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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Make sure to get your bids in for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and DOMAINfest auctions ASAP, both end tomorrow!

T.R.A.F.F.I.C. / Rick Latona auction brought in an estimated $456,000 in sales during the live auction. The extended auction ends tomorrow at 1pm EST.

Top ten domain name sales so far:
$65,000     Fly.co.za
$50,000     GoFish.com
$49,000     Dietfood.com
$41,000     CatFood.com
$35,000     MotorcycleHelmets.com
$30,000     MensSuits.com
$25,000     Gels.com
$20,000     SEU.com
$19,000     Smelly.com
$10,500     Antihistamine.com and Antihistimine.com

DOMAINfest / Moniker auction brought in an estimated $1,071,000 in sales during the live auction. The extended auction ends tomorrow at 3:15pm EST.

Top ten domain name sales so far:
$215,000   LoanCalculator.com
$65,000     GolfLessons.com
$50,000     PearlEarrings.com
$45,000     Husband.com
$45,000     GolfShirts.com
$40,000     FederalAid.com
$30,000     SalaryCalculator.com
$27,500     OrganicCosmetics.com
$26,000     TabletComputer.com
$22,500     Dating.org

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I’m sure by now you’ve seen this shirt in at least a few DOMAINfest pictures circulating around the net, but I wanted to give you the story behind it.

About two months ago I sat at my desk thinking of ways to make money when suddenly the race car style shirt popped into my head. I sent an email over to Ron Jackson and Craig Rowe for their opinions. Overall, the input I got was good and we agreed that this had not been done before. After getting some positive feedback I sent an email out to 25 companies that have either advertised with me before or expressed interest. Within 10 minutes of the email I had three spots sold. The other spots followed suit and the shirt sold out quickly.

In total, I sold $2125 worth of advertising and the total cost of the shirt with embroidery was $675. At $675 to create, this makes it the most expensive shirt worn during DOMAINfest. $1450 profit to wear this shirt for ONE full day during DOMAINfest, not bad!

On the front: DomainGang.com | inForum.in | Escrow.com | DomainTools.com

On the sleeves: Parked.com | WhyPark.com

On the back: Bido.com

On the collar: Above.com

I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsors that participated in this with me. After wearing this shirt for about an hour I was approached by several companies that said “why didn’t you call us”. And thank you to Ron Jackson for the above pictures.

PS…for anyone else that does this, remember, I was first.

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Sorry for the lack of blog posts over the last 15 days. I have been away for 15 days, with 3 conferences within that time frame. You can’t imagine how hectic life can get in that short span of time.  Before I left I had no idea what it would be like trying to cram 3 conferences in back to back. Lesson learned!

Here was my schedule the last two weeks:

January 15, flew to Los Angeles, California
January 16, drive to Las Vegas, Nevada
January 17-19, Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada
January 21-23, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in Las Vegas, Nevada
January 26-28, DOMAINfest in Santa Monica, California
January 30, flew back home to Orlando, Florida

All I can say is that I will never do three shows in such a short period of time again. NEVER!! Don’t take that the wrong way, because the three shows were amazing. It’s just that I have never been away from my wife and kids for more than 4 days at THE most. I’ve been fortunate enough to be self-employed the majority of my children’s lives and have never missed anything. Well, that almost happened while I was gone. My six year old daughter almost lost her first tooth. It was so loose and really would have come out if she didn’t avoid her front tooth when chewing her food. She was so desperate for it not to fall out while I was gone. Everyday we talked on the phone she told me she was making her tooth wait for me to get back. The day I came back, we pulled the tooth. It was hanging on by a string. While it may seem silly to some to make a big deal about a first tooth, it’s not silly to me. Being there for these special moments in my family’s life is what drives me to make a living on my own terms by being an entrepreneur.

Once I get caught up on all my emails, I’ll share more about each show. As I said they were all great!

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