EP18: The Domain Names Marketplace

Monday Domains – EP18

[00:00:00] Yeah,

let’s see who we’re going to invite today. It is Monday morning, 11 o’clock and it is time for Monday domains.

Why Monday domains you ask because it’s Monday and I’m buying, selling, learning about planning, making, talking,

selling. Yes, I’m actually in the process of selling a domain. I didn’t sell any domains today, but I’m working on fulfilling some sales of domains made over the weekend. So that’s good.[00:01:00] 

Let me invite a few more folks and welcome everybody to Monday domains. I do apologize everybody for last week. I was not able to get clubhouse to start. And you say, well, that’s easy. Just download your operating system, reload, your computer, reset your circuit breakers. Um, but even though I did all that, I was not able to get it working.

And, uh, I think that was Monday domains. I missed, maybe it was, it was a million dollar domains, but anyway, we are here for Monday domains, mostly because of two reasons. It’s Monday

and domains trade 24 7 365. What a great asset. If you notice that you do not need to put gasoline in your car to go [00:02:00] trade domain names, you notice your domain names do not need gasoline to be able to run no that people can buy and sell products from the services and the information offered on your domain name without having to put gas in their car.

Domain names, the answer to energy independence. Okay. Maybe that’s too big of a stretch, but you never know. Uh, let’s see what domainers are doing on a Monday morning.

I’ve got hands raised. If you want to share with me.

What you’re doing on a Monday morning, Monday morning for me, [00:03:00] um, is mostly, uh, hopefully doing the absolute funnest part of domain. And to my mind, the best thing to be in domain name investing. And the funnest thing that you can do in domaining is waking up after hopefully a peaceable slumber. It used to be, you had to turn on your computer.

Now you just find your phone and you look at your mail or you look at your notifications and it says, congratulations, you’ve just sold a domain name or even better. It says you’ve got a price request for a domain name on after Nick.

Or you’ve got a message from someone who says on your $10,000 domain [00:04:00] name, would you take eight or you’ve got a minimum offer of 2000 or higher on one of your domain names, even though your minimum offer was 500

sometimes happy domaining on a Monday morning can just mean the name you ordered through your GoDaddy auction has been delivered. Your name has been transferred and for five days you want a name and an expired domain option. And you’ve been wondering, will I really get this name? I liked it. I liked the price I had to bid a bunch of people.

I was nervous. I paid too much, but now I just hope I get it. And if you’ve got the mess, since that says, oops, something gone wrong has gone wrong with this sale and we’ve refunded your amount. Then just sometimes getting a domain name that [00:05:00] you’ve won can make Monday a day for happy. Domaining

let’s see. Good morning. Thanks everybody for posting. Good morning in the chat. We do have the chat on today, which means you can post messages that everybody will see. Uh, I have not had the moderate, the chat yet. Uh, to the extent that it, because I’ve got this name for sale, I’ve got this sale. Hey, do you want to buy this five word.horse for a thousand dollars?

So the chat is not the place right now, at least to post names for sale. Uh, but it will be soon. I think I’m going to incorporate something into the, uh, Monday domains, uh, maybe at the end or maybe a special Monday domains after show, uh, where people can post one name per sale, but right now, just want to leave it for [00:06:00] chat.

Um, if you’ve got any questions for me that you don’t want to ask on stage, you can put them in the chat or you can message me with the little message flyer. So I want to welcome everybody to the studio audience of Monday domains to use a dated term, to make tele I was fortunate. Burbank California, where many of the studios were that we would show is, um, this.

Watch the game shows. So if we were at the high school, you could go with your club or your organization, and they would pay, you know, a couple of hundred dollars, if you could bring 30 people to watch the game show. So, uh, you know, fortunately you, people are here and I’m not having to pay you. So I do appreciate you coming.

Uh, for those of you listening on the podcast or the repeat views, and this is Monday domains part of domain club. I try to present some of the news of the week, my [00:07:00] thoughts on what’s going on and domain names right now. Um, and hopefully spotlight and showcase innovative companies, uh, bringing new services to the domain space.

Um, uh, my name is Paige, how I’ve been buying and selling domain names for 23 years. Now, I probably bought and sold over 30,000 domain names for over $10 million. I’ve been involved on the registry side. The registrar side, but mostly I try to buy and sell domain names, every possible place you can buy and sell domain names.

Uh, and then hopefully sometime in there by showing a little bit of ingenuity research, uh, I can buy and sell domain names. Now the other audience we talked to here, is there anyone that has. If you own a domain name, you own a valuable digital asset. That is, um, the foundation for your online presence.

Everything runs through your website. You may [00:08:00] need, you may use social media, but to sign up for social media, you need to give them a website address. You need to be able to provide links, uh, for who you are. Um, you need to be able to provide resources and images, which probably come from uploading files to your way.

Uh, a domain name and the website that’s on it is critical. And it’s probably gone from being something that was assigned to someone in the company who happened to know about tech a little bit, uh, to now being something the company needs to manage probably better than it did over the past 10 or 20 years, who is in charge of renewing the name who is the name under, who is the legal owner of the domain name?

What is the process? That’s used to make sure that the domain was registered and renewed and who can put content on the website. What are some of the legal aspects, both defensively to make sure no [00:09:00] one does anything to your domain name or to your brand, and then offensively where you may want to have some like sounding domain names.

Within reason, you may want to have domain names for your scheduled growth or product extension or products you may want to invent in the future. You may want to keep an eye on the domain market for what some of the new top level domains are that people are gathering extensions in. It may be part of your marketing plan to have content on a domain name that isn’t your main website.

