DomainSherpa interviews successful domain name investors and entrepreneurs – people we call Sherpas – who share their strategies and tactics to help you be more successful. Hosted by Jonathan Tenenbaum.
Latest Interview
If you think you can file a UDRP case to get control of a domain name after failing to negotiate the acquisition, think again.
The Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was put in place to streamline the process to resolve disputes between trademark holders and domain name registrants where the registration was clearly abusive, predatory and ill motivated.
Unless you can prove the three UDRP criteria, you may be labeled a Reverse Domain Name Hijacker by an international legal panel, face public documentation of the finding, and be exposed to potential legal action.
Michael Cyger March 31, 2014
If you own a domain name, getting the highest offer possible generally requires waiting for a potential end user of that domain name to contact you. In some cases, you may be waiting years, or you may never hear from the perfect end user.
The alternative to waiting is to proactively reach out to potential buyers who may be interested in purchasing the domain name. While it may not maximize your sales price, it could produce a sale and cash flow for your business or investment.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the Estibot Domain Lead Generator & End-User Finder Tools to find and contact potential end users. Also included in this tutorial are the real results from trying to sell four domain names to potential buyers using the Estibot tools.
Michael Cyger March 3, 2014
How risky could registering a $10 domain name be?
Every day new domain name investors and speculators overlook the financial risk associated with registering a domain name that infringes on an existing trademark – a mistake that could cost them more than $100,000. And it’s happening at an increasing rate with the new top-level domains available for registration.
If you’re a domain name broker or an experienced investor that regularly receives emails from new investors asking for help or valuation – and the portfolio is full of trademark-infringing domain names – this is the video to refer them to.
If you’re a new domain name investor or speculator, learn how to avoid the mistake that has the potential to financially bankrupt you.
Michael Cyger February 24, 2014
Many believe the .CO registry is the “poster child” for how a new top-level domain answers all the above questions and is succeeding in the minds of individuals, businesses and entrepreneurs. That makes the top-level domain a better investment than many, if not most, other top-level domains other than .com.
With new gTLDs going live every week for the upcoming couple of years, this interview contains critical information that both new registry operators and investors alike should familiarize themselves with.
Michael Cyger February 17, 2014
In 2011, Luke Webster found an underserved niche in the $13 billion shaving industry: straight razors.
He imported razors and sold them online using his vast experience in search engine marketing. As sales grew, so did his venture. When Webster came on DomainSherpa in March 2013, he shared that his business was grossing six figures per month.
So when DomainSherpa produced the first domain name meetup in Seattle, DNSeattle, it was a no-brainer to invite Northern Idaho-based Webster to keynote on how he built a business on an exact-match domain name – including his experience and how his business has grown in the last year.
Michael Cyger February 10, 2014
More often than not, hand registered domain name portfolios submitted to the DomainSherpa Review are not considered to be valuable by our panel of experts. Maybe there are a few domains worth keeping out of 50 submitted. Maybe.
Today, we’re turning the tables on one of the regular reviewers on the DomainSherpa Review.
Past Domain Sherpa and frequent DomainSherpa Review expert Rick Schwartz opens up his list of 390 recently hand registered domain names, and shares his thought process for how and why he registered the domains.
Michael Cyger February 3, 2014
Instead of hand registering a $9 brandable domain name like ShutterStock.com or iStockPhoto.com and paying for CPC marketing forever, Jon Yau plunked down $250,000 of his family’s savings to purchase StockPhoto.com – a domain name with 50,000 worldwide exact-match searches per month.
Yau considers this investment a “pre-payment” for the endless stream of potential customers that visit his website daily through direct navigation. And with plans to continue to grow his photography database, he expects only to increase his customer conversion rate and revenue.
DomainSherpa January 27, 2014
Listed among the DNJournal.com top domain name sales of 2013 are 114.com for $2.1 million, 88888.com for $245,000 and 1001.com for $100,000.
I would not have paid registration fees for any of these domain names, so I clearly don’t understand the value of domain names comprised only of numbers, usually referred to as numeric domain names.
Luckily there’s an expert ready to share what’s behind those high sale prices and who’s buying 80 percent of the numeric domain names.
DomainSherpa January 20, 2014
We all have domain names that are begging to be developed. Or an idea that we would love to test and see if potential customers like it enough that we can build a profitable business.
But what if we don’t want to design the user experience, hire a developer, build a website, sign up for hosting, or spend any money launching? Can it be done?
It can. And Raj Beri has returned to the show to tell us exactly how to do it. Listen in as Beri describes how to rapidly prototype and test a business idea, including with what industries or with what products or services, and how successful it can be.
Michael Cyger January 13, 2014
.Club is targeting one million registrations by the end of Year 1, and five million registrations by the end of Year 5. And they have the focus, marketing plans and public relations in place to help achieve their goals.
In this interview, .Club CEO Colin Campbell and CMO Jeff Sass discuss the winning auction (in which they beat out Donuts and Merchant Law Group with a bid somewhere less than $5 million), their registry mission, potential customer base, customer adoption, marketing, availabilities phases, valuation of both their domains and .com equivalents (e.g., wine.club versus wineclub.com), and much more.
Michael Cyger January 6, 2014