The 1%ers of Domain Names

TRANSCRIPT: Million Dollar Domains- EP07

welcome everybody to another weekly show of million dollar domains. It’s hard to say million dollar domains without thinking of the character and the Austin Powers movies, Google them. If you’re under 30, who said we expect to sell this domain name for $1 million. Anyway million dollars domain names, uh, as of last year started to become more five and $10 million domain names.

But what we talk about here on million dollar domain names are domain names that are in the top 1% of 1% of 1%. And the type of names that companies might buy startups might buy investors, might buy people that want to own the stability asset class. When you started thinking about the best real estate in the world at $50 million or above, or the best classic sports cards in the world at $10 million and above the best song rights in the world, the best NFTs in the world.

Um, the best yachts in the world. There’s there’s room for those investors in billion dollar domain names too, because. In many ways we have made or are using right now, most of the top words in the top global, global languages right now, now there can be new words that come about, but in general you can say in my opinion, that they’re not making anymore great million dollar domains, to the extent that most of the words that we use every day, we already know.

And to the extent that most of those are in.com, that’s probably the space where the most million dollar name sales happen. And even though we will probably see a million dollar sale of a non.com this year, and we will see new words emerge as a percentage of the overall words that might be worth a million dollars in a.com domain name say that’s 20,000 words.

I think it’s a stretch to say that we would add a hundred words this year to that list of 20,000. And I’ll keep you updated on it, on how as we track that. Now that’s, if the market doesn’t move at all, but I think the market is moving. I think the entire market for million dollar and above domain names is moving up and that’s pushing, especially to word names that used to be five figures.

And some people may have imagined six figures. I think we’ll see more of those in the million dollar range in 2022. So that’s my lead off. I’m going to ping some more people in and, uh, and I want to welcome everybody to million dollar domains. And we are recording the show today. If you’re listening on the podcast, if you’re listening, uh, as part of our relationship with startups, Which is the largest club on clubhouse with almost 800,000 members.

Um, and, and you may be listening and wondering, you know, how can I use a domain name for my startup, or could my startup, could the differentiating factor in my startup be a premium domain name where I could use the fact that my company already owns something or already owns the rights to something to help me raise money, to help me establish the relationships I need to help me establish my value proposition.

And instead of always saying, well, well, when we get traction, we’ll really be able to show what our company does. Why not buy your way into traction? Why not be a player by owning either a one word name that simply gives you credibility? No matter what business you’re. Or one of the ultimate imperfect one or two or three word domain names in your industry.

So when I own seniors.com, I always felt like if I just picked up the phone and said, hi, I want to talk to Prudential insurance, which is a big company at the time. And, uh, and I’m at seniors.com. And we’re looking for Todd to talk about our insurance category, that the person on the other end would be like, oh yeah, seniors.com.

We’ve we’ve heard of them. Oh yeah. We know of you. Even if I had never had a website welcome to million dollar domains. Um, my name is page how I host this show every week on clubhouse. We do this show live in front of our clubhouse audience. Want to thank everybody who comes in here each week, especially those that are, that are here already and right on time.

I do appreciate you. And it helps me to know who I’m talking to. As I looked down the screen. And then we replay this show on clubhouse for those not able to see the show at one o’clock Eastern every Wednesday. And then we posted online, uh, at domain.club and startup.club. And what we’re looking to do in 2022 is increase the discussion around million dollar domain names.

The top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% net, it could either be because the name is scarce. It could be because the name is in a high value area. It could be because the name has liquid value in the one to 10 to $20 million range. Like if it’s a short two letter name or one letter name, or sometimes a three letter name or a one word.

And I think that the, that the things that affect these types of domain names are very. From what affects the other 150 million domain names, even in.com that are out there not to mention the other 50 million and the other extensions. And I don’t think it helps to think about million dollar and multi-million dollar investments to be confused by some of the things that you might hear about the worst domain names registered today, or the domain names that someone’s trying to sell you for $500.

And I don’t, and if you’re making generalizations and conclusion thoughts based upon those lower value names and applying those things to high value names, I think you’re missing the boat. So I think I can say about million dollar domain name. That they had a terrific year in 2021. And we’re off to a great start in 2022.

Now that doesn’t mean, I’m saying that every domain out there had a great 2021 and there’s off to a great start in 2022, I’m talking about million dollar, one, two, and three word dot-coms and the best single words and trendy, single words, and other extensions that you may want to try to buy for 50 to a hundred thousand dollars and sell for a million dollars.

Or there may be names that you may try to buy for a million dollars and sell for $10 million. But most of the audience that I’m going to try to reach here in 2022 are people that can put domain names to work in their business in a way that the asset can be worth much more than the hundreds of thousands or million dollars that you paid.