You may be able to connect with customers before they’ve chosen the brand. Before they’ve chosen to biz to do business with you. They may be a 10 branded site, but they may want to get information from a generic

Oregon. Decision. They may trust an independent or independent looking website more than they [00:10:00] may trust a branded site from the company that owns the product. So I think that’s where anyone who owns a domain name is hopefully an audience for Monday domains and domain club. As I said, we do a lot with domain investors, a lot of domain investors on clubhouse, and then third, the domain community, people that are working in domain name company.

And I think one of the greatest things that happens is when we hear about new people get

practices from other industries that are much larger, more, uh, have been used to fighting it out in competitive environments for a long time. Um, and then it’s interesting that to hear them share their thoughts about the domain name, space, about aspects of domain name, markets, and marketplaces. So I’m going to start talking about marketplaces a little bit, unless anyone has anything they want to ask about.

Let me check the chat. [00:11:00] Let’s see, is my audio going in and out? I hope that lady T but I may have just faced away from the phone for a second. Um,

C I’ll say good morning to Dave. And a second. I want to talk about marketplaces a little bit, because I guess I’m starting to get to the breaking point that we really don’t have a domain marketplace. If someone asks me they’re starting a new company. And they want to buy a domain name. Where should they go?

And I’d love you to put in the chat where you think you’d tell somebody because they go daddy, but you’re going to get, [00:12:00] GoDaddy’s take on the domain market. You’re going to get GoDaddy’s inventory on the domain market. You’re going to get

a lot of choice. If you know what you want, they’re going to sell it to you. If it’s available or they’re going to sell it to you for a premium price, if it’s available. And then they’re going to give you a huge number of most front end channels with. You’re going to see three rows of options on a desktop device, on a mobile device.

You’re going to have to scroll down a lot to see these options, but you’re going to see other extensions that you can get for the domain name you want. So if I was going to start a business tomorrow to sell, uh, golf collectibles, collectibles.com, it’s going to tell [00:13:00] me that that name is taken and that I can hire a broker from GoDaddy to get that domain name.

You know, I’m just taking GoDaddy’s word for it. That it’s taken either way lately, where GoDaddy tells me something’s taken and it’s not taken, it’s actually available

and go, daddy says, if I pay them $69, then they’re going to go out there. And look now they’re going to go out there and look not, but is that the way I want to buy a domain name, somebody else, contact the owner and bring another person into the transaction who needs to get paid? I don’t control their interaction with the current owner of the domain name.

I don’t know if they’re going to come in as a hard enough, they’re going to contact them correctly. Second thing they’re going to do is they’re going to say you can buy a bunch of other [00:14:00] dot-coms that are similar to golf club,

but are they similar? Because they have the word golf. They do a pretty good job of showing. Like, if you want a singular, they’re going to show a plural and they do some good synonyms, but after about five or six nines of direct. Next they’re going to say, well, you can’t get golf, collectibles.com. You can get golf, collectibles.net.

It’s valuable. But if I don’t know about that debt, and then I’m told that I can get golf collectibles that today, golf, collectibles.website, golf, collectibles.shop golf, collectibles, that store golf, collectibles dot roof, collectibles that Yokohama. I know what those are and go down. It’s just hoping I pick one.

So I think, [00:15:00] you know, go to GoDaddy is similar to.

So then we have this idea that we have marketplaces. Wouldn’t it be great to have an eBay or an Amazon or a Walmart of domain names? [00:16:00] And we don’t. My opinion, the two closest things we have are sedo.com. After nick.com

is not worth. I used to have, uh, someone I worked for that had a phrase, it’s not worth the powder to blow it up. It’s not, it doesn’t even list all the domain names that are on afternoon. It doesn’t list them in any order. That makes sense. And if you say anything to GoDaddy about it, they’ll say, well, that’s not really the main reason we have afternoon.

So I’m just throwing after Nick out after nick.com as a marketplace. So then you’re left with Seydoux and say, dude, domain marketplace. We’ve talked about it a couple times in the last three weeks, we’ve talked about listing your domain names and their MLS. Um, it’s very difficult to search. If you just wanted to search all the names and a TLD, you can’t do it.

So you’re just left with. [00:17:00] I’ve been golf available and it’s going to give me the most random assortment of other names. Um, and it may give me 40,000 names with the word golf in it. Now we have some new players. We have dan.com and I think Dan smartly, uh, it started off as undeveloped has become a very valuable lane investors to create landing pages for their domain names.

And Dan has really taken escrow.com and processing many of the domain name transactions that happened in the marketplace. And I know they’ve introduced their marketplace@dan.com where you just type in a word like golf and they haven’t added as many features as they want to, but hopefully there’ll be adding him as time goes by.

But I think right now you can just sort by price and you can sort by. [00:18:00] Uh, linked and, and that’s about it. And you’re going to get a huge amount of inventory. The biggest problem Dan has run into, I think for me at least is because they were a great tool for domain investors to list their names. And that was the primary reason that people use them.

A lot of domain investors would sell names and not take them off. Dan, so many times the most attractive name that you want, or the most attractively priced name isn’t really for sale on Dan and isn’t owned by the person who’s selling it, but. What I’m hoping happens in the future is that people, because Dan is committed to being kind of a platform and an open source, open data exchange and decentralized platform, the people will start using the Dan’s feed in ways that they can produce, um, better searches to connect people with what the domain is that they [00:19:00] really want.

But the last thing that happens when people want to buy a domain name is I believe they need to develop and get some education on what it is they’re buying. You know, if you want to go buy, uh, a green car, you might want to buy a Tesla. You might want to see what else is out there. You’re going to try to find a comparison site, a comparison site.

