EP17: The Impact of World Events On the Domain Industry

Monday Domains – EP17

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If it’s Monday morning at 11:00 PM, 11:00 AM Eastern it’s time for Monday domains, the best show on Monday mornings on clubhouse. You know what? I’m going to go further than that. I’m going to say, this is the best show in the entire domains.

The best luxury show going. Oh, Sam, you’re doing a great [00:01:00] job of adding the word luxury to, uh, to your morning wheel. Yep. You got to have a bit of luxury going. Let’s look at luxury. Let’s just, let’s just take a little look at luxury. Hold on a second. If you guys have never played around with new TLD stats, you can get an amazing amount of information.

Dot luxury has got 2,300 names registered in it. That would rank it. Let’s see in the it’s probably ranked number 560 out of all TLD domain names.

You never know, it might take off Pam and I talked about that luxury last week because [00:02:00] I had talked to the team that had done that luxury and welcome to Monday domains. We’re just starting off with a little chit chat this week. Sam Charles Uber domainer from UK has joined me. And, uh, we got talking last week about.luxury.

And what was interesting about it was, um, I met with the team about five years ago from.luxury at a names con, and I was really impressed because at the time. They charged about a thousand dollars a year for their TLDs and, and I told him everyone else was telling him, no, no, no. And I said, if you guys can stick to it, um, And don’t lower your price.

I think you’ll, you know, you’ll sell more than enough names to make up for the, the, you know, the high price, because people will realize it’s exclusive yet at the same point they own, the easiest way to get into an exclusive club is just to pay, you [00:03:00] know, um, but, uh, But I guess about a year and a half ago, they came back and now you can get that luxury domains for 25 to 50 bucks.

So Sam, I guess we’re getting our luxury on the cheap.

So anyway, we had a fun time playing around and, uh, and the other thing that was interesting about that luxury is, uh, again, a lot of these TLDs were picking. To be part of the new TLD program. And I’ll have something to say about this later based upon their keyword value, but sometimes a keyword is better at the beginning and sometimes it’s better at the end anyway, way to bring up that luxury.

Sam will know one a year, how well we did. Yeah. You never know. And, uh, as they say, it’s always worth a gamble. Wait, are you saying that domain investing is [00:04:00] like gambling? Well, pretty much. Yeah. It’s in, when you get to a certain amount at the mind is it’s pretty much like playing the lottery. That’s what I call it.

Playing. Well, I think that’s a great point because I think that a lot of people sometimes try to apply reasonable, rational thoughts to something that may be based upon randomness and luck. Um, now there’s no doubt that good domain names, uh, you know, you can tell a good domain name. So it’s a one word. If it’s a short name, this, that, and the other, but in the world of the world of the domain names ranked 25,000 oh oh one to 150 million, I think there is sometimes a randomness because the.

The thing about domain names and welcome everyone to Monday domains. And my name is page how I host Monday domains here in domain club. And on Monday domains, we just talked about domains. I’ll bring you a [00:05:00] little news of the week, some articles I have, and then I have some data for everyone today. Um, if I can pin my, uh, my little sheet here on the, uh, on the top, but, um, Talking about hoping to get lucky, you know, with, with, with a return on a domain name.

And I think that because the, the system is so inefficient and. Every one of the world’s knowledge of domain names is so disproportionate that you can have people that really need a domain name, know a lot about domain names, or you can have people that really need and want and can pay for a good domain name, not know about a lot of domain names.

And at the same point, you can have a huge variance and the expectations of a seller, whether it’s a registry or. And the individual owner or hobbyist and collector. So if you mix in an information disparity with a huge gap with seller’s [00:06:00] motivation of a huge gap, and then you mix in systems that are all based upon.

When I call passive registrars, who don’t like to engage with the public, they just want you to come to their website, buy stuff without them having to ever talk to you and they’ll just take what they can get. And so it’s been perfect for these first speculation and new TLDs because the registrars say, well, we don’t promote these.

We don’t promote anything. You know, we just let you buy whatever you. And then obviously greed takes over. Um, but what I’m amazed at when I was looking at some data about the strings, the words that are registered in the most TLDs, and what I did was I compared the words that had the most TLDs registered in March versus the list for February and.

I think what was interesting was, um, how many of the names are trademark names and company named Sam? And when [00:07:00] I looked at it, I would bet that maybe two thirds to three quarters of all registrations are people just registering, famous company names and all kinds of TLDs and still thinking that’s going to make them money.

And I think the registrars love it. And they’re laughing all the way to the bank.

Yeah, definitely. The registrars are always the ones that are gonna make the money, you know, and, uh, especially on the premium names as well. Um, you know, but I looked at, I compared March to February and I looked at a name like, um, uh, Let’s see invisible friends. So invisible friends was an NFT that was launched on invisible friends.io.