So if you’re a company out there and you’re used to allocating capital based upon internal rate of return, I want you to hear, as you listen to our shows this year, some of the possibilities that exist with the internal rate of return, both tangibly in terms of a dollar cash on cash return and in tangibly, in terms of the doors that can be opened, the joint ventures that can be started, the competition that can be excluded, the placement that you can get in the public’s cognitive awareness by having a rare, single word, domain name.

And what could that mean to your business? Could that mean a hundred thousand dollars a year? Could that mean $500,000 a year? Could that mean a million dollars a year? Could your domain name get to the point? Where you can’t even put a value on it because it’s so tied in and integral to the success of your business.

That when you look back on the money that you spent compared to what you might have spent that money on something else that you say the, the internal rate of return is infinite. We could not have done anything better with the half million or million or $3 million that was spent.

And I think that’s, what’s going to happen as time goes by the domain name space for million dollar domain names. And I may be off on my timing. I may be off on the speed, but I think that’s the direction we’re going. So when you enter that market, most of the time, if you’re listening to this and you’re running a company or running a startup or a division manager, or you’re doing an ad buy of $40 million for.

I think you need to hopefully listen to our shows and learn a little bit about million-dollar names. What are they selling for? Cause that’s what everyone wants to know. Everyone wants to look backward and say, what should I pay for a million dollar domain name based upon what’s happened in the past, even though you’re more interested about what that domain is going to do for you in the future.

But most of the time in the world that we live in, you can look back to the past. You can say, what are these assets selling for? And you can buy it for something close to what the last one sold for. If you want to buy a stock, share a Microsoft stock today it’s just traded at $268 a share. So you should pay something close to that.

If you want to buy a $3 million house in orange county, a Newport beach, and one just sold for 2 9, 9, 9, 9, you probably should think about paying around 3 million or 3 million. Because there’s more than one house that meets your needs. There’s hundreds of millions of shares of Microsoft stock. Even in the sense of rare collectibles, there’s a lot of Ford Mustangs.

There’s a lot of rare Ford Mustangs. Some of the artists, they have a lot of paintings in the top tier, but the thing you have to remember about a domain name is there is one owner of that domain name and it’s singularly unique and both the value of the name and the situation that the seller is in are completely unique.

So you’re an aunt, always going to be able to tell them that they have to sell you this domain for a certain price, because that’s what you think other people would do or that’s what you think other people did in the past. You’re going to have to imagine what the domain is going to do for, you know, what the maximum price you’re going to pay is, and then compare that against the seller’s expectations because the seller’s expectations in many cases are coming from not a rational perspective of whether they to build out the domain name.

Even though that could be possible, they may be saying, well, gee, I can make a half million dollars a year from renting out this name to a company. But most of the time they’re just picking a number as to what it would take to get that domain name out of their hands. And if you think about it, you may have an advantage there as.

Because, you know what that domain name can do for your business. You know, what your cost of customer acquisition is, you know, what the value of each sale is and the value of a lifetime customer. And if you know, you can get thousands, if not tens of thousands of customers or save money on your advertising, spend meaning if you’re spending a hundred thousand dollars a year and I’ll use a company that just updated their name this week, facet F a C E T, and they used to be facet wealth.com.

And if you think about their upgrade to facet.com, what did that get? Functionally, you could make the case that everything that they do on their facet, wells.com website they could do on facet.com and there’s nothing they could do on facet that they can’t do it on facet, wealth.com. And one of the great things about domain names is every domain name gives you a connection to the entire world through the internet, and you only have to pay an annual renewal fee to connect with everybody in the world.

Everybody in the world can hear about your. I can get information about your product and can in many cases, be delivered your product and purchase your product and pay you for your product on the internet. Without having to pay an intermediary that you may have to use an intermediate service to process their credit card.

You may have to use an intermediate service to organize the inventory that you’re selling, but as opposed to selling on Facebook or Google, or having to pay Google a percentage of everything or pay apple in the app store, every single domain name allows you to connect with all your customers for free, and you own the data you own the analytics that come from your interactions with your customer.

And most importantly, as opposed to building your presence on Google or Twitter or Facebook, you’re not having another company sell advertising, right alongside your presence. So if I have a link to million dollar domains on Twitter, that’s great. I can reach out to all the people on Twitter and tell them that the million dollar domains, a clubhouse talk to starting right now.

And that’s great for me. And I’m going to keep doing that always. But when they look at that right below it, there’s going to be Twitter showing three other sponsored posts of other people’s posts about domain names. So I’m going to lose customers that may have even come to my feed of Joe domains because I’m doing it on another platform.

So imagine if when I record this show and I clicked, listen to million dollar domains, I’m going to put it on domain club or startup club, because I don’t want to put that recording on. Because everyone listens to that recording while they’re listening to it, they’re going to look at their screen and they’re going to see advertising from other companies.

So it gets back to my overall topic of you’re interested in the domain name. You’re interested in a million dollar domain name. And the reason we started million dollar names was that you would be able to talk about the idea of buying a million dollar domain name or a multi-million dollar domain name.

