NamesCon is a couple of months away, and I am getting ready to attend. I have my conference ticket, but I have not yet booked my hotel and flight. Last year, I waited until a bit later than I would normally wait, and I found that the airfare and hotel prices dropped a bit. I may end up staying across the street at the Vdara, but a word to the wise is to try and stay as close to the conference hotel (Tropicana) as possible.
I hope you have a nice Sunday. Mine is going to be relaxing until 8:30 tonight when the Patriots play. Here are some thoughts, tips, and updates for the weekend:
- Domain Punch published a list of the “New gTLDs in Alexa Top 100,000.” There are 109 domain names on the list (which I did not verify for accuracy). The 4 extensions that had the most entries on this list were .Club (21 domain names), .XYZ (14 domain names) .Today (8 domain names), and .Link (7 domain names).
- Domain Shane shared some good advice this morning: clear out your old NameJet backorders. I don’t like to remove all backorders, but every once in a while, I sort my backorders by fewest bids and delete the domain names I wouldn’t want to buy. Names that have many backorders are unlikely to fall into my lap, so I would tend to delete the names I don’t want with 5 or fewer bids. It all depends on how much time I want to dedicate to this.
- Shane mentioned that he and Aaron are planning to host a small lunch during NamesCon. I think it’s a good idea, and I might do something similar (or join them and help with the bill if they let me). I’ve always felt smaller breakout groups can lead to great conversation, especially if there is a diverse group. I’ve found that breakfast and lunch conversations are some of the best times to get to know people during domain conferences.
- I did some yard work for the first time since I was a kid. My arms and my neck are sore, but I felt like I accomplished something.
- Congratulations to Sol Orwell on growing Examine.com into a million dollar business. I think he is well on his way to a major payday with that website, and I will not be surprised if his company is bought for big $$$$ down the road. It’s always nice to see good people succeed after focusing on growing a business.
- I disagree with Mike Berkens, and I happen to think the NAR got to 85,000 registered .Realtor domain names quickly. I’ve sold quite a few domain names to real estate agents and real estate companies, and it can be difficult convincing them to buy even the best domain names. The response rate, from my experience, is lower with real estate agents than other verticals. Getting 85k Realtors to take a free domain name is quite good, especially considering some people may think that *free* means no value. I would guess most of these people already have .coms, and I would also presume the majority have unique names and they don’t need to worry about another Realtor grabbing their name .Realtor.
- I think .Realtor is a key extension to watch because it’s the usage that will make the general public more aware of the new extensions, and if others see .Realtor websites, they might want their own .Attorney or .Plumbing domain names.
Most important, take Airborne and stay flu-free because no elbow high^5’s are allowed this time around 😛
No more touchings and no more bear hugs.
Follow what the Japanese do, have a meeting in a hot tub-naked- nothing to hide and kills all the germs and to follow the CDC rules- 3ft space.
Wear breathable masks and check symptoms of high fever and uncontrollable diaherra.
BullS – Preferably check these before you enter the hot tub 😀 Will you attend NamesCon?
The Alexa 100,000 gTLD list is prepared from the 1 million daily csv list that Alexa publishes. We take that list and do a query to extract all new gTLDs that rank within 100K. It is updated daily.
Some of the entries in that list are older sites that changed to a new gTLD (eg: searchengines.guru). Some use domains that don’t even resolve (www.google) and are in top 100K simply because of typos.