You might try to read some reviews. And I don’t know if we have that in the domain business. I don’t know if we have any way to just learn about domain names and in a way. Is realistic for a buyer. In other words, most of the educational material out there. And I’ve been a big part of, a lot of that educational material is geared toward people that want to invest in domain names.

Cause that’s the biggest market. The market for people investing in domain names, in my opinion is about 10 times as big as the market for people [00:20:00] actually buying domain names to use them for websites. So if I was going to create a product or a service for people that were, um, going to be learning how to buy domain names, I would go after the biggest possible market.

And you may have someone who buys a domain name for their website and they meet, they may need to buy a domain name every three to five. But if someone’s going to be a domain name investor, then they’re probably going to be buying one to 10, do a hundred to 500 names a week or a month. So I think so much of the education out there is geared toward someone who’s going to buy multiple domain names to be an investor.

And there’s very few, or it’s very hard to parse out as a, just a person off the street who wants to buy a domain. What they should be looking for, but it’s like, because I think most of the articles are [00:21:00] so tied in to registrars simply saying, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy that the, we have a very small number of articles telling people maybe what they should be thinking of.

And many of them could just as easily have a publication date of 2003 or 2008 or 2013, and somehow have search engine placement that makes those articles seem like irrelevant today, but I’m not sure they are. And we also don’t have a brand that people can trust to buy domain names, go, daddy is the most trusted brand and biggest name in the business.

But at GoDaddy, even the investment advice that they provide is geared toward investors. And they have reverted back to the best thing for JoDana, [00:22:00] which is they, once you on the app, they, once you clicking the button that says, look at whatever other people are buying and just bid more than they’re bidding, which is great for GoDaddy.

It increases the number of people bidding on every name and it gets them the maximum price for each name based upon exposing the names that people have selected that are worth a bid to the most popular people. But I think what it’s done is it’s raised the perceived wholesale value of domain name to be the price that one buyer who was willing to pay the most paid for a domain name, but I’m not sure that’s its true value.

You could have investors that are starting to invest five or 10 or a hundred thousand dollars in the market. And they’re looking to ramp [00:23:00] up and buy inventory. But does that mean because they’re willing to pay a certain price than every domain investors should think the domain name is worth that, and those investors who do pay a thousand or 5,000 or 10,000 for their domain name, they would never sell it at that price.

They would probably try to sell it at five to 10 times that price. And because they’ve purchased the domain name for a year, they don’t have to sell it for that price. And they don’t even have to make a decision as to whether or not they want to sell it for another year or 11 months. Because when you buy a domain name, you inherit the registration date of the prior owner, which is usually, um, 30 days prior to when you bought the name.

So if you buy a domain name like today, an expired auction to go, daddy, if you buy a domain name on March 20th or 21st, it probably had an expiration date of [00:24:00] February 21st. And then because 30 days had passed, they’re selling it on behalf of the old owner, but it’s the registry who’s taking all that money.

So when you get the name, it probably has an expiration date, not of a year from now, but about 11 months from now.

So really when you go back to the public, because investors are buying most of the domain names that are being offered about 10 to a hundred times, what the public’s buying, and then they’re marking those domain names up to the most amount of money they can get. Is it any wonder that we have so few in user transactions each week, because we’re asking the end-users to pay the, the, the, the greediest highest possible price that we think we could ever get for the name.

And then we report sales on a site like named bio, where we mix up the wholesale and the retail [00:25:00] prices. So you could very easily have end-user real-world people seeing the prices that people have paid at wholesale, but that’s not a price that they could ever buy domains near. And then they inquire about domain names and they get quoted a price 10 to a hundred times what they may have seen something trade for a name bio.

And I think all this leads to, you know, a lot of resistance, a lot of pain points. And we wonder why people have bought so many new TLDs. We wonder why people buy the worst option available for hand registration. And I think it’s because the aftermarket is so confusing and is so convoluted and is so complicated and it makes it extremely unsafe.

There’s no safe, comfortable feeling for someone to [00:26:00] buy in that market.

So it’s easier to go buy a three letter or three word.com. It’s easier to buy a.com that just doesn’t quite fit. It’s easier when we do the name game, where we have companies that spend days or weeks trying to come up with a domain name that isn’t taken, and then they work backwards, they find a domain name that isn’t taken, and then they work backwards to, to brand their company, that domain name, and then try to make that brand successful in the marketplace.

And what’s so interesting about the work I do on the name game, which was on startup club. The largest club on clubhouse is that so many people are then burdening their startup with a name that doesn’t successfully convey their power, their prestige, their plans for the. [00:27:00] Because it usually conveys the domain name that they were able to get, which may not be as good as what people are expecting.

And your domain name is your first impression. It’s even before your first impression. It’s like if someone handed your business card to somebody and you’ve never even talked to them and they look at your card and they look at your name and your number, and they’re already starting to formulate different conclusions about you and your company before you’ve even talked to them.

So if they see your name, I’m on the list of companies that are going to appear in a zoom conference call or at a trade show. And they’re scanning the list to see who they want to contact and who they might want to talk to, or at a trade show with booth, they want to visit. You’ve got a chance just based upon your domain.

Because many times you have a spot for your company name, then you have a spot for your domain name, and it’s [00:28:00] a second chance to show off the power and prestige of your company. And if you went to a domain name conference, and you look at the list of presenters and the list of booths, and you saw domains.com, even if you had no idea what that company did, or even if you don’t even need any product or service, you’re probably going to go look@domains.com because you’re saying, wow, this company went out and got the best domain name in the business to name their company.