And right now all the information you get is usually when someone wants to sell you a specific multimillion dollar domain name. And I think a lot of you should clip this and I think this’ll be on our blog post. And the reason I think this hasn’t helped our industry is someone could be trying to sell you a million dollar domain name, even though it’s not a perfect fit for your company, because it might be a good.

And they’re telling you all the benefits of owning a great domain name, but you might be confusing. The fact that the name isn’t a good fit with your company with whether or not it makes sense to buy a million dollar domain name at all. So you may leave that conversation, like say I was going to do a new project.

I’m doing to securitize domain names and say that I wanted to have it under my own name, which is parcelization.com. And somebody knew that I owned parcelization.com and they contacted me and they said, we have Lucy bell.com. And they said, Lucy bell is a great brand-able domain name that you can use to build a crypto marketplace.

And they’re right. That could be used to build a crypto marketplace, but I’m going to be confusing. The fact. That I did pick a hundred words like Lucy, bell.com. And I’m going to say, nah, I don’t want to do it. And I may stop looking for million dollar domain names or even $10,000 domain names, because I had a discussion with someone who was only interested in selling me their domain name.

So what I want to provide a million dollar domain names as a chance to talk about them and assume that you’re talking about the perfect domain name for your company. Assume that you’re talking about a name that can provide incredible benefits. Think about internally. Does your, is your company ready when the perfect domain name comes up?

And I think if you start having the discussions, when the perfect domain name is presented to you, of whether your company would spend a million dollars or $3 million or 5 million. Two things are gonna happen. One is you’re going to have to go through the whole process of hearing objections from the board of directors, the legal, the technical, the marketing and everyone’s input is going to be coming from their own experiences.

Many of which aren’t with high value domain names, they’re with domain names that they tried to buy. There were times that they tried to buy a domain name 10 or 15 years ago. And I think the reason I’m encouraging companies out there, startups and existing mature companies and companies that have, that have done a great job at building their presence on a two or three word name to think about a one word name is because when the name comes up, you may only have a short window to buy that name against everybody else.

Who’s interested in that domain name and because the process of selling a domain name is still incredibly simple. It’s an exchange of cash. And it’s an exchange of moving the domain name from one account at a registrar to another account. And that’s all that needs to happen. Many domain investors make these exchanges on social platforms all the time.

Someone says, I’ve got these names, pick any of them for $500. I picked two and I say sold, they transformed my account. I send him the money and it’s done. So the actual process to consummate a sale of a domain name is pretty simple and can happen pretty fast. Now it’s true that an a million dollar above domain name, you do want to do some due diligence.

You do want to make sure the seller has full title to the name. You do want to make sure that there’s no other parties that may claim to own an interest in the domain name, or there might be any other liens or anything against the domain name. So I’m not saying it’s always going to be. But I think ascertaining who’s going to buy it.

And then what price is still usually happening on an email or a text or a phone call. And someone’s gonna say sold, someone’s gonna say, I’ll take that name Amazon recently, it looks like been reported on domain gang that they bought, uh, blink.com. And even though it may have taken some time to consummate that process, there was some time during it where there’ve been a series of negotiations and they said, yes, we’ll do it.

And at the moment they said that that name was probably off the market. And that process may have been as small as two weeks, three weeks, one week. So if your company has it, it’s mine, some ultimate and perfect domain names that you want to buy. I’m encouraging you to get your work done in advance. To know that the legal team is ready.

With their due diligence checklist that can be met before the seller has a chance to change their price expectations, or get sellers remorse, know that your team has already done some preliminary work on how easy it would be to move your website from one to another, no of your financial team is ready to pay that price in cash, or they might need payments, or they may want to lease it.

Some companies, especially corporations like to lease assets, they don’t affect their earnings as much in that way. Although I will tell you on this topic that an intangible asset is usually amortized over 30 years, 20, 25, 30 years. And to that extent, the, the money that you pay for that asset, if you’re only going to have to expense it one 30th of your price every year, and you think from the moment you buy it, you’re going to get benefits.

Uh, 50 to a hundred percent of what you paid each year. I think buying premium domain names is something that’ll add to the value of your stock price or the private market value of your company. But there may be some companies who want to lease it and you want to have had those discussions already. So that as you’re good negotiating price, you already know if you’re going to be asking for terms.

If you’re going to be asking for a lease, if you’re going to be using one of the finance companies that will allow you to lease a domain name, even a multi-million dollar domain name and contact me if you need help on that. So if you’re a buyer of a million dollar domain name, you should know, and already have done the groundwork within your company, for the things that are going to come up and the questions that are going to.

And so I would encourage you to join us on billion dollar domain names, either live so you can interact with us or listen to the replays. And I think hopefully you’ll be in a better position to buy and evaluate domain names this year for your company. Because the one thing that I think has been consistent in the million dollar domain space, if you can learn anything from the investors who have done the most work in the space is they remember the ones that got.

