What factors determine domain value?

EP02 Million Dollar Domains

[00:00:00] Welcome to million dollar domains. Uh, this is million dollar domains today in startup.club. And startup.club is if not the largest, one of the largest clubs on clubhouse. And I’ve been doing a joint show, um, besides my work in domain club with startup club for the past three months. And so we thought we would move and, uh, there’s going to be a way to do it in both clubs, but today we’re in startup clubs.

So. Rachel is hosting us today. Thank you, Rachel. And um, what we do on million dollar domains is we talk about a special part of the domain name, business that is, has less to do with the 150 million dot Toms or the new TLDs or buying names for registration fee and flipping or. Managing the one domain name that your company owns.

And these are all the things we talked about on Monday domaining and outbounding club. But what we’ve done for the past three months, a million dollar domains, it’s really talk about the market of million and multi-million dollar domain. [00:01:00] Where were most cases we’re dealing with scarce assets that are bought and sold on the retail market or the resale market, much like homes are bought and sold on the resale markets.

If you want to go to the middle of New Mexico, maybe, or somewhere in the world, you could probably buy some land for free and just pay the property taxes. But in jail, Most of the time when you’re buying real estate, it’s, it’s a market that’s matured, different people have bought certain properties. And then to, to get those properties that you’d like, now you pay someone else for the value of those names.

And we’ve seen over the course of the last 30 years, domain names, approach million and multi-million dollar numbers in 19 98, 99, 2000. And then maybe again, we saw. Uh, strengths in 2007, 2008, and then really now. And so the purpose of million-dollar domains is to talk about these million dollar. And so what we’ve talked about over the past three months are what makes a domain name, you know, worth a [00:02:00] million dollars.

And I think that just like any appraisal that you might do, you might look at three different ways. What is the cost method of saying a domain is worth a million dollars? What might be the comparable sales method? And then what may be the income method that you might use to appraise the value of an asset?

So at different times I’ve gone through. The prices that are being paid for a million dollar domains seem to have a floor seemed to be consistent. Um, if you want a one word english.com. If you want a two letter or three letter.com, if you want to a two, three or four number.com. They’re all going to be in a much narrower price range.

Uh, then you might find for a name that you may use for a business. So I think you’ve got the cost aspect that you’re not going to get stocks.com or realestate.com or wowed.com or purple.com probably for [00:03:00] less than hundreds of thousand dollars or millions of dollars. And then I talked about the income approach, which is if your company is spinning.

One to five, to 10, to a hundred million dollars on advertising and an easy to remember prestige building domain name can make that advertising one to five to 10% more successful. Or the idea is you would get the same benefit for potentially spending $900,000 on advertising that someone else would have to spend a million dollars on because the domain name, the destination address that they give their customers or the Mindshare that it takes to remember that domain name is going to be is going to be, um, less valuable.

If you, if you don’t have a one word or easy to remember, So I’ve been able to quantify that if you look at your annual spend or the market cap of your company and take your percentage that on [00:04:00] that basis, many of the names that are available for sale and you can buy for just money can give you benefits much more than.

And one of the people that we have with us today, Mani tongue has been working in this market for the past 25 years. I’ve sold a million dollar domain name with Monte. Um, he introduced me to many of the aspects of the domain name business, and I had them on the domain show. So welcome Monte. Thanks for joining us to talk a little bit about million-dollar domains.

Thank you page and, uh, happy to be here. And, uh, there’s a, there’s a lot of the examples of. Seven-figure domain names that are worth a hell of a lot more now today than they were back when they were sold. And that’s for sure. Yeah. And I think as you and I have talked to about where that, where this budding industry in the big one word domain name market, that’s been on the cusp of growth and worldwide acceptance for twenty-five years.

Um, but still in general, I think that. [00:05:00] Everyone is come to grips with the fact that great domain names can be worth one to five, to 10, to a hundred million dollars. And I think that the advantage is still on the buyer side, that if they know what a good domain name can do for their company, they’re still buying in an environment that comes from either past sales, which have happened in some weak economic times, um, or simply the seller’s imagination, you know?

Pick a number one or two or three or $4 million based upon the past, but Bhante, you’ve had some million dollar domains in your auctions this year. Can you tell us a little bit about the last auction you had and I think it’s still going on and you’ve got some, some big one word properties in it. What are some of the dates right now for the right of the.

Um, so the, the closing of the extended auction from the name’s gone option is going to happen on October 14th. Uh, lots will start closing at [00:06:00] one 30, I believe. Um, uh, PM Eastern state. Um, and yes, we have some seven figure names in this option. Um, some of which are considered, um, bargains, even at seven figures, we have names like nutrition.com, sweepstakes.com, waged.com.

Uh, political.com U m.com. Auto loans.com automobile.com. Uh, just to name a few, but, um, uh, outside of that, um, I have gi.com u.com, um, even club.com, uh, that were, uh, marketing for sale. That’s amazing. Now, when you think of a name, since you kind of teased us with it, like club.com, um, or the, the two letter names.

I mean really when someone’s trying to think, everyone just wants to know how much are they, you know what I mean? And really they’re so unique. So [00:07:00] duplicatable, um, in a negotiated method, not in your options, but in negotiated method. How do you kind of start with the buyer if someone’s listening to million dollar domains this week and they’re thinking, well, maybe I want to spend a million dollars.

So my company wants to spend five or 10 million. Do you just kind of show him the price right off the bat. Like, Hey, I’m interested in club.com. How much is it? Do you carry an asking price for something like that or the two letters or is it really a conversation? Well, it’s obviously a conversation. Um, I, I was trained in the consultative sales approach, uh, when I was in my medical business and my medical career for 15 years.

