We’re joined by three Domain Sherpas: Adam Strong, Andrew Rosener and Shane Cultra.
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Watch the full video at:
https://domainsherpa.com/review-20170313/
Michael: Are hyphenated domains making a comeback? You decide.
Here’s today’s show. Hey, Sherpa Network, thanks so much for joining me today. I’m Michael Cyger, publisher of DomainSherpa.com, and this is the DomainSherpa Review. This is the show where we get into the minds of successful domain name investors using real examples, so we can learn strategies and tactics to become better investors ourselves. We have three segments to the Review. We’ll start off learning what the Sherpa’s recently bought and sold. Next, we’ll discuss and value an investor-submitted domain name portfolio and, finally, we’ll preview some domains going to auction soon at NameJet.com and whether the Sherpa’s think they’re good investment opportunities for you.
Joining us today on the DomainSherpa Review are three past Sherpa’s, and industry thought leaders. In order from left to right, we have Adam Strong, Co-Founder of Evergreen.com, a domain name brokerage firm and Co-owner of NameBio.com, the service we all use to find comparable sales. Andrew Rosener, CEO of the domain name brokerage firm MediaOptions.com, and CEO of Ganjapreneur.com, the number one online educational resource for the marijuana, and hemp industry, and Shane Cultra, Publisher of the blog DSAD.com, and Owner of the Country Arbors Nursery in Illinois. Sherpa’s, welcome to today’s show.
Shane: Thanks, Michael.
Adam: Thanks, Michael.
Michael: All right, today’s show is sponsored by six, awesome domain name providers that allow us to do what we do here. They are EstiBot.com, Escrow.com, David Weslow Legal Services, DomainIQ.com, Efty.com, and DNAcademy.
Before I tell you about them we’re gonna start off with a segment called “What’s New, Sherpa’s?” where the Sherpa’s get to share one purchase or sale that they’ve made over the past few weeks, and we get to learn what they paid or received for the domain, why they thought it was a good deal, and how the negotiation progressed, if there was a negotiation. I’ll lead you through the questions. But the Sherpa’s will get to comment during this segment, as well, so it should be entertaining, if not educational. Shane, so we’re gonna Shane, then Adam, then Drew this segment. Shane, let’s start with you. What’s one domain name that you personally bought or sold in the past couple of weeks. Tell us the domain name, and not the price yet.
Shane: I was gonna go with a four-letter that I bought from Drew at NameJet because I wanted to see if he even knew what it sold for. But I can’t remember what it was now and I’m too lazy to go look. So, I’ll go with a sale, and I sold s70.com, the letter S, number seven, zero.com
Michael: All right, three character. S as in Sam, 70.com. Adam, what do you think Shane s70.com for?
Adam: You know I’m not really super familiar with the [inaudible 00:02:47] and price points here, so…
Shane: I love it.
Adam: I would just, as a best guess, five.
Michael: $5,000. Drew, are you familiar with the letter, number, number.com market at all?
Drew: I used to be. I am not…
Adam: Yeah, there’s a way to become familiar with it, though.
Michael: What’s the way?
Drew: DNJournal, right?
Adam: Well, you got mad at me last time I did this, NameBio.
Michael: NameBio, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Adam: But I would probably find the results there, Shane, maybe?
Shane: Yes, you would definitely find there…
Adam: So I won’t do that.
Michael: Well, you can go look it up. You already said. All right, Drew, what do you think s70.com, what do you think he sold it for?
Drew: I’m gonna say $1,700.
Michael: $1,700, so this is an interesting one. You know we’ve often talked about acronyms selling, and numeric selling, and you know the mixed market is one that has a liquid value. You can go on NameBio, and you can into the pattern section. You can type in lnnselect.com and look at all the recent sales, sorta by price. See the most, you know, highest priced ones, and then try and figure out why they sold for more. probably ones with eights in it. Like some consonant that’s a Chinese premium plus 88 or something like that. Shane, what did you sell s70.com for?
Shane: All right, I’ll lead into it. This is a good market. This is really a market that has gone up every year for five years, and even through the Chinese downturn, it still sells. It’s a very big market. The other thing there’s an advantage on zero’s. People think zeros are bad, but when they’re round at the end, they seem to hold price. So I sold this one last week for $3,300.
Michael: Wow.
Drew: Wow.
Shane: That one, Flippa.
Adam: That’s way up. Those were…
Shane: Yeah, it definitely went way up. I bought it on Flippa for $700 for…
Adam: It was $700, $800, $900 a year and a half ago. You got it [inaudible 00:04:40].
[Crosstalk]
Michael: Yeah, you remember that. What’d did you say you bought for on, Flippa, Shane?
Shane: I bought it for $1,500 on Flippa, exactly two years, almost to the day on Flippa.
Drew: Wow, I think that was even my name. I think I used to own this.
Michael: Dude, it’s like two degrees of separation from you on every domain, Drew.
Drew: Yeah, I see that, yeah.
Michael: You’re like Kevin Bacon of the domain name industry. So, yeah, that’s a great example…
Drew: Yeah, maybe I’m like [inaudible 00:05:03].
Michael: …of buying some of these domains that do have liquid values that are traded on a regular basis and holding ’em for a year, two years, and then selling it, right, Shane?
Shane: Yeah, absolutely and Aaron is even better at this than me. He’ll buy ’em in packages, and he’ll do character, character, character. Well, it’ll be H-8-N, you know something that doesn’t make sense to people, but because of the liquidity in the way that the market’s trending, you know he did very well. He had a lot of 84p or not 4, but 83p and just mixtures of those. In our auction, they brought out $4,000, $4,500.
Michael: Wow.
Shane: And that’s a double, a two-year double. You know, Rick Schwartz isn’t gonna write about that, but I’ll take a double any day in two years, from just waiting. So it took that real well.
Michael: Yeah, and so how did you sell it? You sold it on NameJet?
Shane: I sold it on Name…I’ve been doing this…this is how I make my cash revenue. It’s not exciting, but the short character and the four letters, I’ve been buying ’em at one place and selling ’em on NameJet, and doing just fine with them.
Michael: Now do you know if the buyer was another investor from China or another investor just in general?
Shane: Yes, if you told me who you think on NameJet bought it, that’s who it is. It’s either First,Tutu or T. Tuckie [SP]. Those three guys, they will bid each other up and just run it. They ran it for like…
Michael: Yeah, I didn’t think a lot of the Chinese investors were coming and paying a little bit more higher wholesale on NameJet, but you’re saying they are.
Shane: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we had great return. Matter of fact, we put reserves on ’em just to protect it because it’s still going up. So you don’t really wanna give it away and every single one of ours hit reserve, and then we take the money and put it into some other bigger names.
Michael: And was that your DSAD auction that you just sold it or was it…?
Shane: Yeah, actually we put ’em through there now, yeah.
Michael: Yeah, nice.
Shane: Yeah, I put a couple of those. I mean it’s been really well and, again, every single one hit reserve. I kinda expected it, but you don’t know where the market is. I haven’t really been paying attention on the buy because the prices have been a little high. Now I’m thinking, “Well, maybe I’d look for some deals.”
Michael: Yeah, awesome. Well, congrats on that sale. That’s a good return in a coupla years, bud.
Shane: Not too bad.
Michael: Thanks, Shane. Adam, let’s go to you. What’s one domain name that you’ve bought or sold in the past couple of weeks? Tell us the domain name and not the price, yet.
Adam: Okay. I think I’ve discovered an untapped market. So last time I was on, I gave you model-planes.com, which was a hyphen. So shortly thereafter, I sold another hyphen name. It’s birthday-cake.com.
Michael: Birthday-cake.com.
Adam: Yes, sir.
Michael: You are singlehandedly resurrecting the hyphenated domain name market.
Adam: Yes, I think Shane’s the numeric guy and I’m the…
Michael: So like, Shane talking about the upward trend, are we seeing an upward trend here, Adam?
Adam: I don’t know. I think it’s just random coincidence.
Michael: Hey, Drew. Let’s go to you. What do you think Adam sold birthday-cake.com for?
Drew: $1,250.
Michael: That would be an awesome sale. Shane, what do you think he sold it for?
Shane: I was really hoping he wasn’t gonna say this public because me and Braden Pollock, we’ve been out cornering the hyphen market, and you’re gonna kill it.
Adam: Sorry.
Shane: We were getting ’em cheap. I mean we’ve been buying ’em up like crazy. Country code, hyphens, they’re only like, $12. We were buying ’em by the thousands. But anyway…
Drew: The more hyphens the better, right?
