Promediacorp

Pubcon 2007 First Annual Live Domain Auction Recap

Filed under: Domaining, Pubcon 2007 Las Vegas

- “I can’t believe I didn’t get $5,000 for Wednesday.org! You know what Thursday and Friday would go for!” - Auctioneer

Today I had the privilege of attending a Moniker.com live domain name auction in Las Vegas, Nevada. Moniker.com is the leading provider of domain name registration and management services for small and large companies. This was Moniker’s 9th live auction and first ever live auction at Webmasterworld’s Pubcon 2007 annual convention. Moniker regularly sells and auctions off unclaimed or expired domain names on their website.

Now I know as much as the next web guru that “Internet real estate” is a growing market, with many crazy business owners and web developers willing to pay top dollar for domain names, but I had no idea to what extent seemingly useless names would demand! In today’s auction, domain name cabo.mobi was set at $10,000 and woodcabinets.com set at $25,000! Both didn’t meet their reserve prices.

Moniker.com raked in $326,650 in today’s auction alone – with the majority of domain names not sold because they did not reach their reserve prices. He expects the silent domain auction to generate an additional $200,000. According to Monte Cahnn, President and CEO of Moniker.com, past live auctions have earned over $1 million in one day.

Today’s top sales, both won by the same anonymous phone-in caller, were SoccerTV.com for $80,000 and Grandpa.com for $55,000. FamilyServices.com earned $45,000 and BlindDating.com earned $14,000.

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Content Creation - Cranking It Out

Filed under: Pubcon 2007 Las Vegas, Uncategorized

Constant content creation is the fuel for your website. Whether you live ‘n die off search engine referrals or natural type-in traffic you understand the need for minty-fresh content.

This panel of content gurus looked at how to keep the creativity flowing and managing the content process.

Moderator: Elisabeth Osmeloski
Speakers:
Elisabeth Osmeloski, Director of Online Media, Zonder.com
Robin Liss, Founder and President, Reviewed.com and Camcorderinfo.com
Ted Ulle, Partner, The MEWS Group
Rae Hoffman, Principal, Sugarrae Internet Consulting
Ted Ulle:

Menus are content!

Final Web Edit – must look at the way content interacts with the layout. CSS is typesetting for the web. Can kill good content with bad layout. Boost weak content with good layout. Seth Godin’s blog is a good example. Recommends learning about typesetting – read Robert Bringhurst – “Elements of Typographical Style”. Everything in it is beautiful.

We want a seamless experience. Show off! Don’t let graphic designers distract from your content. Programmers like to show off too. They like to show off their code by implementing fancy features.
IT people should not write copy. They write all kinds of things on the site and are a big part of user experience – search results. Do the words make sense? Words like next, error messages, etc. Site owner knows site so well, they don’t see error messages. Autoresponders are a good example – copywriters should write them. These are a big part of user experience. These things can turn people off. Code geeks should not write copy!

Yahoo Directory – example – went to the directory to pay for a review – Filled out the form and used the dropdown for the Visa/MC – that’s a lazy programmer – because if it starts with a 4 it’s a Visa, 5 – Mastercard, etc. The error message said “Invalid Payment Instrument Data”. This is why programmers should not write copy!

Another example – if you build site around .php, and click on menu and there is an error message, says “search produced no results!” - you clicked on a menu, not on a search!
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Link Building Campaigns and Strategies

Filed under: Pubcon 2007 Las Vegas

Link Building Campaigns and Strategies

By Jim Boykin (Webuildpages), Rae Hoffman (Sugarrae.com), Greg Hartnet (Best of the Web), Chris Tolles, Roger Montti (martinibuster.com)

Speaker 1 : Jim Boykin:
Some basic questions people may be wondering about that I will attempt to answer:
1)    Which methods have changed?
2)    Which sites should be last to get a link from?
3)    What page?
4)    What is the value of that link?
5)    Am I willing to give out anything in return?
6)    Who should I link out to?
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