And, um, w what you’ve really tried to do as a, as a, um, you know, as a consultant. And that’s, uh, basically what I, what I’ve been doing with domain names ever since the beginning, it’s kind of changed the way that domain names were, um, even offered, um, to end users instead of vending or lifting, um, Um, needs, [00:08:00] um, or you find out what somebody needs and once, and then you create a case around that.

Um, so you put together a great case around why a certain name might be better than what they’re using or better for a project that they’re about to launch. Uh, I gained a lot of, um, mind share and market share doing that for some of the largest companies in the world. Uh, and some of the biggest industries.

Um, you know, back in the early days, you know, corporations just didn’t get it as much as they do now. And even there, they’re still late to the party on stuff like that. So, uh, uh, I used to manage the acquisitions for Lionsgate films, for example, and if everybody remembers there was a movie called crash.com many, many years ago that won the academy award.

Um, before they got to LA to accept the award, they didn’t own the domain name. And so I got them the domain name and, um, it was, it was a good reason on why they needed that name after they won the academy award for best picture, uh, because there was going to be tons of traffic and [00:09:00] attention and mind share and eyeballs on that, on that movie and on that, on the domain name and trying to.

You know where that, where that website went and where, where it was pointed to and all that stuff. And so that’s just one of the examples. Um, um, you know, there’s, there’s many, many others, but, uh, I use a consultative sales approach, uh, to try to generate a case. Um, if somebody needs to get a range, uh, of a price that’s in a, you know, above seven figures, I try to give them a range.

Also let them know that there’s probably other interested parties in the same name that, um, it’s possible, Michael go higher than that. Um, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of seven-figure names that have sold, but, um, you know, there’s, there’s not as many as six figure names and five figure names and forfeit your names.

Of course. Um, so, um, they’re, they’re big feats to accomplish both at auction as you know, uh, page when we sold your seniors.com for $1.8 million and, um, and others for even more. Yeah. And I would say to people that are thinking about getting into this market, whether you’re listening today [00:10:00] or on the podcast, that many times I would encourage you as a buyer.

You know, you may have someone in your organization or you may have in the back of your mind, Hey, maybe we could get this for cheap, you know, and I would just encourage you that by trying to get something cheap at the beginning, you may just start a really long process that lets the seller. Continually look at the name more and more and sometimes become more enamored with it.

See its value on the upside. And you may end up paying more later because you came in low. You wanted to talk about all the deficiencies, the domain name had how it was terrible, how there’s no way you should pay a certain amount and Monte. Have you seen it? Where most of the time when someone buys a name and the hundreds of thousands or a million dollars.

There’s a lot of times where it should seem like they’re overpaying a little bit. They shouldn’t be a little, it [00:11:00] should seem a little risky, but that’s the only way you can buy something. We’re looking back. You’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe we were even thinking about, you know, whether to pay this or this or this, because of all the value we’ve had.

So sometimes can, can the buyer be so greedy, maybe that the process goes even longer and they pay. Oh for sure. Um, the more interest there is on an aim, usually the higher, the value goes up, the higher the, the, the, the price goes up. So. You know, a lot of people increase price as interest goes up, even, even though the name hasn’t sold yet.

So there could be a thousand offers on a domain name, um, which shows there’s tons of interest in it. And every time there’s an offer, it could ratchet up, you know, similar to any kind of a valuable piece of real estate. I mean, look at the home market as an example, uh, today there’s so much demand that houses were selling above asking.

Um, so that’s kind of a similar example to domain names. Um, on the contrary though, it’s [00:12:00] also can be, it could work to a company or an end user’s advantage by paying more or paying a hefty dollar for a name because they can publicize the fact that they’ve paid up for a valuable piece of real estate or digital asset that promotes their business and enhances their longterm game.

Um, Yeah, people might say that voice.com at $30 million was way overpriced. Um, some people might say voice.com at a million dollars was overpriced, but boy did both sides of that transaction make play and make sure everybody knew that they paid $30 million for the domaining. Um, so, and, and it also set a bar, you know, for other domains.

Um, probably to be, um, enhanced and value and overpaid, you know, like, uh, you know, home.com and others. Um, so it’s really important that, um, if you’re going to pick, you know, some people want to stay quiet and keep the transaction confidential, uh, for good reason, because they don’t want to be solicited with a thousand other names that are like it, [00:13:00] or the, the, the, the, the contrary side of that is once you pay up for it, especially if you’re a public company it’s going to come out every year.

You might as well, you might as well beat the drum about it, eh, because you know, press any kind of press is good press. Um, as the saying goes and paying up for a digital asset or an acquisition, or, you know, a merger and acquisition of a company, it’s very similar to a domain name and the price. Puts that on the map and sets a mark and, and makes it newsworthy.

And wouldn’t you agree? Also many domain names are so unique that once they’re purchased, it’s not like another board or another venture capital group or another startup can say, yeah, we, we we’d buy voice too. We’d go. We’d do that too. We’d like to do that too. Um, you know, now that we’ve seen someone else actually do it, uh, actually, you know, consummate buying that we would do that too, but really.

Once, once it’s gone, they don’t have the ability to buy that exact name anymore. So you’re, you’re almost announcing [00:14:00] to your industry that you’ve purchased something at the exact time that no one else in that industry can duplicate what you’ve done. And in a world of paid media and shared media and earned media.

