Originally Posted by broe-foe

You've stated the reason in describing the irony. There's money in the auctions. There's money in admission fees to conventions. There's money in getting a piece of the hotel bookings. These days, there's more money in sponsoring domainer conventions than ppc schemes. That's why you'll see, proportionally, an increase in attempts to sponsor conventions while ppc revenue declines. Eventually, of course, the convention market will become (if not already) over-saturated. At that point, you'll see the next incarnation of "monetization", whatever that may be. When the typo-squatters, cybersquatters, snake-oil salesmen, pitchmen, hoarders, flippers, and hucksters pack of their tents and move on down the road, the playing field will be open for really usefull development. When desperate, lazy bottom-feeders are unable to make fortunes off of domains because of worldwide illiteracy and the inability of many netizens to properly spell, then real developers will have a shot at making the Internet what is was envisioned to be by Jon Postel.