And I’d like to at least check on what it is that they’re doing. Now, if you saw a company called domains or us.ceo, uh, or, you know, dot com.ceo, You might just skim over it. And if you happen to be walking by there, or you heard something good about the company, you’d remember, oh yeah, they had the funky domain name.

And again, for some companies, maybe that’s good. Maybe that’s like a [00:29:00] guerrilla marketing strategy, but if you’re trying to do everything, those of you out there that, that have a company name, you’re thinking about upgrading. If you have a domain name or you’re trying to choose a domain name for your company, you’ve already made your product as attractive as it can be.

You’ve tried to make your salespeople as attractive as they can be. You’ve tried to make your, your, your offering or your value proposition as attractive as it can be. You’ve tried to make doing business with your company as easy as it can be. And when it comes to your domain name, are you really ready to say, oh, I’ll just take what I can get.

If you want to go on a vacation, someone says you should stay at this resort. What room would you like? Nah, just take what I can get. You’re going to sit flying an airplane. There’s 452 seats on the airplane. I’ll take what I can get. You go to a restaurant. You have little choice of where you want to [00:30:00] sit in the restaurant.

Where would you like to sit anywhere?

Now? There’s no doubt that functionally, any domain name can connect you to the internet. At least any domain name using the ICANN root system. If you’re on the web three stuff, you may have the greatest thing in the future, but you don’t have much now. But anyway, um, You could still make a lot of money now as we saw last week.

But, uh, but any domain name can connect you to the internet. The question is, do you want to spend just like you’re spending money in other parts of your business, the money it takes to own the best domain name, because there are 115 million.com domain names registered. And if you take anything in the world that has 150 million issued and you want to be in the top 1%, you’re probably going to have to pay a premium price.

But why not? If all it takes is money [00:31:00] to be able to give you something that can produce benefits every day and every month and every year over and over and over again. And the only cost you’re going to have to pay for your domain name is a renewal of nine or 10 or 11 or $12.

And all it takes is money right now to be able to own that domain. Then why not spend the money, especially in this inflationary environment, the money is only going to go down in value yet. What you’re buying with that money, the domain name, if it produces a 10% return on your sales and inflation is slowly increasing the amount of your sales every year, then that domain’s value is going to go up each year.

Because of last year you spent a hundred thousand dollars on advertising and your domain name made your advertising 1% better. It was worth a thousand dollars a [00:32:00] year. Now next year to get that same amount of advertising reach. And if the inflation’s at 7%, you’re going to have to spend 107,000 now. But if that domain name makes your advertising 1% better, it’s going to make your advertising $1,070 better.

So the one thing you have to remember is the value equation. Most people look at, and we talked about this on million dollar domains. When they’re buying a domain name is ours. The benefits of buying this domain name more than the amount of money that I have to pay to get the domain name. And especially if you compare it to the other things they could do with that money, some people may be investing money in their business just to receive 10 to 20% more efficiency on that money.

One time you may have people spending $10,000 to run an infomercial, [00:33:00] hoping that they’ll get a $12,000 return during the 30 minutes that, that infomercial. And you’re offering them an asset that can produce returns every day and every month and every year in the future for simply money right now, and money has been plentiful and cheap.

So that’s why we like domain names. That’s why I think domain names have a strong future, but the ways that we sell domain names are so inefficient that it’s hard for us to communicate our story because so many of the elements of the story of people talking about domain names that they’ve purchased are so completely inconsistent.

You could just as likely have someone say that they bought a great domain name for a thousand dollars. [00:34:00] Because they bought it on an expired marketplace against a bunch of domain investors. And it was worth a hundred thousand as you can have someone who said, I thought this was a good name. The seller said it was worth a hundred thousand.

I paid a hundred thousand for it, but I went to sell it. And the best offer I got is a thousand and that type of inconsistency that’s out there. When you mix in the fact that almost everyone has a different idea of what an individual specific domain name is worth, and the fact that there’s all kinds of places to sell domain.

I just don’t think we present anything unified that people can hang their hat on when it comes to buying domain names. So I’d like to find better marketplaces. I’d like to find, I’d like to spur on the existing marketplaces to improve. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but it’s one of the goals I’ll have this year, uh, from my upcoming domain [00:35:00] conference is to try to shine a light on, on those companies that are trying to connect with the real public, um, ’cause even though GoDaddy does a lot of advertising in many cases, it’s for their web services.

And that tells me that, that people really want websites and we’re selling domain names. So I’d be interested in if anyone has any thoughts on that. We have a very inefficient way of communicating what it is we’re selling to the public. And it seems like the companies that have made the most money in our business, the billion dollar domain companies like GoDaddy and Squarespace and Wix, they’re selling websites, not domain names.

And I’d like to get a piece of the billions of dollars that people are spending on websites. But all I have is domain names. Anyway, let’s see how everyone’s doing today. Let me look in the chat here[00:36:00] 

again. This is Monday domains.

We’ll get to the news of the week in a second.

Yeah, I really appreciate the comments about, uh, that, uh, Sam Charles found another market place. Perfect domain, perfect domain. I thought it was a great marketplace. It took the founders about three years longer than they thought to get it launched and it since sold to another domain company, but it has a lot of the elements, um, that I think will be attractive.

A new marketplace are staying Sam for pointing out perfect domains. Um,

let’s see. Who else we have. You have anybody here in the Monday domains family. Alright, let’s see. What’s going on in the [00:37:00] news of the week. Let’s see news of the week. I feel like I need to have a little ticker tape of the back.