And in March it was registered in 59 extensions already. So there’s one use case for invisible friends. It’s an NFT built on [00:08:00] invisible friends.io and 59 other TLDs have all been able to make money. Selling invisible friends. And then I’m sorry, 40 going into February. And then between February and March, there were 99.

Now someone could say, well, no, that was the company going and just doing brand protection and buying all these other TLDs. But I really don’t think it was. And if I ever had time, I guess I could do the data mining. And if it is, then I think it further shows that we don’t need new TLDs because it further proves the point that they’re just adding a burden on any company, um, that has a.com or has a.cc TLD of having to go get this in hundreds of extensions.

When they really may not need to. So someone asked the other day on the social on Friday about the new TLD program, and I’ll give the new TLD program, zero credibility, [00:09:00] except as a money grab. And if anyone wants me to be involved with their new launch, I’ll, I’ll happily do it for compensation, but, um, until they assess what’s happened in the, what was called the testbed round of 2003, Which never got assessed much less this wide open round of 2012 to 2014, which never got assessed.

You know, I think the idea that they would just launch a third round. Um, just shows that it’s a, you know, an insider money grab, but like I say, uh, if I can grab some of that money, sounds great. Almost reminds me of FDS. Um, but anyway, welcome to Monday domains. I think it’s an interesting time in domains. I talked about this last week, um, when, uh, welcome you to Monday domains and domains.

Uh, please follow me and follow domain club. Uh, we’re the largest club on clubhouse and we tried to bring, uh, [00:10:00] anyone who owns a domain name, a domain name investors, and the domain name community. And, uh, on the Monday show, we do kind of news of the week. Uh, I’ll present different stories or things I picked up during the week.

I’ve been buying and selling domain names for the last 23 years. Um, If you have a contribution, you want to tell me something’s going on. If you have a question you want to see what my take is or an announcement. If you’re a company offering innovative products in the domain space, please jump up on stage.

We do record this, uh, for those of you in the live studio audience. Thanks for coming. If you’re listening to this on a replay, we appreciate you. And if you’re listening to it on the podcast, we appreciate you. But when I think about most of our community here in the live. I think most of us are doing domain name, investor investing as a serious hobby.

We may have another full-time job. And I think that that’s the best thing to do in domain investing is to have a full-time job. If you don’t have a [00:11:00] way to generate income outside of domain. You’re going to not only need to pick good domains and get lucky selling them, but you’re going to need to pick good domains and get lucky, selling them enough money to pay for your lifestyle, your family overhead, and your business over a Ted each week.

And what that can normally mean is that you may have to accept lower prices to get more turnover. And you’re going to be at. And I think a disadvantage to someone who has a full-time job, they look at domain name investing as a. Uh, investing phenomenon, meaning they’ve taken excess money from their budget.

They’ve invested in domain names, many domain investors. Re-invest what they make on domain names, into new domain names and even investors that have a hundred thousand or multiple hundred thousand or $10,000 portfolio. A lot of them started with just a small, original amount of money, [00:12:00] but if you’re doing it, full-time, you’ve got to be even better at this thing called.

So, where are we in 2022. And we’re almost to the end of the first quarter, have you accomplished a quarter of your goals? Have you accomplished a quarter of your sales goals for this year? If you’re like me, you’re coming off a very strong 20, 22 and I have not. One quarter of what I did in 22 or 2021 so far in 2022.

And I think before I get to another quarter going by the second quarter in June, I’ve got to start making some changes right now. So I think that for most of us, it may still feel like the beginning of the year, but we’re almost at the end of the first. So I’d be interested. If anyone has thoughts on that, Sam, do you think about different things like that in terms of the time of the year with your domain portfolio?

Yeah, obviously at different times of the [00:13:00] year, different sales normally, um, normally this time of years it’s getting towards some or the sales. Um, and then they build back up after the summer. But, um, the last month for me was a very good month this month. For me, it’s not so good, um, with sales, but, um, I always find every month is different, especially in the domain world.

And, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a portfolio of 15,000 or 1000. Oh, 50 domains. Um, doesn’t matter how many you’ve got it all depends on, on the market. And I know from a few people that have got a large investors like me, um, haven’t been selling many this month, so. You know, it’s different. It’s I can never say one years, um, the same as the next year.

I mean, yeah, absolutely. And I think that there’s no doubt that the impact of what’s going on in the world of Russia’s, uh, you know, attack on Ukraine, [00:14:00] um, and the rise in gas prices and the costs around the world. Um, has probably got an effect on people’s spending. Now I will say one thing about domain names.

I do not have to drive my domain name to the office today. I do not have to go and drive my domain name to sell it and deliver it to somebody. Um, I do not have to pay gasoline to hold my domain name and inventory. And so investing in virtual assets, isn’t an advantage in this case. We’re not dependent as you might be.

If you were a salesman, a manufacturers rep. Uh, a company owner, a business person commuting, um, you’re, you’re not as dependent, maybe on the price of energy and gas, I guess you have to still heat your home and everything, but I’ve said it before domain names are an amazing asset. Um, they work for you 24 7, 365.