Shane: Yeah, well, you know how hard it is to find three hyphens in a row right now that are already registered? You almost always have to hand reg ’em, and we want ’em registered with age. So, but anyway, I’m gonna say that you probably crushed it on this, and it’s $350.
Michael: $350, all right.
Drew: Yeah.
Michael: Let’s go back to you, Adam. How much did you sell birthday-cake.com for?
Adam: $4,000.
Michael: Shut the front door. You did not.
Adam: Yeah.
Michael: Dude, people need to be going to look at hyphenated domain names again.
Adam: I’m telling you.
Michael: How did this miraculous event happen?
Adam: This was a long-term…well, not a long-term negotiation. The guy’s come back a few times. I knew a little bit about who the buyer was, just through some digging, and seeing who owned what, and things like that. But they…I don’t even know how the negotiation started. It was probably fairly low. But then I talked to the owner of birthday-cakes. I’ve talked to a few of the hyphen owners. There’s a couple guys who do pretty well on hyphens. I’m not joking because I think, you know if you want a keyword name, and you don’t really care about the radio test and things like that, these are good options. So this guy has…Go ahead. Drew?
Michael: Drew, were you about to say something snarky?
Drew: Probably. I’d say [inaudible 00:10:25] Zimmerman.
Michael: Oh, a German, right, exactly.
Adam: No. When I closed the sale, I thought that I was right on who it was, and I ended up being right. And it was a long, drawn-out negotiation, but I think they were in the $1,000 range in the beginning, so that kinda tipped that would go a little bit higher. But, yeah, I think after I sold it, I think model-planes, didn’t I say I sold it for $700 or something like that?
Drew: Yeah.
Adam: And then I I was like, “Ah, man, I got $4,000 out of this one. Maybe I need to hold onto my hyphened names.”
Shane: Seriously.
Adam: But, you know I think, again, if you’re starting something that you need a specific name like this…this guy actually you know when I looked up his information or this company has a bunch of other birthday cake and cake-related domains. So they didn’t really need this name and they seemed to be in the Japanese market so, again, another reason, just a peculiar sale, and just pushed the envelope on it, and I’m pretty happy with it. The owner of birthday-cakes is a domain guy and I’m hoping to maybe help him sell that one as well, but, yeah, so I dunno, weird things.
Michael: So did the inquiry come in through, like a landing page or Whois lookup or Afternic or one of the marketplaces?
Adam: I’m pretty sure I had a banner on the top of my page, and it went through DomainAgents, so I’m pretty sure it came through that banner. So they piped it in, and saw that it was for sale and then negotiated through that platform.
Michael: And so we often make fun of the hyphenated ones. If I typed it in to EstiBot, I’m not even sure if it would come back with a…What made you think it was a $4,000 domain name versus, you know, like a $700 domain name?
Adam: Well, I used this tool that I’m pretty familiar with, and I looked up some hyphened names to see what they sold for.
Michael: But on NameBio are hyphenated domain names selling today?
Adam: Yeah, there’s some sales going through. I mean GoDaddy sells a lot of hyphened names. Like I said, again, there’s another domain investor that I know that has hyphened names, and there seems to be pretty good successes with it. You know I don’t think you could push this. You know if you look up, look at the Google searches for birthday cake, I mean I’m sure it’s fairly high. The cake business, I’ve got other cake names that get a lotta inquiries. I think maybe Marlin [SP] owns wedding-cake or wedding cake or something like that. So I’ve talked to other people that have some of the better cake-related domains, and it just kinda gives me a backup for it.
Michael: Well, and so I typed it into EstiBot because I like to look at it, and see what the EstiBot value is, like everybody else, and it came back at $5,900 which I couldn’t believe. But then, yeah, exactly your point, it’s got massive search volume. So 200,000 unique searches per month on the phrase birthday cake, as two separate words, and then related domain sales in EstiBot, without even going to NameBio, baby-shower.com for $4,600 at GoDaddy, just like, March 1st it sold, slot-games, $6,000 Uniregistry. So, yeah, some of these hyphenated domains are selling in the mid-four figures.
Shane: We’re not laughing anymore, are we?
Michael: I know. We just got shut up.
Adam: Yeah, model-planes in EstiBot was at $1,000. So I think that’s kinda ballpark where I sold it, and, you know when I pull up the search results, the related sales on there are strange. Park-locksmith for $940, us-civilwar for $1,000, I mean I would not tell people to invest in that sort of domain.
Michael: No.
Adam: Because there’s much better options out there than park-locksmith, and us-civilwar, but these are kinda names that those are all $1,000 price points. But anyway, the keyword search is probably the top reason that you’d pick up a name like this, I would think. If you’re already in an industry and dominating it, and wanted to just kinda round out your portfolio. That’s what I’m guessing this person was doing.
Michael: So let’s put this into perspective. How many years have you owned this domain name, do you think?
Adam: I actually have no clue. I’ve done that with all my…
Michael: No, you go…
Drew: It’s definitely left over from your parking days though.
Adam: It’s definitely. I’d say…
Michael: Over ten years.
Adam: Let’s say 2008, I probably paid $60 for it. So, yeah, about [inaudible 00:15:04].
[Crosstalk]
Michael: Okay. So I wanna sorta put it in perspective because we were sorta joking at the beginning about selling hyphenated domains.
Adam: Right.
Michael: But now we just got really serious because you sold this baby-shower, slot-games.
Drew: Hold on. Do not include me in the, “We just got really serious,” please? At no point in time…
Michael: But I also wanna temper that before everybody goes out…
Drew: At no point in time, did I get very serious about this conversation or hyphen domain name, as long as that’s clear.
Michael: That is clear.
Shane: And Braden and I really did not want any names.
Michael: So I don’t want people…What’d you say, Shane?
Shane: And Braden and I really did not go in and buy hyphened names.
Michael: You did not. And so I wanna talk about, like the fact that you’ve held it for on the order of magnitude of 10 years and negotiated, and so you know I appreciate you bringing this up.
Adam: Well, I will still, I’m gonna say like, I don’t go searching daily for hyphened names, but if I saw one on the drop list, I’d pick it up in a heartbeat. So as long as it…
Drew: Oh, yeah?
Michael: Drew’s gonna send you over a list of hyphenated domain names.
Adam: Not us-civilwar, not…
Drew: I’m not gonna lie. In the back of my head, while you guys are talking, I’m thinking, “There’s gotta be some monster keywords with a hyphen in there for super cheap.”
Adam: You bet.
Shane: It’s a number phrase.
Drew: Let’s just do a little exercise here, okay?
Shane: It’s gonna be a long program.
Drew: All right, sexual-positions.com.
Michael: Hey, Drew, tilt your camera up a little bit. When you’re talking you’re off the screen.
Drew: Well, because I’m trying to look over the screen at the list I’ve got here. Hold on, let me move it.
Michael: Oh, gotcha, sexual-positions.com.
Drew: Yeah.
Adam: Nope, not a [inaudible 00:16:42].
Shane: Nope, that’s not how we’re talking.
Adam: Hold on. Hold on, ready. I’m gonna get you some good stuff here, all right?
Drew: How about golden-gate?
Shane: I got something. I got…all right, here we go, ready? Cure-all.com.
Adam: No.
Drew: No.
Shane: No, really? A hundred bucks, maybe.
Michael: Yeah, you say you can pick anything off the drop, cure-all.
[Crosstalk]
Shane: Sold.
Drew: A hundred bucks, all right. Next…
Shane: He’s picking up lunch money right now.
Drew: black-authors.com.
Shane: That’s just terrible.
Michael: Why would you pick that?
Drew: How is that terrible?
Shane: Where did that come from? That’s not even a parking name.
Michael: It’s an entire category of fricking books you’re talking about.
Shane: How many Robert Patterson’s are there?
Drew: All right, here’s an extra special one, c-r-t.com, three letter.com.
Shane: Adam, can you start over, please?
Michael: Adam?
Adam: That’s not a keyword domain.
Shane: I’m thinking more like drone-reunion.
Drew: Moving on, moving it on. For-help.com.
Adam: No.
Shane: No.
Michael: It’s not a product or a service, like it’s not…
Drew: Well, you know forhelp.com just sold last week for good money so, all right.
Shane: This sounds exactly like an email.
Drew: There you go, right? Spot on. Here you go, teddy-bears.com.
Adam: Yes.
Shane: Yes, now you’re on the right track.
Drew: How much you gonna pay me?
Shane: One hundred bucks.
Drew: Nah, not $100 on that one.
Shane: Oh, all of a sudden worth more.
Michael: $125.
Drew: I paid $500. You can have it for $500.
Adam: Why would you pay $500 for it?
Shane: Yeah.