You’re right. Monty, just dimensions from it. Um, you know, I got to believe if you have a million dollar price tag in your press release, you’re probably going to get picked up on most of the, the newsfeeds surrounding any keyword relating to your industry. And what a great way to either enter an industry or, you know, announce a rejuvenation or a web three O concept or something like that, uh, with this announcement, because sometimes those of you out there, when you’re doing press releases, it’s really hard to talk about yourself, unless you’ve, you’ve come to a stage in your company, like a new release for something you can’t just say, Hey, uh, domain, club’s really doing well right now that really isn’t a press release.

But if I said that, Uh, domain club just bought domain.club that 10 at least [00:15:00] gives me something to say to get that, that shared media in that earned media. Totally agree. And, uh, again, that’s been demonstrated in many, many examples just as, um, you know, companies that buy out other companies make sure it’s newsworthy and it’s right on CNBC that they, they, they publicize the price paid for that.

And then there’s all the discussion. Well, was it overpaid? Was it underpaying? You know, and, and, um, just that conversation generation from that particular transaction even generates more, um, eyeballs and more conversation around it, which makes it more of a. Just from that incident, just from the discussion happening on whether it was worth it or not.

Um, so in the case of domain name, you know, you have, you have things that are, you know, you have rarity obviously, because domain names are unique. Um, you know, there’s the short names, like the two letter domain names, for example, like U m.com that we have, you know, that could stand for a thousand different things with the, that start with the letter, U and M, including a bunch of universities.

And so, [00:16:00] you know, there’s a lot of play on that. There’s a lot of, you know, you’re going to have something that’s generic as you M or something that’s specific as automobile.com or you know, or nutrition.com. And so, um, um, rarity comes in two different, you know, a couple of different formats. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s rare because it’s short and could stand for lots of things.

And once it’s gone, it’s gone or rare could be like a name like nutrition.com that stands for an entire. You know, segment of health and food and, and what you eat every day and, um, you know, healthy environment and all that kind of stuff. And that’s a top tier name or what we, you know, what we call as a top tier name at the very top of the food chain of domain names that then all kinds of stuff fit under it, like diet and exercise and all kinds of.

Well, that’s fantastic. I think you’re right. The two letters, um, have so many uses now. So we talked a little bit about some of the names you representing and the buyer gets the benefit of a broker, many cases. And I think where I found that’s helped over [00:17:00] the years is a buyer can express. Maybe exactly what they’re thinking in no uncertain terms to the broker in a way that just like in a real estate transaction, you may not feel comfortable doing with the seller.

You know, I go into someone’s house and I’m like, that’s terrible. That looks terrible. I want to change that this, that. But I think that whether the, you know, the brokers level of interest, what they’re looking to do, what they’re looking to pay, it seems like it helps both sides to have this buffer to kind of help the communication.

Do you find that sometimes you’re, you’re having to translate what the seller tells you, maybe to the buyer in a way that they can hear it the best way and then vice versa. Oh, for sure. I mean, again, that’s where the consulting side comes, comes across. I’ve probably done more stealth acquisition transactions than anyone.

Um, so I would be on the buyer and seeking out the proper name for, uh, for a particular, for, for their company or for their, you know, for their end user use. [00:18:00] Um, and then, um, working with the seller side, you know, I have to be the consultant on their side as well to make it a fair transaction. Um, Um, what you, what the perfect transaction is, is, uh, something that’s a win-win for everybody.

What were the buyers happy? The sellers happy. And of course the broker, um, or the agents happy, uh, with the transaction. And, um, as a, if you’re working on the buyer side, you obviously want to help them get the name at the best and most affordable price. And if you’re working on behalf of the seller, you want to get the most money for the domain name.

So it’s, it’s, it’s a tricky spot being in the middle of that, but, um, if you’ve done it over and over again, you know what that sweet spot is and where it’s fair to everybody and. Then you get repeat business, uh, as a broker, um, you know, on the broker side, but then you have a happy transaction between buyer and seller in the, in the long run.

And that’s. Yeah. And I think we’re at a unique time right now, because I think, um, whether it’s because of the renewed emphasis on e-commerce because of the pandemic, the frustration with having the dominant internet companies like Amazon and [00:19:00] Google and Facebook, you know, control your message that buyers are, are becoming infected.

And sellers, the reason I think it’s, it’s, it’s a two way market right now is I think most sellers that have owned premium names for 20 years, if they ever thought they were going to get an amount in 2000 or 2007, we’ve kind of got back to that level where they said, well, I’m never going to sell until I get a million I’m never going to sell.

I get 2 million. And I think for them the last seven or eight years, they would have had to take a law. Versus their emotional expectations of what they thought the name would be worth Monday. So now that we’ve reached a strong market, I think many of the best inventory. Is available, you know, names like home.com coming up this year and some of the other one word names, you know, I think that we have a lot of inventory that most people didn’t even want to have discussions about.

Right. Monte and 14, 15, 16, [00:20:00] 17, 18. Cause the, you know, the, the prices were maybe a little weaker. So you’ve got a time when we have great inventory. The sellers expectations are based upon the past and the buyers seem to be slowly coming around or. Uh, startup just raised so much money, like a hundred million dollars, then all of a sudden spending 1% of what they raise to get there.com.

That seems to be a trend. Do you see that trend? Yeah, for sure. And there’s still some companies that, that, uh, that just don’t get it, you know, I’m I’m and I’m going to lay out the perfect example. So we have bird.com for sales still, um, and a bird, the scooter company, you know, bird, a bird, um, scooters, and, and, uh, they they’re about to go on.