And many times it was just a matter of timing. Somebody was on vacation. Somebody was, was in the wrong frame of mind. Someone was involved with a development deal and the right name came along and looking back on it, they didn’t give it its due diligence. They didn’t give it its due consideration. So I would encourage you if you’re looking to buy a million dollar domain name, to have some of your homework done and to already run through some scenarios of what would you pay for the perfect domain name for your business.

And what you’ll hear us talk about this year is what would you pay for the perfect brandable domain name? Could there be a name where you would change the entire brand of your company if it hasn’t been working out or you think you can do better, that if you had the one word.com you would switch or could there be a name that was so dominant in the business you’re in that you would start a new marketing emphasis or a new push.

Built simply around the name. You would still keep all the other business you’re doing, but you would also be doing what’s called direct to consumer. And the biggest move that we saw in 2021, in my opinion, from one word domain names was to create direct to consumer businesses, mostly in the financial space, but also in many consumer goods where you’re going to advertise on old media, TV and new media, you’re going to connect with your customer and you’re going to send them to your website, to both buy your product, get support for your product, manage the delivery of the product and buy, add on and up sell products.

And you may be in an industry where over the years you’ve got a distribution system, you’ve got a sales reps, you’ve got a wholesale buyers that distribute your product. And I would say to you, if you don’t create a direct to consumer brand for your product, then someone else probably will in your business.

And unless, you know, you’re the manufacturer of the product that’s going to flow through that channel. Think about doing one on your own. So that’s our first half hour, a million dollar domain names talking about what we hope to do this year. Let’s see if we have any questions or if anyone has any comments, I really tried to start talking about million dollar domain names, one word, domain names, two word, product names that are approaching a million dollars, because I think these should be the headline makers for the domain industry.

And they’re the strongest part of our. So if we don’t at this time, talk about the power of premium one word domain names when they both get the most attention, because we’re talking when it’s talking about a thousand dollars domain name or $8 a year renewals talking about spending millions of dollars, that’s the type of thing that gets companies extend attention.

When they see someone else in their business or industry spend multiple million dollars on a domain name, they’ve got to look at it and say, are those people doing something we should be doing one just to maintain our competitive edge or two, that’s the smart thing to do. And you may even see companies and other industries doing it and saying, should we be the first in our industry?

And I would encourage you that in many cases, the risk of overpaying or paying multiple millions of dollars for a one word. Is mitigated by the fact that if it doesn’t work and if I bought domains.com for a million dollars to have a marketplace for the hundreds of millions of domains that are out there and it didn’t work, I wouldn’t be dead in the water.

I would still have a domain domains.com that I could recoup, hopefully a hundred percent or more of my investment. That’s not 80 or 70 or 60. There’s a lot of investments you make for your business as a startup, where from the moment you raise your money and start spending it, you’re going to zero.

Unless you gain traction, you’re going to not even having enough money to pay employees or taxes or your lease. If you think of the first internet bubble before you’re out of business and you’re. So at least by spending your money on a premium domain name, you may have an asset that you can either pivot your business model on.

And I could simply say the new domains.com the best place to buy a crypto based domains, or I could say the new domains.com the best place to buy and sell a shared interest or partial shares of domain names. Or I can say domains.com your domain registrar, or I could say domains dot Tom, how to build your domains.

I would still be left with something that I can take advantage of a lot of places in my industry, as opposed to having something or spending the million dollars on advertising that when your company’s gone and done, you don’t have an asset there to either sell or pivot on. So I’m a Homer for million dollar domain names.

I think that domain names are unlike any other asset out there. It’s true that we can call them digital real estate. Cause in some ways they’re like real estate, but what real estate do you know of that can fit through the excess capacity on transmission lines and phone lines and can be communicated wirelessly.

Do you know of a piece of real estate that can be communicated wirelessly through an antenna? No, but the content on your domain names, Ken,

I think they’ll say, well, uh, you know, domain names, they can be like a net lease free the state where they have a yield each, each week and each month. That’s true, but can they grow exponentially where a company can go from earning a thousand dollars a month to $10,000 a month to a hundred thousand dollars a month.

So I think there’s a lot of analogies for domain names and other. But I don’t, I haven’t seen anything else. Then at the same point that it’s functionally the way you conduct your business online and it’s integral to your branding strategy and the first or the lasting impression you make on customers, vendors, partners, investors.

And if you think about how important images right now, um, if you think about placement of your company in the mindset of your consumers, companies that are appealing to their values companies that are appealing to, uh, how they’re perceived on climate change or equity companies that are concerned about how they’re they’re, they’re placed in terms of fair.

Uh, being a good place to work everything now about your company, there’s so much based upon image. And when people make the first impression of your company, many times, you’re going to be telling them the address to go to the brand name of your company or your email. And in that moment, you’ve got a chance to constantly affirm.

If you’re one of the rare companies that has a one word or high value domain name. So I bought million dollar domain names, fortunately for under a million dollars, I’ve sold million dollar domain names. I’ve consulted with companies as both buying and selling domain names. Um, my broker million dollar domain names.