Drew: Good —- question.
Adam: I’ll give you $100 and you can take your losses [inaudible 00:18:36].
Shane: How about I sell that domain for you?
Drew: Okay. Why don’t you give it to the kind of dash?
Michael: The king of dash.
Shane: The king of dash. Okay, my-photo.
Drew: I will tell you, I have sold a name like c-r-t but with numerics, and I sold it for six figures, so don’t mess around with a hyphens. Man, you can give me the moniker, the king of hyphens. I’m all right with that.
Shane: No, you’re the king of [inaudible 00:19:02], man.
Drew: King of dash.
Shane: My-photo, my-photo.
Drew: No.
Adam: No.
Drew: Photo-…
Shane: My-education.
Adam: No.
Drew: No, I don’t like possessives in front of it.
Shane: Waterproof-camera.
Adam: No, water-proof, yes.
Drew: Yeah.
Shane: Bio-lux.
Adam: No.
Shane: Raw-cooking.com.
Adam: Possibly.
Shane: No, cookie-recipes.
Drew: Cooking?
Shane: No possibly, take it or leave it.
Drew: Cooking or cookie?
Shane: We’ve $500 for teddy bears. We got $100 for…what was the other one? This is a real DomianSherpa show here. Now we’re gonna go [inaudible 00:19:48].
[Crosstalk]
Adam: [Inaudible 00:19:50] -domain.
Shane: Real time, real money. All right, so moving on. Okay a couple more, a couple more.
Michael: Drew’s like, “I’m gonna get rid of all these right now.
Shane: A couple more, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael: All right, so anyway…
Drew: So let me wade in here, folks, luxury-stores.
Adam: No.
Shane: No.
Drew: Used-cars.
Michael: Oh, here we go. We gotta winner, ding, ding, ding, chicken dinner.
Adam: Chicken-dinner.
Michael: Smoked-salmon.
Shane: No.
Drew: That’s a good one, smoked salmon.
Michael: Smoked salmon is big, but…
Drew: There’s like three people on earth that don’t love smoked salmon.
Adam: Yeah.
Shane: I dunno.
Adam: No.
Michael: It could be Adam. People in Chicago.
Adam: Yeah, you do realize we don’t have salmon near here.
Michael: All right, just no birthday cake. All right, are we getting a love connection here, Adam? Are you taking teddy-bears off of him?
Adam: Maybe one day.
Michael: All right, not today. When you’re ready to take a loss, call him up, Drew.
Drew: I’m gonna come back on here with another hyphen. So I’m gonna come back on here with a sale of teddy-bears, you watch.
Shane: How about interactive-advertising, interactive-advertising.
Adam: No.
Shane: Big for the new VR/AI world.
Drew: That’s a lot of dash portfolio right here.
Michael: Why no, Adam? Why don’t you like that one, kind of hyphen?
Adam: It’s just that market is dominated by brands rather than the keyword.
Shane: Okay. I’ve got one more for you.
Drew: You can’t use the sale of teddy bears as your sale today, too.
Shane: I’ve got two. I’ve got two of them that are actually the only ones that I actually do like, okay, raw-bar, for whatever reason I just like that one.
Adam: Why don’t you use that one and how much you paid for it, we’ll all guess.
Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’ll remember that. What’s the other one, then?
Drew: And the other one is rest-stop.
Michael: Rest-stop.
Drew: And the funny thing about rest stop is that it gets actually a bunch of traffic and earns money. It has for…
Michael: Wow.
Adam: I like that one even better then.
Michael: But you don’t wanna buy it is what you’re saying?
Adam: No.
Michael: No.
Shane: No, actually I don’t mind that one on a buy. But because he’s got it and it’s making money, it’s not gonna be a $100 sale.
Drew: No.
Michael: All right, hey, Drew. Do you wanna use raw-bar.com as your buy?
Drew: Not really.
Shane: You’d get a reputation [inaudible 00:22:19] apparently.
Michael: I know. That’s why I love it, right? We just go an insight into the man that’s selling like, five, six, seven-figure domain names on a regular basis. Like, he pisses me off when he’s texting me, “Hey, guess what I just sold?” You can’t say what it is and it’s like just a killer name.
Drew: Here’s the deal.
Michael: Or a killer price or whatever it is and so I love to hear that he’s got all these hyphenated domain names that nobody else on the panel likes.
Drew: So here’s the deal. I’m gonna take one for the team here, okay, because this is gonna be a learning moment. All right, so raw-bar.com, I’m not gonna use it for my what did you buy, what did you sell thing. But I paid $600 for raw-bar, and this is all part of that $300,000 that I flushed in the toilet when I started buying names because I thought I knew what I was buying.
Michael: Yeah, go watch that episode on DomainSherpa.
Drew: Raw-bar, not a terrible domain. I actually do like raw bar, but paying $600 for it was an absolutely awful idea, you know. And if you’re not careful, those are the kind of decisions that will get you really quickly out of the industry. So, yeah, even I make terrible decisions. Such as, here’s one that’s even better, lamp-shades.com, I paid $850, lamp shades, lamp-shades.
Michael: Want that one, king of hyphen?
Shane: Not at that price.
Drew: How much?
Shane: Lamp shades?
Drew: Yeah, how much?
Shane: I’ll give you $100 for it.
Drew: Sold.
Michael: Oh, baby. There we go.
Adam: Hey, after we’ll go halve, all right? In case you don’t wanna get that deaf.
Michael: Lamp-shades.com, sold.
Drew: I think I have 300 of these.
Shane: You paid $800 for lamp-shades?
Drew: $850.
Shane: Do you know how many emails you’re about to get?
Michael: Oh, my God. I know, Adam, you’re about to get inundated, dude.
Shane: Yeah, [inaudible 00:24:28]. Ooh, here’s a good one, public-auction.
Adam: No, no.
Shane: I’ll take teddy-bears and lamp-shades for $100, and you know you cut your losses.
Michael: Cut your losses, Drew.
Drew: Yeah, doing you a favor.
Shane: And the other one for $100. What was the other one?
Adam: I dunno, teddy bears, lamp-shades.
Drew: You had lamp shades and…?
Shane: Teddy bears.
Drew: No, we got that one.
Adam: We’ll go back and look on the [inaudible 00:24:58].
Michael: On the transcript. I think that was it.
[Crosstalk]
Drew: [Inaudible 00:25:00].
Michael: All right, Drew. What’s your domain name that you wanna talk about that was either a buy or a sell? Tell us the domain and not the price, yet.
Drew: All right, so, yeah, I don’t really have any great ones.
Michael: You just told two of ’em.
[Crosstalk]
Drew: [Inaudible 00:25:15]. I’m gonna go with teddy bears…No, no. I’m gonna go with…
Shane: We did this about 40 minutes before we started this.
Michael: I should just gut the show here and talk about, like hyphenated domains.
Drew: I had one. Okay. All right, let’s go with this. We’re gonna go with ocean.club.
Michael: Ocean.club, buy it or sell it?
Drew: Bought it.
Michael: You bought it. Shane, let’s go to you. What do you think Drew bought?
Shane: We’re actually in negotiation to sell it.
Michael: All right, but you’re talking about the buy of it, so what do you think Drew bought…
Drew: I’m talking about the buy.
Michael: …ocean.club for, Shane?
Shane: You better negotiate the same before it comes out.
Drew: Actually, sorry. Let’s go with happy.club.
Michael: Oh, okay.
Shane: Okay.
Michael: All right, happy.com.
Drew: Happy club.
Shane: Happy.club. Well, and this is a buy, right?
Michael: He bought it.
Drew: It’s a buy.
Shane: They premium price those things and Drew loves to pay premium price, as we know. So we’re gonna go happy…I’m gonna say the buy was $6,000.
Michael: Hey, Drew, before I go to you, Adam, you’re allowed to talk about the price that you paid, right?
Shane: Drew?
Drew: Who me?
Michael: Yeah, there’s not an NDA or anything on it because it’s premium?
Drew: Oh, I have no idea. I dunno.
Michael: I dunno.
Drew: I think it’s fine. Yeah, I don’t think there’s a…I mean.
Michael: All right, Adam, what do you think Drew paid for happy.club.
Drew: They didn’t give me any special deal on this, so I think it’s fine.
Michael: Yeah.
Adam: $5,000, I dunno. I’ll go under Shane.
Michael: You’re gonna say $5,000.
Adam: Yeah.
Michael: All right, Drew, let’s go to you. What’d you pay for happy.club?
