DomainSherpa Review – Apr 24: DON’T Buy These Types of Domains…

DomainSherpa Review with Michael Cyger, Andrew Rosener, Michael Krell and Shane CultraThis is the show where we get into the minds of successful domain name investors – people we call Sherpas – and talk about the value of specific domain names. By listening to the Sherpas, we expand our thought process so we can become more successful investors ourselves.

In this DomainSherpa Review:

  • We learn what the Sherpas bought or sold recently: Wadsworth.com, VeryLocal.com, LSFA.com
  • An investor’s portfolio is appraised: TurfPal.com, TechMorsel.com, GanjaCall.com…
  • Get your bids in soon for these NameJet auctions: NetFolio.com, Emblaze.com, DynCorp.com…
  • Plus, much more!

We’re joined by three Domain Sherpas: Andrew Rosener, Michael Krell and Shane Cultra.

Review (80:27): Watch | Listen/Download Audio | Domain Lists

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Investor Submitted Domain Names

AdMonitr.com
BetCred.com
BrandHero.net
BudSecrets.com​
Cool-VR.com
CruiseDeals.online
FarmersPrime.com
GanjaCall.com
illuminease.com
Maintayn.com
SalaryFox.com​
SinoProcure.com
SleepLabs.io
Squynt.com
T-HC.com
TechMorsel.com
ThinkerU.com
TurfPal.com
UserChats.com
VendorSpeed.com
VentureStock.io
VinoBrand.com
VoiceSugar.com
WealthBid.com
Writerli.com

NameJet.com Pre-Auction Listings

acestorage.com
commercialvans.com
copenow.com
dubaiart.com
dyncorp.com
emblaze.com
icebreak.com
japansolar.com
jobsalsa.com
kazooo.com
landscapecompany.com
nancyk.com
trime.com
vaporization.com
webfolio.com

This Show’s Sherpas

Andrew Rosener
Andrew Rosener
Andrew Rosener is the CEO of the industry-leading domain name broker Media Options.

Andrew is widely considered a thought leader and expert on domain name value & methodology as well as domain name sales & acquisitions. With 20 years experience with domain names, Andrew has leveraged his knowledge and expertise to make MediaOptions the go-to domain name firm for startup & company domain acquisitions as well as high value domain name sales.

More shows with Andrew Rosener »

Michael Krell
Michael Krell
Michael Krell is the owner of the web and app design and development firm MKrell.com.

Krell is also an avid domain name investor specializing in brandable domain names. His portfolio can be viewed at MediaPlow.com, as well as BrandBucket.com, where he is currently managing director.

More shows with Michael Krell »

Shane Cultra
Shane Cultra
Shane Cultra is a domain name investor and owner of the popular domain name blog, DSAD.com.

Cultra is also a fifth generation owner of Country Arbors Nursery based in Urbana, Illinois, and has been a member of the PBS television show Mid American Gardener for more than 10 years, in addition to being a part of various gardening segments on CBS and ABC.

Shane also recently launched two new businesses, BeeHouse.com and Wormcastings.com, leveraging his online expertise with his love of nature and business acumen to create two exciting new ventures that are sure to be successful.

More shows with Shane Cultra »

DomainSherpa Advertisers

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Namejet.com

MediaOptions.com

Interview Raw (Non-Edited) Transcript

Download/Read the Domain Name Interview Transcript in PDF FormatInterview Transcript in PDF Format (Right-click to Save As…) [View in Google Docs]

Watch the full video at:
https://domainsherpa.com/review-20170424/

Michael C: Hey Sherpa Network. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m Michael Cyger will publisher of DomaineSherpa.com and this is the DomainSherpa Review. This is the show where we get into the minds of successful domain name investments using real examples so we can learn strategies to become better investors. We have three segments to review. We’ll start off learning what the Sherpa’s recently bought and sold. Next, we’ll discuss and evaluate 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 Andrew Rosnener, CEO of the domain name brokerage firm MediaOptions.com and CEO of Ganjapreneur.com, the leading B2B Magazine leading the cannibis industry. Michael Krell, managing director of the brandable domain name marketplace, BrandBucket.com. And Shane Cultra, publisher of the blog DSAD.com and owner of the Country Arbors Nursery in Illinois. Sherpas, welcome to today’s show.

