A few months ago, I had a stroke of genius. Rather than head from Melbourne across the Pacific to NamesCon I would prove all the "flat earthers" wrong and travel to Austin via the Atlantic Ocean. This would mean that I could then drop into Europe and the east coast of the USA prior to NamesCon and then exit out the west afterwards.

On paper this was all made perfectly logical sense but that was before I started putting the itinerary together. To give you an idea, the around the world journey will mean flying in seven different planes for fifty-six hours and this doesn’t include waiting times at airports etc. Oh, the joys of international travel….not!

Just of special note is the fact that I’m away for fifteen days but with only eleven days of accommodation booked. What does this mean? Pretty much that I’ll be the bleary-eyed guy in seat 74D that’s twisted into a pretzel as he tries and sleep in whatever airplane seat, he finds himself in.

So where am I headed?
Melbourne - > Frankfurt -> Cologne -> London -> Washington - > Austin -> San Francisco - > Melbourne

If you happen to be in any of those cities and would like to catch-up then don’t hesitate to reach out to me. You never know, we may be able to grab a drink together!

Since September, Australia has been up in flames. Now, in the height of the fire season, almost the entire eastern seaboard is now caught up in an inferno that can only be described as apocalyptic. Major cities like Sydney and my home of Melbourne are shrouded in a smoke haze that beggars belief…..and yet, there is hope.

Yes, millions of hectares of land have been scorched to a cinder, towns have been razed, lives ruined and sadly lives lost but amongst all this devastation there are stories that give you faith in humanity.

The volunteer firefighters that put themselves in harms way to rescue those that cannot rescue themselves. These incredible men and women have selflessly pushed themselves to the brink of exhaustion as they race in front of the inferno to buy some time for children, elderly and the infirm to escape the holocaust.

It almost feels pitifully inadequate to say, “Thank you” to such amazingly brave individuals. There is the wives, husbands and children of these firefighters that wonder if their brave loved one will survive the day or night…..sadly, the nation has wept with the families of some that didn’t.

Then there are our friends abroad. Highly trained firefighters have flown in from New Zealand, Canada and the United States and have come to put their lives on the line to help us. I’m reminded of the Bible verse (John 15:13) that says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay his life down for a friend.”

This help is like a soothing salve on an open wound to the people of Australia. To have nations that are willing to help in times of strife will be long remember into the decades ahead. I’m also reminded that it wasn’t too long ago that California was burning, and these same countries banded together to do whatever they could to help in that horrific disaster.

At this time of year, I like to take a few minutes to think about the state of the domain industry and what I personally managed to accomplish over the past year. In many respects, I’m finding that 2019 was tremendously positive for the different business domain business models this has setup 2020 to be a boom year.

Traffic Monetisation
At ParkLogic (I’m the co-founder), we are continuing to see good steady growth with one record month following another. This seems to be in contrast to what many investors have been experiencing with monetising their own domain traffic. I can only surmise that the technology that we’ve developed over the last decade is really paying big dividends.

One of the major projects we completed was the rolling out of a new DNS infrastructure that is not only faster and more flexible but will support the growth of ParkLogic in 2020 and beyond. In addition, we've expanded the team and if you’re attending NamesCon you will get a chance to meet Matt Herbert who is assisting with account management and development.

I keep on saying this…..like a broken record…..but if you leave all of your domains with a single monetisation company then you are leaving money on the table. We have over a decade of data to prove this is true so if you’re earning at least $250/month in traffic revenue then reach out to me if you’re interested in further information.

My wife, Roselyn and I were chatting yesterday, and she mentioned in passing that there seemed to be an effort by some people to remove Christmas out of Christmas. Since "Merry Xmas" didn't appear to catch-on “Merry Christmas” is now being supplant it with “Happy Holidays”.

Although there isn’t anything inherently wrong with wishing someone a “happy holiday” I do believe that we need to take a step back and consider what is happening here. In order to do this, we need to reflect upon what this season is all about.

Christmas isn’t just about presents, eating copious amounts of food and holidays. At its roots, Christmas is a Christian religious celebration that centres upon the birth of Jesus. It’s about God reaching down to man, not as a judge but out of love by sending his son as the saviour for the world. Whether you believe the above or not is irrelevant to the millions of people that have this conviction in their heart.

If we are to be respectful towards Christians then I believe we need to call this period what it is, Christmas. Similarly, to be respectful to Muslims we should not try and rename Ramadan to something else or the Hindu festival, Diwali, as the “Happy Light Show”.

This would suggest that to make the least offense the politically correct lobby should insist that everyone says, “Merry Christmas”. The question I began to ponder is why don’t they? I could almost guarantee that if we renamed Hannukkah to something else then the Jewish community would be appalled and there would rightly be a voice of protest.

The “success” industry is worth billions of dollars a year selling seminars, videos, books and the like. They peddle guaranteed instant success formulas that for some reason first require you to fork out your hard-earned cash. Most truly successful people don’t apply any of this snake-oil, so what is it that they’ve discovered?

Several years ago, I found myself on the platform at a conference being interviewed about what it takes to create a successful blog. It was at the height of the SEO (search engine optimisation) hysteria and as I looked across the audience, I could see they were hoping for some formula that would guarantee they would become successful.

Maybe I would say that I incorporated a particular number of hot keywords into articles or ensured that each one was of a particular length. This would provide them what they needed to become successful!

I turned to the moderator and asked, “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes,” came the reply.

I looked across the audience and said, “It’s incredibly easy to create a successful blog.”

By this time the moderator was getting a little impatient and asked, “Well, what’s the secret?”

“Write two to three articles a week for ten years.”

A groan could be heard across the auditorium and the moderator looked at me with a particular level of disappointment. This isn’t what anyone wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that with a wave of my hand I could turn them all into successful bloggers.