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Frank Schilling Keynote
August 20th, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
I thought I would share the Frank Schilling keynote from the Domain Roundtable last week. Frank shares some insights on how he got started and where the industry is going. Frank figured out early on that domains with PPC advertising can be a good thing. This is a great recap of how Frank got to where he is today and a few hints about where he plans to go in the future.
Many people didn’t renew domain names in the dotcom crash and Frank re-doubled his effort to pour all his revenue back into buying generic keyword domains. Frank reflects how history doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes so there are lessons to learn from his domain history.
The most amusing part is minute 31:55 where Frank jokes that he just made $100 exhaling. 
There is also a mention of George Kirikos at spot 42:04, Frank helped co-found the ICA with Bob Martin after that conversation with George. At the very end, minute 52, Frank talks about possibly creating a super brand by redirecting all his traffic to a portal and building a brand around it. Traffic measurement companies like COMscore can’t seem to track Frank’s traffic because it is spread out on so many different domain names. Frank owns 320,000 domain names but it would be hard for any advertising company to see he has around 30 million unique visitors a month. In comparison, the most watched TV show on National TV every week only has 20 Million viewers.
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Posted in Domain Roundtable, Frank Schilling |
August 21st, 2007 at 2:11 am
Wow, just wow. I’ve been reading Frank’s blog for a while and from the posts he seems like a nice guy, but this speech surprised me completely. Thank you, Frank, for this very insightful keynote and thanks Jay for posting the video.
August 21st, 2007 at 8:24 am
Jay,
I was not able to attend the recent Domain Roundtable, but I would like to view an archive of videos from the recent conference; just like the recent Frank video that was posted.
Jay, is there any way of posting links for all the videos taken?
Thank you.
UPDATE BY JAY: We might have one or two more we will post. All of the videos were done in the main auditorium. The sessions in the smaller rooms were only recorded with audio and will be made available to the attendees at a reduced price.
August 21st, 2007 at 2:53 pm
I hope you can make a transcript available.
Thank you.
August 21st, 2007 at 3:52 pm
NextYear,
They will not make any transcript as you may imagine. It’s already great they put the video available for free.
Now like you I do not understand anything when Frank speak.
In fact I never understand anything when a person speak english.
Fortunately I read english with no problem so I should also be very interested by a transcript.
To motivate english people to make one this is my deal:
I will PayPal $250 to the first perrson sending me a transcript.
Just send it to info at cybertonic dot com
For sure NextYear I will not forget you, you as anyone else that want the transcript, it will be for sale for only $50. Just drop me a note.
I am impatient to read Frank’s speech.
…
August 21st, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Maybe you can find a transcriber like http://castingwords.com or other such services
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:01 am
I would love to see this video but thanks to the overlords in China Google Video is blocked here. Any chance the video can be posted on youtube. That would be really great. Thanks.
UPDATE BY JAY: It would be on YouTube but they don’t allow a video that large. Go figure, Google owns both companies…
August 22nd, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Thanks Frank.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:34 am
Great keynote. I really enjoyed it.
Next time maybe it would be better to split the video in 3 parts for example. Google video stopped 2 times, and I had to reload the whole video.
I was a bit surprised with the 30 million visitors a month though. Not an accurate number, but with 300,000+ domains I expected more. Some domains really need development, and that number would go sky high.
Some years ago I had one domain with 100,000 unique visitors every month, thanks to word of mouth.
Best Regards,
Nuno Oliveira
CatalogDomains.com
August 28th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Very interesting as usual listening to his thoughts, thank you for the speech and video.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Jay: youcan try using http://www.Veoh.com and signing up for Veoh Pro… Although from my experience, it would not upload to youtube, but it did upload it to google and myspace without problems at all. You can also charge for videos useing Veoh, but you can also just have them hosted on Veoh for free, and they have no size limits.