They don’t need vacations. They don’t get. [00:15:00] Uh, they don’t get on the celebrity pages for being out at two in the morning in an inappropriate relationship. Um, you know, your brand, uh, does not make an accidental bad tweet, uh, that can hurt their perception of your company. And I, and I think a domain name is, is a unique asset in that regard.

Um, You know, I’m a Homer for domain names. And a lot of what I do here and domain club is just talking about the benefits of domain names. And one of the ways I forgot to share with everybody was, uh, just three weeks or no, four or five weeks ago, it was the super bowl. And, uh, it was at so fi stadium in Los Angeles.

And so fi is a company, a consumer finance company. That’s really. Uh, killing it to use a parlance of today’s times and that they’ve both connected the crypto community, the investing community, along [00:16:00] with traditional products. And it was fascinating how they did it. They started building customer relationships with their student loan refinance product.

And so if you think about it, even though they were selling student loans at the beginning and refinancing student loans, what an amazing position that, that put them in, uh, when it came to offering all these other products. But the CEO was, was on an interview during the super bowl right before, and he said something amazing.

And I just want to slow down. So I think everyone can just take this in because it’s obvious, but the way he said it was really interesting. He simply said all of our millions of customers do all their banking and trading with their fingers on a computer or a mobile device.

And [00:17:00] we can skip over that. And we can just say that we all know it, but really think about it in banking, a trip to the bank, going to the bank to deposit a check, to endorse a check, to get cash. Wasn’t an errand was a trip. Um, I think the banks contributed to people moving toward mobile because they stopped providing any level of customer service.

And the brands is at least for me at a big bank, even when you were in the bank branch, if you had a problem with your account, they sent you to a phone to call all the customer service to. So they almost conditioned people to use the ATM’s and to do [00:18:00] everything they could without using the bank. So now when you have these new companies come around and show people what can be done on a computer and digitally, he just said it so easily.

He said all of our consumers, all of our customers do their business with us. On a computer or on their handheld device. And if you think about what we have with domain names, we have the functional thing that is absolutely necessary, absolutely necessary for any company’s web presence,

to be able to conduct their business, to be able to market their business, to be able to transact. And the reason I believe that domain names will continue to have increasing value. Is that the only way that accompany system can be interrelated [00:19:00] to everyone else’s app or system or all the other service providers that provide ancillary products is through the domain names.

In other words, I may be selling your credit card, but I need to get your credit score. I need to access the credit score company enable to let you research stocks. I need to let you go get stock research information on a company and able to do crypto trading. You need to be able to hook up your wallet.

You need to be able to get your wallet by downloading it. If you could only download your wallet from a domain name system that doesn’t work right now because it’s only going to work in the future. If everybody gets a new browser, all those companies couldn’t start doing business. Right. [00:20:00] If you couldn’t communicate your NFT project right now using a domain name on the existing ICANN system, you would be disregarding 99.99% of your customers.

If you only dealt with customers that can look on an alternate route or new web three domain system, all these companies to be able to work together and not have to individually negotiate. Relationships with every other company to work on their app. The way they all work together is by using the domain name system, the original internet app, the original internet app that allows anybody in the world to type in a domain name and get the one and only authorized source of content for.

Information resource [00:21:00] bot widget app, or whatever’s on that domain name and it all works together for free in the extent that. Call to a domain name to pull information. Cause that’s all you’re really doing. If you go to domain.club, your computer asks domain.club for information and domain dot clubs sends your computer or device information.

They’re never really connected. It’s a sand and receive function, and that works on every computer. And to do that, that information has to travel over wires and routers and amplifiers and all kinds of hardware. That also has to use one and only one list to know where that information is being requested from [00:22:00] and where that information is being sent.

And then less, we want to all remember everyone’s IP addresses. The domain name system lets us transfer these numbers where a resource may be located at your hosting company and your hosting company may have an IP address of one six, nine.one 3 2 9 1 1 that’s six. Unless we want to remember those. We use a natural language system to convert natural language, easy to remember words, starting with ASCII characters.

Now we’ve moved into ideas that every device and every piece of hardware, the transmits the information off the internet. That’s the power. That’s the basic power of the domain name system. And it hasn’t changed since the mid nineties and it works [00:23:00] and we’ve got some variations in China and Russia and Iran, but it works.

And that’s what you’re selling people access to when you sell them a domain name. And that’s what you’re buying when you buy a domain name and you don’t have to be of a certain class. You may have to be of a certain age, just to, just to buy something with a credit card, you can be any gender in the color from any part of the world.

For many upbringing, you can be working for a company or yourself and own a connection to every other resource on the internet for a domain name, for a fixed annual cost. Uh, between nine and $35 a year, depending on the retailer that you buy your domain name from now, the new TLDs have come along and they charged between 20 and $10,000 a year, but I’m still talking [00:24:00] about.com and the reason.com.

