the site and found the link is pointing to the .COM , I have no idea if the intention was to point it to the .ORG or not. But what I did find looking through Archive.org is that the site was registered back close to 2000 but was really just a link site with a few links to local businesses, looks like a local had it but then let it go and a domainer picked it up on drop along the way.
So it is possible that the link was meant to be to the .COM but I am thinking I am possibly getting link leakage rather than type in leakage this time around.
Domain Newbie Having A Taste Of Success
This past year I met a person who had been around domain investment enough to understand the value of it but had not really got to the level of understanding that makes it a profitable enterprise for someone. He is one of the people I referred to in an earlier post about people new to domain investment.
After registering some names and asking for advice a few times and then having me push back several times saying keep reading, keep researching, do not buy another name until you do X,Y, and Z he now is starting to have some success, maybe not on the selling front but at least on the monetization front.
One of the first things he did was he stopped randomly hand registering names. He now uses Bido.com to watch for keyword rich .COM, .NET, and .ORG names and focuses on names that have some level of search relative to the size of the industry and focuses on keywords that generate high PPC.
One of the other ways he has had much success in picking up several VERY nice registrations is by using the Geo.Godaddy.com tool I discussed in an earlier post about using the Geo Domaining Tool. Using that tool right can be a gold mine, I may have to slow him down now though since I might want those names for myself:)
What is really nice is to see he is setting goals for himself now that he is understanding more about the industry, that shows focus, that is how you get where you want to be. Find success, focus on what made that success happen and grow it.
His next step is understanding how to position properly when cold calling or emailing end users. His first contact did not go well, he focused too much on "domain name" and not on the value to the end user. Without explaining why something is valuable it is an uphill battle trying to sell it. He knows this now and is focused on creating his end user email template for moving forward.
Just thought I would relate a potential success story, maybe not on a large scale, but at least on a small scale, of someone that is just starting to focus on generic domains and making progress even in this market.
Rural Broadband Stimulus and Why Domain Investors Should Care
One of the things I have been surprised that I have not heard more domain investors discuss is the rural broad stimulus that has been approved and is being allocated to drive broadband penetration deeper into areas that have previously had only dialup or other slow Internet connections. With my previous background in Telecommunications I was aware of this and was working with companies that were looking to bid on grabbing a piece of the stimulus funds and could see how this would impact business in these communities that previously did not have easy, affordable and quick Internet access.
Well, many of the bids have been submitted for approval and will be awarded towards the end of this year. There is 7.2 billion dollars up for grabs to help build out this access, much of it will likely be over broadband wireless since in many areas it is not feasible to upgrade the in ground copper wires or do fiber to the home type services.
So what does all this mean to us as domain investors and developers, well it means that those users who previously had slow, little, or no access will suddenly have the want and ability to use the web how the rest of us have been doing for some time. One study I read for a rural region of my own state said that 68 percent of users had zero or only dialup access, they do not use the Internet in the same way we do as broadband users. It has been shown in those studies they use it less and much differently. These business owners in these areas will suddenly need to care about doing business online. Even if it is not a pure commerce site they will need some presence online to make sure their business is seen by their local community rather than the corporate competitor who has the budget to have a full online marketing budget.
Local search has been shown to be the fastest growing type of search online, that is only going to go deeper into the long tail as the rural communities come online. The users in these communities will start to search more frequently for services and products in their areas. There will be a new group of businesses nationwide that will suddenly start to understand or at least think about the value of category killer keywords in their domain names.
There will be many ways to work with these businesses and as a company that focuses on community based approaches to online marketing we hope to help these companies move online. We already have multiple seminars planned in regional centers around rural Missouri to start the training process. There are times where even if you are not selling there is value in educating the larger group on the value of how to work online now that the consumers around you have moved online in a more effective manner than in the past.
WebmasterRadio.FM Interview September 2nd – Geo Domains and Geo Development Topics
I just finished my WebmasterRadio.FM interview for the Domain Masters show, it will be airing next Wednesday, September 2nd at 7PM EST. The show will focus on a few specific topics including domain development, geo domains, and working with small businesses to move them online. Although I have spoke in front of people many times this is the first time I have done a "radio show" interview and must say it was a nice change of pace.
Special thanks to Victor Pitts who runs he Domain Masters show and also does a great job at Moniker.
I think you will find a few new tidbits in this interview that I have not spoke about in others up to now. I hope you find it valuable. Look for more information as the date draws closer.
Also, I recently did an interview on Ygrab.com, I spoke a bit more about domains in general there and how I approach or have changed my approach to domains since launching Localtek and Missouri.me. Heres is the link to the interview.
Press Passes, Free Water Bottles, and Offline Marketing for Missouri.me
The Missouri.me team are just about ready to go for our offline marketing promotions at the Tour Of Missouri international cycling event. Although this post may not be specifically domaining related it should help those of you that are launching geo domain related sites think creatively when looking at ways to target offline marketing efforts.
If you are not a cycling fan or really your experience with road biking is Lance Armstrong its pretty likely you are not familiar with the Tour of Missouri, the race is the second largest stage race in the USA only behind the Tour of California. Last year it drew somewhere around 400,000 fans and onlookers and many went on to attend the Health and Wellness Expo held at the end of each stage which allows sponsors to promote their business with a booth and free giveaways, etc just like any other tradeshow.
Well, with Missouri.me being a statewide community focused site we had been trying to determining what the best event would be to do a statewide "feet on the street" effort for offline marketing. With my operations manager and myself both being cyclists it did not take us long to figure out how to take advantage of the Tour of Missouri event. This event draws teams from around the world, these are not your average everyday cyclists you are griping at as you drive down the road, these are the same riders that ride the Tour De France. This event draws viewers from all over the world.
First off for the marketing and awareness side, we have purchased a booth at the expo at the end of the stages in:
If you are going to be in state you should come visit!!!
We purchased these specifically to give us statewide coverage so all of our efforts did not just hit one piece of the state. Now for the fun part, we ordered hundreds of water bottles with our logo on them to handout to fans and attendees. This is a brand awareness campaign for us and knowing how athletes like runners and cyclists use water bottles we know these will be in their bottle cages for a year to come, we like our free reusable water bottles. We also have some other handouts planned as well and will also be in the booth to discuss various cycling rides throughout the state in the communities we are in.
What is even better is that our logo will be on the Tour of Missouri website which had 330,000,000 pageviews last year based on the exposure the event gets. Thats right, you read it right. Plus our logo will be in the Tour guide which is distributed for the week prior to the event and also it will show up in a few other media kits that will be handed out. All in all, considering what we put together to do this its quite a value.
Now for the next fun part, based on the fact we are an online media company we also have obtained press/media passes to cover the event like any other media or news company would. We are in the process, it's not quite ready yet, of launching Tour.Missouri.Me where we will be posting videos from the stage route, providing interviews, and posting general stats, etc as we report on the event. For us this also allows us to promote our community sites with links from the cycling posts to our community sites. Once again, tying it all together is key. Having people actually in the press tents and press conferences will allow us to network with other media companies and grow awareness as well.
There is plenty more going on but as you can imagine there is still much work to do to pull it all together, exciting times and the work is well worth it to be able to go state wide with one event.
If you happen to be in Missouri during the race feel free to contact me and we could meet up during one of the stages at our booth or somewhere along the way. Now I am heading out for a ride, albeit at a much slower pace than these pros will be doing.