They still don’t own their.com name, which I have, uh, it’s at a reasonable price for them to get. Um, they’re, they’re, they’re going to come out over, uh, I believe it’s between a four and $5 billion market cap, uh, value, and they can obtain the domain [00:21:00] name at the right price, uh, for, you know, a fraction of that.

Obviously you have, you know, a percentage of, of what their, um, you know, what their value. And, you know, they’re about to launch on a, on a.co, you know, and, and I, yeah, I like, I love dot CO’s, but it’s not as good as a.com. It’s a great alternative to.com, but you know, there’s not too many successful IPOs that launched on a.co versus a.com.

Um, and then you brought up the Facebook example. So what just happened to Facebook in the last week? Well, they had a huge outage. Not only Facebook as a social media company, but the millions of businesses that decided to go with a Facebook page instead of having their own domain name. And so they were out as a result of Facebook being out when they say had their own domain name, they would have been in business and still operating for the almost 24 hours that Facebook was down.

That’s a huge, huge, um, SailPoint right there on why companies should own their own domain names and, um, the best domain [00:22:00] name they could ship out. Uh, to avoid somebody else’s outage, uh, and thinking that Facebook could never go down or be vulnerable to, uh, to, uh, an attack or to a screw up on their DNS or whatever.

And therefore everybody’s businesses were affected by that besides Facebook. And, uh, that, that multiplier effect is a great fail case on why everybody should have the right domain name and, uh, and their website up and operating well, fantastic. No doubt. And I think. Um, you know, the things that go along with the Facebook thing, kind of bringing to mind different things.

I know Michael Costello tweeted yesterday. Hey, if, if you heard in a sales process, someone saying we can get by with Facebook, uh, you know, now’s the time to contact them again. But I think it brings up more than that. It brings up the idea that in today’s market, you might be paying Google. To retain customers that you’ve already earned.

You’ve already made the [00:23:00] investment to get a customer. And most companies know what that investment is. You know, what does it cost to acquire a customer? And you’ve already made that investment yet, somehow, whether it’s because of the competition for the keyword of your company’s name on Google, you’re having to also continuously pay.

If you’ve trained them to only find you. By typing your company name into the Google search bar. And I think w w I think what’s happening more and more is companies are realizing, wait, because we have a short name because we have an easy to remember name. People can either just type in our name on their smartphone, because really it’s almost easier now on a smartphone for me to type in bird.com.

Then to go to Google type in bird, have to look at their results, scroll down past the page, the results, paid results. Look at each thing. See if it’s the company I want and then get myself to my [00:24:00] destination. And then it may not be the destination@bird.com today. It may be where the bird.com marketing people want me to go.

So I think when you think about a name, like bird.com, you know, I think money, I think, and we do a lot of staging it, million dollar domains, you know, I think your buyer’s going to come from outside that in user, because it’s just something. It’s four letters. It’s short. If you think about a bird making music, a bird making speech, a bird chirping, a bird flying, a beautiful bird, a bird in the sky.

It’s just such a wonderful thing to be associated with. Um, and I think what a company can do is they can say, are there any attributes of our company that are bird. We’re all birds or just the word bird would be associated with and what these companies have been forced to do. I think over the past 10 years is make up other words like birdie or bird something, or spell birds with three whys.

[00:25:00] When the cost of getting the exact one isn’t as much as they think. So. Good luck with that one. Yeah. Well guess who, the biggest buyer should be a bird that’s who the number one buyers should be based off of what you. No, what company uses bird as their logo makes a bird noise. Whenever you send a message.

Twitter. Exactly. Twitter. Or the next Twitter, but bur you know, birds tweet, that’s what birds do. And BR and, and, and Twitter should be the next buyer of bird. And, uh, of course I am trying to get it across their, uh, their, their eyeballs, because it’s a no brainer. They just launched a, uh, uh, a division called bird watch.

Um, so they’re using the term already, but that’s just a perfect example, uh, and exactly down the pathway of, as you just described on, uh, you know, other potential buyers, there’s no brainer buyers. There’s no brainer buyers that have the word, and they’re the only word they go by my brand and they don’t own their own brand name and the.com.[00:26:00] 

And then there’s others that use bird-like features, logos, uh, uh, noises, um, um, things in their commercials that makes the most sense. And I would say, you know, the neat thing about the crypto craze or the NFT craze has been that a lot of it’s had. Completely outside the three biggest companies on the internet, Google, Facebook, um, and Amazon.

And, you know, you think about telegram and then discord. And the idea that people have come up with better mousetraps, I think of a company raises $40 million to do a new messaging service or something. And then they do their second round of $200 billion or something to be bird. It’s just a fraction of their market tap, you know, literally it’s, it’s it’s like saying, would you rather have a company worth, you know, a hundred million dollars called X or, you know, it would only cost you [00:27:00] 101 million to be well, 104 million to be worth this now, Monte, I know we’ve had just for a little bit.

The advantage that I think buyers have in an auction platform is in some ways you’ve already done some of the work for the buyer and that you’ve prenegotiated a reserve for the seller. And not only that is, I’ve told people over the years, you’ve prenegotiated kind of the opportunity to take some time to think about this name.

By it and know that they’re going to get it. It’s not going to be pulled out from under them or something like that because you’ve got a reserve price on these names that if people bid that reserve numbers, they don’t have to wonder if the transaction’s going to go through. Right. The sellers already agreed to that.