News of the week. Google domains came out last week and, uh, Google domains operates off domains.google. And what was interesting to me was that, um, hi Dave, I think you, your, your microphone may be on, but I’ll get you one second. Right? What was interesting about Google domains, which operates off domains.google?

Is that I can’t remember if I ever opened an account there, but if I go to domains.google,

it already had me. You can log in with your regular Gmail account or your regular account [00:38:00] that you use to manage your Chrome. Um, And it already had all my information, uh, my billing information and things like that. And, you know, Google has been very active in the business identity marketplace. They’ve offered a free website product for.

Uh, you can make a, um, a, my business page on Google for free, you know, using the different tools. And I think the fact that they finally came out of beta, which is interesting because even g-mail is not a beta actually knocked down the GoDaddy stock price that day by 5%. But it’ll be interesting to see if over time names registered at Google’s registrar will, they will try to, even though the department of justice is supposed to stop them from trying to leverage market power and market strength in one area like search to extend over other areas.

But I think it’s important to reach out to, [00:39:00] and I, and I think that you can bet that if people look to buy domains, that Google is going to feed them information from Google about whether to buy domains, um, Google owns some extensions, they own.app. They own.dev. They own one that most people have never heard of called.new.

And I own a couple domain names and.new. And what’s funny about.new is, is, uh, Google with.new is trying to impose their view of what should be on websites on, on.new. And so.new is not an open TLD. You can’t just buy a name and have it resolve with anything on it. You have to have on a.news site, something that’s part of the workflow of constructing something.

You can’t have an information site. You can’t have a site about your [00:40:00] company. It has to be literally the way they define it. It has to be an action in the workflow of creating something on. So I think Google takes the attitude that they are. If you just want to get information about something, well, you should go to Google, so they don’t want to let anybody get a.new, like say I had domains dot.

And I wanted to have an information site. The only thing I can do on domains that new is I have to offer you pretty much for free, a free way to get a domain. Something has to be in the workflow and they monitor your site after 30 days to make sure that you’re doing something that matches up with their interpretation of what they think that news is supposed to be.

Now, having said that some of the biggest companies in the world have that new sites square has a payment site. Shopify has a shop site, uh, Facebook and Instagram have sites on that new, [00:41:00] so it’s interesting, but they launched this right before the pandemic. They came out with the trademark sunrise period, the about six months before the pandemic started.

And I think it was just overshadowed by what was going on globally that most people have no idea that, that new example. But anyway, uh, go, daddy’s a strong player. So I think seeing them in the market, uh, is a big deal. Hey, Dave, I saw you pop up. You may do that just cause you follow me. But if you ever run across Google domains at all,

Hey Paige. Uh, yeah, I’ve actually bought some Google domains and the reason I bought them was, um, my understanding and I’ve read this somewhere, but, um, as you know, I’m not a super tech guy, but, uh, was that if you use your do Google domains for outbound marketing or they’ve already set up, uh, the D mark and a couple of other, those factors that, uh, [00:42:00] that I guess are designed to help, you know, in my case, keep me out of the same spam folder on the other end.

Well, that’s a fantastic tip because I think a little bit of a little key difference there that I like you, I’m not that technical. So even though I could probably watch a YouTube video on how to set that up, I’m probably more likely to make a mistake doing it than I am to do it correctly. So telling me that being at a certain registrar would help me.

That would be attractive. Yeah. I, uh, you know, I remember the rating about it. It sounded pretty legitimate that, uh, they would help. Um, and the other thing, as you mentioned too, was, uh, I think a free website. I haven’t done that yet, but that’s obviously interesting. Yeah. It’s funny how the different parts of Google probably never want to talk to each other because I know Google the search engine.

Of course, they [00:43:00] probably would complain that there’s too many content sites on the internet that don’t produce anything. There’s too many domain names without content, but I’m sure as the registry, they’re not turning away, anyone’s money for, uh, for.dev and.app. You know what I mean? Uh, because they don’t have a website.

No, no, that’s right. And so, even though the pricing is a little higher, I forget maybe I might pay $18 for a.com. Um, if it does what it says and, uh, you know, so far I’ve had good luck with it. I’ve I’ve had, uh, I had maybe a dozen, uh, um, D names on Google, uh, Google domains. So that’s worked out well. I also want, I was going to come into on you’re talking about, you know, the ideal marketplace and, uh, it would be nice, but as far as.

Um, as domain investors go, uh, you know, I see your point about just the average person trying to pick their [00:44:00] name. Uh, you know, they would probably go to Google, you know, a small business person, uh, look for it and get a price. And, uh, you know, if they had something in mind, uh, there’s also squad help, uh, you know, for brandable names.

And, uh, you know, I think those that could be valuable, but, uh, there, you’re going to probably spend at least $1,500. Whereas like you said, if you, if you pick a three-word Nubain and, and, uh, you know, you’ll probably get a pretend dollars. So, uh, so those, uh, and I was going to mention too about, uh, dan.com. I think, you know, I think our world has been kind of overturned by dan.com and, uh, the other day, I, I had an agreement to sell a domain for $500.

The domain was already on a dan.com, but the person that had approached me in another direct from just an email. So oftentimes I [00:45:00] would just say, you know, S you know, send me the 500, I’ll change the registration for you. In this case, I was just a simple, a GoDaddy to go daddy, a account transaction, but I thought, you know, for the amount I’m going to pay, uh, then.com, I think you’ve probably had this experience.