If you’re listening to this for the first time, just learning about domain names, or just, just kind of listened to me and you’re doing.

Dot com is where companies gravitated because when the original addressing system was created, it was first created geographically. Remember we had this situation where people had all these IP addresses. I had to remember Sam’s IP address. If I wanted to send Sam a message or connect with his computer, he had to remember.

And then each person might make their list of little nicknames. I might call Sam’s website, Sam, but somebody else may call it Sam C. So they kill with this idea that what if we had one list of the nicknames or the domain names that we used, and we all use the same list. So they said, okay, how are we going to do that?

[00:25:00] They came up with the system of having a word to the left of the. And then a dot and then a word to the right of the dot. And the words of the right of the dot would be called a top level domain. They originally allocated those throughout the world based upon countries, uh, that were in the, the phone system.

And in the phone system, every country has a calling code. Like when you dial different countries, you say plus one, or plus four, four plus five, two, they said, okay, we’ll give every one of those countries. There are two letter abbreviation. And that’s how UK got UK and CA and.us and.edu. And then they said, but what about companies that do business all around the world?

They said let’s invent some generic top level domains that aren’t tied to the country that you’re doing business. It’d be like, if you were [00:26:00] sending out snail mail, you know, a letter to somebody and you wrote their street address and their city and their state and their zip code. And then someone said, no, no, no, no, no.

You can just put it in the mailbox and just put on it a name and it’ll find that person. And that’s really what a generic top level domain does is they say we’re going to create calm net and org and gov and EDU, and, uh, a couple others, I think, mill and ant. And those are for companies that do business around the world.

Now, the reason.com was taken in the U S so much is that that U S extension was really complicated when it was given. Someone decided that the U S was too big to have just one domain space. So they need to break it up into 50 states. And then someone decided that each one of those 50 [00:27:00] states should break their little internets into commercial government organizational.

And you had this really complicated five layer system with little governors running the domain name system for each state. And I think that’s why most people in the U S which was probably the easiest place for the internet to start and have wide adoption in my opinion was because originally registrations were done through the mail and the U S had a very extensive mailing system where you could mail the registration information to almost every physical address in the country using the U S mail.

Secondly, credit card adoption was huge in the us. And so between those two things, they could sell the domain names. It’s kind of fun. That’s kind of a history lesson. This was too boring for anyone. Let me know. But I like going down memory lane here. What do you think Sam keep going.[00:28:00] 

Sam was falling asleep. Um, So we had these ccTLDs. So then we have the generic top level domain names. And what I wanted to get back to was the idea that by starting any business and being connected to the entire world, the entire internet, you can do that by owning a domain name. Now we’ve grown the.com space to 150 domain names.

And it’s no wonder that in anything that has 150 million, that you should pay more to get the. If you go to a concert in a 15,000 seat. You’re going to pay more to sit in the first three rows, you’re going to pay more to sit on the end. You’re going to pay more, to sit on the seats with the best view you’re going to be.

There’s always going to be things that people desire and the company that’s, that’s making that thing, making money off. It is going to want to [00:29:00] charge them the most amount of. If you go to a club at night, they’re going to charge you. If you want your own table, they’re going to charge you more. If you want to table in the best area, you go to a football game, you’re going to pay more, to be in the best seats to go to a hotel, you can be paid more to be in the best rooms.

If you think of all the clothes you combine in the world, the rarest and nicest and most exclusive is probably going to cost you. Now the thing about domain names is the company that originally got the contract to give out domain names on a first come first serve basis. They charge the same amount for all domain names.

So you have an incredible. Difference and the value of these hundred and 50 domain names. And you have them all costing the same per year. So it’s no wonder that people went in and speculated and bought those domain names that they thought were the most attractive, whether they wanted to use [00:30:00] them, use them in the future, or perhaps sell them to something that someone else.

And that’s really the domain name market. It’s a domain name market made up of original registrations between the customer and the registrar and the registry. And it’s made up of an aftermarket of hundreds, of thousands of different intermediate holders of which there is a couple that own millions of domain names.

And that’s what we have, but it’s a disjointed market. Anyway, that’s my trip down memory lane today.

I’m not sure if that was exciting as I wanted it to be. Let’s see. What’s going on in the domain name space this week, checked in on some of the news this week. And I think that one of the topics. That, um, it’s getting a lot of attention lately has been.xyz. And I think the discussion on.xyz comes down to two things.

I believe most people have [00:31:00] already made up their mind about.xyz they use. Hate it, or they really hate it. Um, that XYZ has been going for about seven years and a different times you can buy.xyz names for a penny. And that certainly creates an image of a TLD. That’s not really that valuable because you can buy domain names from.

Now you could never buy the best domain names and XYZ for a penny with one caveat. Most of the time they had already excluded what most people consider great domain names to be in premium price tiers. T I E R S. But what that did allow for was that there was emerging trends that would pop up. You could potentially go get.xyz names in those nutrients for a non-premium press.