Uh, that is correct. 99.99% of the time. So, yes, so I do a lot of work with the seller to come up with a reasonable reserve. The goal, obviously in an auction, this is no different than Kristy Sotherby’s Meekum car auction, Jackson. [00:28:00] Um, is to have reasonable reserve prices and even no reserve prices that drive market value based off of market competition and letting the market determine what the value is.

So, um, domain names are still a unique, um, asset in that way that. There’s not a lot of comparables, uh, as there is with real estate. So, you know, if I’m in a neighborhood and I’m selling my house and the house across the street was built by the same builder and has the same structure, you know, like a plan neighborhood, my house is likely, uh, valued at the same price that that house just sold.

Uh, based off of the number of bedrooms and the neighborhood we’re in and whether I’m on the water or not, that kind of stuff. So that’s it, that’s kind of an equal comparable, uh, and that’s what makes a real estate, um, you know, a comparable market with domain names. It’s kind of similar. You can say that bird.com is similar to.

Um, birdie or birds, plural, or, you know, a type of bird or what birds make a tweet or whatever, but it is very unique. [00:29:00] Um, and it is, um, it is based off of type in traffic and well, how you can SEO it and whether it is a dictionary term and, you know, uh, marketability and, um, all that kind of extra stuff. So.

We do have a huge comparable database, obviously of similar terms and the same keywords and all that stuff. So that’s how we kind of come up with, um, a market value and I’ve done 500,000 plus domain appraisals. Um, so we use that data as well and all the millions of transactions that have occurred, um, but take negotiate with the seller to come up with a reasonable.

And that will drive market competition is one side of it. And it’s, it’s, you know, it’s not an easy task to do because you want to make sure that seller satisfied with the sale. And then of course, the buyer has a set reserve, you know, and they don’t know what that reserve is, but they at least have a price at which when they strike that number, um, that, that, uh, they’re going to become the winning bidder of that name when they beat the second highest bidder.

So in that way it is correct. And [00:30:00] that’s what makes. A viable market for digital real estate and digital asset and things that are fungible and non fungible, like art, uh, collectibles, um, you know, rare coins, um, NFTs, as you can see, what’s going on, the biggest transactions are happening on auction because of this.

Um, not in. Um, and, and, uh, you know, we believe, and I’ve always believed since I created the auction market for the domain industry, that it’s a way to keep fluid market transactions and liquidity in our market. Um, on the side. True private and negotiated and listing transactions. So all at the same time, um, because it sets a bar, it makes it, it sets a, uh, a great foundation of what names are worth.

And it keeps things going and fluid throughout the year. No matter what time or what day it is or whatever, um, when the markets may be up or down, um, auctions, or at least our auction seem to, to keep the market fluid and generating a revenue. [00:31:00] That’s great mind you. I would encourage those of you looking at the right of the dot list.

You know, whether you’re looking for a, a million dollar name, like new christian.com, multimillion dollar name that because, and all respect to Monte that the whole world doesn’t know about domain options yet. And you might take the approach that, well, if no one bid more than 300,000 or something for nutrition.com, why did I have to pay the.

As it’s more, but I might say to you as a buyer right now, you’re benefiting from the fact that as much as Bonnie, you know, prize, not every qualified buyer is at that table to buy that name. And you might be able, you may have to pay the difference between the current bid and the reserve to get it, but you’re going to own it.

And the other people that might’ve paid that amount, aren’t going to find out you bought it until you have it. So I think in many cases, because we don’t always read and Monte and notice [00:32:00] with that, we don’t always reach every qualified buyer to be in the room of these options. That if that, if you, it would be great, if you only had to pay what the second highest bidder one to pay, but if you’re there and the other qualified buyers aren’t, and you know what the reserve is, or you bid high enough to get the reserve, it’s really a buy it now.

And you’re not going to have all of the. Am I too far off base, too Pollyanna, or I think that’s an advantage for the buyer that, that there’s a chance. Not every qualified competitor is bidding in the auction. Oh, that’s definitely true. I mean, uh, uh, I try to get as many qualified buyers, so our options as we can, uh, we do all kinds of marketing and end user marketing and LinkedIn marketing and Facebook marketing.

And, um, Scott works his ass off in marketing. And so we, we try to get as many qualified bidders as we can so we can, so we can truly have a, um, a true market value at, at the strike price or whatever the price is. Um, and we do run, I do run all kinds of different options. So [00:33:00] we do do sealed bid options with, um, you know, bitter D high bidder pays the second highest bid price that we did that in our contention resolution four.

I can, you know, when, when all the new TLDs came out, um, because that was the fairest way to do those types of auctions, we felt, um, where everyone would put their best bid in. And, and even if you. The highest bidder would pay the second highest bid price, uh, which would be called the market price at that time.

Um, in, in terms of public auctions and open options or English auctions as we run, um, it’s the highest price wins obviously. Um, and you outbid each other until that price goes to the highest point. And then when there’s no more interest in. Bought or, you know, at the strike price or it’s, uh, moved and sold or, I mean, moved into, um, you know, a brokered situation where we might have to bring the reserve price down and negotiate with the buyer that was interested, our second highest bidder and the highest bidder and see if we can get a deal done there.

And we do lots of [00:34:00] those transactions as well. Fantastic money put the, the what’s you’re fading. You’re fading out a little bit page. It sounds like now.

Uh, can you hear me barely? Something’s happened with your mic. All right. All right. Um, so we have till the 14th, uh, the names that didn’t meet reserve in the live auction are available. Plus some names that may not have been in live auction, cause you had to whittle down the list and those end on the 14th.

