The Rick Schwartz Domain Name and Traffic Blog: RicksBlog.com – Home of The Domain King®

Afternoon folks!!

An entire registry went down this week and Google Palestine was hacked. We saw first hand ujst how fragile some of the DNS infrastructure is and if you have a gTLD, this WILL directly affect you and your futures.

"Widely used domains such as .com and .net are operated by registrars such as VeriSign and NeuStar, which have security features that cost as little as $50 a year to prevent tampering with Web-address records. But many regional domains are managed by local companies that don't offer the same protections, said Paco Hope, a principal consultant with Cigital Inc., a cybersecurity consultancy.

In some places, only one company may be in charge of managing a country's domain, leaving customers such as Google vulnerable should employees at the local company get hacked, Hope said."

The entire article is here. And my story last week is here.

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

There is only one daily hub for the domain world and that is Domaining.com. Along with you other ADDICTS, we load and reload the main page in domaining many times per day to keep on the latest news, developments, opportunities and sometimes gossip and pissing matches.  T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Presented Domaining.com and Francois an award in 2011. Well deserved. It is places like this that propels our industry further and faster and with more meaning.

So another tip of the hat to Francois for making Domaining.com the GLUE that binds us all together on a daily basis. Sometimes the praise trumps the dollars and we take daily things for granted. On the other hand I am sure Francois would rather have the dollars so place some ads with him and put a smile on his puss!

Well done Francois! Carry on! You ARE the "Circulation King" when it comes to domaining and I have a post later today that illustrates WHY I appreciate what you do!

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

So my post yesterday morning is inadequate. It touches what I see, but it is oh so much bigger. It is the collective energy that is coming and WE are the BIG winners! 1000 NEW Divisions if not separate companies. They are going to make a LOT of NOISE!!

They are going to make noise in many ways. Some of it will be just that, noise. But thru that noise there will be some that have something or their something may benefit your .com as I have described here.

There is a TIDAL WAVE coming and it is going to make a direct hit on the domain industry. If it does not keep getting delayed. Each day of delay makes a company weaker not stronger. It costs money not to sell anything. But at some point that dam is gonna BURST and when it does, the landscape will never look the same again.

Bringing in Adam Dicker to help with T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is by design. We are preparing for what is to come. We have 2 venues capable of holding THOUSANDS of attendees. Besides the current domain investors an entire new generation of domain investors are all heading this way. The competition is going to be very interesting and it will be fierce and it will heat up from there. A lot of elbows in a small industry as this "Experiment" progresses.

So you are seeing the calm before the storm. And the only reason there is calm is because of the clusterf*ck that is delaying everything. In a perfect world you certainly would want to roll things out very soon. But looks like the delay will extend into 2014. I really do enjoy watching incompetence up close. Somethings are not well thought out and when that happens it blows up in their face. How could you not see this clusterf*ck 2 years away? I think I have been writing about it for 2 years and am glad others now see that there is no other word in the English language to describe it.

But after the clusterf*ck, IF we EVER  get to that point, then things are going to move very fast and the $$$ are going to fly! It will look like 2005 on steroids. This IS the calm before the storm and to be honest, the calm has a lot of things bubbling and brewing below the surface.

All I want to make perfectly clear is anyone reading this scared that their .com values are going to go down are not paying attention and are already reacting to noise that means nothing. Now WHY am I spending so much energy writing about this NOW? Because when the flood gates open, my voice will be drowned out by THOUSANDS of others. I need to be CLEARLY on record. If I stay true to what I see, I am also likely to have an entire new generation of people who don't like me. Sorry if my thoughts and vision does not match their agenda. REALITY trumps everything. Let the chips fall where they may and I am rooting for soe successes out there. The NOISE won't make them a success. END USERS, CONTENT and DOMAIN INVESTORS will decide their fate. MANY of those extensions may actually SNUB the domain industry thinking they can make their mark solely with end users. Good luck with that strategy.

I think the biggest unknown is how many extensions will collapse or be acquired before they collapse?

That said....I wish every new gTLD the greatest of successes. Your success is our success. Even if only 1 in 1000 works, the folks reading this blog will be on it. I won't hide which, if any, I think have a chance. The birdie in the mine for me is .web. I like .web but it could easily prove to be another .net. Should that happen, many others will simply collpase. And anyone that gets a .whatever and has a success and you own the .com version, you too have a success. It's coming!

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

Last week I posted a question about my 10-year-old picture (Oh the pain) and you folks (especially the ladies of domaining Donna, Anita and Naomi) were good enough to respond.