And I think it’s no surprise then that as we looked at a lot of the new web [00:32:00] three companies who there’s just something about people wanting to be the original registration of a domain name and buy it from the registry that that being able to buy an XYZ and be the original owner was attractive to. So much so that we did have some companies start to operate on XYZ.

And I don’t think it had anything to do with the registry. I don’t think the registry promoted it at all. They just have to sit back and collect money, you know, from all the renewals. Um, but I think you had use, and then we’ve had the much publicized sales of Sweta who does a good job on Twitter and publicized and crusade.

But what we are seeing as much as a lot of people don’t want to admit it. And I have no relationships with Sweta or after Nick or anybody that people are able to now track that yes, somebody bought live art.xyz for $8,000. And it looked [00:33:00] to be, it looks like it was like, this is Raymond Hackney on TLD.

Investors is doing this research and he talked about that. It’s uh, it’s the first and only marketplace for fine art in FTS. And they say that their platform is curated by experts. So you’ve got a company that called live art X who decided to be live art x.xyz. That’s real. They decided to do. And then they say, well, live art X, that’s three things for people to remember what if we could just be live art.xyz.

And I’m sure that it would have been great if they would have gone to register live art.xyz. And it would have been available for 99 cents, which a lot of.xyz or. But it wasn’t, it was available for $7,888 because someone else had purchased to previously, I will say other domain investors have purchased hundreds of thousands of.xyz names.[00:34:00] 

I don’t think there’s any way that anybody could have predicted this one name live art.xyz would sell for $8,000. However, if domain investors registered thousands of days, Of good short, two word names that go together. It would make sense for NFTs. Then you may have this name when you’re your portfolio, and you’re going to sell this name.

And the first thing you’re going to have to do is use some of that money to pay for all the other names you registered. But anyway, we do have some real use and XYZ. Uh, primitive.xyz was sold by Sweta for 39,888. Back on February. Uh, it’s a defect company called primitive.finance. And whether they’re going to use the.finance or the dot, uh, XYZ, they both look the same.

Um, you know, but, but we’ll see what happens, but we do have a real end user that was presented with the chance [00:35:00] to buy primitive.xyz for 39,888. And they decided to buy. So I think you can’t argue with the fact that these names and.xyz are selling for these high values, but I will say,

unless you look at the denominator, Of a domain investor. You don’t know how many names of renewables they’re having to support. You don’t know how much time over the years it’s taken him to research what names they can buy or whether they had to pay more for this name because they bought it at auction.

And if you have an investor, like Sweta, who’s maybe own these names for seven years, paying eight bucks a year for seven years and has a cost of $56. In thousands of domain names that I think you can’t just sit there and say, oh, wouldn’t it be great. I can buy [00:36:00] one and sell it for 40,000. No, I think you’re going to have to buy a couple hundred and still hope to get lucky and sell one, but I think it is happening.

So, uh, I’ll be doing some work in XYZ. I’ll be having some.xyz names on the outlet. And I have to say one of the things that’s fun about it is it’s taken me back to my early days of investing in domain names when there was a huge difference between $3 and $9 and $9 and $16 and $16.

If you buy a.xyz name that you could get a hand raise for a dollar and you pay $90 for it. You’re having to ask yourself, does this name 90 times as good as a hand registration domain? I’d say there’s another equation, which is as long as you’re going to own a name, you might as well hone a good name. So, you know, uh, you might be better off owning better names at $90, but if not, [00:37:00] you can buy 90 names and get lucky in one year, uh, and potentially have a name that you buy for a dollar that you sell for three or $400.

So anyway, uh, keep an eye on Raymond hackney@tldinvestors.com. He’s also on the domaining map. And I think he and other bloggers are definitely keeping an eye on these XYZ sales, uh, to see, um, to see what happens anyway. Hey Richard, how you doing? Welcome to Monday domains. I hope you’re having fun and successful year.

Uh, did I take you too far back on my history lesson or what’d you think, Hey Paige, uh, yours going phenomenal for me? I liked the history lessons, plus it also makes you think fundamentally. With, uh, how the banks affected driving people in line because their customer service that we’re trying to reduce their costs, but then they just drove customers to, uh, platforms outside of going to the [00:38:00] local branch.

So I think there’s a lot of, uh, lessons to be there, of how we got more people online. So the banks are definitely, uh, helping that. And when we’re working with our own customers, We want to look at how do we retain them as well. So if you get someone to buy a domain name, for example, um, after they buy that name, reach out to them, maybe they’ll buy a similar name.

So I think there’s a lot of good lessons there. So I do enjoy the history lessons, um, because they can be carried forward and added value to anybody’s business at this time. So I greatly appreciate it. Well, thanks, Richard. I think one of the things that I fall into sometimes and welcome, Dave, I’ll say good morning to you here in a second.

