New Modern Domainer Arrived
During this holiday weekend, I received the November 2008 issue of Modern Domainer. There are a couple of topics listed in the magazine that I just skipped over. How many domain conferences can you continue to write about? Before chucking the magazine into the garbage, I noticed a section entitled “The Domainer Apprentice Challenge.” What an intriguing topic, first there was Donald Trump, then there was Martha Stewart and now in our industry we have Donny Simonton. If the third name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s quite alright. You would be one of the many readers who had the same dumbfounded look as I had when reading the article. To bring you up to speed, Donny Simonton is the chief technical officer of Parked.com. Yes I used the P word, the same Parked.com that was visited by a domain chef from a domain name kitchen of some sort. Yes, our industry has some interesting characters these days. Anywho, back to the topic. Since we have already touched base on Donny “Trump” lets proceed forward to the apprentices!
Soon-Jong Lee
Computer Science student at a major California University. (It would be nice if they could tell us which one that might be, COUGH!)
Jose Martinez-Villalobos
Bartender who promises not to register domains while driving.
Derek Turner
Graphics designer looking to achieve financial security for his retirement years. He saw an ad for the challenge in Modern Domainer. Now that’s ironic. 
Clarence Celestine
A cable installer from Baton Rouge. Will install cable for domains, if that’s the case please make a trip out to Los Angeles in the near future.
Samantha Falcon
College student who works tech support for a telco company. And as soon as she first heard about the domaining industry she picked up a subscription to Modern Domainer.
Now that I have covered all of the Domainer Apprentices for 2008, lets talk about what they all seem to have in common. Well for starters they all became subscribers of Modern Domainer. Let me ask this question, if this was to be a real challenge, does it matter if an apprentice has subscribed to Modern Domainer or not? I will leave this question up to you to answer. The other commonality that the apprentices have are related to generating more income. I have to pose another question, domaining for the pure purpose of generating money seems to be a folly. The truth is in the pudding and when I say pudding, more money is generated in this industry by the services and tools which are ingrained in it! A person who enters into this industry at this time purely to generate more income will be at a loss. With this being said, this Modern Domainer Apprentice Challenge just doesn’t make the cut in my books. It is misleading, bias and creates a false impression of what our industry is truly about. Money is not what built this industry, it is the pure essence of what has destroyed it. Simply selecting an Apprentice Mentor that work’s for one of the top advertisers in the magazine is completely backwards. Not to raise suspicions but come on guys, couldn’t you have created an honest challenge as opposed to one which was fixed from the start? Just my rant, back to enjoying the holidays.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Jason Thompson