After cashing out to Local.com, Octane360 founders return to agency roots.

The founders of geo domain monetization platform Octane360 have returned to their agency roots with a new social media agency Next Step Social.

Adam Rioux and Mark Roah founded Octane360 back in 2006 and sold it to publicly traded Local.com (NASDAQ: LOCM) in 2010. They left Local.com at the beginning of last summer and just recently hatched Next Step Social.

The agency helps brands, athletes, and web sites leverage social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as other communication media such as email. Rioux says they work with clients to help them grow their social media presence and help them understand the right “social balance” in pushing their message.

The pair hasn’t deserted the geo domain industry, though. Their firm is working with some city .com owners that have created successful businesses but haven’t yet realized the full potential of social media. They also plan to work with domain investors who have developed quality domains into real web destinations.

Best of luck to Adam and Mark with their new venture.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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A great opportunity for an hour of quality time with an expert.

One of the more successful features of DOMAINfest is “Dine With an Expert”. It’s an opportunity to have breakfast or lunch with one of the conference speakers.

A lot of the speakers at this year’s event aren’t from the domain industry, including SEO experts and lead gen pros. That means this is a great opportunity to basically get a free hour with these experts to pick their brains.

You can reserve your spot here.

So far it looks like the hottest lunch date is Brook Schaaf, Founder and CEO of Schaaf-PartnerCentric. Brook managed multi-million dollar affiliate programs at Zappos.com, Shoes.com, and Edmunds.com. There are only 2 of 9 spots available at his table for lunch on Tuesday, January 31.

Although all of the experts are worth dining with, here are three that warrant special attention:

John Morris – he’s Chairman Emeritus of the Tech Coast Angels, which means he may be a connector to capital for you.

Paul Nicks – he effectively runs the aftermarket at GoDaddy. He’d be a good person to answer your questions about sales strategy, premium listing pricing strategy, etc.

Jay Weintraub – he’s Founder and CEO of NextCustomer, Inc., but perhaps best known for his LeadsCon conference. He knows the lead gen business inside and out.

One disappointing thing I noticed when reviewing the options — there are no women. I checked the agenda and see only two “experts” that are female.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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DomainIncite Pro offers in-depth research on the domain name industry.

DomainIncite has launched a subscription service called DomainIncite Pro.

The service provides in-depth domain industry analysis and research. For example, current reports on the site include analysis of how .co was relaunched, Five thousand strings that could get your gTLD application rejected, and a domain name sales database.

I think this is a smart move from DomainIncite’s founder, Kevin Murphy. A lot of other online niche industry publications have subscription services. Good quality content and research often can’t be supported on advertising revenue alone.

Although I’ve thought about writing research reports in the past, the truth is it takes a lot of work.

Introductory rate subscriptions are $799/year for a single user.

At first I thought the domain industry might be too small to support such a service, but given the new top level domain expansion I think there are plenty of possible subscribers. Any company launching a new TLD should consider such a small fee to get a leg up. Add to that registries, attorneys, and domain registrars, and the target audience grows quite large.

Dot-Nxt, a side that covers internet governance and ICANN, also has a subscription service.

© DomainNameWire.com 2011.

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