I am so sick of people either deluding themselves, or trying to pull in big words in hoping to get you to look at their [for sale] listing.

Classic example: ‘MV-M.COM a premium name for sale’

In what reality is ‘mv-m’ a premium domain? Hell the domain was registered just over 10 days ago - are you telling me premium domains are for sale like that?

I’ve been a long believer that the easiest way to differentiate between serious and dumbass is price. SitePoint has sort of gone that way - adding a ‘Premium Sites for Sale’ category. The problem is that it still only costs $40 to list there. You still end up with stupid sales like Torrentaholic.com. If the site BIN is $500, that isn’t premium. Quite the opposite - certifiable crap.

Same rule applies to any other marketplace - from DNF to NamePros to WebHostingTalk.

I wish one of the forum operators would be willing to take the flak and create a premium listing that requires $500 listing fee. These are established sites. They push a lot of traffic. They have generated millions in transactions. Why not?

Oh an addendum too - provide an Escrow service.

So - SitePoint, DNF, NP, WHT, etc - please provide us with a real premium listing service, and also a built-in escrow service. You have the traffic and brand - it seems to be an obvious extension.

[I’m good friends with the new DNF operator - I will try to get his response here.]

The #3 site on Google UK for ‘ipod’ (and #1 if ‘UK only’ is ticked) is http://www.ipod.org.uk

Beyond the decent name, the question is - how do they get there?

Good ol Yahoo Site Explorer reveals all.

It seems like the good people at ipod.org.uk decided that they needed authority. They also realized that getting authority for ipod was rather difficult - there are so many apple/ipod sites it can only make your head spin.

So they built out in areas that had nothing to do with the iPod, but would get them quality links. Namely quantum mechanics and Google Sightseeing UK. This resulted in a nice influx of links from Wikipedia (yes I am aware of nofollow) and also Google Maps Mania. Heck, even DMOZ got into the action and linked to the site (the Quantum mechanics section).

I’ve long been suspicious that all nofollows are treated equally (especially with how [usually] brutal Wikipedia is with external links). Considering how most of the links to this site are all from Wikipedia and Google Maps Mania (which in itself have zero context to ipods) … use this as you see fit

I’ve been relatively quiet on ILM:07 as I’ve been busy digesting information and getting a chance to reflect on it.

When I came across the Marchex Internal Strategy Memo I couldn’t help but laugh.

So on Day 3 we had “Keynote Address: Marchex and the Vertical Opportunity in Local” It was a decent talk - of everything, what really boggled my eyes was the claim of 25,000,000 unique visitors a month. Not even SuperPages.com, YellowPages.com, etc can claim that.

There was the talk of the difficulties of local data - on how the struggle is both with breadth (quantity) and depth (quality) of data. The approach Marchex has taken is via its acquisition of OpenList - scraping other sites for information and mixing together into coherent text. The talk basically focused on building out various verticals, Marchex’s collection of domains (thus providing them instant traffic), and selling local ads on all these sites (no need to start over - just convert current salespeople into selling online ads).

Overall though - I have to agree with the faux internal memo linked above. I previously mentioned it, but there are a ton of questions I would love Marchex to address:

Why bother building out all these domains individually? Why not aggregate all the traffic into one stronger brand? You may lose out on the SEO value of each domain, but with replicated content galore, it seems to be on a rather shaky foundation again

What exactly is Marchex doing with all the other domains they own? Especially non-US geodomains that are just sitting around (eg Beijing.com)

How is the ZIP code blog panning out? (for those that don’t know, Marchex is experimenting on using its ZIPcode.com domains as local blogs)

While the above memo is poking fun, it does have a legitimate point. Your domains alone are arguably worth your market cap (~$500 million). Sahar says .com went up an average of 311% from 2004. Marchex was founded in early 2004 by purchasing Yun Ye’s collection for $165 million. 165 million x 3.11 = $513.15 million. So it actually seems like their portfolio alone is worth more than Marchex and all of its assets. So - why are you guys going sideways (or even arguably down) and not up?

Are you concerned about impending Demand Media IPO?

Will you ever start selling off any of your non-local domains?