Drew: Happy.club, I paid $3,000. However, I did it as a part of DotClub’s new five-year, no-interest financing thing. So I think I pay $33 a month. And so the only reason I wanted to bring that up is that I actually do think that it’s a very interesting model, number one, and a very good opportunity. So I would like to see this roll out with more TLB’s. I’d like to see this roll out with marketplaces for .com domains, to be honest, but I think that this is probably the best sales model I’ve seen so far come out of any registry. Still, whether you like DotClub or you don’t is irrelevant.
That’s not the point. The point is just that the structure of these deals, I think it’s very interesting. It’s something I had kind of envisioned and spoken to Frank Schilling about a few years ago, I spoke to GoDaddy about a few years ago. I think I spoke to Adam about it a few years ago, and I thought it was very interesting to see them roll that out., and they’ve done it well, and it looks to be very successful for them so far. I picked up a few names and, again, it’s not even necessarily about .club, as much as it is about the structure of these deals.
So I pay $33 a month. I think I’m three months into it or two months into it, and you know we go out now and we’re $66 into a $3,000 domain. We can go out and find out if there are buyers out there for happy.club and if there aren’t, then it’s up to me whether I keep paying $33 a month until it’s paid off or I just let it go, and I walk away and so it’s an option. It’s an option and a lease all in one. It’s a beautiful thing, and, really if you’re a domain investor of any sort, other than retired, you know, you would be remiss not to look at this whether or not you buy any .club names is getting irrelevant. But looking at this model and thinking to yourself, “Is this a good way to move my names? Is this is a good way to go out and start optioning other names and buying them?”
Michael: Right.
Drew: It opens up a lot of doors. It opens a lot of opportunity and probably one of the first things to really excite me in a while in terms of like, how people are going about selling domain names.
Michael: Yeah, and this isn’t like $33 a month…
Drew: And I think that’s the future.
Michael: This isn’t like $33 a month with a balloon payment at the end. It’s $33 a month until it’s paid off, a certain number of months.
Drew: $3,000 split into 60 monthly payments, period.
Michael: Yeah, so instead of, like, you brokering deals where you only get a small percentage.
Drew I think it comes out to like 50…
Michael: This is like an option and you get all of the upside between what you’ve paid and the retail price.
Drew: That’s actually right. So I mean they could, whether it’s them or anybody else, they could say you know, “Yeah, look. We’re gonna give you an exclusive brokerage option, right? Now go out and sell this thing.” Well, and that requires a bunch of paperwork. It requires blah, blah, blah. It’s cumbersome. As opposed to, “Hey, we got this domain, and you could option it for $33 a month, and then go out and do whatever the hell you want with it, and price it however you want, as long as it’s more than what you gotta pay us, and that’s it.” And that’s a beautiful thing. It’s very clean, very efficient, and very effective.
Michael: Yeah, I’d give Colin and Jeff credit.
Drew: Not in the [inaudible 00:31:02].
[Crosstalk]
Michael: They’re always working different deals like this, and this is a great, great opportunity for investors that wanna do proactive marketing, go look at the premium list, figure out how much it is per month, spend two months working on it. You pay $100 for the option, $50 for the option depending on the domain name, and yeah, you could have some [inaudible 00:31:20].
[Crosstalk]
Shane: Well, you NameBright does the same thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed. It’s the difference, I think, between these two is that NameBright, you can walk away anytime.
Drew: [Inaudible 00:31:30].
Shane: So they divide it up. Go ahead.
Drew: DotClub, you can walk anytime. NameBright charges interest. The total amount of the payment plan is more than the buy it now price.
Shane: So NameBright takes a name that you know the buy it now, but they’ll do it interest-free over a period of time, and you can walk away anytime, so you it’s kind of the exact same time set.
Michael: Same thing, but with interest.
Shane: Yeah, and they’re mostly .com names, so you could scan their lists, see if you think you’ve found something that’s underpriced and do the exact same thing. So it gives an opportunity for somebody to work their name, so the same concept.
Michael: Yeah, cool.
Adam: Is it just…?
Drew: I’ll tell you what. You’ve gotta lot of people that want…Sorry, Adam, just one more thought. So you get a lot of people out there that wanna be domain brokers. You got a lot out there looking to make a buck in this hustle, and honestly, NameBright, you know the HugeDomains people, looking at the HugeDomains’s list, looking at the DotClub stuff, like that is, I’m reluctantly saying that is probably your best channel to find a way to make a buck.
Adam: Is there any difference between us, all of us doing self-financing, like Michael, the deal that you were telling us about earlier, any different?
Michael: I think it’s the same thing.
Adam: Yeah, there’s [inaudible 00:32:57].
Drew: No, so it’s not the same thing. So the difference is the infrastructure. So I’d go, I’d buy happy.club. I’d pay my first $33 payment, and the domain is in my account. I can update the domain servers. I can do everything that I want to do except for transfer it out to another registrar. But it is in my account, at a registrar, for me to use freely as I choose, setup email, forward it, point it, whatever, everything except for transfer. So that’s the difference. So, well, you do own a registrar with Evergreen and so you could set that up, you know with that type of infrastructure where the name stays at Evergreen, but it’s instantaneously available in the buyer’s account once they make their first monthly payment. So that’s the only difference is sorta the infrastructure and the logistics behind it. There’s no [inaudible 00:33:56].
[Crosstalk]
Michael: The deal is structured similarly, yeah.
Drew: Yeah, there’s no escrow. There’s no third party. It’s just you know you…
Shane: And we similarly haven’t set it up to make it easy where that’s a HugeDomains. You can look through their list. Everything’s priced. You have monthly payments. They’re all set, all easily for you to digest. You can I, and maybe you have, but I haven’t, put together something. You can look through all of my names. Here’s a price. Here’s a finance. In order for someone to do that, it really needs to be laid out properly for ’em to digest it.
Adam: Yeah, I remember our past discussions about that. I wasn’t aware that NameBright, HugeDomains is doing that, though.
Shane: Yeah.
Adam: So, cool.
Shane: Yeah, Jeff talked about. I think we’re nice enough to have dinner with him one night, and he was talking about that works for a lot of people, and if they have to walk away, they walk away. Nobody really loses. They got their monthly fee, the other person not any more money. But, of course, as a domain investor, I was looking at it not as a guy that wants to buy a name for a business, but how could I look through their name, and maybe value something different than them, and try and flip it, and they only I have it a couple months. Of course, I haven’t one it, but I love thinking about it.
Drew: Yeah, I’ll add to this, though, on the other side of the equation, on the sell side, I’ve had two major deals go south on lease type of agreements like this, where the buyers just basically kinda ruined the domain. You know I can’t really go into a whole lotta detail on it because they’re NDA deals, but on a high dollar, valuable domain it could be bad.
Shane: No, that’s true. That’s very true.
Adam: You gotta know who you’re dealing with and you’ve gotta have really good terms on your…
Shane: What till you see the happy ending club that Drew…
Drew: It’s getting a little bit better. Yeah, it’s getting a little bit better because Google’s got the disavow tool now. So like if somebody creates a really spammy link profile, and so hurts from an SEO perspective which, generally is the most dangerous, then there is ways to [inaudible 00:36:06] time consuming, but it can be, the name can be salvaged. If somebody’s putting kiddie porn, you know that’s a little a different.
Adan: I’ll give you an example.
Drew: If they’re doing something illegal and the domain can potentially be seized, you know that’s something else.
Adam: I’ll give you an example, one that we’ve got a lease on. They wanted to use AdSense to make money and the domain was actually banned from use as an AdSense…
Drew: Oh, wow.
Adam: And there’s nothing had been parked before, so I dunno. I can’t go too much into detail on it, but now this guy can’t make money on the domain, so he’s coming back and saying, “Well, you know I can’t make money. You know you sold me…” but that’s not part of the deal. You know the part of the deal is you get the domain or whatever, like, so there you know you’re at a impasse there so, but you know.
Shane: Sounds like a new contract you write out, that when you return the domain it has to be non-band or you pay a certain fee.
Adam: Right, yeah.
Michael: Yeah, well, I appreciate you saying that because I’m gonna be writing up that agreement, and I need to put that [inaudible 00:37:13].
[Crosstalk]
Drew: Yeah, exactly.
Shane: It needs a little working through here.
Michael: All right, Sherpa’s, we need to move on. Thank you for sharing those. I wanna tell you about three of our sponsors of today’s show.
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Michael: All right, welcome back. In the Domain Portfolio Review we take user submitted domain name portfolios and provide honest and constructive feedbacks to the owners, so that they can either cut their losses, continue to hold the domains long-term or figure out a sales strategy going forward. Today’s portfolio was submitted by Lee Latner. I met Lee in person at NamesCon. Shane, you did as well. A heck of a nice guy and I was appreciative that he came to the DomainSherpa Live Session that we put on.
