Transcript

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Interviewer: This is Brett Tabke we are here live at Traffic and we got the man himself co-founder of Traffic Rick Schwartz also better known as the domain king you just started a blog too didn't you?

Interviewee: I did.

Interviewer: I haven't read it in a couple of weeks.

Interviewee: Well I probably had a blog before there were blogs and when I had a chat board back in the later 90s for the domains. In April I decided to do more formal blog and I don't blog all the time and it’s a lot of the blogging is more from a historical prospective so when they come they can kind of get a grasp of what domain means mean.

Interviewer: Right, right. This is great conferences this is what number eight or nine?

Interviewee: This is our 8th one.

Interviewer: Eighth one so we are in New York and your next one is in Miami. When is the next one?

Interviewee: The next one is in Hollywood, Florida I believe its October 19th to 22nd.

Interviewer: Hollywood okay.

Interviewee: At the Western Diplomat.

Interviewer: Right. And there are usually two or three days?

Interviewee: Well that's our major show of the year as far as its an extra day, so its three full days and then partial of two days so it takes up the entire week.

Interviewer: Excellent. Let’s see the domain auction you guys started up the domain auction by Moniker.

Interviewee: Correct.

Interviewer: How does that help promote the show?

Interviewee: It’s been a great asset to the show it gives people a reason to come and obviously since the domains go on auction one time they become very time sensitive and so it motivates people to come. And we have had a good track record last two auctions combined over $10 million in domain sales in just hours and we are hoping to do over $10 million tomorrow alone in domain auctions.

Interviewer: And then after the Vegas conference couple weeks there is a domain that's hold for $7½ million is it?

Interviewee: 9 I think 9½ million if I am not mistaken it was the largest cash sale with domain ever.

Interviewer: Ever…that was incredible sitting and watching it sell.

Interviewee: Right.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about domains now for a while what seems like last conference mobile was hot what's hot on this conference?

Interviewee: I don't think that much is changed. I mean everyone here just getting a little more sophisticated looking for ways to what develop, monetized to tap into more revenue strings. The parking companies are getting much more sophisticated and taking a domain and getting pertinent results and I kind of look at domains and what they represent as far as the taping traffic is on rams to Google and Yahoo because at least 15% of all the traffic that goes to them comes through a direct search via type-ins on domain names. So even though there is a lot of controversy about park pages really there are only just an on ramp onto the search engine.

Interviewer: Now there has been a lot of talk about park pages and the alleged arbitrage or some call it “garbitrage” or buying ad words on Google and reselling the traffic to Yahoo wherever they can resell it too and advertise it have you seen a fall out from that recently?

Interviewee: Not a lot I really don't I mean it seems to be an acceptable practice for as they are concerned I kind of…I am a little bit weary of it but you know if its okay with them and it doesn’t violate their TOS then I guess everything is fair game.

Interviewer: Well they did recently go after some of the arbitrage players a little bit…

Interviewee: I guess anything can be abused but you know I think if you do it right there is probably there is a clean way to it.

Interviewer: Well you haven’t heard any industry wide “ohs and ahs” about recent policy changes in Google.

Interviewee: There is a lot of policy changes between Google and Yahoo right now. There is a lot of things going on but a lot of it is good because I think they are really starting to understand the difference and different types of types of traffic and the potency of traffic just like you have different octane on gasoline you also have different potency on the traffic that you have in how targeted it is and how much a result is as far as buying power.

Interviewer: Excellent last night we heard from travel expert Terry Jones former founder of Travelocity I don't notice a lot of travel here people specifically in travel.

Interviewee: Actually these guys do have a lot of travel domains that's I would say one of the largest sectors that they have is travel and they have large varieties of them. And some of them may not be heavily trafficked travel but they have so many of them that it does mount up. I know I have some travel domains and lot of people have quite a bit so it’s always been one of the stronger sectors with the domain owners.

Interviewer: In the next conference who's your keynoter going to be?

Interviewee: Our next conference we are going to have Steve Forbes on October 10th so we are pretty excited about that.

Interviewer: Excellent do you have any agenda what he is going to talk about specifically or…

Interviewee: Well we obviously we’re trying to get him here. He was hopefully going to come tonight he had tried to rearrange his schedule. But he is out of the country and he is anxious to speak to us. And he is a very sharp person I would say he is one ten sharpest guys out there.

Interviewer: Excellent, excellent. That it I see that the United Nations is in town got me thinking about the last conference one of the undertows was…everybody was trying to figure out who would pull of the dot CM Cameroon gambet I guess is being called and we know it was Kevin Hamm…are there any undertows like that going on at this conference.

Interviewee: Well it’s…listen he found a black hole that's worth ten of millions of dollars and I think it picks the interest of other people saying I wonder if there is any other black holes that can be drilled through and penetrated. And I am sure there are when I got into the domain business the reason I got into the domain business is because I didn't have a clue how to work a search engine and getting traffic so I went in the back door via domain names and that gave me more traffic than a search engine could have provided me.

Interviewer: Excellent, excellent thank you very much for taking time to talk to us today.

Interviewee: Thank you very much.

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[edited by: Vanessa_Zamora at 1:31 pm (utc) on Oct. 10, 2008]