Just a few question to get started

I like what OpenList is trying to do, but I fail to see what Marchex is trying to do - redirect the domains to their respective parts of OpenList (or a new brand), build some good SEO structure, and go from there. What you guys are doing (so far) doesn’t seem to add up.

So - how do you keep track of contacts that you met?

At ILM:07 I met about 50 people whose business cards I ended up with. Shamefully there are some people whose cards I look at now and think ‘huh?’ In my defense they have glossy cards which make it impossible to write on. Note to myself and anyone else reading this - glossy cards are cool, but don’t use them.

A contact is more than just a name + email - it is a budding relationship really. So just like we created ePM to handle our project management requirements (enthropia Project Management), we are creating a basic eCM (enthropia Contact Manager) to keep all of our relationships in line. This means companies, people, to-do lists, calendar events, and so forth.

If you haven’t already - it is critical you make sure you are organized about your contacts.

No other way around it really - sometimes you do things that don’t work out. Sometimes you have to change your tracks (after you already changed your tracks).

The recent ILM:07 was fun. I still have about 3-5 posts to write on it. And I will.

But for now - we’ve placed a moratorium on our city sites.

I’ve talked previously about exploiting Digg to get links and so forth. All links in the ‘who blogged this’ and ‘comments’ area are direct links - no nofollow or anything of that sort.

Now - what Digg does is hide old comments from old stories. But what they do do is show new comments for old stories.

So - you find old stories that were heavily dugg, and throw in your comment. Easy as pie!

Observe our friend Card Warrior going at it.

Check out the Google Cache copy of the first post he commented on.

And a ton more links - all from Digg.

Whew - its 2:10 am, and I’m finally home. We were stuck in the plan for roughly 2 hours due to excessive rain.

Overall - great show. I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot.

But - lets start off with the one negative (or I guess two).

I listened in one the UGC (user generated content) panel. It was a conversation - which I much prefer so that I don’t have to listen to implicit (and sometimes explicit) sales pitches.

So the participants were ZipLocal, Local.com, SuperPages.com, and YellowBot. Now - I don’t want to be the enemy here, but exactly why were ZipLocal or Local.com even on the panel? ZipLocal has had UGC content for roughly … oh, exactly one month today (Dec 1). Local.com has UGC … where?

Regardless - there was a lot of hyperbole on how great and fantastic UGC was. Listening you would imagine you put up UGC, take out your cigar, and puff away with your feet on your desk while people trip over themselves to flock to your website so that they can make you billions. There was very little ‘but to do it properly is tough.’

So when it came to question time - I stood up and essentially asked: “We hear a lot about how great and simple UGC is - lean back and the money will come in. But this seems rather naive - I would imagine there is some effort involved. How do you actually get users involved and participating?”

So what was meant as a question to all four was answered by PremierGuide. But it wasn’t really - I heard about aggregating content and you need to work with everyone. How does that answer my question? While the moderator moved on I wasn’t satisfied. I re-asked my question - that answer didn’t answer what I said, and I wanted something more meaty.

SuperPages.com came to the semi-rescue. She agreed that it was hard, that it was tough, that they try to lead users with suggestions to help participate. I was hoping for more meat - rewards, ‘promoting’ helpful users, pushing away unhelpful users, and so forth. Essentially temper all the exuberance that was bubbling around. At the same time - this was Q&A time, and I can understand and appreciate the response she did give.

And secondly - why weren’t we allowed to ask Marchex any questions? My question I was going to ask:

As a company, you were formed to acquire Yun Ye’s portfolio of domains. At that moment, you were essentially a domain company. So while you are you still part of the domaining community, you have pretty much morphed into a local-oriented site. What do you intend to do with non-geo domains? Are you going to stick with parking them, sell them off, or is there a plan for some other division inside Marchex to develop them? And if your plan isn’t to keep them parked, what will you be doing with non-US geodomains like Beijing.com?

I’m still confused about who Marchex thinks they are (at domain conferences they rarely mention ‘local’) - is this a semi-identity crisis in play here?

As people sometimes lose focus - of all the conferences I’ve attended, this was the most successful one I’ve ever been to. I’m already planning a booth for next years. Still - wanted to start with the flaws before getting into the good stuffs.