Meet the team part 1 - Filipino foot soldiers - the unsung heroes in our family of companies

This week I’ll be doing a series of profiles of my staff and partners. I thought it would be appropriate to start with the team that does the bulk of the work for our web design projects. They are the unsung heroes and without them nothing would get done.

The design and development of the sites for our aeiou.com clients as well as for our internal projects are done by the fine people at Open.ph, Inc, a wholly owned entity of ours in the city of Ortigas in the country The Philippines.

Many of you know that I was one of the founders of Offshoring.com and have since sold my shares in that company. Recently we have setup a new entity there and named it Open.ph. So recently, that we don’t actually have a site up for it yet so don’t bother going to that domain.

Even though there is no site up there yet, it doesn’t mean we didn’t put a lot of thought into the new name. Think about the implications a name like Open.ph can have on the overall brand. Yes, the company there needs a brand. It’s important for recruiting, moral and focus on the mission at hand.

We’ll use open source software to keep the cost down.

Management will have an open door policy with the staff at all times.

We will remain open to new ideas and initiatives at all time.

The list goes on and on…

Anyway, back to the staff. The kindness and loyalty in the Filipino culture never ceases to amaze me. I’ve been doing business there since 2004 and won’t lie that it took me years to fully appreciate these traits.

I know now that unlike in the States, you don’t hire someone unless you truly intend on being with them for years. Your team will be loyal to you if you are loyal to them. Well, that last part is the same everywhere.

It’s really an “open” arms approach to things. We are in it together and I like it that way.

Together, we have built an assembly line system that allows us to build sites quickly and inexpensively without degrading the quality and custom touch the finished product must have for our customers.

I thank them all for their service and pledge my loyalty to them in return. We have many bright years ahead of us.

Salamat sa inyo at magandang araw sa inyong lahat.

I’ve decided to go for my own ICANN extension and compete with .com

Greetings from Sydney Australia.

What’s amazed me about this current ICANN meeting is the sheer number of companies and individuals lobbying for their own extensions with ICANN.

Last night we went to a party, hosted by Wolfgang Puck and the good people over at Mind and Machines. Chef Puck is going after .food. Are the restaurants all going to line up for these names? We’ll let the market decide.

Or how about Shaquille O’Neil applying for .basketball? Maybe with his bankroll, it doesn’t matter if you drop half a million on it just to see what would happen.

Therein lies the issue. For many corporations and high net-wealth individuals it really doesn’t cost that much money to secure your own extension. At least, not in the grand scheme of things and not if ICANN finally gets the initiative launched.

The meeting has a very Washington DC feel to it. There are lobbyist everywhere. Even though any extension with two bidders will enter an auction, most companies are openly promoting the extensions they are going  after. One would think that is their way to getting competitors to shy away from going after the same one.

More likely, these companies are putting on an aggressive lobbying effort. There in-your-face marketing puts their wannabe babies on the forefront of the ICANN board’s minds.

I guess you can’t blame them. If you want to get your extension passed it is a good way to go about it.

Therefore, I’ve decided to apply for my own extension. My idea is so huge and ground breaking that you may want to open a savings account now to be ready to snatch up my domains during my land rush period.

It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime ideas that will be a game changer. Starvation will no longer be a global problem. Everyone, everywhere will have clean water. Cats will play with dogs. It will stop raining in Vancouver and the Cubs will win a World Series.

Are you ready for the idea?

dotICANN

Yep.

.icann

You could have politics.icann, lobbying.icann, painfullyslowandtediousmeetings.icann, wheredoesallthemoneygo.icann and of course, the super premium travel.icann. These boys and girls do love to travel after all.

Seriously folks, there are not going to be dozens of new extensions or even hundreds. Expect thousands of extensions over the next 5-6 years.

It’s a land rush of a new and different order.

What I’ve learned about Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu

Sometimes you don’t really get to know someone until you’ve done battle with them. In the case of Rick and Howard, my perception of them has changed forever.