Sometimes they finish in like six hours and, uh, it, it just say, I thought, you know what, that’s where it’s at to me. Uh, I’m not sure I probably pay 20 or 30 bucks for commission, probably not more than that. And, uh, what do you think about that for small, uh, small. No. I agree. I think that, um, you know, I opened my Dan account in 2015 when it was undeveloped.com and I spent about an hour talking with them and it took me three more years to do any business with them because at the very beginning, they, they wanted to [00:46:00] provide security to the buyer.

So, so when you had a transaction, the seller would have to transfer the name to their registrar, and then the buyer would get the name for their registrar, but you know, how buyers are, they just wanted to go, daddy, you know what I mean? They don’t want to go in a new place. So, so when they finally got the idea of pushing domains, that a seller could push it to Dan’s account, Dan would pay the seller and say, great, we’re all set.

We got it. We’ll take it from here. Um, Then then I grew my confidence and them grew exponentially because what I didn’t like before was I would give up the code or I would give up the name, but I had to rely on them, kind of like say, dude, you know, to deliver the name to the buyer. And until the buyer approved the name, you couldn’t get paid.

So yes, once they allowed you to push and then you got paid on the outbound push, I think that changed everything. [00:47:00] One. It showed that they were in touch with the industry. They understood that a lot of names were recently registered. Maybe they had to be pushed. They couldn’t be, you know, provided a code.

Um, I think that really changed the game for them. And the second thing that happened was escrow.com left the business. And what I mean by that. When escrow.com got sold, they went from a one day or, or, or 48 hour transaction process with human beings that you could contact to a two to three day problem, you know, process that was mostly gonna have a problem.

The buyer had to triple verify information. You as a seller, had to triple verify your ACH information. And I think the fact that they became more compliant. ’cause I mean, that used to be the go-to right, Dave, you just said, oh, we’ll do it@escrow.com and you could set it up and they could approve and they could pay and you could [00:48:00] deliver and they could approve.

And, and that was the go-to. And when they went to their new system, which had people in offices all around the world. So I think besides the fact that Dan’s only on European time and things only work quick on European time. Yes. I think when they changed to that, it, it, it made a huge difference. Yeah. I agree there.

And, uh, and you’re quite right about escrow.com. They must’ve lost about 90% of their domain business because, uh, uh, you know, I still have sent the odd one through them that, uh, but you get, you know, if you get a client that says, look, they asked for all this personal information, uh, he, this is a company by, I don’t want to give my personal information.

Uh, we both know that, you know, another day text by even a couple hours, people can get cold feet. And what could have been a $5,000 sale is, is down to zero. And I think we also realize that a transaction [00:49:00] is, is hard to make happen, right? It’s kinda like getting porcupines to dance, right? It’s hard to get someone to agree to a price and feel good about the name.

And for most of us that have been around for awhile, you feel like you have to not just get the person to agree with their dying breath, but you want to agree with some energy on their part that they not only are happy, but they’re going to finish the transaction. And the transaction is so fragile until it’s done.

And I hated that say too, when some of the other intermediaries would add friction because. I feel like people that work in the domain industry, if you come from outside the industry and I put GoDaddy employees in this, in this role also, you’re just presented that this is easy. People just decide they want a name and they buy it.

And then you could take as long as it takes to process a sale. You know what I mean? You know, because well, the buyer [00:50:00] agreed. They’re never going to go back on it. And the seller, of course they own the name because they wouldn’t have sold it. And I just don’t think there’s an appreciation for the fact that boy, until that buyer has paid, the money has the name.

They still may be having second thoughts and any little hiccup can cause them to say. Uh, to just go silent, you know what I mean? And we know what that means when they go cycling, it means their they’re and second thoughts. That’s right. I always figure that, uh, the guys at his office or a guy or woman, and, uh, they, they decided, okay, 3000, that’s a good deal.

I don’t want them to go home that night and tell their spouse because their spouse sees that 3000 as a vacation in Europe, you know, no IRA or a new boat, or so, yeah, that’s a major, have many self-employment people and I’m not talking about partner in terms of spouse. I’m talking about how, what are you?

Self-employed people all of a sudden have a partner [00:51:00] after awhile. Right. I talked to my partner and they wanted a better price. So we got on this because of Dan. So yes, I think that, uh, because of the alternatives that, and then I think the last thing. When you add up your numbers for the year. And if you’ve heard me do one thing on Monday domains, it’s know your numbers, know your numbers, know your numbers, you are going to look back at the year.

And even though in any given sale, you might say that was great. If after Nick brings me a buyer, I’ll pay him 20% in a heartbeat. You know what I mean? If you bring me a buyer for a name that I, that wouldn’t have reached me directly, I will gladly pay 20%. But if you’re just paying 20% to process a name and you look back over a year and you say, wow, I paid $18,000 just to do names that I could have done on my own.

You know, I think that, you know, you have to look, but as long as it’s just that, that small percentage, you know, uh, and you get the transaction done, like you were talking about Dave, [00:52:00] I think it makes sense, but what I would like to see companies do, and this is why I think squad health and brand bucket have been a nice bit of, um, uh, you know, fresh air in the last five years has been.

People will pay. And I said this on the social on Friday, and it was great to see RF back doing the socials with what squad help and grand bucket proved is that people will give up 30% of the margin of the sales price of their domain name. If you can increase their velocity. And just because they’ve done it with logos and a brandable marketplace.

I want people to hear that they convince people to give up there’s money available. If you can increase the velocity of my sales, I’m willing to pay 30% of the sales price of names worth 10, 20, 30, 40, $50,000. So there should be a [00:53:00] reward out there for innovation in the space. Now, of course they wanted exclusive, of course they, you know, there’s a lot of hoops to jump over.

