An Interview with Patrick Ruddell aka Chef Patrick
Patrick Ruddell, better known as Chef Patrick, is one of the domain industry's most prominant bloggers. In just a few short years, Chef Patrick has used his smarts, marketing skills, and personal charm to build his blog (www.chefpatrick.com) into a highly informative and entertaining destination for those old and new to the world of domains.
HEXONET has been lucky enough to connect with Patrick. Through our conversations, we were inspired by his story. HEXONET is honored to be able to share Partrick's success story and his thoughts on the domain industry through this online interview.
HEXONET: As a successful entrepreneur in real estate, what experience and lessons did you learn in real estate to prepare you for success in the domain industry?
ChefPatrick: Simple, a domain name is the same as a house or piece of land. I sold a lot of houses!
HEXONET: ChefPatrick.com and other sites you manage are becoming prominent in the domain industry. In particular, chefpatrick.com, which delivers interesting domain industry news with added style and creative flair, a very impressive site. What gave you the idea for such a website?
ChefPatrick: Thank you for the compliment. I have to admit, my inspiration came from outside of our industry. I learned and was inspired by successful bloggers like John Chow of JohnChow.com and Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net. John Chow is known as the blogger who makes $40,000 per month from blogging. I seen that and said, I can do this.
HEXONET: What should readers and followers of chefpatrick.com and your other associated web properties expect for 2010 and the years to come?
ChefPatrick: The blog doubled in traffic from 16,000 visits per month in early 2009 to 32,000 monthly visits by the end of the 2009. I’d like to reach/educate as many non-industry people as possible and continue on my previous year’s growth. My GoDrops partner and I are set to re-launch a pending delete domain name membership service GoDrops.com on April 2nd. Beyond that I’d like to broker high-end domain names to end-users, work on my conference and build out some of my domain properties.
HEXONET: One of the highlights this year is your DNCruise conference in October, which is completely done on a cruise ship! Again, a great idea. HEXONET really wants to support this event, so we become a sponsor. From an attendee perspective, who should attend and what should they expect?
ChefPatrick: Any person interested in the domain industry should attend. I will have something for everyone, from beginners to experts. I believe that our group discussions will inspire all levels of participation. I also believe that the unique networking opportunities will be unmatched by any conference. I can’t give away too much because it’s too early, but we have some great things planned. Stay tuned for updates!
HEXONET: With your pulse on the domain market, how do you think the industry is doing in this year of recovery? And what do you think of ccTLDs?
ChefPatrick: So far things are looking good. We have had a few big sales, I know of at least one million dollar sale that will be reported soon and I can see at least two more million dollar sales within the next 60 days that are being put together now. As for ccTLDs, I haven’t studied or followed them enough to comment.
HEXONET: What are you thoughts on the new gTLD?
ChefPatrick: Some make sense, but most of them don’t. Good examples are .Movie or .Music, bad examples would be .Food or .XXX. What will really make a gTLD successful is the use by that specific industry. If the music industry uses .Music and are the only persons authorized to register those domain extensions then it will be a success.
HEXONET: Which TLD intrigues you the most and why?
ChefPatrick: Past .com, I’d have to say .US. I have personally bought at least 25 .US domain names within the last 10 days. I believe these are perfect for United State based businesses that cannot afford premium .com domains. Another great use is mini-site/affiliate site build outs which I plan to implement on all of my recent purchases. A few examples of recent purchases are PastaMaker.us, IndoorGrill.us and FaxMachine.us.
In closing, HEXONET would like to sincerely thank Patrick for taking the time to answer our questions. We here at HEXONET will continue to support chefpatrick.com, as well as, his DNCruise.com. HEXONET is a platinum sponsor of the DNCruise and encourage people attend, as we expect the event to be fantastic. Lastly, we want to wish Patrick much future success with new position with Oversee.net