For instance, Rick Schwartz talks often on his blog and on message boards about how he doesn’t want to work. He goes on and on about it so much that the naive could think he is lazy. Lazy he is not. Once a hard worker, always a hard worker. I can best summarize what I have learned by sharing with you all a little story.

While in his South Florida home negotiating our deal the question of roles and responsibilities came up. Rick said, “hold on a second. I want to show you something”. We then walked out to his living room where he showed me jar after jar after jar filled with old hotel room keys.

I was floored because I collect room keys as well. Besides the obvious connection that we both collect the keys I noticed one very big difference. The keys that I collect are credit card size and throughout my travels I have yet to fill a shoe box with them. Great news! I’m still young in the grand scheme of things! Granted they also don’t take up as much space in the box as real keys but still.

Rick’s keys were real keys with the little rubber key chains on them typical of 60s, 70s and 80s hotel rooms. They were a testament to a man that clearly spent many decades as a real road warrior. As they say, this is not his first rodeo. I don’t want to think about how many hours he spent in those rooms with wall unit air conditioners. I’m sure he drove to the hotels too. My road warrior life is a piece of cake considering. Respect.

I’ll never forget those keys and I’ll certainly stick to building my own collection.

Howard Neu also turned out to be someone completely different than I expected. I had known for some time that he’s been a judge, a mayor, a broadway singer and lawyer. His accomplishments were never in doubt but I was also a little bit guilty to think that he may be a man in his twilight who was ready to slow down.

On the contrary. You’d think he was in his 20s when you are dealing with him over real business issues. He has the fire and tenacity of anyone in their prime if not more.

He’s eager to continue to build on the TRAFFIC brand and it clearly shows.

Never underestimate your opponents dear readers. Never.

I’m proud to be associated with them.

P.S. I just heard that there are only around 20 tickets left for New York at the really low early bird pricing. It’s going to be the best TRAFFIC show in years so don’t miss out.

Targeted TRAFFIC’s new Open Arms policy - No more invitation only

Rick, Howard and I want to grow TRAFFIC into something very special for the industry.

Just today we’ve cut a deal for a major CPA companyto give a really educational lecture/lesson in New York on buying traffic and monitizing outside the PPC industry. More on that later… The reason I am bringing it up now because it is all part of a broader strategy to get more people in the room that can help us all. Which brings me to the rest of this post.

The real announcement today is the launch of our new “Open Arms” policy.

In the past TRAFFIC  was an invitation only event. It is now open to anyone who wants to connect with domainers. There are a number of reasons why this is important.

First, you never know where the next great idea is going to come from.

Second, small time players can become big time players. We want to know who you are regardless of your standing in the industry.

It’s a new beginning for us and the industry. It’s time for some real soul searching and for us to unite together and work on ways to bring back the profits of the past.

We can do it and will do it. See you in New York.

.CM Auction Exclusive - Announcing an online only auction of .cm premium names in July - Inventory Inside

Rick Latona Auctions has cut a deal with the registrant of aged .cm names to auction. These are not being auctioned off the registry but the registry is aware.

More details will be published soon but I wanted to give you guys a teaser on some of the names:

casino.cm
poker.cm
loan.cm
billboard.cm
cars.cm
401k.cm
abc.cm
aaa.cm
academy.cm
ae.cm
apartmentguide.cm
budget.cm
buy.cm
shopping.cm
coach.cm
boston.cm
creditcards.cm
date.cm
digitalcameras.cm
drugs.cm
drugstore.cm
bodybuilding.cm
cupid.cm
fling.cm
forex.cm
forrent.cm
games.cm
gateway.cm
guess.cm
gap.cm
gunbroker.cm
jeux.cm
jobs.cm
juegos.cm
king.cm
launch.cm
maps.cm
musica.cm
nick.cm
canada.cm
playboy.cm
switchboard.cm
virgin.cm
lasvegas.cm
australia.cm

Announcing aeiou 2.0 - Death to minisites. True business opportunities for domainers and the tools they need

You’ve asked for more ways to make money with your domains. Well, now you have it.

Please take a moment to read the complete press release below. We’ve put a tremendous amount of work over the past months into this new service.