Multiple: Hello.

Michael C: Shane, Shane, Shane, my man, just two days ago from when we’re taping this, you ran 26.2 miles in the 121st Boston Marathon. That is not your first marathon.

Shane: No, I think that’s 31 or 32. I lost my memory of [crosstalk]

Michael C: That is freaking crazy. So, I woke up early because you’re three hours ahead of me in Boston, and I went to the BAA.org website, Boston Athletic Association, and I wanted to track you. It’s amazing that you can put in anybody’s name and track them live. And so, I typed in Bainbridge Island because I wanted to see how many people from my city were running. There was like five people that went out to Boston.

Shane: Yeah.

Michael C: You started off strong, 23-minute and 45-second 5K, you’re looking strong. 7:30, 7:32, 7:35. You’re like right on pace for a nice marathon.

Shane: Yeah. That’s the problem, they say the marathon is halfway at 21, so I [crosstalk]

Michael C: Yeah, exactly. And then things started to slow down and I’m like oh no, Shane, what happened.

Shane: I scared a lot of people. Here’s the thing, so over 65 if you look at my history, I run 30-something. Over 65 terrible, under 65 good. It’s a very definable line. And I knew going in it was going to be hot. I don’t like scaring everybody because there’s so many people watching you. And so, they look at you and all the sudden I can just hear the ooh, like the crowd sighing as I disappeared. [crosstalk]

Michael C: Never a good thing.

Shane: Yeah, I could just hear it. I did an Ironman and people went to bed just hoping I survived [crosstalk] late at night.

Michael C: Yeah, those take a long time.

Shane: …when they went to because it’s 17 hours, like the world’s longest… But I could just hear, that’s the thing, I hear my wife, I hear you, like every time I start walking I just hear them go, oh Shane.

Michael C: You hear me saying, hey, Shane, did I tell you what my fastest marathon was. 2:58. Oh, yeah.

Shane: Well, I ran 306 last year. I mean, I was… But you know here’s, here’s the thing [crosstalk]

Michael C: Yeah, that’s better than my 2:58 when I was 22 years old. Yeah, I agree.

Shane: Yeah, that’s what everybody says, you have to oppose 40-year-old everything.

Michael C: Totally.

Shane: If anything, you did under 40 you can’t… But yeah, it didn’t go that well, there’s some good stories, it hurt like a —-. I’m sorry, that’s the only way to describe it. But it’s done and now all I’ve been thinking about is doing something, doing a better job. I refuse to get old but I [crosstalk]

Michael C: Dude, let me tell you, man, you train like a madman. You told me what you’re doing on your workouts and stuff, it’s not for lack of trying. You know, I was thinking about this, I got up this morning, I did my cross training and then I went to the local track and I was doing quarter repeats. And some young gun was there, he’s like a foot taller than me, he’s doing his quarter repeats in 70, right. Because I’m tracking this guy. That’s like a 4:40 mile, he put four of them together. And the guys just flying. I’m like, all right, I’m going to throw down my 1:20 here. I talked —- when he was walking off the track as well. Like, where you going?

Shane: When you say it in a minute, the kids say it in seconds. It’s like, yeah man, I ran a 70. And old guys like us, we’re like a minute and 20 seconds.

Michael C: Exactly.

Shane: They don’t even speak the same language literally.

Michael C: But you know, I remember when I was in high school and not for lack of trying but like eating too soon, but like if you’re giving it your all and you’re running your mile hard or your half-mile hard in a race, you’re going to throw up at the end because you just, you pushed your body to the limit. And like that’s what you did in this marathon. You pushed your body to the limit.

Shane: That’s the problem though, that’s how people die. Once you start doing things that hurt, that pain is just part of it like where passing out or throwing up is just how you end things, yeah, that’s the scary [crosstalk]

Michael C: It’s not normal, I’m saying. But it’s not for lack of trying is the point that I’m making.

Shane: Yeah, no, no, it’s…there’s definitely not lack of effort, but there’s so…

Michael C: Or lack of preparation. You prepare.