And right now I’m involved with looking at the securitization or the parcelization a million dollar domain names. So hopefully I can provide a resource for what’s been done in the. And help evaluate some of the innovation of what comes up in the future. As we talked about million dollar domain names.

So what are the big things that happened this week? I think some of the big things that happened this week is a dramatic decline from Friday to Monday of almost 25% in the value of most liquid cryptocurrency investments, both Bitcoin and Ethereum, they trade 24 hours a day. They trade on the weekend. Um, all the NFTs that are based upon a Sirium or Salana or one of the other currencies all saw their value.

Their liquid value dropped 25 to 30% or more in three days. And I’ve said that I think domain names are one of the original digital assets. Did domain name values drop 25 to 30. In three days. And I’d say part of a, maybe did, if you’re thinking of selling your domain name to a cryptocurrency company that has never felt the pain of loss and you’re planning on them paying 1, 2, 5, 10, $20 million for your domain name.

I think they’re in, they’re in an area of consolidation here to build back strength, build back, stronger hands, um, take in the losses slowly, build lower or higher lows and higher highs. On one hand, there may be some fear that wasn’t there before this, this weekend, because this weekend Bitcoin went from almost everybody in the asset class two months ago, having invested in.

To over a third of the people in the asset class, owning Bitcoin at a loss. And I think that does have an effect on the value of those cryptocurrency. So if there’s a positive for domain names, is that those investors that have been extremely successful buying liquid cryptocurrencies and trading them or getting out of them, whatever they want.

And now maybe their outlook is a little muted and they’re looking for digital assets. There may be more money available from the people who, who couldn’t buy domain names before, because they said, why should I buy a slow moving? E-liquid hard to value digital asset, like a domain name when I can make 20% a week, either buying crypto or staking, Chris.

But the thing that I want to encourage you is that the biggest for you domain investors out there, the way you make money on domain names is not based upon their liquid value for most of us. Now, if you’re trading one word domain names and you can buy them at 250,000 selling for 320,000, you know, buy them for four 50, sell them for six 50 and you’re kind of, you know, trading or you’re, you’re buying them for 80 and selling them for one 50.

Could you found, uh, an old buyer that had it forever? You know, an old owner that’s one market, but in general, most domain investors own an illiquid asset at five to 10% of its ultimate value. And I think even if the liquid value of our domain assets dropped over the weekend, along with other digital currencies, That only applies to 10% potentially of the ultimate value of a domain name.

So what I mean by that is say you have a million dollar domain name, say, we said, domains.com was worth a million dollars. And as a wholesale name, it was worth 200,000 because normally you would be only a hundred thousand, but in the domain space, you have a lot of people that would want to own a domain about domains.

So maybe it’s 200,000. So maybe that value took a hit. The liquid value, took a hit over the weekend, but that doesn’t mean that the ultimate value took a 10% hit. And I think because you’re going to make more money in domain names from simply holding them and waiting for time and luck and a fortuitous chance for a buyer to be in the market with the desire and the money to buy your.

That’s how you’re going to make money in big one word, domain names. So I’m going to talk now more to investors. That’s how you’re going to make money is on time and luck. And fortuitousness now you may make your own luck by being a broker and outbounding and reaching out to companies in the space, but that’s where you’re going to make your money is when you take the asset that you’re able to buy as being e-liquid was an uncertain value.

And you had to simply pay more than all the other investors or companies that were going to buy it as an illiquid asset with an uncertain value. That’s probably at a big discount to someone who who’s starting an initiative for their company and spending millions of dollars this year, and they need a brand and a domain.

And they can afford to spend 10 to 20 to 30 times what you may have paid for the domaining cause it’s worth it to them. It’s funny. I got an interesting glance at what timing can be. I went to a sporting event this weekend. I watched the Tennessee Titans lose to the Bengals. So man, that was a heartache game and I watched people pay $12 for a can of beer over and over and over and over again because they wanted that can of beer right now, as they were watching the game in the stadium.

And then you think about going to Costco and buying a six pack of the same beer for $9 and paying a buck 50 for a can. And if someone walked up to you and said, I can’t have beer worth. Well, it depends. Are you, are you just buying it to hold onto it? You’re not sure when you’re going to need it and when you’re going to drink it and Costco’s got millions of them and they need to sell them to you.

It’s a buck 50. I can, or maybe less than a dollar. Again, are you sitting in a sporting event, sharing on your team with your friends and you’re thirsty and you went part of the game day experience to have a beer because the advertising’s told you, you wanted it and you need it. Then you’re paying 12 bucks.

And I think we have that same type of thing in the domain name business. Are you ready to launch a business? You’d need a domain name and you’re going to start making money from customers immediately after you buy that domain name and this domain name is going to help you sell more to your existing customers and gain new customers.

