We kicked off the #InternetOfficial contest on Monday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of .com and fuel up to 15 lucky entrepreneurs’ dreams to start their own business on a .com domain name. Now that you are well aware of how to enter the contest, we wanted to introduce you to the panel of judges who will be helping to choose up to five monthly winners (for a total of 15) and the final, grand prize winner over the course of the contest.
Meet domain expert Michael H. Berkens! Michael is one of the most well-known and prominent investors and bloggers in the domain industry. He was awarded Domainer of the Year in 2009 and is a member of the Domain Hall of Fame. Michael has been quoted on the domain industry in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and Bloomberg, TheRegister.co.uk as well as many other technology, domain and legal publications. His evaluation and development expertise has also been tapped in several of the highest profile domain sales and auction events in recent years.
Since 2007, Michael has run the widely read blog, TheDomains.com, in which he has published almost 8,000 posts and has generated close to 85,000 user comments. TheDomains.com has been even nominated for Best Domain Blog each year from 2009 – 2014.
As you can probably imagine, Michael caught the .com bug early on and registered his first domain in 1997. He owns and manages an investment portfolio of more than 75,000 domain names. He’s been a full-time domain investor since 1999, when he founded Worldwide Media Inc.and launched its retail side, MostWantedDomains.com, which is responsible for tens of millions of dollars in domain sales in the business and domain communities. MostWantedDomains.com has sold or brokered three of the top five sales in 2015 as reported by DNJournal.
Michael is also the Co-Founder and Managing Director at Right of the Dot, LLC, an Internet consulting, advisement and brokerage firm specializing in advising new and existing top-level domain registries about premium domain name sales and acquisition strategies. The company also provides guidance to corporate brand protection companies on the sales and acquisition of domain names.
In addition to his expertise in the domain industry, Michael is an attorney, holding a Juris Doctor degree (J.D.) from Stetson College of Law and a Masters in Tax Law (L.L.M.) from the University of Florida. His legal expertise is focused on tax law and intellectual property rights as they relate to the various rights of domain owners and domain investors, as well as other intellectual property rights issues.
We’re thrilled to have Michael as a judging panelist for the #InternetOfficial contest and welcome you to connect with him on Twitter @thedomains, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Stay tuned as we continue to introduce our judging panelists, with background on small business expert Anita Campbell next!
