A few days ago, I had the privilege of being invited to attend a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Internet in Australia. The event was held in Sydney and was organised by Peter Coroneos, the former CEO of the Internet industry association, and was supported by the “who’s who” of the Australian Internet industry.

As a former director of the association it was great catching up with past colleagues and journeying down memory lane together as we recounted how the Internet has transformed our lives. For the first time in Australia’s history we were no longer isolated by our geography as the Internet brought us within one hundred milliseconds of everywhere in the world.

I chatted with a director of the association who is now running a university business incubator program. He asked me what he should say to the budding entrepreneurs under his charge. I said to him, “Get them overseas as fast as possible and open their eyes to the fact that Australia is no longer geographically isolated.”

Amongst many other things, the speech made by Paul Fletcher, who is the Minister of Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, picked up on the point that Australians had embraced the global marketplace. They had done this not only as consumers but also from businesses investing in reaching overseas markets via the Internet. So watch out world, here us Aussies come!

Paul Fletcher - Ministry for Communications, CyberSafety and the Arts

During the evening, many industry luminaries were highlighted for their efforts, either as entrepreneurs, technical experts or from a policy perspective. It was also sad to hear of the passing of others who had contributed so much to not just the Australian Internet industry but played valuable roles on the global stage.

When President Trump unveiled his presidential campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” I was a little confused. Being from Australia and a frequent traveller to the USA I can unequivocally say that America has always been great and is still great.

After flying for fourteen hours from Melbourne in an A380 it’s a welcome relief to step off the plane in Los Angeles. You know what the first thing I notice is? No, it’s not the security guards, the chaos of immigration or the queue for the taxis. It’s opportunity.

Sadly, some Americans have become so used to the opportunities around them that they can’t see them anymore. As a foreigner let me tell you right now that America was not just a land of opportunity for the early settlers, but it is very much still a land of opportunity right now.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Australia but in terms of opportunities when I’m at a conference in the USA I feel like I’ve come from the desert and entered a tropical paradise. Every conversation has bigger numbers in it, people are willing to give something a go and even failure is seen as just one of life’s many lessons.

Just over ten years ago I took my family to the USA for a six-month road trip. It was an amazing experience where we travelled the length and breadth of the nation in a Dodge Grand Caravan. During our trip the thing that impacted us the most was the openness and hospitality of the American people.

This is the fifth in the series on running a traffic test. I thought that I would return to the traffic test series and update readers on the results since the last article in July. The question that I wanted to know was whether the positive numbers previously reported were sustainable or whether they crashed back to reality.

The first four articles in the series can be viewed at:
Part 1 – Baseline Data
Part 2 – Focusing on Performance
Part 3 – Improving the Revenue
Part 4 – Show Me the Money!

I would remind you that the data is being pulled from the ParkLogic client interface and this wasn’t a “special” customer that just so happened to be doing well. In fact, I didn’t know what the results would be prior to writing the first article.

The great news is that both the revenue and RPM trends have continued to increase. The revenue has increased above the baseline from 46% back in July to 55% as of now. I would have thought the trend would have levelled off by now but it’s continuing to increase.

I was reading an article on TheDomains.com about domain traffic monetisation and the comment list ended up being filled with doom and gloom. I found the comments tended to spring from domainers harkening back to the “good old days” when raking in money from their traffic was easy. Many of them also showed a complete lack of understanding about how monetisation has moved on from the “good old days”.

I will once again say upfront that I’m one of the founders of ParkLogic and we monetise domain traffic but in a very different manner from ANY other provider. We work with almost all of the traditional parking companies and many of the global advertising networks. This gives us a unique perspective on the industry, and I believe provides us with some authority to speak on the subject of monetisation.

I would first like to tackle the common misconception that parking providers are thieves. Contrary to popular belief, we find the parking providers are not fraudulent and stealing your money. They are often as in the dark as you are as to why a domain’s earnings have fallen apart or why a clawback was applied to your account. Google is pulling all of strings and they don’t share squat with their partners.

Before you go accusing your account manager of theft think twice. They are actually your best friend who represent you to their larger organisation. I’ve heard of some account managers being treated despicably and it’s about time some bad domainers act a little more professionally. Thank goodness most domain investors ARE professional in their approach.

That all being said, have some parking providers attempted nefarious behaviours in the past? Absolutely! In fact, on the whole these companies are no longer in business. They’ve either been caught out by their customers or partners for doing the wrong thing and have now been expunged from the industry. This means the companies that have survived are generally pretty good.

Now let me comment on the state of play of domain monetisation. Is it dead? Nope. Is it dead for some people? Yes. The major reason why domain investors believe that domain monetisation is dead is because they keep on doing the same thing they always have. Go figure?

Let’s think about this for a bit. Many domain investors complain about declining revenues and then do nothing about it. They may change parking providers but that’s just like changing which cabin you’re going to sleep in on the Titanic.

I’ve really been wrestling with what to write about today for Saturday Musings. I love writing and normally I find that it just flows onto the page but today is different. I thought that I would take you on my journey for the past week and invite you to share about how you have tackled challenges in your life.

After returning from vacation I was immediately faced with a major personal issue to contend with in my extended family and this culminated in a family meeting. Typically, these issues would really drain me, and I would be struggling for several weeks while I emotionally and mentally came to grips with what was going on. This time was different.

As many readers know, for many years I’ve been sharing openly about my own personal life journey. In many respects, Saturday Musings has become a form of therapy as I write down my thoughts in at least a semi-coherent manner.

I’ve tried to share openly so that you can learn from my quest to becoming a better, more well-rounded individual; physically, mentally and spiritually. To me, life isn’t being the one to finish with the most money or toys.

Life is a journey of self-discovery about who you are and how you can constantly improve. Afterall, the most difficult thing you can do in the world is change yourself…..as you have absolutely no power whatsoever to change anyone else.