As part of Lee’s submission and his domain names, he made a generous donation to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, to help us all find a cure for cancer. Lee’s list of 25 domain names starts with antiqueexporters.com and ends with youthbuilt.com. All of ’em are dot.com domains. If you’re watching this show right now, now is a great time to press pause, scroll down, look at the 25 domain names that Lee submitted, pick your top three, your bottom three, put a couple of valuations on them, and then come back up, hit play and listen to what the Sherpa’s are saying so, you can check your logic against theirs. This segment we’re gonna go Adam, then Drew, then Shane. Adam, let’s start with you. What do you think about Lee’s portfolio in general. Let’s start at a high level.
Adam: High level, okay. I think he needs to buy some hyphens.
Michael: If these domains only had hyphens in ’em, right?
Adam: Yes. No, you know I looked through the list, just a quick scan, and there’s really just very minimal, there’s a couple names I would call keyword type of names, but you know they all have, generally speaking, a two-word combo names, and they kinda lean towards the brand side of brandable type name. You know I bought a bunch of stuff like this early on. I think Drew was kinda indicating that he bought stuff like this early on. It looks like an early…if this is all he’s got, and these are the best, and he’s got more of these, I’d tell him to slow down. Looking at high level, looking at EstiBot values, you’re looking at only like a $4,000 EstiBot appraised value.
Michael: All in.
Adam: All in, yeah, and then, you know he’s got just…I dunno where he’s bought these, but even if he’s only spent $10, you’re looking at 25 names, so he’s got $250, not that bad. I don’t see these names moving anytime soon, even at a 1% to 2% rate which I don’t see these names moving that quickly. I think he’s sitting on some debt here, and if he keeps renewing ’em there’s gonna be problems. There’s definitely names I’d dump. There’s names that…I dunno.
Michael: So give me your top two. What do you think that you would keep if you liked? You know what would you keep from this list if you had ’em?
Adam: Oh, man, tough one.
Michael: And it’s okay to say nothing if you feel that way.
Adam: Yeah, you know like, they’re just kinda like on the borderline. Like, I mean I’ve got names like this in my portfolio, so it’s not like I’m not immune to the pickup of antiqueexporters, that kinda looks good. But I don’t know anything about antique exports or whether or not that’s even something that somebody would wanna use as a term for their website.
Michael: Right.
Adam: That kinda sounds good to me, but, again, I don’t know that much about it. Yeah, I don’t really see any of that just like jump out at me. I mean names like ethnic dish, you know that sounds good, as well. These type of names, I don’t remember what we used to call these names, but they’re…you know a nice term, I guess. Like they’re not garbage. They’re just…
Michael: They’re just not gonna sell.
Adam: They’re just not gonna sell. Like, there’s other choices, right, and you might be lucky. You mighta hit a home run with one of these, and maybe sell it for a couple grand. That would be the home run.
Michael: Okay so, at best most of these domain names would be like a $2,000 order of magnitude, maybe $3,000, maybe $1,000.
Adam: Right.
Michael: But hopefully, he picked ’em up for reg fee, is what I hope I hear you saying, and hopefully he can learn from these and move to something that is more of a product or service. Like, if he could buy birthday-cake.com off of draw with 200,000 unique searches, that would be better than any of these domains on this list?
Adam: You know, again, I held it for 10 years, so I can’t promise you that. Like, I mean if you hold these name on this portfolio for more than a couple years, you’re probably spending too much money. You know so you could just throw ’em all up on an auction and see if somebody picks some of ’em up. I mean get steaks, it has kind of a ring to it. There’s names on here that definitely could be applicable for a website or a app or something like that, but you’re also competing with all the other options that are out there, you know so…
Michael: All right, okay. Thanks, Adam. Drew, let’s go to you. Any domains on Lee’s list that you would definitely hold onto?
Shane: Be nice. Lee’s a good guy.
Drew: Hang onto ’em, huh? So, I mean vitriol for whatever reason that name just kinda stuck out to me as like, “That’s kind of a nice brand. I feel like I’ve even heard it before.”
Michael: Okay so, you’d definitely hold on. It’s a dictionary word.
Adam: [Inaudible 00:43:10].
Michael: It’s a single word. It’s a typo?
Adam: Mm-hmm. It’s spelled with an O.
Michael: Oh, is it?
Drew: I just called it V-I trial.
Adam: Virginia trial?
Drew: Virginia trial.
Michael: Oh, it is a typo, yeah.
Drew: It’s V-A, man, V-A.
Adam: Oh, V-A, sorry. Virgin Islands.
Shane: Virgin Island trial.
Drew: Basically it’s worthless.
Michael: Yeah.
Drew: Potentially what you’re saying is that it’s worthless?
Michael: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah, I dunno, man. There’s really not much on here I would recommend hanging onto.
Michael: All right, so tell me one thing…
Drew: I would your $250 is better spent buying one domain that’s worth $250 and go out, and hustle and try and sell it, and then reup into two, and then rinse and repeat.
Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so Drew like find a domain name on this list, and tell me why he’s just a little bit off, right? Like, he was close on this, but it needs to be this word or it needs to be more product or service focused, something that somebody would buy or what’s the one tip that you would give Lee to focus on given this list?
Shane: This is the first time I’ve ever heard Drew speechless.
Drew: I mean, honestly, honestly, it’s time to just reassess your entire strategy here. You know, look, if you are spending…you know you’re obviously serious about it, right? The guy’s spending money. He’s coming into NamesCon. That’s not cheap and [inaudible 00:44:43] and that’s right. That’s good. That’s exactly what you need to do. You wanna make this a business, you need to learn. You need to come to events. But you are not on the right track. This is a very bad list, okay. Just to be totally blunt, like honestly, this list is a liability. You are worse off for having this list than you are having nothing.
Shane: Lining ’em up.
Drew: No, I mean I’m just saying, like I’m just trying to be straight up about it.
Michael: Yeah, I appreciate it. I’m sure Lee does as well.
Drew: This is bad. This is bad. You pretend you don’t have this.
Michael: Let ’em all expire.
Drew: You either like, I agree, get steaks, you don’t let that expire. Like, getsteaks.com, you know it’s a decent little name. I mean you know you’re not getting rich on that name, but it’s gonna be worth more than $8.50. You know honestly it’s the End Academy time. I think it’s just you gotta completely reassess what is going on, and what makes a valuable domain name because what you’re doing here is not helping anybody, except for the Verisign, and your registrar.
Michael: Yeah, all right. Shane, any final thoughts for Lee on domains that he may wanna keep on, domains he should definitely drop and why on other [inaudible 00:46:12].
[Crosstalk]
Shane: Yeah, I mean, again, so I met Lee. Lee’s got skills. He can certainly call. He can certainly sell. He has the ability to move a name, but what’s holding ’em back is the names, and the list was fine. I get why some of it. But here’s where I got disappointed. This is like when your parents aren’t mad at you, they’re disappointed. When I saw New York’s broker, that’s disappointing. That’s just a bad, you know that S is just totally off. He knows better. I dunno if it’s a possessive name or those kinda names you just drop. Those are terrible.
Drew: Well, New York’s broker, it’s like if you’re that real estate broker with the big ego, like, “I am New York’s broker.” I can see that, but everybody’s gonna to New York broker…
Shane: You can talk yourself into anything. So my advice for him, the first thing I would do, though, is I would make sure I premium price and the GoDaddy. Give yourself that year. Put it in GoDaddy’s program so that if somebody types something in, at least your name comes up as a premium name, make it cheap, and spend 20 minutes…
Drew: $249 each, $249, every single name.
Shane: All for a buy now $249, opt into the premium option on Afternic which puts it in the registration path at GoDaddy and all of their partners, and then until it expires, hope that somebody types it in and buys it on the spot.
Drew: Josh does a great job at everything at $399 and he constantly things that you never think would get taken get popped at $399. It’s a good price, $299, $399, $249 and put ’em in there, use your time out and put ’em there. If everybody was…Sorry, I’m reading Adam.
Michael: Stop presenting to us, Adam.
Adam: I’m sorry. I just was clicking so.
[Crosstalk]
Drew: [Inaudible 00:47:58].
Shane: What we were talking about, like Squeegee [SP] or something? Oh, no, anyway, again, you know you could even put ’em up at GoDaddy auctions and run ’em through it, like you know buy it now there, a low reserve. Just work your time through. Don’t drop ’em. Let ’em drop naturally, but let ’em drop. I just don’t see anything here worth keeping, but at least try and do a little work, and put ’em in the program so people can at least see them.
