Flooding, what are the odds that the two cities we work in get hit?

During my recent trip abroad, my home town of Atlanta was pummled with rain. I returned only this Friday after it was, for the most part, over. My wife promptly reminded me that I’m always away when disaster strikes.

One time, when she was pregnant, the city froze over and the power went out in our neighborhood. Over the phone I told her to go to the nearest hotel with working electricity. Problem was she couldn’t open the power garage door to get the car out. We got her to saftey using friends but that’s a memory that won’t fade any time soon.

During the Atlanta flooding last week no harm was done to my office or staff but we were shut down a couple of days. Ryan made the correct judgment call to close up when 2.5 feet of rain was dumped on Paulding County where he resides. It would have been wrong to ask anyone to drive. I’m glad he did that and I’m glad that everyone was safe. Seems the worse of what hit our camp is we all have a lot of clean up work to do to our yards as there are branches and debris everywhere.

Now, it appears our operation in The Philippines is at risk. Considering our team there is much larger than our team in Atlanta and their resources and access to assistance are much less than what we enjoy here in the States, the problem is much more troubling.

My sincerest and best wishes to everyone in the greater Manila area. Stay safe. Don’t worry about work assigned to you. Just don’t get hurt and protect your family.

Should I rename my company Cyberspace.com?

I need your help. My partners and I are agonizing over a decision so we’ve decided to lay it on the masses.

While I realize this isn’t the most professional way to name an organization that does as much revenue as we do currently and are projected to do in the future; it is the 21st century and the age of collaboration.

First, some background. We have RickLatona.com which is essentially the newsletter, Rick Latona Auctions, AEIOU.com (our web development arm) and we are building other domain related services. The loan companies, DigiPawn and DigiLoan will be left out of this conversation.

We want to throw everything in one pot for a few reasons. One of the biggest is that it would focus advertising dollars. We could build a much bigger and broader brand this way. Also, quite frankly, it probably makes sense to separate my name from the identity a bit.

Now we’ve gone round and round about what would make a great name. We’ve wanted something that could stand out. Something that didn’t sound like all the other domain companies.

It just so happens that we own the name Cyberspace.com due to a recent acquisition. The names has pros and cons and that’s what’s making it such a hard decision.

Pros

• Memorable
• Has the word “space” in there which has a real estate feel to it
• I hold a very old trademark to the term

Cons

• Could sound unprofessional
• 90s term

Now my gut is that the cons can be destroyed through the use of the name. Our planned marketing blitz would establish the name Cyberspace.com as a domain company. The domain company, hopefully. In a perfect world….

What do you think? I really really want to know.

Parked.com agrees to sponsor all 6 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. events in 2010

*image reprinted with permission of dnjournal.com

I’m proud to announce that Parked.com has joined the likes of Skenzo and InterNetX as a sponsor of all six T.R.A.F.F.I.C. events in 2010.

The men behind Parked.com have always impressed me. I’ve known most of them since the late 90s. They are an agressive bunch and very savvy businessmen.

Thank you Parked.com for your continued support.

I’m hiring - sales people, web designers, finance people - Atlantans and Filipinos contact me please

If you live in the Manila area or Atlanta, GA, want a job and are savvy enough to read this blog, I want to talk to you.

We are hiring the following positions:

Sales People

Graphic Designers

Programmers

Finance professionals

Our web design and auction companies are growing at a rapid pace. We have lots of work and will offer very competitive pay.

I’d like to think that we are also an exciting company to work for but I have a biased opinion.

If you are interested in the opportunity, please just use the contact me form.

Domain sales are up. Way up in fact. Is the economy improving for us?

I’ve often compared running our newsletter to being on the front-lines of the domain industry.

It’s really quite intensive. We look at thousands of submissions every day and get hammered with replies from our users, both positive and negative.

To run it is to have your finger on the pulse of things.

Over the last couple of weeks we have seen a notable increase in activity. Sales are way up. The question of the day is, will it stay that way?

Perhaps its the entrepreneurial spirit in me. I’m the eternal optimist. I can’t relate to the doom and gloom nay-sayers out there. Some friends of mine tell me its because I’m American, that the rest of the world thinks that things are going to get much worse.

I just don’t see it. When we are putting up $30,000-$70,000 a day in sales, how am I supposed to be negative?

Now truth be told we’ve also made a lot of changes to our newsletter.

For one, we rarely run our own names anymore.

We’ve started doing weekly themes.

We’ve started running more expensive premium names.

I think those things are making a notable difference but I also think the general mood out there has improved. People seem less scared to make the necessary investments.

It also helps that I finance a lot of the deals.

*cheers* To a bright future!