You have to pay to submit. But I think that’s what I want people to hear is that people, domain owners will pay if you can increase their velocity. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. I’m just going to tell you a quick little story too. It’s a little bit off topic, but I think it’s instructive. I was talking to a fellow the other day, who I had a domain.

I wanted 15,000, um, The highest seat would get to was 7,500. And I’m re I’m thinking of this, cause we’re talking about leaving it overnight. Cause uh, I rejected his 7,500, uh, verbally. Um, I liked it, get all my buyers on the phone if I can. And uh, you know, the next day he sent me an email that he, he from Esteban saying the name was worth 1500, you [00:54:00] know, he had a little screen clip.

Well, you and I know those estimates are just that they’re, uh, they don’t mean too much and, and this was quite a powerful domain for his company. Um, but you know, he’s basically ghosted me that since then. And every time I think back on that deal, I think, you know, that 7,500 would look pretty good right now.

And, uh, I’ve even, I’ve even offered them that in, in an email, I said, you know, you offered that, are you still good for it? And uh, um,

Yeah, Dave, I think that you’re right. And that, and it, it just shows that when people are confused, they still have the option of not participating in a transaction. Right. We think it’s just by yourself, but there’s buy, sell or do nothing. And, um, the best thing I would do in that case is, is, is you have to put [00:55:00] forth a little effort, but I would take, I think you could take any week or any months of either name bio or Ron Jackson or the GoDaddy sales results for any month that they publish on the blogs and then just do a comparison between the sales price and the Esteban value.

And then you could obviously selectively pick the ones that have the highest price, where it’s the highest multiple of the estimated value. And the one thing about domain sales that are being reported. Is that people are searching for the truth. Domain sales are the truth that happened. You know, you’re, you’re trying to figure out something that’s hard to understand what’s a domain name worth, but when someone actually forks over money of a certain amount for a certain name, that’s a fact, you know what I mean?

And I think that it should be easy to, you want to almost have a [00:56:00] go-to link on your own website of you answering that question and that way you don’t necessarily have to answer it in the email. You may, it may be easy to say something like a lot of our customers have asked those questions over the years, you know, and then you have maybe something to show.

Yeah, that’s a good idea. You could even make a little YouTube video of it or, or just a PowerPoint or something. Yeah. And if not, you can go back to the story I told last week, which is, uh, you know, it’s hard to know what anything’s worth. If I go to the supermarket, a can of beer is worth about a dollar. I went to a football game and the same can of beer sells for $15.

So

we know it’s worth, Hey Sam, welcome to Monday domains. Great to see it. Thanks Dave for Sharon. How’s your week going, Sam? What’s uh, what’s on your schedule this week? Um, well the sun’s out, so my schedule is out the window when the [00:57:00] sun’s out. Um, I’m, uh, taking advantage of the weather in the UK. So, uh, but yeah, also I’m going through my domains in a repricing.

Gotcha. Now for you. I think you’ve been fortunate in that sometimes you just pick one price, you put everything there and you get a couple sales. Uh, so are you repricing them up down or actually looking at each, each name if you don’t mind me asking? Yeah, so, um, the, the ones that I price a lot, uh, Pacific, uh, price points.

So, um, I’m not changing those ones, um, thing, some of the bigger names, um, and, um, um, property, a lot of them I’m going to put the price up, but some of them, I will look back and I might change the price down. Um, you know, [00:58:00] for ones that I haven’t had, um, inquiries in, you know, so I might be putting. Potential buyers, but, um, yeah, because, um, I just want to, uh, sell certain names that I’ve got, that I’ve had for 20 odd years now.

Um, and then reinvest that into probably more names. Um, but apart from that, I’m developing a lot of sites out. Um, and then I’m setting the traffic and stuff like that, but I’m on, I’m on a traffic, uh, venture as well. Yeah, no, I think you’re right. And I think, again, I’m going to challenge the marketplaces out there.

Say there was one of the few that do this, um, uh, after Nick to a much lesser extent, most places like Amazon and even. Uh, and, and, uh, and Etsy, not FD, but Etsy. Um, [00:59:00] you can watch something, you know what I mean? If you see a product you’re interested in, you can click. I like it. And you know, you can watch it on eBay and then if the price is ever lowered, you get an email.

Well, wouldn’t it be great. If when you did go about repricing, your names, that if someone had ever added it to their watch list to keep an eye on, and you all of a sudden made it 25% less, that you could actively merchandise your portfolio and said, yeah, I’m in the market to sell some names this month and you could price everything down.

So I did that over the weekend and I’m going to upload it to say due today. And I don’t know if I’ll get a sale, but I know save you does allow people to watch your name, um, or to, to have it on a, uh, some people go to an extreme. They unless their whole portfolio. And then they relisted, uh, to the extent that people have watched list on, say do for any new names [01:00:00] with a certain keyword.

But again, these are all things that active, successful marketplaces do and other businesses, and we’re, we’re enabled to really take advantage of that and the domain space because GoDaddy controls everything and they’ve got everyone to advance that we should want to sell domain names in the way that’s best for goat.

That’s what they would basically be saying, no matter what words are coming out of their mouth, that’s what I would put above those words. And, um, the reason I’m, you know, been very supportive and of Dan as they brought innovation to the space and, and anyone else that’s bringing innovation, you know, because I think the public, you know, doesn’t want to buy in the way that’s good for GoDaddy.

They may want to buy in the way that’s good for them, but, well, thanks, Sam. Good luck with your repricing. It can be tough. Um, the only way I know how to do it is I’m fortunate that I’ve categorized a lot of my names. And so just to give anyone out [01:01:00] there a hand, so what to do, if you’re repricing, I’ll just give you what I do.