It’s worth a lot more to you than it is to someone who’s just going to sit known it for five. And this works for smaller domain names, but it especially works for million dollar domain names. So then someone says, well, what’s, what’s the domain name worth? And I think you have to say, well, it depends.

What’s the motivation of a buyer. What’s the motivation of a seller. And I think the biggest opportunity to make money in million dollar domain names right now exist when you can be on the flip side of your competition for the name and what I mean by that is as we go forward in 2022, I’m going to try to define who I’m speaking to on million dollar domains, into four groups.

I’m going to talk about people that are looking to buy million dollar domain names to use them for their company or startup right away to be an end-user buyer, to get the benefits of what that name temporary. Secondly, I’m going to talk to million dollar domain name owners who are looking to sell domain names into that channel for their ultimate price because of domain name and.com only cost about $9 a year to renew.

You can have incredible staying power to wait and find the right buyer, but what should you be doing today? Or this year? Third group I want to talk to is those people that are looking to buy domain names at a percentage discount to their ultimate value, whether it’s 50,000 or a hundred thousand or 200,000 or 10,000 or 5,000 or hand Ridge and sell them for a million dollars, can it be done?

I don’t know if you’ve got more time than money. It doesn’t cost you anything to treat. Then the last group would be those people that are looking to make money on the ecosystem of the wholesale price, a million dollar domain names, are you good at finding domain names that are available and you want to be able to make money from selling them at their wholesale value?

Um, and, and so those are the four groups of people that, that I’ll try to talk to in different times throughout the year. Um, but anyway, that’s our, our first main show of the year, we kind of got sidetracked. Cause we talked about securitization the first two weeks of the year. And, and so I really wanted to just kind of get back to the basics of million dollar domains.

And as part of that one to give you a report on the million dollar of the activity in million dollar domain names over the past week, And there was a time when I would’ve wanted to say let’s talk about the activity of million dollar domain names in the first quarter, or let’s talk about the activity of billion dollar domain names this month, I guess, going back, there’s probably a time when you would talk about the activity and million dollar domain names for a whole year, to be able to be able to talk about five or six names.

I think what you’re going to see in 2022, both because we have a lot of people that are doing great job of finding the domain names that have changed hands and reporting about them. And we have more transactions happening because we have more people in each segment. That would be buying a million dollar domain name

I’m stalling here. Cause I’m going to put something as a pin. Um, we have more people in each group that and purpose for buying a million dollar domain name, transacting business each week. And what I mean by that is, is if you say one of the markets is companies, um, starting up and wanting to have the best brand.

And that is increasing. If you have companies that are going from a two word domain name to a one word domain name, that activity is increasing. We have some activity this week of companies going from a long domain name to a three or two letter acronym. That activity is increasing. We have names, changing places, changing hands between wholesale and.

Um, based upon their own personal needs and that activity is increasing. So if you think about it, instead of just having one part of the market strong and having that part of the market dictate what’s happening, like maybe the years where the Chinese market was, was really, uh, driving the market or times when the auction market, uh, was really driving it.

Um,

let’s see. I want to pin this. I think we’ve got multiple places now that are driving the market for one word domain names. All right. I’m going to pin a link with some of the links high. You got that. I’m going to pin a link with some of the links that we’re going to talk about today. And it looks like it’s just going to say wordpress.com.

See, I need a developer to help me out. I need to change my title. But if anyone can test out, if that link works, it should go to a page that has about 10 links on it. And apparently I can’t do it unless I log in. Let’s see, Hey Sam, how you doing today? But just to let you know, it just goes to wordpress.com and that’s, that’s no fun.

Yeah. Thank you. Let me see if I can do this correctly here. Edit Penn link. All right. Million-dollar domain names.com/ 3 6 8. Well, what are you going to do? But try one more chance here.

All right. I’ve just made the executive decision that I’m going to do those links next week. All right. Well, thanks everybody for hearing. What was a one-sided talk today from me about million dollar domain names. I do think the market’s got off to a great start. I do want this million dollar domain named show to be a place where, um, people could talk about million dollar domain names before they’re presented with a million dollar domain name opportunity Sam’s since you popped up to help me out, can I ask you a question you’re in one of the places where we might see a million dollar sale this year you operate?

I know in a lot of ccTLDs names, and I think as the single words in.com go from five to 10 to 20 to 30 million, I think we could see in some of the more, uh, developed, uh, commerce spaces like to UK, um, maybe a million dollar sale there because. You could have companies that are doing hundreds of million dollars of business in that country, or that’s the foundation of their brand globally.

Um, if I said the chances were 50 50 of there being a million dollar co UK sale this year, which side of that bet you think you’d take? Well, it’s 2022, um, is going to be an amazing year for anyone that’s in the digital space, not just the main names, but affiliate marketing and you name it. Anyone that’s invested in the digital space, uh, it should be a good year.

