I am once again looking to acquire smaller US city .com domain names that meet the specific requirements set out below. Please see the bullet points below, and if your domain name(s) meet ALL of the requirements, please post a comment with your domain name(s) and price(s).

1. Actual United States city known by its residents as the name you have (Wikipedia page is a must)
2. .COM only
3. No hyphens
4. Between 15,000 – 75,000 residents
5. Keep in mind that I am not paying end user prices, so if your pricing isn’t great, your names aren’t for me. There’s nothing wrong with setting high prices, but I am looking for good values for these types of names.

If your name does meet the requirements but just isn’t of interest to me (maybe due to pricing or other reason), I will still post your comment so others can see.

If your domain name doesn’t meet one of the requirements, I will delete it and will not reply. I don’t mean to be harsh, but I have set out very specific parameters, and I would hope you respect my time and not submit domain names that aren’t related to this request.

Mike Berkens informed us that the list of the most popular 1,000 male and 1,000 female baby names in 2009 in the US was recently released. Not too surprisingly, all 2,000 of the names in .com were registered. It was surprising to learn that Berkens’ company owns over 100 of them. Actually, on second thought, it’s not so surprising considering his stellar portfolio.

So with these 2,000 .com domain names registered, you might wonder how you can utilize this list. I have a few ideas that might help you keep an eye on some good names.

1) Using DomainTools, monitor some of the secondary domain names that might be of interest in the future. As some of the less popular .com names expire in a couple of years, you’ll know about it ASAP and can back order or buy them.

2) Buy alternate extensions like .net or .org.  I know a couple of people who own their .org domain names and they love using them on cards and resumes. One is an actress and it’s great for producers to remember her name and see her credits.

3) Buy names like FranksBlog.com or StevesWebsite.com. I’d imagine these would be considered generic / defensible, and they have value. In fact, someone messaged me about the typo name I own – ElliottsBlog.com, although I have no interest in selling that name.

For years, the Targeted Traffic conference was known as the most expensive domain tradeshow by far, charging close to $2,000 for a ticket to the three day shows. The conference organizers said this was to make sure only serious domain investors attended, as basically nobody else could absorb the cost. Many people assumed they could get a better ROI by buying a $5,000 domain name rather than spending that much for travel and tickets, and others simply attended less expensive conferences.

This morning, Rick Latona announced a major price decrease, and the cost of the Vancouver Traffic conference is now $395 per ticket. Not only that, but Latona will refund all conference attendees who paid the regular price prior to today’s announcement.

I believe this is a smart step, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Oversee.net has been charging much less for their DomainFest conference with many more attendees, and people have made it a priority to go to DomainFest when they previously said that about Traffic. With Traffic and DomainFest conferences competing in back to back weeks in January, it simply made sense to go to the less expensive, more widely attended DomainFest conference, and the attendance gap was obvious this past January. Oversee.net has also started one day conferences at a cost of $175, so the new Traffic price is even more affordable over 3 days.

Traffic Vancouver is expected to be a huge show, with the Vancouver area teeming with domain investors and companies that work within the space. If this price change is carried through to future shows, it could make the Traffic conference much more competitive as it’s now more affordable for people who don’t necessarily make a full time living in the domain space, and those are the people who are usually on the fence about attending. Professional domain investors can frequently get major discounts or free passes depending on the amount of business they do with the organizer, so they are generally less price sensitive when it comes to the actual ticket prices.

Due to other travel, I won’t be able to make the Vancouver conference, but I hope the price is the same for the Hong Kong conference in November.  If you’ve been on the fence about attending a Traffic conference, does this price decrease make it more likely that you’ll attend?