Well, they end all in at the same time, that day will different bids extend the auction or how’s that going to work just from the details point of view. Now it’s going to be a staggered. Um, so closing starts@onethirtypmeasternstandardtimeatrotddothighbid.com. That’s HIB id.com. Um, or if you go to rotc.com, you can be directed right to the [00:35:00] auction.

Um, but we are, we have a staggered close, so, uh, we’ll start closing lots of names at the same time. Um, you know, lots being, you know, Um, a group of names at once. And then if there is a bid that happens within 30 seconds or a minute of closing, then there’ll be an extension. And, um, it’ll extend until the bidding’s over in each one of those lots.

And it’ll continue throughout the day until all the lots are either sold or closed and past. Well, fantastic. Well, I’m going to cover some news of the day. Is there anything else you want to share with us Monte or Scott? Scott? You have anything? No, I just was, uh, my jumped on the beginning. We were talking about Andy eaters and what Paige was going to do with that.

But I think you’ve covered everything. Monte, as you mentioned, page, there was, there was a lot of names that weren’t in the live auction. And then there were some late addition names that, um, you know, didn’t even have a chance to get in the live auction that are in the [00:36:00] extended auction name, like wage.com for example, which is.

Again, a great, awesome, you know, one word, short name that stands for, you know, anything we’re related to money and making money and earning a wage and income and a job and, um, all that stuff. So, uh, that’s, that’s one of the best names we have in the auction as well. What’s the reserve rains on, on Wade’s.

If I’ve got some nickels to rub together, I got to find some money in. Oh, that’d be, that’d be in your million dollar category. That’s it? But I think that’s a great example though, because you know, you think about wage and I think that. You know, people could say, oh, this is what’s wrong with this. What’s wrong with this.

What’s wrong with it. And then you think what really is the most valuable people? The most valuable thing that people have even more than their house, it’s the earning power over their lifetime. And I think that when you started talking about the total earning power of every person in the world is your, is your market size.

Um, [00:37:00] and the ability to relate that, you know, with. Uh, one syllable, one word Wade’s dot com. The only thing that I think works against people’s thinking is the past, or maybe it hasn’t been done. And I guess Monte, that’s the one thing from, you know, again, in many ways the, the, the, the person who’s started everything in our business.

Do we need to have some new companies make that case. You know, for a long time, we used to have the business.com sale and the toys.com IPO. And we’ve had companies buy generics to brand themselves, you know, like purple mattress company, but the idea of taking a generic and, and applying it to that business.

You know, I think some people might say, well, no one else is doing it. Why should I, um, do we need some new use cases in that area where people started a business with, uh, with a great one word showed how you could make 10, 20, 30, $40 million a [00:38:00] year. It seems like some of our use cases are dated.

Well, I wouldn’t say they’re, I wouldn’t say they’re dated. Uh, I would just say that, um, you know, you use purple as an example, which is a mattress company. Um, Uh, you know, in that particular case, it has nothing to do with bedding other than the material underneath the mattress is purple. Um, but it had nothing to do with, you know, the mattress itself, other than the color of the mattress, uh, you know, fabric, you know, the mattress, a makeup, um, and, and you have several examples like that word names, you know, short names, we’ll repurpose for another use.

Um, and then just. Um, on that case study, um, you know, they became valuable domain names in itself because the, uh, color turned into a product or, um, you know, another word turned into, uh, another use case that was unrelated to the actual definition of the word. Um, that’s actually a [00:39:00] cool way to use names these days.

And of course you have the urban dictionary and other dictionaries now that are in use. You did mention like using bird with a Y instead of a IRD and a Y RD and which people are doing, and, and the slang of the word sometimes makes it cooler and more hip than the actual spelling of the word. Um, and I think there’s plenty of use cases out there that do it.

And, and as we keep going down a path of digital. Uh, the digitalization and AI revolution of, um, of the internet. You’re going to see all kinds of new use cases and words and things that are used. I mean, just look at the last 12 months. You know, digital real estate, digital assets, NFTs, non fungible tokens, crypto Bitcoin, um, all the various terminology for that Metta medic.

Metaverse met a universe, all these new words that were in existence before, but weren’t used in crypto before, because there wasn’t crypto. Now there’s new uses and new cases and new definitions. And now they’re going to be redefined in the, [00:40:00] in the, in the dictionaries, across the world because of this. Um, so I think that happens every day and maybe we just don’t pick up on at all.

Yeah. Well, I would say to, to those out there in the business, I think that once something shown to be. Working the price of entry is going to be a lot more. And I think if someone takes mattress.com and starts moving 60, $70 million a year of mattresses off of it, there’s going to be a rush to buy the keywords, not for their brandable value, but for their keyword value.

And. You may have to pay up now, but I think compared to what’s going to happen to sellers expectations when there is a great use case like that. Um, you know, I think that’s the risk and people say, yeah, but I, I don’t invest in risky things. I don’t take chances. Well, there’s billions of dollars being spent on risky assets right now.

And. And I think that shouldn’t be a thing. So speaking of billions of dollars, thanks again, Mani and Scott, [00:41:00] I’m going to announce the Guinness book of world records, highest asking price ever for a domain name. Um, this is the official unofficial. Book of world records, which for those of you who aren’t over 40, uh, used to be a book that we all had that had the world records for everything, the oldest person, the youngest person, the tallest person.

So I’m going to use the Guinness book of world records. I’m going to announce and put forth for verification, the largest asking price ever for a domain. And, uh, Monte, I could play a game with you and ask you, what do you think it is? But anyway, I was looking on doe.com, which is a way to look at all domains for sale.