So I think there should be a few decent million-dollar sales, hopefully some of my domains, um, but in the, in the past, uh, a lot of, uh, ccTLDs have sell for a million plus. Um, and I, I think a lot of them got very close last year. Um, I think there was not. Uh, some, some names that sold, but they got very close to the million mark.

And, um, before, you know, I think they will be the, you know, I reckon a few will sell for that price, but you know, it might be a, uh, a site attached to it or whatever. I don’t know, but I’ve got a feeling that there’ll be a couple, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Yeah. I think that, um,

let me just get rid of this link here. I think we’re going to send too much traffic to WordPress. They don’t need it.

Oh, that’s just a mess. I think, I think you’re right. I’ll have to caveat mine now and say, well, we have a reported million dollar, uh, domain name sale, uh, in a CCT LD with the idea that there potentially have been. Uh, but that most of the times the price of a domain name, uh, does not go reported at the time of the transaction.

And I think that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be reported later. I think that a company would usually like to control the publicity. Like if I went in and bought crypto.co.uk, um, or metaverse.co.uk, which I know is for sale right now, and I did pay a billion dollars for it. I may not want the publicity to happen.

At a time that I haven’t yet built up my marketing, uh, for the company. So if there’s going to be publicity around the domain name sale, which is going to make people go, wow, I wonder what they do. I may want to control the timing of that and have it be when I have a value proposition out there when I’m ready to engage with partners in the business.

And so I think that just because a transaction was done under confidentiality doesn’t mean that we may not see a price later, especially I think in the million dollar, the beauty of that million dollar word, where it helps the buyer. Um, and, and it helps serve, notice that they’re going to be active in a space.

So maybe it will be crypto.co.uk. Do you know if that’s a silent. I’m not too sure. Um, who owns that, but, uh, if it isn’t a site, then obviously it’s at the main of the items. Um, you know, for example, names in the CCTL space, slot money.co.uk sold for 1.2 million, Cruz’s still carry a case sold for 1.1 million, uh, cruise sold for 1 million gold is 600,000.

So, you know, that is sort of prices that they’re good names, solid, very strong names. So they gotta be good names in the CCTL D uh, space, uh, to fetch a million. So, uh, you know, uh, if it’s, if someone’s got a good name and a company comes along, they, you know, they’ll pay the price. So, you know, like who knows when the next one’s going to happen, but it’d be interesting definitely this year is, um, gonna be.

A good year for sale. So if you’ve got names, just try and sell them for the right price. Thanks Sam. Well, I want to give a chance as we wind down our hour show here and thanks everybody. If you’ve joined us late, you can click on the replay when we’re done. I tried to cover my view of million-dollar domain names, the purpose of the billion dollar domain names show on domain.club.

And we’re part of the startup club group of companies, which is the largest, uh, largest, uh, talks on largest club on clubhouses startup, that club. And we’re kind of part of that group. And we’re going to be doing some joint things with them. I already do one show each week on startup.club called the name game.

And I’ll be doing that later today at six Eastern. What we do is we talk to companies about they, they present the three panelists, uh, the name of their company, and. There a domain name. And then just from that information, we try to guess what it is that they do. And then we give the company a chance to reveal what it is that they do with their name.

And it gives founders and, and company owners a chance to talk about their company and do a presentation. There might be found there might the other founders or joint venture partners on the call, but it also lets us get into this idea of, is, does your branding and does your name help or hurt you? And does it communicate what your company’s about?

And that one of the biggest things we talk about in many cases is even though you want a brandable name where people will associate that name with your company and no one else, you might not want it to be so confusing and hard to understand that they keep having to ask, how do you spell it? How do you say it?

What are you doing? And so it’s trying to figure out the balance in the middle. So that’s the show that I do later today on startup club. And that’s called the name game. And if you follow me, you should get indications. Uh, for those of you who are messaging me. Yes. I realized my pinned link did not work today.

Uh, it’s a site that I host on wordpress.com, but I was not hoping that that, uh, the site would simply take you to wordpress.com, but it would take you to my website. That’s hosted on wordpress.com. Um, but thanks for that. And I wanted to give anyone else who’s got a talk or if anyone’s got a million dollar domain name they’re working on, uh, if they either want to get an appraisal on it, either at a wholesale or retail value, if they want to announce it for sale.

And again, I’m not talking about. $2,000 names or 5,000. Our names are names that you bought for registry yesterday that you think could be worth a million dollars, unless you really think they’re going to be worth a million dollars. So you can back channel me back channel message me and I’ll share with the group, uh, any names that we might do an appraisal on.

And then if you’ve got a talk on clubhouse about domain names this week, I want to give you a chance to share when that is and what you’re trying to do. I think digital assets and million dollar domain names are critically important for companies as they look at their investments this year. And I’ll finish with this.

I was watching CNBC this week and people were talking about technology stocks, tech stocks, and would the tech stocks come back. And how would the tech stocks do? It was interesting. One of the comments that one of the guests.

