It’s an interesting question but it’s one that I ask my kids all of the time. My daughter recently graduated from high school and has now enrolled in university….yes, I’m a VERY proud father. In discussions with her she kept on talking about what job would pay the most so that at the end of uni she would earn a packet! I kept on saying, “Sarah, do what you enjoy and the money will come.”

So the question I ask you is, “What’s your passion?”

One of the biggest challenges that I find that I face in the domain industry is that there are so many opportunities and great ideas that it’s easy to forget what you actually really like doing. Although earning money is an important part of life it’s only just a part not the whole.

I love the domain industry and domains but I don’t try and do everything with every one of the domains in my own portfolio. To be quite honest with you there are only a few of them that I actually get excited about…..and they are the once that I slowly develop. The rest of them I let ParkLogic take care of and I rarely spend any time worrying about them.

I had a conversation with a domain investor the other day who was really good at finding great traffic domains but really bad at managing them. He loved the sleuthing around and building systems for finding the gold in all of the dirt but hated actually managing them afterwards. To cut a long conversation short…..we now manage his portfolio and he goes and finds the domains. He loves it and his life has improved dramatically!

So across this weekend I encourage you to ask the question, “What’s your passion?” Once you have the answer, make decisions to follow it.

For the 9th year DomainFest is returning to its roots by being held in Hollywood on the 31st March until the 2nd April at the Loews Hotel. This is great news for the industry and for Oversee.Net. For some strange reason a number of people in the industry have been voicing whether DomainFest would actually go ahead and some even suggested that it was the beginning of the end for Domain Sponsor! Those individuals must feel pretty silly now.

I have always liked going straight to the source and at no time during the last several months have I been told by anyone from Oversee that DomainFest was not going to happen. In fact, it has always been an emphatic YES! The challenge was to finalise the date and the great line-up of speakers and activities. So for all of the naysayers out there.....take some advice, if you have a question then go and ask the source.

I remember attending and speaking at the very first DomainFest and it was an incredible event that galvanised not only the domaining community but those outside of it. Oversee has consistently tried to bring new entrants into the domain industry by educating the wider media about the importance of domains to business. Whether it has been by personally inviting potential investors or having keynote A-list celebrities such as Kim Kardashian. The ultimate goal has always been so that domainers can realise greater returns on their assets through additional investment being poured into domains......I'm sure that Oversee wouldn’t mind helping in this process :-)

The innovative mindset is reflected in the conference agenda with three major streams of sessions with a focus on gTLDs, Domain monetisation and mobile traffic. There is also three sessions on domains as a business.

Although the sessions have always been outstanding I’ve found that it’s the people that conferences like DomainFest and TRAFFIC attract that make them special. They are gathering places for domainers to swap ideas, learn and most importantly do business.I think that going back to Hollywood is returning to the roots of what made DomainFest a great conference.

Being a bit of a film fanatic I've always enjoyed being near where the Academy Awards are held! With any luck one of the evening events may be similar to the "James Bond" one that was held many years ago. If you remember that event then like DomainFest you've been in the industry for quite some time.

I know that I will attending DomainFest and look forward to meeting up with as many of you as possible.

Many people have said to me that the only thing that matters is revenue.....sure, revenue may be important but it's definitely not a measure of success. So the question has to be asked....what is a good measure of success?

Let's imagine that you have a domain that is doing 100 uniques per day and $100. You move the domain to another parking provider and find that the revenue drops to $75. What is the normal reaction? Move it back! Quick! I'm losing $25 per day! That actually may be the wrong answer.

Let's imagine that on the day the domain received $75 it only received 50 unique visitors. That would mean that the new parking provider is performing brilliantly compared to the first one. The way most people compare the results is via the "tried and tested" formula of:   revenue  /   views   *   1000   or in other words RPM.

This sounds wonderful until you realise that the definition of views is different at every parking provider. There are no standards at all. So it we go back to our example, the second parking company may have actually received the same amount of traffic as the first but just reported less because they have more aggressive filtering on the traffic. This would then mean that parking company one would once again potentially be the winner.

Confused? It gets worse. There are over seven different revenue numbers that can be used each month for every domain name for your RPM equation. A couple of them are, "The estimated revenue number" or "The number confirmed two days later". To get an accurate picture of what is really happening you need to get both the revenue and the traffic numbers right or you get the wrong answer and sub-optimally optimse the domain traffic.....which is a fancy way of you saying you will be losing money.

I'll do another short blog on the solution to all of this shortly.