In addition to the products that we now offer on aeiou.com, you will see many more coming out in the weeks to come.

For Immediate Release:  AEIOU.COM Launches Version 2.0 with Cutting Edge Website Products for Domain Owners.

Tuesday, June 16^th Atlanta, Georgia, USA - AEIOU.COM, the development division of the Rick Latona Family of companies, has announced the launch of AEIOU.COMv2.0.  With the launch of a new website, and brand - the company now offers a broad range of business based websites that domain owners can use to economically increase their revenue and domain value.  Tapping into ecommerce, directories, squeeze pages, geo sites and more - AEIOU.COM is leading the domain development market once again to the next level.

Breaking out of the “mini site” company mold that AEIOU.COMcrafted in 2008 - the new product line offers featured filled websites that will create an easy to run business on your domains.  These development products allow the domain owner to tap into a wide range of monetization reaching far beyond the standard Pay-Per-Click model.

The new product line includes the following types of sites, with regular additions already being worked on:

Directory
2 Different types of ecommerce sites - The Amazon and the eBay.
Info Site
Squeeze Page
Domain Landing Page
Geo Site

For full details on each product, visit the all new website at http://www.aeiou.com/

Additional v2 features include:

• Real time credit card processing
• Choose your own color schemes
• Choose your own layouts
• Live sales and client support during business hours
• Expand easily with new upgrade products

 

About AEIOU.COM - aeiou.com, LLC is a full service web development firm which markets their services primarily to domainers. Using an assembly line format they quickly develop full websites while keeping the costs low for both the company and their customers.

Interview with Victor Abboud of NIC.EC - Ecuador’s ccTLD

I’ve decided to take on an ambituous goal to interview all of the world’s ccTLD registries. Some of them will take years before I can get them to agree and others will take years before they are even operational like some African nations. A man has to have a mission though and the project intrigues me.

This first interview is with Victor Abboud of NIC.EC the Ecuadorian ccTLD. While their market share is small they are doing a promotion for domainers that ends in a few days so the time to publish this is now.

After friendly chats with Victor over the phone and via email I feel that they are a domainer friendly registry so I want to help them get more exposure. After all, any friend of domainers is a friend of mine.

A bit about Ecuador first. I was there last summer when I visited the Galapagos Islands with my family. I really liked the country and the people very much.

According to Wikipedia Ecuador has around 15 million people. Most of them live either in Quito (the capital) or Guayaquil the financial center. NIC.EC is in Guayaquil.

The official language is, of course, Spanish.

Now onto the interview. As this is my first one, forgive me if I have missed important questions.

RL - Please tell us your official title with  NIC.EC

Mr Abboud - General Manager   of NIC.EC , Domain Registry of Ecuador .

RL - How many .ec names are currently  registered?

Mr Abboud - There are almost 20,000 domain names under .ec .

RL - I see that www.nic.ec is also in English. That’s  very handy for many of us. Can you tell me if email and telephone support is  also available in English?

Mr Abboud - NIC.EC website is in Spanish and  has a full version in English  , as well as all reminder and  confirmation emails. We have customer support by email and telephone also in  English .

RL - I see that you have a special running until the 20th  of June. Can you tell my audience all about it?

Mr Abboud - During the last years we have had a promotion of discounted  fees , and this year from June 10 to the 20th, the promotion  is for new domains for US$10 for 1 year , $20 for 2 years and $30 for 3  years, which is a great opportunity to register domain names . Many domain  holders had their names under .com.ec but not directly under .ec . Some  prefer one or the other , some prefer both , in any case is a good moment to  register both options as well as others as .info.ec and .net.ec .

RL - Are there any restrictions for foreigners that want  to own .ec names? 

Mr Abboud - Registrations under .ec , .com.ec  , .net.ec , .info.ec are open to all with no local presence required ,  however domains under .edu.ec , org.ec and .gov.ec are only for Ecuadorians.

RL - What about transfers? Is there paperwork required  for transfers or can people simply push a name to another account?