Um, one of the things I fall into is, um, is if you take Sam’s comment before about sometimes you feel like when you have a sale, you’re you got lucky, you know what I mean? That you almost feel like you don’t want. You don’t want to press that button again, because what if it was just luck? You [00:39:00] know, what if it was somebody and we’ve all seen this where they’ll pay two to $10,000 for a domain name and they’ll never change the name surfers, you know, they may even let it drop in five or six years and you think, well, I don’t want, I don’t want to talk to them.

You know, I don’t want to do anything to jinx myself. But at the same point, I think, you know what you’re talking about seems to work Richard, if I’m not mistaken in almost every other business, that the best way to get businesses go to your existing customers, to either one learn why they bought from you or to get a referral.

Is that about right? But somehow we don’t do it in the domain of business. Exactly. Right. You know, w w we don’t do it. Remember if they’ve bought a name for whatever $2,000, whatever it may be. Um, a lot of us have similar names. And that person could buy another name and, or know someone that would be interested in that industry as well.

So I think again, we were sort of always focused on going into the next customer, [00:40:00] but can you get that same person to refer you, somebody to spend money with you or spend more money with you going forward? So just keep, keep the fundamentals again. Don’t make them mistake the banks. Send them away to their computer.

I even was, um, I think sports authority a few years ago, I’m going to narrow to buy something. They’re like, oh no, you didn’t go to our website. And they just wanted me to leave the store to go to their website. Well, that didn’t work out too well for them. So kind of keep that in mind, kind of keep that in mind, everybody.

Well, I certainly appreciate that. And, uh, I used to have, um, a closing email and I encourage everyone to do this. I’d encourage you to have. Some drafts and your email program of language that you want to use over and over again, because you may not feel like after you’ve had a sale, if you’ve personally negotiated it, or if you’ve directed them to a marketplace that you want to put any more time and effort into it, and you want to buy some more names or work on selling it.[00:41:00] 

But I found that it was easy for me because I had an email that said, um, about five days after closing, I just wanted to make sure that you received your name and you were able to set up the name servers or email. Um, and I would say something, um, you know, diminishing, like I’m not a tech expert, but maybe I can help you if you’re having any trouble.

And then I would say, and let me know in the future, if I can help you. Friends or associates with any other domain purchases or even questions. And then I might even put over the years, like, you know, no questions too dumb. And I learned this in a financial services business that even though we dealt with million dollar and above clients, We would deal with any client who we met, because you don’t know if today’s client who just has a small IRA investment to make, or a small financial product that they’re buying a life insurance policy.

They may [00:42:00] be the trustee for a pension fund that manages a huge amount of money. They may have a cousin or a friend. A spouse who has a question that you can help with. So sometimes in the domain namespace, which we can kind of hold ourselves out as digital marketing specialist and, and tech people, you know what I mean?

Um, you can always say no. If someone says, Hey, do y’all know the answer to this question? You can say, well, I don’t, but maybe I can help you with the resource, but you never know how that might be the gateway in the future because domain purchases come along for a lot of people. Once every three to five years.

So you have to think that people in their circle that have a thought about a domain name that may happen more. So you’d love it. If somebody says to somebody, one of your customers, I’m thinking about a domain name, I’m really worried about it. You’d like them to be able to say, I got a guy or I got a girl, you know, I got a guy who, who, who helped me.

And, um, and I think that’s a [00:43:00] great point, Richard. So thanks for sharing it. Hey, David Chandler. Welcome to Monday domains. David was a presenter on the domain show and I’ve known him over the years. Welcome to Monday domains, David, thanks page. So I, uh, I wanted to bring up something along the lines of what you’re talking about.

I’ll often use as a, in my message. Is there a domain name that you’ve always wished you owned? And, uh, I think, I think you’d agree probably page that it’s easier to deal with somebody who knows what they want to buy than to have a good name, and then who, you know, try and market it to, uh, you know, a thousand people and you just get nose and nose or no answer at all.

So, you know, if you can find a motivated buyer, And, uh, I think the next time I do a mail out, I’m going to do a mail out to startups and just ask them that [00:44:00] question. Is there a domain name you’ve always wished you wanted to wish you could own and it’s already taken and. ’cause I, you know, every week I find a different, uh, domain names that are great, but, you know, and there may be a.com, but they’re not really being used or they’re just being forwarded.

So I think there’s a lot, I think there’s a lot of business to be had there finding motivated buyers. Yeah, I think so. And I would even say that your own circle of friends and relationships over the past 10 years, Is probably, there’s probably a greater likelihood that more of your friends and associates are going to come in to a need to maybe want to get a domain name then 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

Um, and I think that. Even though someone may know that you do something with domains. We would love to think that all of our friends and associates and social media [00:45:00] connections have heard that we do domains that have retained that information for 20 years, but maybe they haven’t, maybe they need to be reminded.