They said, I don’t think in the future, we’re going to be able to differentiate tech companies or tech stocks from everybody because in essence, everybody is a technology company now. And what that means is whether you always use traditional distribution or you provide a service in the real world, you’ve had to be, have a technology component of your company in the past two years.

And to virtually you’re competing with almost every other company out there for the limited mindspace that consumers and businesses have.

So if you’re a movie you’re not just competing with movies anymore, you’re competing with gaming and crypto and real world events and the metaphor. And if you’re trying to sell something to a consumer or a business you’re competing with everybody else. And then at a time when it’s becoming more and more and more and more competitive, think about when you think about your domain name, investing in the core assets that are going to help you in this environment.

And it may not be leasing more space than an office building, and it may not be, unless you’re a distribution company, buying more distribution points around the globe, and it may not even be hiring someone for a million dollars a year because I’ll tell you this about a domain name, a domain name works for you.

24 7 365. It doesn’t take sick days. It doesn’t take vacation days. It works for you over the weekend. It can’t leave and go to a competitor. It can’t leave and take your company secrets. You don’t have to give it a raise beyond its annual renewal fee and you control it a hundred percent. And if you’re the CEO of a company, you’re probably the only one that can understand what the value of domain name might be to your company, because everyone else might see it as a competing use of resources that they would like to see, go into programs or inventory or marketing or legal or support or advertising or PR.

And they wouldn’t see those expenses flow every year. And when you’re making a capital investment in a domain name, you’re making a one-time purchase. That once you own that domain name, you own everything it’s going to produce every year in the future. And those benefits could increase a hundred or a thousand percent a year, and you’re not going to have to renegotiate your contract to buy that domain name.

You’re not going to have to worry about that domain name, walking out the door, like a key employee. You’re not going to have to worry about that domain name ending like a joint venture agreement or a distribution agreement or a marketing agreement, or in many cases, an endorsement agreement. You’re not going to have to worry about your domain name, getting caught coming out of an inappropriate place or doing something inappropriate at work.

The next that’s a worry about the embarrassment to your brand of your endorser, potentially doing something that might hurt your brand, but not everyone in the company may see that. But as the CEO or the owner of a company allocating capital, hopefully you, what you’ll hear this year, a million dollar domain.

Is this idea that for the, for the enterprise, for the venture and for the person who sponsors it and, and brings it to the business and champions it, that, that, that wouldn’t be a position of risk for somebody inside of a company anymore. Wouldn’t be like, oh yeah, you’re the guy who said, we should buy this domain name for $2 million.

But instead it will be you’re the woman who came in and showed us the light of what the benefits will be over the next 5, 10, 20, and 30 years for spending something that’s only money that, that is around everywhere. And by spending money, something that we do have you inside of a company, show the company how to wait to get something that it’s always want to do achieve.

So that’s the power of million dollar domain names. You’ll hear me say a lot of these themes over and over again, but I do want to thank everybody for coming. Let’s see, send me a Backchannel message. If you got something good out of today’s show, I do thank everybody for coming every week. It gives me a chance to perfect.

What I think about million dollar domain names. It helps me in the coaching that I do and the consulting that I do with both buyers and sellers of million-dollar domain names. And it helps me reaffirm to myself why I want to buy and slice and securitize million dollar domain names this year. So thank you, Sam.

And thank you everybody else for listening. I’ll give anyone one more chance to share. Let’s see. I do have a message. Yep. I do have a message. Culprit wants me to say, what do I think about televisions.com televisions.com. So, yes, it’s a one-word domain name. Yes. It’s a name that most of us know by the third or fourth grade, if not earlier.

So say you started the name at 3 million because it’s known by so many people, but then you have to start taking off for the fact that most people would say, well, how much is tvs.com? Because that’s shorter, easier to type, easier to text. And it’s what people call a television. You think of a television, you might think of an old bulky model in the living room, but when you think of TVs, maybe you think of something more modern.

So maybe that takes them from 3 million down to a million and a half. And then you have the idea that you own the plural. And what’s interesting about that is the plural means you’re probably going to sell televisions, but the singular means that you might be an online service for what it is that that product does.

So television.com. In the last five years might have become more valuable than televisions.com because television.com could be a place. You go to do what we call watching television or experiencing television. And television’s dot com. Doesn’t have that power. It’s simply a place where you go to buy what some people may think is the old name for televisions, but it’s still a one to $5,000 item that people buy every three to five years, it plays globally.

So I would put the retail value if I was someone called me and I own that name, I would try to get six to 700,000 for it. And if that domain was training in a wholesale auction among investors, I think it would probably go for about 60 to 70,000 because. Investors want to look at the detriments first and they won’t think about the possibility of selling televisions to millions of people around the globe.

They’ll say it’s the long version of the word. And it’s got an S so I’d say 60 to 70 wholesale, six 50 to seven 50 retail. All right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t ask more. Let us know if you do have a sale of televisions.com this year. All right. Thanks everybody. We’ll see you next week on million dollar domains.