So I’ll sort, usually I’ll start my names by category. And then I’ll sort by expiration date. So the first thing I’m doing is I’m getting a peak at the next two months, expirees, and I’m looking for something as I’m repricing it, that I would love to get my money back or any money for it before I drop it.

And, and if I’m filling in a column, I actually create a new. Call them in my database called new price. So I created a column for March, 2022, and I put my old price that I have at it, all the databases on it. And then just to the left of it, I’m going to put in my new price and then I’m going to have my cost.

And then I’m going to have the GoDaddy appraise value if I, if it’s with GoDaddy or if I got the appraised value before I did, and then I’m going to have the expiration date. And what it’s gonna allow me to do is when [01:02:00] I store it each category like metaverse names or, um, keyword names or blog names, or city names or geo names, it’s gonna allow me to first, I’ll sort by, um, expiration date.

And I’ll look at names that I don’t think I’m going to renew. And I may price those all the way down to $29 lights on domain outlet. You know, I’ll sell names down to $9 for $29. And then if not, I’ll put it at 1 99 or 3 99 or 500. Then the next thing I may do is I may take, after I get to the next month’s worth of names on that category is all search from my lowest price to my highest price.

The reason I do that is when we price the name, initially, at least when I price the name, initially I’m usually pricing it at above what I’d really take for it. Cause I’m hoping that somehow I’ll just magically sell it for 28, 88 or 1999 or 1499. [01:03:00] And there’s other names that I’ll think that on it magically sell for 99, 99.

But most of the time, if I sort them by, by my initial price, it’ll be a good indicator that. You know, down on the lower price, ranges, all have the weakest names and I’ll be able to take maybe the biggest haircut on those names. It’s a great exercise for me to find names that I’ve may have mispriced, you know, and then I’ll be able to maybe raise my price.

So usually what I do is I first go expired, um, low to high, I mean, soon, uh, as soon as to expire to latest and then I’ll go price low to high. But then the last thing I’ll do is I’ll go back through and I’ll sort it by cost. And the reason I do that is a lot of my inventory I bought in the past three years.

And I either paid, you know, under $30 or under $50 for it, or I got it as a hand registration. And to me, if I bought a name as a hand registration, [01:04:00] what I’m looking for is, has that name in the year or two that I bought it, has it become. Innately valuable that no one could possibly hand register it today.

And if it was on an expired name, drop people would pay at least 2, 4, 6, 800 or a thousand. In my opinion, that’s the goal of hand registering. It’s not always to flip the name right away. It’s to buy it in a way that as time goes on. Develop the wholesale value because you can’t buy a name that good again, because most of the time you’re going to end up pricing that name for the most you can get, you’re not just going to go back and say, well, I bought it for $9.

If I could sell it for a thousand, I’d be happy. If that’s a really good name, you may price that name at 5,000 or 20,000. But I think what I’ll do is it’ll let me go back and realize that I may have hundreds of names that [01:05:00] I bought on the minimum bid at a GoDaddy auction of 11 bucks as a closeout. And I’m really not married to that name, like the name that I’ve owned for 10 years.

And if I can get out of that name with the reasonable return. I’ll price it at 69 or $99, because really it hasn’t elevated itself to be worth 10,000. And I’ve got some new ideas of things I want to buy. So it’s almost like I want to be able to tag my inventory as to what I bought recently. It sounded good that day, but I’d much rather get it off my shelf, then turn it into one of those names that you keep for five or 10 years.

So anyway, that’s how I reprice saying, I’m sure you’ve got your own way to do it, but, uh, and I doubt you go down as low as I go on domain outlet, but good luck with your repricing this week.

All right, everybody, I’ll check back in the, uh, in the [01:06:00] questions. Good luck everyone. This week, keep practicing what I call happy. Domaining remember it’s not a loss. You can either get a name, not get a name. If you can, you can buy a name for a great price. By name for a terrible price or not by a name and among all those things, not buying it is not a loss.

Let’s see. Yeah. Ken, thank you for your chat comment about the websites. I think it would be great if there was a way to take a domain name, like domain blog.com and say website 14,500 domain name only 4,500 and let people pick, you know, do you want the name and the site, or do you just want the name? And, and I think that that would do better for our industry.

Um, then I think we do want to get the value for the name as if it has a website on it, but it [01:07:00] really doesn’t.

Alrighty. Well, let’s see what’s going on on clubhouse this week. We’ll have outbounding club tomorrow and then million dollar domains on Wednesday. Um, Todd’s going to have his legal room tomorrow. They’ve they should have a good week this week. They’ve got some uni RP cases, huge domains got a reverse domain name, hijacking decision.

And the reason that it would be worth it to, to listen to when they talk about that is I think that that decision is going to give you some things to quote back when someone says, oh, you’re a Cybersquatter, you’re a trade marker. Uh, I don’t care if you got this name before I got my trademark, and then you’ll be able to in a balanced way, say, well, let’s look at what some of the decisions have said.

And the fact that they got a reverse domain name, hijacking, meaning that the, that the person who filed the case, they didn’t just lose. But the. [01:08:00] I don’t think they have to pay the fees. I forget what the consequences are or reverse domain name hijacking, but maybe that’ll be my first question for Todd and his group.

Uh, let’s see, I saw names con uh, kept their low ticket price until the end of the month and that’s about it. All right, everybody. Thanks for coming in.

I’m looking at everyone down there. Great to see everybody.

All right, we’ll see. Y’all I’m going to close the room.[01:09:00]