So I’m at the tail end of LeadsCon, getting ready to go home.

To me, the best two sessions were ‘Keynote Address: Lessons From the Leaders’ and ‘Uncovering Local Lead Generation’

The first was an interesting story - how things were done, how much FreeCreditReport.com cost (hand regged!), and so forth. Personal stories of success and development are always good.

The second was interesting in the sense of mechanics - the background work required to make local lead generation work. What is expect from businesses, and what is expected from consumers, and match the two.

The rest in the middle, while executed well (I much prefer talk sessions than podium preaching), was boiled down to two core issues:

1. Teeth gnashing at what meanies the FTC are and how they hate us
2. Teeth gnashing at the mortgage industry explosion, and looking forward to the housing market coming back

It was, in my opinion, far too retrospective, when it should have been more forward-thinking. What I got (and remember, this is my perspective), was that the only new thing was lead scoring.

My intent in coming was of course locally-oriented - local lead gen, while a tougher nut to crack than the traditional ‘financial’ categories (mortgage, debt, loans, financing), is also potentially far more lucrative (higher margins, repeat customers, word of mouth effectiveness). Yet every single established company I talked to had the same boiler plate answer - we think it’s great, it’s on our list of things to do, but not in the year 2008.

It reminded me a lot of the domainer industry. All those PPC companies are basically the same (their ads come via Google or Yahoo), and they all sell the same services. Instead of trying to evolve the market in new ways, it seems like everyone is content sitting on their laurels fighting each other for the same leads, instead of trying to work on new areas where there is no competition.

Yes there were most definitely some individuals who want to try new things, who are looking at new types of leads. But the local space requires scale and operations - a one man operation won’t make much of a dent in local lead gen.

At the end of the day, this just elucidates the level of disconnect happening between some of the major industries I travel. Local companies should be interested in domains (readymade traffic - just look at Marchex), and should be interested in getting the most money out of a consumer (lead gen!). Yet I saw almost zero local-oriented companies. Domainers should love local (’unlocking’ the potential of their domains) and lead gen (leaving the Google/Yahoo duopoly) … but again, few domainers. Lead gen should love domainers (source of traffic) and local (higher margins, new areas) - but again, little interaction.

I almost feel like a trailblazer trying to connect the three - anyone else actively participating in these three areas?

A while ago the Flicker.com for sale story made the rounds. It was a simple site - stating what had been offered, and their status (all rejected). If you read the comments, I mention Sahar owns the domain - and he commented denying any ownership.

It now redirects to a site called Assista. A kind of meld between a search engine and Yahoo Answers. A site owned by Sahar. I wonder how Yahoo feels about this?

So I had talked about the Dallas Cowboys and their mishap with cowboys.com. Now our good friendly domain of Cowboys.com features ads for gay porn.

I am sure the fact that the landing page uses the exact same colors as the Dallas Cowboys is just a delicious coincidence.

What’s going on with Marchex? They seem to be tanking - badly.

Perhaps time to sell their non-local domains? Are are there non-local domains bringing in the revenue?

1. Things will tighten. While the USD seems to have stopped its freefall (3 months ago it was 1 USD = 0.98 CAD, now its upto 1.02), year over year it got brutally hurt. With high oil prices finally start to affect consumer behaviour, and the housing market meltdown creating a huge gap in people’s spending power, the US will see a legitimate correction/ouch/get your breath moment. I think this will cause some of the more no-revenue sites (even with sizable traffic) to feel some pain. This will finally cause …
2. The Great Offline to Online Local Migration. Local businesses are alrady starting to get unhappy with yellowpage publishers. There is enough evidence in front of everyone that less and less people are bothering with the yellow pages book anymore. Combined with the general tightening of things, enough small businesses will finally try to understand the internet and move their spending online. Which means …
3. The rise of the online local ad networks. Part of local’s difficulty (and accompanying beauty) is the granularity. Companies like ReachLocal, which are helping companies move money from offline to online are focusing on the major search engines. But there is a ton of local content online - from event sites to blogs to everything in between. I believe we will finally see the rise of online local ad networks that distribute ads across a swath of websites. A very sizable amount of traffic that is ignored by most are …
4. Domains (which will finally start to cool down). As things tighten, branding becomes more important. Which means generics like Food.com (great for traffic and SEO but harder to brand) won’t go skyrocketing like they were before. Or they may stay around the same … just like …
5. Google, Yahoo, MSN - nothing will change. Maybe AOL. But the Big Three will remain the Big Three (really people need to give Yahoo some credit for stealing Flickr when it did).

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.]

First off - the Dallas Cowboys blundered Cowboys.com, and a bunch of domainers (lead by Eric Rice) picked it up (for a much higher price) during the ensuing silent auction.

So when I see posts like this which somehow make it as if Rick Schwartz put the domainers together - I shake my head. It was Eric Rice, not him. But that isn’t the real point - it’s the hidden move by Rick Schwartz.

According to his blog post, he chipped into this consortium, putting up 11% of the amount. 11% of $370,000 = $40,700. A sizable investment.

However - Rick Schwartz gets 10% of the net sales during the auction process. At $370,000 that means he gets $37,000 back. So really for under $5000, he ended up owning 11% of Cowboys.com.

Congrats to this new team of investors. They saw opportunity and seized it. The American dream is alive and well and this will go down as one of the worst decisions in corporate history.

Beyond the typical hyperbole, if this was an opportunity for anyone, it was for Rick. Well played.

Yes the title is convoluted on purpose.

Following the debacle that has been Cowboys.com, there was one user on Domain Name News defending the decision - all under the pseudo-name ‘Innocent Bystander’

Innocent my ass - his IP resolved directly to ‘DALLAS COWBOYS FOOTBALL CLUB FON’ This of course begs the question if it is the attorney himself.

So - if you are going to troll - remember your IP can tell a lot about you.

Following up on Compete.com missing Compete.net dropping, a bigger story: Dallas Cowboys re-think Cowboys.com purchase.

A pretty bizarre story really. Cowboys.com was up during the TRAFFIC live auction. One of their attorneys was a phone-in bidder, bidding ‘$275′ - the auctioneer assumed $275,000, whereas the attorney was thinking $275.00

This is a perfect follow up to the Bobcats.com purchase, where the NBA team paid $50,000 for the domain.

Even more interesting is that Cowboys.com supposedly has a TM. And supposedly is the first domain ever granted a TM.

So where do we go from here? The Dallas Cowboys are far more of a global brand than Bobcats will be. The domain cowboys.com gets an estimated 2,000+ visitors a day. And here they expect to pay $275.00 for it?

Oh you fools.

Your traffic will bleed. No matter how many times you brand with the obvious ‘.com’ or ‘.net’ or whatever, people will type in other domains. You can’t stop that.

So I laughed the other day when Compete.net dropped, and someone else picked it up. Compete.com, a traffic analytics company, was completely asleep at the wheel as their domain-in-another-extension dropped.

Whoops.

UPDATE: Actually the domain never expired. The new owner just contacted the old owner and bought it from him. Evidently Compete.com couldn’t even do that.