Um, and so I think what you were sharing about the perfect domain, you know, that’s a nice little LinkedIn post that, that may spur someone to say, you know, I had a question. Something completely unrelated to that, but at least it tags you as, as the domain person and domain guy or a domain girl. And, um, and, and you never know where that’s going to lead because in a world where a lot of us, for every thousand domain names that you sell you own, you know, you might be selling one a month or one every three months, even a potential connection that might lead to someone that may want to buy.

One of your domain names are one that you could make money on. That’s that’s a massive headstart compared to just relying on randomness, right? Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. And, [00:46:00] and the other good thing, I guess I’ve found too, is some of those people looking for a domain, they’re looking for a six-figure domain.

And so if I can broker that deal, you know, that’s a, that tends to be a nice commission at the end of the day. So we’re. Uh, you know, it’s very hard for me to just, you know, if I found somebody who had sunglasses.com, it’s, it’s not that easy to find a buyer for a, you know, a generic, you know, w what should be a six-figure to mean, but, uh, but if I already know the person that wants sunglasses.com, it’s a much easier job for me.

Gotcha. Thanks, David. Cheers to you. Yes. Um, let’s see, I read another article and again, pop up on stage. If you have a question or a comment, um, if you’ve got a room on clubhouse this week that you want to share, if you’ve got an innovative product or service that you’re introducing, I always want to make room to bring those people that [00:47:00] are creating products, especially anyone doing a marketplace or an exchange, uh, to promote connecting.

Domain investors and owners who have names for sale with the real world out there, that’s, especially the area that I’m looking to highlight companies on this year, I saw, uh, Elliot who runs Elliot, uh, runs domain investing.com and he had an interesting post last week. And it was about this domain name deal.com.

You guys know deal.com. Well, maybe you don’t know deal.com. deals.com is spelled D E. And this is the type of name where I do a show in startup club, which is the largest club on clubhouse with hundreds of thousands of members where we do a show called the naked. And we have companies tell us what their company is and what they do and what their, or know what their company is, what their name is and what their domain is.

And then Jeff sass, um, and [00:48:00] Sharon and I, we guess what we think they do. And then they get a chance to share what they do. So it kind of helps us start up person, uh, rehearsed their pitch a little bit and communicate. And then we talked about how their name and their domain. Relates to their potential company success.

So we had this interesting story that popped up and it took me a while to figure out just what Ellie was talking about. So he talks about and says, you’ll never guess how deal is using deal.com. So Jamie Zak reported that deal.com D E L was acquired by a startup called. And this has been owned by Francis Koreo who runs domaining.com and the startup had been using let’s deal.com.

So I think it was great that the startup that had been using let’s deal D E L, which we would say doesn’t pass the radio tech. Because there’s no way to emphasize. When [00:49:00] you say let’s deal.com that your company is using D E L instead of DEA L. Now, when you’re trying to buy a domain name and you look at it and you say, oh, it’s cute.

I found a work around, I found a hack. Uh, instead of us having to buy deal, let’s deal.com, which may have been seven or 8,000 probably. Um, we’re going to get this let’s deal, but what you don’t realize is you’re going to have to constantly remind people to spell it. D E L and you’re going to have to constantly hope that people don’t send you emails.

Go to the other address. And you’re going to have to always say how to spell your domain name and every advertisement. So if you’ve got a limited amount of time in a, in an ad or on a podcast sponsorship, you’re going to have to say, come to let’s deal.com. And you’re always going to have to say that’s www dot L E T.

[00:50:00] As the E E L and then you’re going to have to re-emphasize the properly E L. So you may have to take 20 to 30% of the time you spent for that advertising spot or that sponsorship, just to reinforce every time, how to spell it. And so when you think about the quantitative reasons to get a better domain name, that’s one of them, what is the cost over time?

Every minute, every month, every year that you’re having to pay, put that additional time in communicating your brand. Plus the cost of having to make sure that people don’t send emails to the wrong addresses. And you may even find the people on your own staff are misspelling the name when they write different articles.

Anyway, what’s funny about it is let’s deal, which was didn’t pass the radio test. They upgraded to deal dot. And then Elliot said that it looks like the acquisition of deal.com will be well-received [00:51:00] by the startups, customers who have been mistakenly visiting deal.com instead of the correct let’s deal.com.

So the first thing after a member, when you go with the two word domain name, is that one, even though you think, well, everyone’s going to remember that in this case, there was a sense that the customers were just remembering. D E L and then secondly, they were going to let’s deal.com spelled the right way, because you’d say your company’s called let’s deal.

And then people just depend the doctor. So then the CEO announces that they’ve bought deal.com and Elliot was kind of cryptic. And he said, he said, it’s interesting how they use it apparently. Um, apparently if you go to deal.com, spelled D E L, and again, I’ve been confused about this whole story, but it’s a video.[00:52:00] 

Okay, I’m sorry. It’s okay. Let’s see. Okay. deal.com goes to led steel. This must be what Elliot was saying. If you go to deal.com.