And I clicked some of the keywords like Monte was talking about, you know, NFT and metaverse and I have metaverse.aig. And metaverse.aig and Dofu has a [00:42:00] way to search the different marketplaces for what’s for sale. And we’ve all seen the names that are for sale for $999 million. And I say, that’s peanuts because metaverse that AIG has been listed for sale, not for seven figures, not for eight figures, not for nine figures.

Not for 10, not for 11, not for 12. Not for 13, not for 14, not for 1517 figures. It’s for sale metaverse.aig for 14 quadrillion 165 cents million 439,241 billion, $642 or $302. So Monty, have you ever seen anything listed for sale for more than 14 quarters? Only in pesos.

I think, I think that must [00:43:00] be in pesos or, or, or shackles or something. It’s got a dollar sign in front of it. So the internet doesn’t lie. Um, So anyway, so that’s a, you heard it here first, the height, or maybe, or maybe it represents the entire universe and beyond in a potential users of people we haven’t discovered yet that living beings.

There you go. It’s not just the metaverse. It does not say a financing was available, but you might be able to get it for a trillion. Uh, for a 14,000, uh, it’ll be 1000 years that a trillion a month would be $14 trillion, 14 quadrillion dollars. Anyway, uh, we in second place, uh, oh my gosh, you got me on that.

That’ll be next week. Tune in to see with second place, uh, here on three I’ll sort by price decreasing with the word metaverse. [00:44:00] Uh, FB Metta first is, oh, we just have a new record. We now have FB metaverse listed for sale for 73 quadrillion. That must be somebody listening right now that just put that up for sale because I think it would become number one in the Guinness world book.

That’s right. They’re tied with metaverse start and start metaverse. So those people need to add $1 to their listing so that it’s 73 quadrillion 316 quadrillion 861,022 billion, 119 million, $730. All right. That was. Well, listen, rarely do we get the real world to interject with domain names and we just kind of about 10 minutes more today of a million dollar domains.

And if you have a question about a million dollar domains, a question for Monte or Scott, if they can stay with us, or if you’re offering a million dollar name for sale, or you want to know if your name [00:45:00] is a million dollar domain name and. Have it be close. Okay. Um, or if you’ve got a show on, uh, on clubhouse this week, go ahead and pop up and we’ll make you a speaker.

If you give us your permission to record. But, um, in the news this week, Elliott silver reported on his domain investing.com, which you should be subscribed to. I know many of you can probably get the feed from domaining.com, but if you’re subscribed to his feed, you’ll get his post. Right. And he talked about Kevin O’Leary from shark tank.

Mr. Wonderful. I think is what he goes by. Um, and one of his investments is in a company called immutable holdings, Inc. And immutable holdings Inc is a holding company with various blockchain investments. This is from, uh, Elliot story. And one of the investments was nfte.com and just like Bhante shared before Monte, uh, immutable holdings had a press release where they said, announcing that [00:46:00] immutable holdings is listed on the stock exchange, the Nao stock you saints.

I’m not sure where that is. Um, But, uh, Kevin said quota divested immutable holdings to get a diverse portfolio of blockchain opportunities, including nfte.com. One of the most important and valuable domain names and Cristo assets settled. Larry nfte.com is where the puck is going. The opportunity to build profiles in the NFTE space was such a powerful and important domain name.

Is what immutable holdings is doing. So if you think about that, By having Kevin as a shareholder, knowing that his name and his press releases are getting picked up. Not only are they announcing that they own in Ft com, but they’re given a free chance in one or two sentences to say exactly what their business model is without having to pay for that advertise.

So not only when you announced that you’ve purchased a one word domain name to get a chance to tell people what [00:47:00] the name of your company is, you get you’ve earned the right because of their interests to say what your company’s trying to do. And if you think of how much money companies spend trying to communicate what their company’s trying to do, it’s an amazing chance.

Uh, the thought is that they bought this around. Let’s see, I don’t know if they’ve ever published it. They want NFC at that time to be the go-to platform for entering the NFTE ecosystem. Uh, Andrew Roesner, uh, had announced that he sold in Ft, uh, to this holding company. Uh, Elliot found out that the name was sold for seven figures.

Although the exact amount is not being disclosed. So Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O’Leary might be the type of person that you can expect. If you had a start-up and you went to the shark tank and you may say, well, what is your company worth? Or what are your assets? And you said, well, we have a domain name. You may think he’d be a naysayer.

[00:48:00] But I think in this case he gets it. And I think more people than you think. In the real world, they don’t want it publicized. They want to be able to buy things for cheaper. But, um, Monte, I don’t know if you’ve worked with this company before or, or this, but don’t you feel like this is a real world, uh, announcement of something that we’ve known for a long time, but it’s going to take more of these, uh, before we can ever say that domains are at their top or overvalued or this, that, and the other, we still have a long way to.

Yeah, for sure. And, and, you know, and Andrew’s a good friend of mine and a good cop and a good colleague or, or we’re in businesses together. Uh, and we also compete together and as brokers and, uh, but I know for a fact that he sold. Cheap, um, on purpose so that it would be a real use case. So there’s another example of somebody in the industry, um, um, selling a name less than probably what it’s valued at one could argue that it’s worth as much as [00:49:00] a voice.com you know, NFTs and.

Um, you know, it’s, it’s shorter than boys. It’s, it’s the huge rage right now. It’s, uh, it’s also a three word domain name that could, you know, three letter domain name. It could stand for other things as well. Uh, it happens to Stanford, non fungible, token, um, and. It keeps again, it keeps fluid fluidity and liquidity in the marketplace by doing a transaction like that.

