NamesCon 2018 was the first conference I gave a speech at! Although I've been a paid speaker since last year it was still a very special conference to me. It's no surprise it's special since it was my third year in a row learning from such a diverse crowd of online entrepreneurs and investors!
Here's my top tips I took away from the conference as well as 3 tips I mentioned during my talk you may have missed:
What I learned at NamesCon:
- Developing your domains is HOT.
Yes, we all know that the domain name is the land, but land can be worth so much more if you build on it--e.i. develop a website on your domain. I've been doing this with my own business for some time so it was great to see the conference validate our newer strategy.
We developed small, niche websites like Pueblo Tint, which is a tinting lead generation website based in a small (non-competitive) city. Then, we find a window tinter to forward the live leads (phone calls) to for a monthly retainer. It's as easy as renting real estate once the site starts getting phone calls!
- Networking is still king, even more than the sessions.
I met a handful of prospective clients I'm following up with, as well as learned from some of the sharpest veterans of the industry, like George Verdugo, owner of Hotels.club, and highly valuable Rams.com. I even shook hands with Andrew Rosener, the founder of Media Options, longer than I have with anyone else in quite some time.
- .com is still the best extension to own.
As Morgan Linton said, ".COM is still king and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Everyone I spoke to about their portfolios said that they’re still continuing to invest in .COM, while it does seem like more people than ever are dabbling in new gTLDs I didn’t talk to anyone that is shifting their focus away from .COM."
Also, I got my annual picture with the Founder of NamesCon, Richard Lau. The conference actually sold recently, so congrats to Richard!
I'll keep the highlights from my talk short, and if you want to watch it, subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when I post here very soon.
My talk was about "how to use your blog to connect with influencers" and here are the two resources the crowd was most excited about:
- instantdomainsearch.com
This tool allows you to search for available domain names as you type. Simply turns green if it's available, or red if it's not. And then you can look up who owns it (if they aren't using privacy) if you want to try to buy the domain from them.
- Boomerang for Gmail
I've recommended this tool for a long time and it's remains a powerful follow-up tool for your gmail inbox. It boomerangs emails back to your inbox as unread if someone doesn't respond to you within a week (or whatever you set it to). It can also track opens and clicks really conveniently.
I used this tool a lot when chasing people like Jeff Hoffman of Priceline.com, and Kimbal Musk of PayPal to be on the Handshakin Video Series. Obviously some folks are going to require more than one email to respond or consider what you are asking from them. Boomerang can help and has a free version!
If you'd like to see more resources, check more online resources here, or learn about our lets chat about how domain names play into your business strategy.