Mr Abboud - For domain transfer from one Registrant to another there is some paperwork  in terms of signing a form and sending some documents. Also there is a  transfer fee . This process is not through the website but is not time  consuming if done properly.

RL - It  appears that nic.ec is both the registry and registrar for .ec domains. Do  you have any plans for opening up and supplying volume discounts for other  registrars?

Mr Abboud - Many Registrars register .ec  domains for their customers but also many Registrants register directly  through NIC.EC . We are working on implementing a Registrar accreditation  process for them to have a more efficient process on .ec registration as  well as fees according to the volume they manage. This effort is to promote  the use of .ec domains and for Registrants to have several options of .ec  registration with value added services

RL - Do  you offer tasting or have plans to offer tasting?

Mr Abboud - No domain tasting in .ec because though one may register a  domain name, activation is upon payment.

RL - What do you do with expired domains? Do you publish  a list anywhere of .ec names that are expiring or have expired?

Mr Abboud - We  do all efforts to make domain holders aware that their domain is  expiring and that may suffer suspension of services and finally its deletion  . Once the grace period ends after many processes and alerts, the domain is  deleted and no list is published and it is then available for registration .

Thank you Victor for taking the time to help me on this project. Good luck with your promotion and see you at an ICANN meeting or hopefully a Targeted TRAFFIC show.

I’ve partnered with Targeted TRAFFIC in a big way - announcing the only auction game in town

I have a pretty big announcement today. Actually, this is the biggest announcement I have ever made in my years in the domain industry.

Yesterday I visited Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu in Boca Raton and agreed in principal to partner with them in the TRAFFIC shows for 2010 and beyond.

Together, as a team, we will be presenting six fantastic shows next year. Due to my investment of capital in new auction software (currently under development), sales people who will be working the end-user market and other auction related activities that will bring substantial additional income to domainers over time, I became convinced that the auction company and tradeshow company need to be closely aligned and essentially partners.

It is our intention to grow upon the brand which started the industry events we know and love today.  For that reason, we are doubling the size of the company for maximum exposure on a global scale. As of today we are  announcing the following 6 shows in 2010. Exact dates and locations will be announced quickly.

January/February – Las Vegas

March/April – Amsterdam

May/June – Toronto

July/August – Either Reykjavik, Barcelona, St Petersburg, Prague or Rome (help us decide please)

September/October – South Florida

November/December – Hong Kong

We are looking forward to making T.R.A.F.F.I.C. bigger and better in 2010 and a trade show and Expo that will alert the whole world to the profession of Domaining and the value of our investments.

ccTLDs Extended Auction Ending Today!

Our ccTLDs Extended Auction is ending TODAY at 5:00 PM ET.  We have over 1000 high quality names and ccTLDs on the list. Please take the time to review it carefully.

You can go to www.proxibid.com/ricklatona and search for the name you want to bid on or the lot number for the name. The complete inventory is available for download below:

Excel Version | PDF Version

Bid Online Now!

.CO is coming - Expect huge prices and an intense aftermarket - finally real competition to .com

At long last, the nation of Colombia is going to turn their coveted ccTLD extension “.co” into a business.

I’ve received word that on the 23rd of June the country will be accepting a bid. My source tells me that Verisign, Straat Investments, Affilias, Argus, and Technology Services (GTS), among others, have all expressed interest in and most likely placed bids to be the administrator of the extension.

The .co extension will be a major hit. Not only will the names get snatched up by domainers due to their similarity to .com names and other names that use .co like .co.uk (United Kingdom) but if marketed properly, end-users will also want the names.

After all, .com means (commercial) where .co traditionally means (company). In many ways, .co makes more sense than .com for a company’s domain.

I’m not saying that .co is an immediate threat to .com. Please don’t blow out of proportion my comments. I’m just saying it is the biggest threat. I can’t think of any other extension which would have the same potential.

If I was a gambling man - which I am from time to time - I’d place my bet on VeriSign walking away with the prize. I can’t imagine there being a price tag too big for them to pay to control the extension which poses the biggest threat to their core business.

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