Michael: Yeah, definitely. Great advice. Lee, thanks for submitting your portfolio. Thank you also for making your donation to cancer research so we can all find a cure for cancer, and I am going to offer you a free tuition to dnacademy.com, if you’d like to go through it. I think that there are some lessons that you could probably take away from that. And we look forward to seeing your portfolio, maybe in a year or two, and seeing the improvements in it. So, thanks again, Lee.
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We’re gonna move onto the marketplace list This segment is sponsored by NameJet.com and aside from one domain name that’s on the list, we’re gonna be reviewing 13 mostly no reserve or reserve met domain names heading to auction soon. If you like one of the names below click through soon. Because once they go to auction you lose your chance to put in a minimum bid, and be part of the auction or even just watch the results.
I have this problem all the time because Shane and his team at DSAD put out these auction lists, and I’m on West Coast time, and when I find a domain name on that list that I like, and I click through, it’s already started in auction. So, Shane…
Shane: Yep, I know.
Michael: That stinks. All right, so click through soon. The links below go directly to NameJet. They’re not commissionable links. They’re just trackable, so NameJet can see that we’re sending them some traffic, hopefully. The list starts with businesspark.com and ends with webucation.com. For transparency I always ask if any of the domains on the list below are owned or being brokered by the Sherpa’s. I think there’s just one. Drew, you’ve got a premium on there.
Drew: Tuesday.com.
Michael: Tuesday.com. Shane and Adam, any domains that you guys own on the list?
Shane: No.
Michael: All right. Again, if you’re watching this show, now’s a great time to hit pause on the video, scroll down, look at the list from an investor standpoint. If you’re a newer investor and you’re like, “I only have like $200 or $500, I don’t wanna buy 25 hand-registered domain names, like we were just talking. I wanna put $250 into a domain name. What would be a good investment opportunity for me?” Look at the list, identify what you like, maybe put down some prices, and then come back and listen to what the Sherpa’s have to think.
This segment we’re gonna Drew, then Shane, then Adam. Drew, let’s start with you. From an investment perspective, and let’s put tuesday.com on the hold for a moment, what do you like on this NameJet list and why?
Drew: Okay. So my favorite name on this list is probably a sleeper and one that most others don’t like, but washingmachine.net, big dollar item, a lot of search volume, a decent CPC, you know super competitive. There’s a lot of startups competing now in the what do you call that, white…? All year they call it the…
Michael: Like laundry as a service or something?
Drew: White something, white…
Shane: Come on, fill ’em in.
Adam: It’s a premises?
Drew: No.
Adam: What are you talking about, dude?
Drew: I don’t know the term. All right, so anyways, I like that name a lot. I think washing machine.net is a very good domain name. I think that there is a buyer for that name. I like fake trees to some degree.
Adam: Hate ’em.
Drew: No, actually I don’t like fake trees. Never mind. It doesn’t have the search volume. I like goodfriend.com. I don’t know what you’d do with it, though, but it kinda just rings for me a little bit. That’s it. You know I don’t really love this list.
Michael: Yeah, okay. Which do you like better washing-machine.com or washingmachine.net.
Adam: I was just gonna ask that.
Drew: Washingmachine.net, all day, every day.
Michael: All day, every day. All right, washingmachine.net was at $600, no reserve. It is gonna sell. What would you pay for washingmachine.net and still feel good about that acquisition, knowing that you’d have to do some proactive selling on that?
Drew: Probably up to…
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…is probably what I’d pay, you know maybe a little bit more.
Adam: I think he said $2 million.
Drew: Maybe up to three.
Michael: You broke up just now when you said that.
Drew: Sorry. I would pay $2,000 for sure, maybe up to $3,000 and I would, you know, sell it for probably $10,000.
Michael: $10,000, okay.
Drew: $8,000, $10,000, something like that.
Michael: All right, and then good friend.com was at $700. What would you pay for that one, do you think?
Drew: It’s probably already passed what I’d pay.
Michael: Yeah, I don’t even know why you’d do that. It’s not a product or service. It’s not really a brand for a startup.
Drew: Yeah, I mean I’ve done very, very well with names that start with good, like good this, good that. They do well. You know just it sounds nice. It makes a good brand. So, goodfriend.com, I could see it being a brand. I dunno for what, but it has a use.
Michael: But you think it passed the wholesale that you would pay for it?
Drew: Probably more than I’d pay for it at this point, but you know I think under a grand you’re fine on that.
Michael: Yeah, cool. Thanks, Drew. Shane, let’s go to you. What do you like on the NameJet list and why?
Shane: Yeah, I like good friend. I mean to me it’s gotta kind of a soft quality. I think females, they think a good friend is better than anything. I think that’s a nice name. Yeah, I think it could be a lot of different brands.
Michael: Like what?
Shane: Well, I think like a good friend, I think, you don’t wanna see what I think. I was thinking dirty actually, but you know like some kinda clothing line. You know what is that the happier…? What’s that good life? What’s that clothing line?
Drew: [Inaudible 00:55:06].
[Crosstalk]
Shane: [Inaudible 00:55:06] something.
Michael: Oh, Life is Good.
Shane: Life is Good.
Adam: Life is Good.
Drew: Life is Good, you know?
Michael: I’ve got a t-shirt from there, yeah.
Shane: Yeah, good friend, something like that, just a clothing line, brand. It’s pretty to spell. Most people don’t put the E before the I, so…
Michael: Yeah, kinda like myjohnson.com.
Shane: Big Johnson was a t-shirt line a long time ago.
Drew: I know they dropped their domain. I bought it on NameJet.
Shane: Oh, no, that’s a good one. I do like…we’re not allowed to talk about Tuesday?
Michael: Oh, no, no. You can. I just didn’t want Drew to talk about it because he’s offering it for sale. So I wanted to hear you guy’s impression first so…
Shane: Well, so, I hope it doesn’t sell for him.
Michael: …tuesday.com. Let me just preface this. It’s under reserve. I dunno what Drew’s reserve is. Maybe we’ll ask him. I’m not sure if he’s allowed to tell us, but…
Drew: It’s $50 to $75, I can tell you that.
Michael: $75?
Drew: $50 to $75.
Michael: Yeah, okay. So it’s in the $50,000 to $75,000 range.
Drew: What I can tell you is that the reserve is substantially below what we paid on that name.
Adam: That doesn’t mean anything. Is it closer to the $50 or the $75?
Drew: I actually don’t even know.
Shane: At least your [inaudible 00:56:15].
[Crosstalk]
Michael: So what do you think about Tuesday.com?
Shane: All right, so this is a personal thing for me, so you guys know. But I take Tuesdays off. I’ve taken Tuesdays off my entire life. It was a day that CDs used to come out back in the day and records used to come, and movies came out, and when I was in high school, it was a big deal to see when the new albums came out. So I’ve kinda like, even skipped school on Tuesdays forever, and I’ve taken work for Tuesday. So Tuesday it’s like, it’s my day.
Michael: That’s your day, yeah.
Shane: And I saw Drew owned it and was selling, and then I saw he blew it open by paying too much, and now he’s trying to sell it, and so I was hoping to buy it. I mean I woulda paid $20,000, $25,000 for it, but obviously, Drew’s got a lot more. So I think it’s a great name. Everybody will remember Tuesday. It can be, you know you’re not gonna sell time, but you’re gonna sell a lotta things to it. So I really like the name that you only get seven days of the week. I’m sure Drew told somebody, “Yeah, there’s only six more like it.”
Michael: Shane, doesn’t it like…exactly. But it doesn’t it make you nervous, like one of the top brokers in the industry that’s gotta fantastic outbound team has owned this domain name, and he wasn’t able to sell it?
Shane: Well, here’s what I tell everybody and this is not to discredit Drew or anybody. But brokers have a lot of names, and there’s only so many things that can reach out for and call, and timing changes everything. You can buy a name from somebody who worked it, and the timing just wasn’t right. You get it and the next day it sells. So to think that a name has been worked to death is a misnomer.
I mean that’s not that Drew doesn’t work hard, but it’s just a fact that not every name has been worked through the system to try and sell. And so there’s great names, and he’s moving it for a reason, and we need cash flow. So I don’t ever think that way. I know a lotta people do, but they’re wrong, plain and simple, and Drew can probably explain that, too.
Drew: Yeah, I mean that’s absolutely right, but even more so in our case, we just do not resell our names. So I mentioned earlier with the happy.club, like just as an experiment because I wanna see if this model like holds water. We are trying to market some of the DotClub names that we optioned, just to see if that’s like a viable model. You know pretty attractive, you can get it for $33 on an option, and then go out if there’s…There’s very little downside and a lot of upside. So we are trying to proactively sell some of those, but we do not, I repeat, we absolutely, unequivocally do not proactively try to sell our names to end users. The only time we sell our names proactively is to the wholesale market on NameJet. That’s it, period, end of story.
