Is Modern Domainer Magazine closing shop? I just sent an email to the company to find out. What I can tell you is that ModernDomainer.com, the magazine’s domain name expired on February 4th.

Domainers…I wouldn’t waste your time placing a back order on this domain name. I am 100% sure they will renew. Whether or not they will use it is what we we’ll find out.

I hope this is not the end of Modern Domainer, I truly enjoy the magazine.

When a domain name expires the registrar, in this case DirectNIC, removes the website and parks it.

Thank you to my Twitter friend John @BuySellDomains for pointing out the expired domain name.

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I don’t know about you, but this happens to me. I get so wrapped up in work that I sometimes don’t make it to the first floor of my house until about dinner time.

Click on the comic strip to enlarge.

Last week’s comic strip: Where Do You Shop?

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Yes, this review is coming a couple weeks late. Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas was from January 17-19, but I’ve been so busy traveling and playing catch up on my work I just haven’t had the chance to write this.

On a 1-10 scale, I give this show a 10!!! Not only was the show held in Las Vegas, which is awesome in itself, but the show was great. With a sold out show of over 3000 attendees and 120 vendors, I’ll admit that I didn’t have enough time to meet everyone. BUT…the people I did meet were amazing. I want to personally thank Missy, Shawn, Todd, Jen, John, Brad, Lisa, Stephanie, Andrew, Joe, Heather, Lesley, Dina and sooo many more for making me feel like a part of the family.

As for the show content, thumbs up. I learned a lot about affiliate marketing that I hope to implement soon on a few development projects. If you want to learn about affiliate marketing and make some great connections, this is the show to do it. I loved the show so much that as long as my schedule permits I will be attending their New York show in August. For more details and to purchase your ticket visit AffiliateSummit.com.

Pictured above is me with John Chow of JohnChow.com whom I was able to meet during Affiliate Summit. I have been reading John’s blog for almost two years now, his success is one of the reasons why I started a blog. John earns $40,000 a month from his blog, which ironically is a blog about teaching people how he makes that much money per month from it.  No, John is not a midget, I am standing on a chair because he’s too damn tall.

In closing, PPC revenue is down and domain investors are turning to development. This has made affiliate marketing an even more invaluable tool to monetization. Affiliate Summit is a great place to learn and connect. Hopefully I’ll see you there in August.

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T.R.A.F.F.I.C. – Rick Latona’s auction closed yesterday with a grand total of 60 domain names that sold for an estimated $835,000. The top sale for this auction was LongIsland.com at $379,000. Based on the total sales and amount of domain names sold that is an average of $13,916 per domain.

DOMAINfest – Moniker’s auction closed yesterday with a grand total 201 domain names that sold for an estimated $1,319,037. The top sale for this auction was LoanCalculator.com at $215,000. Based on the total sales and amount of domain names sold that is an average of $6,562 per domain.

So which auction was better?

DOMAINfest sold more domain names, which comes as no surprise considering they had about 450 more live attendees than the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show. Does this mean that their auction was better? Well, if you go by the amount of domain names sold, then yes. But if you go by the average domain sales price, no.

My personal opinions:

• Both auctions had overpriced domain names.
• LongIsland.com sale saved the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. auction.
• Deals will get done afterwords. The perfect example is Guns.com which was in the DOMAINfest auction. The highest offer was just shy of the $1mil reserve. I’m confident a deal will get done on this.
• No the sky is not falling and the domain industry is just fine. Domain name investors are more cautious, they want to make sure they are getting a deal. The principle of an auction is to pit bidders against each other which relies on emotions to raise the sales price.

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To start off the day Domaining.com had at least five new blog feeds that I could see, Mashable, TechCrunch, Engadget, BusinessInsider and ReadWriteWeb. These five websites took over 95% of the showing feeds. They have professional writers that write several times per day. Out of 20 feeds on the first page of Domaining.com, I’d say 16 of them were non-domain related feeds.

Myself, along with several industry members sent an email to the owner, Francois, urging him to take down these feeds. His initial response, in a nutshell, was that he is doing this because after 2+ years he still has not covered his monthly expenses with advertisers or sponsored headlines. His goal was to reach out to webmasters of the world and pull them into the domain sphere. This is just a summary because I do not believe in sharing private emails. I think it is great that he wants to increase domain awareness, but this was not the route to go.

It seems that after enough complaints those feeds have been removed. Smart move!

Now…I have never, not one single time posted anything negative about Domaining.com, until today. I feel a line has been crossed with this new donation button. As you can see below, the donation button says that our industry leaders have no money and to donate money in order to help maintain his website. This from the man that values Domaining.com at $3,000,000, he shouldn’t need the money. If Domaining.com is a business that is not producing revenue, I hate to say this, but either take it down, create a new business model or seek consultation.

I have to say this is the worst message to send to the domain community and potential advertisers. Who the heck would advertise after seeing a message like this? I personally emailed Francois last year offering my assistance to sell advertising, something I have a knack for. Not once was he receptive to the idea. Instead, what he does is sends a message to potential advertisers that they must advertise with Domaining.com to support the domain community. I’m sorry to say this but Domaining.com is not the community, the people that make up our industry are.

This is not a personal attack towards Francois. Not only have I had some very nice email conversations with him, but I do believe most of his efforts benefit our industry. Unfortunately, this is an action that does not.

UPDATE – Since this post Francois has removed both the donate banner and non-domain related news feeds from Domaining.com. Good job Francois!

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