So as a result, voila, the best they could do with what I am working with.

The new improved 6.0 Domain King. Imperfectly aged to perfection.

But I also took a walk on the "Dark side" for the Battles to come!

I  want to thank Michael Lloyd of LloydsStudio.com who will be blogging about our meeting soon.

Thanks for your help all!

Rick Schwartz

Evening folks!!

If I told you that we had record voting today it would be an understatement. There have already been more votes cast today than the 2 previous RECORD years combined and maybe all the other years added together. Our 10th annual awards are a great success because they are YOUR CHOICES. There are THOUSANDS of votes to count. It has been quite overwhelming. Congrats to all. WELL DONE!!!!

Rick Schwartz

Afternoon Folks!!

Spammers Make $200 MILLION a year on Facebook!  That is VERY big news. That is something folks can get their heads around and that is just one little turbine of Facebook. This is the tip of an iceberg of the riches that Facebook has locked up in it  and right now leaking. That $200 Million number is from a Forbes.com article here. So it is not something I am making up and it is probably on the low side.

As you may know I am not a big Facebook fan. Never have been. But I have invested in the stock because I am watching the behavior of many folks. Females are HOOKED!! I see proof of this all day long and a growing percent of men along with them. HOOKED!

Now at first blush you may think this is a negative article. And it is. But not for many f us. It is educating people on traffic. The more they know about traffic is the more targeted they will try to get and ALL paths lead to the Domain Industry. That's a good thing. PURE traffic. Unfiltered. Not spammed. PURE as the driven snow. That has GREAT VALUE!

"That traffic can then be monetised. To a page showing Adsense for example, or to a YouTube video that is carrying ads. Or more often to a page selling some tchotchke and given enough traffic being sent there will be some sales meaning some profit. Once those pages are set up, once they’ve got say 30,000 likes, then they are likely to turn up in timelines and that’s the point at which the spammers can start selling those links:"

“The spam posters get paid an average of $13 per post, for pages that have around 30,000 fans, up to an average of $58 to post on pages with more than 100,000 fans,” De Micheli told the Guardian. “If we consider these two as extremes, the pages we analysed generate a revenue of 18,000 posts per day, times the revenue per post – ranging from $13 to $58 – 365 days a year.”

"That gives a range for the spammers’ earnings of between $87m and $390m – but when they took into account the number of fans of the pages, the weighted average was just over $200m annually."

Forbes.com article here

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

in June I discussed my fastest growing domain name right here. At that time it had hit 10,000 daily uniques. When I checked today and over the past 30 days, the traffic is now averaging 14,000 a day and earnings are of course increasing as well. It's a noticeable change and in a very short amount of time. The trend seems to be accelerating. Just a very pleasant surprise in an era where pleasant surprises are not exactly common. It's not my #2 $$$ earner....yet, but it is my #2 in terms of daily traffic and the earnings are still substantial.

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

You can see this coming a year away and you best be prepared for what is coming.

With close to 1000 new gTLD's to be sold and marketed they are all going to have to man their ships and that means collectively hiring THOUSANDS of people. Going to be very interesting how this all plays out . But make no mistake about it, within a year we are going to see a massive change in our small community. For starters, it is no longer going to be small. And it will be VERY different.

Some of you reading this will end up working for some of these companies. But please take a moment to imagine  what this will all look like and how that will change the industry we are in.Much will be good and much will not. You will have a full-time job just sorting out all that is coming.

Whether  you believe the gTLD's are going to fly or not there is going to be HUGE opportunity. It may or may not come in the way of investing in domains. The opportunities may look different. I invite ever new extension owner to come here and tell us what they see. What their vision is and why. I am more likely to buy into an extension that is well thought out and supported than one that is not. Just sayin'.

A crowded field is coming and some folks will be desperate. The delays are VERY costly. Each day that passes costs money. Weeks that pass cost more. But now we are talking months and I would not be surprised if it turned into a year or more or something very unexpected happens that plunges this entire thing into turmoil. Like a complete Clusterf*ck. Even Clusterf*cks can make you money or present great opportunity.

Rick Schwartz

Evening Folks!!

The  official T.R.A.F.F.I.C.  voting ballots for this years awards will be going out shortly after midnight tonight. You must be on our mailing list to vote or for your vote to count. Nominations were open to all and posted here a few weeks ago.

Those are  YOUR nominees for the 10th Annual 2013 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Awards.

Awards will be presented on Tuesday October 22nd at the Ritz Carlton in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. You MUST be on our mailing list to vote. It's easy to be added to the list. Just post or send me an email.