Michael: So when you’re [inaudible 00:59:08].
[Crosstalk]
Drew: [Inaudible 00:59:08].
Michael: …you go to NameJet, yeah.
[Crosstalk]
Drew: [Inaudible 00:59:13]
Michael: When you’re ready to sell, if you definitely wanna sell it, you go to NameJet directly and you sell it there, but you’re not doing outbound sales on your own portfolio?
Drew: Nope, not, zero. Unh-uh, zero.
Michael: What were you saying, Shane?
Shane: No, I was just gonna say he does, if he’s got a good enough name, and it’s six figure, he’s gonna reach out and try and sell the name. That’s not to say that he doesn’t do some work to earn his money.
Drew: Who, us?
Shane: Yeah.
Drew: No, we don’t. We don’t reach out…
Shane: Okay. Can I have my names back then?
Drew: …and try and sell the name, ever.
Adam: I dunno. Other people [inaudible 00:59:45].
[Crosstalk]
Shane: [Inaudible 00:59:46].
Adam: You do outbound.
Shane: No, other people’s names.
Drew: Okay so, hold on, hold on. Our outbound, quite honestly, I think there’s a single person in this entire industry or company that works as hard as we do on the outbound sales, okay, because I don’t even know how you could. But that being said, we only do outbound brokerage on our client’s names. We do not do outbound brokerage on names that we own.
Michael: Great, thanks for clarifying, Drew.
Shane: Okay. There you go. So, anyway…
Michael: Anything else, Shane, that strikes your fancy that you might think would be a good investment opportunity for newer investors?
Shane: Well, I think the online education market has a great CPC and for a build out webucation is a good brand for online courses. I know that market’s pretty saturated, and it’s tough to compete against E-D-U names, but that’s a big market and it’s gonna grow exponentially as more people get their education and learn online. So I think webucation is a nice sounding, at $104, that’s a no-brainer in my opinion. So the CPCs on those are fantastic. You can pay for that if you build that out, but again, I’m not gonna say building out is easy.
Drew: No, no.
Shane: It is very, very difficult. But the name to what you can get out of it, webucation’s a good name.
Michael: Yeah, what do you think the asking price of webucation.com would be retail? If you owned it, what would you ask?
Shane: Oh, I would be close to $10,000. I’d be five figures on it. The potential there is huge, and there’s only so many. You know I’ve thought about how the education, you know, web, online. There’s certain ones that you can do, but it’s hard to put an education name together on that. So that’s one I really liked, and dot.net, Drew owns and has some of the best keyword dot.nets. Every time I went to Flippa and saw I go, “Ah, it’s a fantastic dot.net,” it was always his, always his. So, but that also tells you they were on Flippa a couple times.
Michael: All right, thanks, Shane. Adam, let’s go over to you. Anything what do you agree with? What do you disagree with that the other two Sherpa’s said, and what strikes you as a good investment opportunity for new investors?
Adam: Well, I have good friend on my list. I’d probably say at the current price, I would go a little higher possibly on that. I’ve sold a good-related name for a pretty significant amount, and it’s a pretty decent-sized business now. So good names are good. I also sugar mill which wasn’t mentioned.
Michael: Yeah, why do you like that one?
Adam: It’s an upgrade name for $150 there’s bound to be one of the companies that has the name sugar mill is a hotel in the BDI that actually I am familiar with. But there’s other sugar mills, companies using that name. So I think you know at $150 it’s a sure bet that they’ll upgrade that.
Michael: Yeah, so, one of the things that you potentially look at at NameJet is, is it a short domain name that maybe a lot of other companies use, and I can get the dot.com of the short version and maybe sugar mill hotels or sugar mill something.com would wanna upgrade to this.
Adam: Sure.
Michael: And this one strikes you as one that would be good?
Adam: Yeah, it’s a…
Michael: What would you price this at? If you picked it up for $100, $200 let’s say. I dunno how high the auction’s gonna go, what would you ask for it, if you were doing outbound to a company that may wanna upgrade to this domain?
Adam: I don’t do outbound, so I don’t know how I would approach that. I would probably just sit on it and wait for an inbound.
Michael: Okay and then, what would you price it at, inbound?
Adam: Probably $5,000, I’d say.
Michael: Yeah, so if somebody inquired you’d say $5,000 and then you’d negotiate from there?
Adam: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, okay. Awesome.
Adam: I like Tuesday. I don’t know that I would…I think the price point is probably a good buy. I would if I bought it at that price point, though, I’ve got plenty of names in my portfolio that I’ve bought at that price point. So I don’t need to carry more. I would look to sell it for six figures, though, if I was gonna sit and hold it. And I like washingmachine.net, but I’d prefer to have washing-machine.
Drew: If you could get it.
Michael: You need a hyphen, baby.
Adam: Yeah, it’s actually taken. I went and checked while you guys were talking, and Drew it’s White Goods is I think the word you were looking for.
Shane: Oh, White Goods.
Drew: No, White…no, it’s white something.
Adam: Google White Goods, it’s a dictionary term, dude.
Drew: Yeah, no, it’s something else.
Michael: That’s not what he was thinking about.
Drew: Yeah, I was thinking [inaudible 01:04:47].
[Crosstalk]
Drew: I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s not that.
Michael: No.
Adam: It says white goods, a noun, large electrical goods used domestically such as refrigerators and washing machines, typically white in color.
Drew: Yeah, just not the one.
Adam: All right.
Michael: Hey, Adam. On this list, any domains that you’re like bad investment decision? Any of these that you would say do not invest because you’re not gonna get your money back out?
Adam: I mean Tuesday is a big risk. I mean so I wouldn’t advise some novice that doesn’t have more than $50,000 grand in his pocket if the reverse is $50,000, which I doubt it is, but you know that’s a big risk.
Michael: All right, so what about the rest?
Drew: Hold on. I think [inaudible 01:05:34].
Adam: What?
Drew: You think that buying tuesday.com for $50,000 is a big risk?
Adam: If you’ve got $50,000 in your pocket and that’s all you’ve got? Yeah, I wouldn’t.
Drew: Well, okay. But I mean I don’t think anybody that’s got only $50,000 in their pocket’s gonna step up and pay $50,000 to buy tuesday.com or any domain for that matter.
Shane: That’s what I was talking about.
Drew: But okay, anyways, move on, move on.
Michael: All right.
Adam: I guess, I wouldn’t put all my eggs in one basket. Is that fair enough to say?
Drew: Fair enough.
Adam: So that’s where I was getting at. I’m not dissing your name, chill out.
Michael: Everybody loves the name. I threw it on there because I love it as a brand so much, but I wanted to hear…
Adam: No, I definitely love it. Drew, I think I’ve talked to you about it a couple times.
Drew: Well, that’s why I just wanna clear the air is it’s, you know…
Adam: Yeah, yeah, I’m not dissing.
Shane: He’s trying to tear down your mountain, so his is taller.
Adam: Exactly. If it was tues-day, I might buy it. I don’t see any in there that are…I’m trying to look at the reserve price points and things like that. I don’t see any there that are just like, “Don’t do this.” Fake trees doesn’t really do it for me at $500, but somebody might know something that I don’t. I really wouldn’t call it fake trees if I was selling trees that were fake. I’d call it something else, I guess, and I don’t know what the search is also for that. But everything else looks pretty good. I like the webucation. It sounds a little clunky, but like Shane was saying it’s kind of a good niche. It’s kinda, maybe a little bit, I dunno, Drew might know a little bit more about this, but there was a big college in the online education space blew up and then exploded, like in a bad way exploded.
Drew: Imploded, imploded.
Adam: Imploded, there you go, yeah. So that bubble popped and I don’t know where it’s at right now. But so, I’d be a little bit leery, but at $100 it’s still a good buy.
Michael: [Inaudible 01:07:31].
[Crosstalk]
Adam: But, yeah, I think they’re all pretty decent. I mean…
Michael: What businesspark.com? Is that just too generic for you know the millions of business parks?
Drew: What do you do with businesspark.com? What are you gonna do with it?
Adam: I could see it be a brand for like somebody that’s you know running a podcast on startups or businesses or whatever or some sorta, yeah, some sorta brand angle. But like you said, like if…you know.
Drew: It’s worth $500.
Adam: Yeah, and it’s at $68 right now. I mean I’d buy it at $500, for sure.
