Give him some Credit.Club.  Q&A with Bruce Marler

This past week news broke that Credit.Club had been hand registered by domain investor Bruce Marler while headed home from NamesCon. Soon after the registration a knowledge base of credit information was launched causing many to wonder how this happened so quickly. While many questioned the validity of the registration and talked it up as a marketing stunt by the dotClub registry the latest were later presented and validated the story that had been told throughout the past week. I reached out to Bruce earlier today and asked if he would be interested in answering a few questions, here they are:

Q. – Simple question, what caused you to even look to register Credit.Club?

Bruce Marler – I had been looking for some value purchases of finance related domains in the gTLD space, with .Club being a very successful launch I started searching through names looking at relative pricing on different terms, I have been following the P2P lending and credit space and really thought that .Club made a lot of sense in a space like P2P lending. Look at LendingClub.com and their success to understand why.

At the same time Tiffany (my wife) was searching for domain names that she found interesting. We were putting in some pre-registrations for some of the other gTLDs that will be launching and added a couple domains she had selected to the cart.

I then did a search for Credit.Club expecting it to be the top priced of the finance group and saw the price as 10.99, I refreshed and it was still there, I added it to my cart and purchased. And then checked my account several times during our lunch. Made sure I did not typo it, and then called a couple domain colleagues about it.

Q. – How did the site get launched so quick? That seems to be one of the points people continued to hit on.

Bruce Marler – It made me laugh that so many people kept saying that was proof, some people made comments that it was not anything special, some realized (correctly I might add), that for the time I had to put towards it that it was a job well done (Thanks!). Well, once again, it really is as simple as I have explained on DomainGang, I really thought it was a perfect opportunity to tie our NamesCon sessions about using WordPress to rapidly develop feature rich sites, the success of .Club with their 6 figure transactions, and the focus of NamesCon around the rise of gTLDs. Add to that Tiffany spent all weekend with a 102.5 fever and ended up in the emergency room, so we spent a lot of time sitting around rather than running around, and you end up with a perfect scenario for the launch of the first phase of the site that is initially focused on credit repair and information on other lending topics.

Q. – So whats next for the site now that dotClub has announced that you can move forward with it?

Bruce Marler – I have started a product roadmap to layout some of the plans. Obviously this was not something I had planned and already have an overbooked schedule between my work at CafeX, LocakTek and Missouri.me, and the work we do for the community we live in with Parkland Programmers and Parkland Meetup. For the next couple months you can expect to see the content grow on the site and see both Android and iOS apps launch to go with the site.

Beyond that I have a couple plans that I am not going to release just yet, but it will end up being more than just a knowledge base, although two apps and a knowledge base in such a rapid time I personally think would be a success, but if things go like I think they will it should be interesting. Lets just say I think the work I do at CafeX with WebRTC could tie into possibilities with Credit.Club.

Q. – What do you think about the launch of gTLDs over the past year?

Bruce Marler – I think its great, I think great marketers are going to find great uses, do I think someone should go buy EveryGenericKeyword.NewTLD? NO!

But do I think there are success stories that are going to come from this that the naysayers will have to acknowledge? Yes. without doubt.

I love hearing the new blood in the industry, with that comes new ideas and concepts for what is possible. We as an industry have really been an inward focused bunch that has really had a hard time with change. It is amazing how much actually based on the fact we are so attached to what has been the greatest innovation platform ever, the internet.

We have to find new ways to show the value of these new, highly brandable, extensions. A new way to get the message out will be key, at the same time there has to be focus on developing some of the key properties, without that end users will never get to see what is possible.

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We’d like to thank Bruce Marler for taking the time to join us here at dotWhatever to answer our questions, and offer him a big congratulations on Credit.Club!

Your moderated comments are welcome.