That says shop with an expert. Anyway, somehow I got to a video of a song called never going to give you up from the eighties. And I felt like it was somebody who was using a negotiating strategy. Um, the fact that they would never sell a domain name. So if I’ve thoroughly confused, you, you may have to go back and read, uh, Elliot’s post.

And if anyone’s got any insight on this, I’d love to hear it. Let’s see. You can either email me or put it in the chat. Um, but what it says is if you’re going for a hack, if you’re going for a misspelling that doesn’t pass the radio test, even now, In this commentary, [00:53:00] I’ve got to the point where I have no idea what the real company’s called.

And, uh, and then what I tell the customers on the name game is I know money is tied into the beginning, and I knew until you get your first couple of rounds of financing, it’s hard to upgrade from the one word or the, from the two word to the one. But I know that financing is critically important. And if you’re out there listening to this, you’re listening, uh, trying to learn about domain names.

One of the biggest changes we’ve had the past four years and I’ll end with this, unless anyone has any announcements has been the ability to acquire 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, $40,000 worth of equity value, domain names, making payments over one, two or five years. And what that means is you can start right off branding with a name that’s close to your ultimate name.

Like Dave was mentioning, maybe it’s not a six figure name, but maybe [00:54:00] it’s a five figure name and you won’t have to upgrade. And explain that later, you can start up. And if that gives you a 20 to 30% higher perceived market cap, that may even help you when you go to raise money, because you’ve been able to acquire an asset for your company.

Pay for it on payments and maybe raise money or connect with new vendor relationships or, um, get place when it trade shows and things like that. You’ve been able to, to swing above your weight, um, and be more prestigious and not had to commit to 10, 20 or $50,000 to buy a great domain name with the start, but maybe you’re paying 400 a month.

And I think that’s probably. If we think that domain names and our marketplace in general is misunderstood by the public. Now you have a new innovation that’s may be not even known by 10% [00:55:00] of the small group of people that even know how to buy domain names. So, you know, I just can’t underestimate, especially if you’re trying to sell a name and the multiple thousands of dollars.

Try to get your best price up front. But if not, if you still just don’t want to let that name go for less than certain things. Um, you know, really, you know, educate the customer on what they can do with payments. And I do think customers as much as I’d love to offer them no interest payments, and I love no interest payments as a buyer.

I do think it makes sense to offer, to have your payments add up at a significant interest rate over time. So that, so that the incentive for the buyer is to pay that. Um, is to pay that off once they get the money or just to have a sense that they thoroughly own and control the domain name. I know what Dan does is if you, if a customer picks the [00:56:00] five-year option, they add about 30% to the cost of the domain name.

And I think that it allows you to show a very low payment. Someone can buy a great domain name for 200, 300, 400 a month. And then when it actually comes time to buy it and they see that they’re paying 30% more, they may have already convinced themselves that they liked the name for the total purchase price.

And maybe they’ll look to save 30% by either buying the whole name upfront or they’ll pick the shorter payment plan of say one year. Where you, as the seller gets your money faster, you don’t get the extra interest, but she gets your money faster. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for everyone today on Monday domains, I am practicing happy.

Domaining. Happy domaining for me is putting more effort into buying fewer names [00:57:00] and only wanting to end the day buying domain names, but I’m really happy with, and if that means winning less names, but being a little greedier on the price. If that means doing a little bit more one and done bidding where I bid for a name, I been a price that I’d not just be okay with winning the name.

I’ve been a price where I’d be like, I’m so happy. I got the name for that price. If I get up in fine. Did I lose? Yeah. I lost the opportunity to buy a unique domain name and make the markup over the next five years, but I didn’t lose any. Tizer okay. And then lastly, I’m trying to put more time and effort into researching and finding domain names.

So at the end of the week, this is my, my, uh, my line for the week. What I’m trying to do right now in domain investing is when I look back on the week, no, that I committed the most amount of money to the best [00:58:00] opportunities that I saw this. Not just seeing a lot of stuff that I ended up getting. I ended up getting, I ended up getting, but did I spend the most amount of my money on the best opportunities?

So for me, that’s happy. Domaining

sounds good. Well, thanks Dave. I hope everyone has a good week. I’ll be on outbound in club tomorrow at 5:00 PM. Uh, here in clubhouse, a domain club, um, I’m a reluctant outbound, or I think outbounding is critical to the success, especially a full-time domainers and I’m have a fear of rejection that keeps me from doing it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t suffer on our community to be better, more effective outbound outbounds.

And that’s what we talked about an outbounding club tomorrow with. Um, and then Wednesday at one Eastern, I have million dollar domains where we talk about the [00:59:00] most expensive, the most VIP, the top 1% of the 1% of domain names and whether you’re buying or selling or brokering or now tokenizing or securitizing million-dollar domain names.

That’s what we cover on with. All right. Well, thanks everybody. I’ll see you next week on Monday domains. Thanks Richard. Thanks Dave. Thanks, bye now. All right. Bye-bye.