Michael: All right.
Drew: Really?
Adam: The other problem with business park is that it kinda looks like business spark a little bit.
Drew: I got a hyphened domain to sell you.
Adam: Yeah, business-park.
Michael: You just sold him two of ’em. You don’t have anymore. Hey, Shane, faketrees.com, do people call in fake trees?
Drew: Oh, I’ve got lots more to come.
Shane: No, Adam is exactly right. When you have something that’s not real, you come up with some fancy name, like bonita tree or something like that, and it’s blasphemy anyway. Anybody would buy a fake tree’s a loser.
Drew: Even a fake Christmas tree is ridiculous. Think about the environment. Every time you take a breath, that fake tree’s not doing —- for you.
Shane: Neither is the dead trees.
Adam: Is the dead one?
Shane: That’s true. As Adam cuts ’em down in his new yard. All I hear in the background when I’m talking to him is roar. I’m like, “What are you doing?” “I’m cutting down trees.” In my heart it’s like, “Oh, my God.”
Adam: Dead trees.
Drew: Deadtrees.com, that’s a better one.
Shane: How about…and Drew you know this better than anybody. The word entrepreneur is a great word, but people just butcher it when they’re typing it out. I mean does ganjapreneur have a problem with people typing that out? Do you have typos to try and bring [inaudible 01:09:20].
[Crosstalk]
Drew: I own every typo and I just redirect them.
Shane: Yeah, because that green entrepreneur it’s a great industry, but man typing that out, I know I’d blow it up three or four times before I got to the calm part.
Drew: All right, I gotta a hyphened domain here for Adam.
Shane: He’s blowing ’em out, Adam. What do you got?
Drew: One-minute.com, one-minute.com
Adam: Number one?
Drew: O-N-E-minute.com.
Shane: I can’t even imagine the purchase of these, like…
Drew: For Adam, the minute man.
Shane: One minute, man.
Michael: What do you think, Adam? Do you want it?
Adam: No.
Michael: Sorry, Drew. Couldn’t make a love connection there. All right, Sherpa’s we’re at the end of today’s show. I’d like to give you guys an opportunity to share anything that you have going on, any new activities in the business, new names you’re brokering or selling, deals you’re offering, things that you’re…you know new services that you may be offering through your businesses. Anything you wanna mention or give a shout out to. Let’s start with Adam and work our way across, Adam?
Adam: Evergreen is working on some new things, and we’re looking to assist people in selling names like Tuesday. We’re specifically focusing on one-words for our clients. And so I’d say like if anybody has some interest in selling one-words, I could probably talk to Drew a little bit later about this, as well. But we’re working on a marketing campaign for one-word domains and so, I guess that’s what I’m pushing and, of course, go look at the values in NameBio before you talk to me, so…
Michael: All right, so you will basically do outbound marketing for one-word domain names?
Adam: We’ve gotta lot of clients that are buying one words, and that’s been our number one sales and buyer brokers services is one-word domains, and I think, probably the applies for Drew, same applies for anybody else that’s doing this business. But what we’ve experienced with our clients is they have a hard time finding all the options that are available to ’em.
Michael: Right.
Adam: We’re trying to, like our goal is to harness all the available one words that people can purchase and kinda provide, like a resource for our clients, and maybe it helps other people to move domains and maybe it helps other people to find what’s out there, available. We’re kinda consolidated that market a little bit.
Michael: And are you looking for just one-word dot.coms or would you take happy.club?
Adam: Just dot.coms.
Michael: Just dot.coms.
Drew: And is blowtorch one word or two words?
Adam: Is it in the dictionary?
Drew: Yeah.
Adam: [Inaudible 01:12:14].
[Crosstalk]
Michael: All right, and people should contact you through Evergreen?
Adam: Yes, adam@Evergreen.com
Michael: Okay, awesome. Thanks, Adam.
Adam: You bet.
Michael: Drew, what’s going on? What do you wanna give a shout out to?
Drew: Well, we’ve got a huge auction running over at NameJet, including tuesday.com which we just discussed. If you go to NameJet, you will see our banner. You can click and see what names you’ve got available. There’s over 600 names coming to auction over the next 60 to 90 days. So far we’ve sold already a bunch of names. There are very good values.
As I said, with tuesday.com, the reserve is about 30% under what we paid, and that is pretty much the case with all of theses names. They’re between 20% and 30% above or below what we paid, and you know we are pretty good at buying sometimes. So I would encourage to check out what we’ve got coming up. Check it out often, as we are adding more names every single day on NameJet, a short link of x.co/nj for NameJet, x.co/nj and you will see all of the names that we’ve got running.
Also, I would like to mention that Ganjapreneur, we have just launched a domain name marketplace, a cannabis domain name marketplace. I will say unequivocally that I am 100% confident that our domain name marketplace on Ganjapreneur is the absolute best place to sell cannabis-related domain name in the world. We are approaching about five million engagements with our unique visitors that are coming to Ganjapreneur.com. Our social media, our podcast, our newsletter combined, all of our channels, we’re approaching about five million engagements per month.
Those are 70% according to a recent survey we did, 70% of our audience is a business owner, works in a cannabis…so cannabis business owner, works in a cannabis business, has invested into the cannabis business or plans to invest in or open a business in the cannabis industry in the coming 12 months. So we have got the exact audience that you want to get your domain name in front of, and you know I can’t do much more than that. But get your domain, Ganjapreneur.com/domains.
Michael: Awesome. Yeah, and so if people are watching the show and they have 1, 10, 100 marijuana-related, hemp-related domain names, do they submit ’em to you or how does that process work?
Drew: Yeah, so if you’d go to…I mean you can just submit them to domains@Ganjapreneur.com. G-A-N-J-A-P-R-E-N-E-U-R.com or just go to GunBlast Domains and click submit, but those domains will be…or if you can’t spell the direct media options, but basically if you have more than 5 domains, I believe, by 25%. If you’ve got more than 10 domains we’ll discount it by 40%, I believe, and a logo for your domain name. That is a lifetime listing that is not annual.
That’s a lifetime listing, and it includes a logo, and we will be rotating out. We’ll be featuring names in our newsletter. We’ll be featuring names on our podcast. We’re gonna be doing a big press push over the coming weeks, getting this thing out there in front of end users, letting the people in the industry, the ones that can actually buy these names and want to buy these names, letting them know that this marketplace is there for them. So get your names in sooner, rather than later to ensure that you know the most visibility.
Michael: Cool. All right, thanks, Drew. Shane, let’s go over to you. What’s new?
Shane: Well, I didn’t have a beard when we started this show. That’s how long it’s been.
Michael: Yeah, that is [inaudible 01:16:39].
[Crosstalk]
Shane: I know that. No, we too, have a lesser auction at DSAD.com through NameJet. The easiest way is to hit featured, and if you hit the featured button in NameJet, you’ll see Drew and I’s auction right there in front of you. And no, we’re running it, and we’ve still got another couple weeks left. It’s gone really well. The price points were pretty good reserves. Some were a little high on the shorter ones, but they all hit. So we’re doing that. We’re adding people to write for us. We’re trying to make it more interesting, have more people write, and just have another viewpoint.
You know hearing from people in this industry, you know not everybody does it full-time. There’s lots of different strategies, lots of great personalities, and so if you noticed over the last couple weeks, we’ve been adding people to write for us, and kinda hear their views, and I find it really interesting. And that’s what you do on your shows. You do the interviews, but we let ’em write a little piece on their own time, too. So that’s what we’re doing at DSAD, and for me, the nursery business has heated up, the weather. Man, global warming, this is a —-. We got people buying trees and putting mulch done in central Illinois in March, and it could snow this weekend, but we got 60 degrees. It just all over the place, so I’m kinda spinning in circles, but it’s a good thing. I’d rather be busy than trying to figure out what to do.
Michael: Exactly. All right, if you received benefit from today’s show, please post a comment below and thank today’s Sherpa’s. Thanks to Lee Latner for submitting his portfolio and making a generous donation to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Thanks to NameJet for submitting their portfolio and sponsoring that segment on the show and I also wanna thank our site sponsors, EstiBot, Escrow.com, David Weslow Legal Services, DomainIQ, Efty and the DNAcademy.
You know they’re the ones that make the show possible by paying the web hosting, paying my developer, the producer, the web hosting and analytics, the transcriptions, the audio optimization, everything that goes into making these shows possible. So thanks again to our sponsors and, of course, thanks again to our DomainSherpa’s, Adam Strong, Andrew Rosener and Shane Cultra for sharing their experience and insights. We’ll see y’all next time.
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https://domainsherpa.com/review-20170313/