And look what happened, you know, Kevin and Larry of sharp shark tank made a point to say how valuable that domain name was. And one of the reasons why he invested in that company and, and there’s, there’s lots of examples like that. And I think as more and more transactions come into the future, um, you know, some people put stipulations saying, Hey, we, we want to do a joint press release about this.

And that helps the industry. It raises everybody’s Tidewater up, no matter what domain name you have, what extension you believe in. Uh, it helps raise the value of the entire industry when things like that happen and, and a particular famous investor and a television [00:50:00] personality. And, you know, CNBC commentator makes a point by saying how valuable that particular domain name was and using the word domain name and using the, uh, the, the actual domain name that was sold.

And we know it was sold for $2 million. And so that’s great. Um, and we need. Well, fantastic. Um, last thing I’ll cover today on the news was, uh, James Isles, who does a great job. He writes for Dean Dwayne named wire. He talked about a company, marshmallow.com, which. The big marshmallows song for 12,500, about four years ago.

And the Andrew was like, great sale. Wow, great one word name. But at that time, it wasn’t clear that these single word names were going to have the brand of open. And people said, well, you want to get the one with the E because that’s what it sounds like. And different things like that, but he writes a story and he talks about how for buying that name for 12,500.

Now there they’ve just raised 85 million at a [00:51:00] $1.2 billion valuation. Um, they spent the 1200. In the early days, instead of waiting till now, where they may have spent, had to spend $2 million to get the name, they paid 12 five. It was for sale on seydoux.com at the time. And I think that if you’re out there buying, you’re going to have to show foresight.

And I would say to you that are listening about million dollar domains. It’s only the equity owner, the private equity firm, the venture capital firm, the CEO, it’s only a stakeholder. I think that can make a domain name, decision like this because. I think everyone else in the company is looking for guidance on what to do from the top down.

And they may not want to see any money go toward, um, an asset purchase. They may want to think that that people can always replace that asset. But as I’ve said for 20 years, you know, a domain name works for you, 24 7, 365. It takes no vacations. It needs no friends benefits. [00:52:00] You don’t have to house it. You don’t have to create an officer.

You don’t have to supervise it and pay a supervisor or a manager. And, and once you buy that asset in.com for the initial price, it’s going to cost you about $9 and 50 cents to $13 a year to keep that name for each and every year, you have the guaranteed right to renew that domain name on the internet.

And I think that. Other departments may not want to see money, go out for this purpose, you know, to, to buy an asset. But if you’re the stakeholder and you’re allocating capital inside of a company, I would encourage you that you need to make the decision to spend the money, a domain name, to make all the rest of the money that you spend, uh, happen.

So those are my three news items. Uh, this week in Ft com selling and Kevin O’Leary’s comments. I think that should go into your list of links that you can show to people. When you’re talking about million dollar domain names, what other people have said [00:53:00] about million dollar domain names. I think you can paint a picture with the domain name wire story on unicorn.com uh, to show people that.

Even at the time, it may look like you’re overpaying a little bit, but looking back on it, if you know what you’re going to do with it, even at your founder or your startup stage, um, if you can get it for the right price, that makes sense. And then I want to thank Monty and Scott from right of the.to share with us about direction, their auction coming up and, uh, and domain names.

So thanks everybody. I’m going to check for questions. Let’s see, uh, anybody have any questions for what we talked about today? Have a million dollar domain name they just bought or that they’re selling or brokering, or lastly, if you’ve got any clubhouse talks this week that you want to share, um, I’ll be on Monday in domain club for Monday domains and then Tuesday in domain club for outbounding club, where we talked about selling domains and outfit.[00:54:00] 

And I know next Tuesday, I think Braden, Pollock’s going to be on with Krista for a clubhouse talk. So, uh, we usually end right about the top of the hour, Rachel. Thanks for letting us be in start-up club today. We may do this in the future again, so thanks.

And Monte and Scot, and anything else you want to, you want to end with a Monty? Thanks for announcing some of the new ads like Wade’s dot com to the auction. And we hope to have you back to talk about the results of the auction, um, uh, as you get those in. So thanks a lot. My pleasure, our pleasure. We look forward to everybody participating in the online auction.

That’s ending on October. Thanks Monte. Hey Debra. How you doing? Do you have some content and a content room coming up? I do. Thanks Paige, for having me up on stage and, um, this afternoon at 3:00 PM Eastern standard time. Uh, we’ll be [00:55:00] Domenico was, and it’s a club about brandable domain and, um, people.

Feedback from their peers and many times that will increase the value, like in your own mind of your own domain. Um, just to see, to get, if you, when you get feedback other people’s. Fresh eyes, see things you might not have seen in your domain. So it’s a lot of fun. And, um, and we also talk about other things about in the brandable space, like the brandable markets or, um, whatever we want to talk about.

Brandable tone means. So again, that’s, uh, 3:00 PM Eastern standard time domains and domain is, is domain with I a Z. Great. And if you want more information, you can also hit Debra’s profile and follow her club or follow her. And Deborah, we did record today. So I wanted to make sure to get [00:56:00] your permission that we can record you to the.

Yes, certainly page. Thank you. Fantastic. Well, thanks everybody for coming to million dollar domain so you can get some information on prior shows a million dollar domains.club. We’ll have the recording of this show up on start-up dot club and a link from domain club. Uh, want to thank our speakers and guests for coming to million dollar domains today and have a great week out there.

I can’t wait to see what happens in million dollar domain name. Just in the next seven days till we meet again. So I’m going to close the room and thanks to.