Shane: Yeah, preparation. It’s just there’s so many things that you can spend an extra 40% and gain an extra 5% it’s not just running. But yeah, no, it’s a lot of work. Anything we do, the hours and hours we put in and that’s why people like, any athletic or work or skill, they’ll come in and say, man, I’d love to do that, and you’re like, dude, I’ve been like, for five years, 60 hours a week, I’ve been getting up and 4:30 in the morning and then they’re like, I could have done that. You know, they [crosstalk] but I’m 50 and you’re 20, so I have to work like three times harder just to compete.

Michael C: Yeah, people think like oh, I threw down a 258 marathon, you threw down a 3:06, 3 hours and 6-minute marathon. Like, oh, you know, I could do that, too. That’s years of training. Like you three guys making money in investing, that’s years of training. I just did a DNAcademy session with a guy that bought a domain for $93 even. Bought a domain for $93, did 19 outbound emails, got six replies back, sold it for $1000. Quick money. And you can look at it and say that’s easy money. Steven spends half an hour a day going through the drop list looking at domain names, figuring out which ones he wants to buy and why and then making the investment. Like how long do you guys spend per day looking at drop lists analyzing domains? Give me a number, Shane.

Shane: I spend two hours every day.

Michael C: Two hours every day. Michael?

Michael K: It’s probably around three. Three or four.

Michael C: Three hours a day looking at drop lists and domains. Drew? Nothing?

Andrew: No. A lot of time. A lot of time [crosstalk] my voice is a little raspy. Yeah, no, I mean, I’m…especially, online and drop lists probably two or three hours.

Michael C: Yeah, there are no overnight successes. Like you’re not running a marathon [crosstalk] overnight success. You’re not becoming a successful domain investor overnight success.

Andrew: I’m spending at least that much, probably, actually, much more than that. Probably four to five hours a day going through email lists and spreadsheets that are being sent to me. So, that’s even actually more than the drop lists.

Michael C: Yeah.

Andrew: But I look, I’m looking at a lot of domains every day. A lot of [crosstalk]

Shane: I love businesses that have high barriers to entry. Like I want to be in something that it takes a lot of work, a lot of money, and a lot of time to get into because I don’t want somebody else coming in there. Because once I’m in I like to protect it. So, I love high barriers entry. That’s why I don’t mow grass, the barrier entry to mowing grass is a mower and a pickup truck. I’m not in that business. So, I like [crosstalk]

Michael C: Back to the marathon. You’re running along 13 miles, you see Elliott silver from DomainInvesting.com.

Shane: It was fantastic. His kids had a sign up with my picture [crosstalk] mile 13. It’s great to be in a city. And I saw him at the Expo, too. Saw his beautiful daughter. It’s great that this industry, I can go to the city that far away, and in the middle of Boston I see a friend. That is fantastic.

Michael C: Yeah. And congratulations to Elliott’s wife, Karen, she beat you by about 35 minutes, buddy.

Shane: I would not even ask that question because I knew the answer. Yeah, I got her next time.

Michael C: All right, well, congratulations on finishing. That is an effort in itself, especially because the heat and looking forward to hearing about your next marathon, buddy.

Shane: Yeah, it’s going to be better, I promise.

Michael C: All right. Today’s show is sponsored by six awesome domain name industry providers that I’m going to tell you about later during the show, but they include EstiBot.com, Escrow.com, David Weslow Legal Services, domainIQ.com, Efty.com, and DNAcademy.com. Before I tell you about them, we’re going to start off with a segment called What’s New Sherpas, where the Sherpas share one purchase or sell that they’ve made over the past few weeks and we get to learn what they paid or received for the domain name, why they thought it was a good deal and how the negotiations happened. We’re going to lead you through the questions but the other Sherpas will get to comment during the process as well. This segment, we’ll go Drew, then Michael, then Shane. Drew, 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.

Andrew: So, we just bought an interesting one, wadsworth.com.

Michael C: How do you spell that?

Andrew: Wads, W-A-D-S-W-O-R-T-H. Wadsworth.

Michael C: All right. I’m not even going to look it up, I’m not going to let you explain it [crosstalk]

Andrew: I’m going to just say it’s an old British surname. That’s it.

Michael C: All right.

Andrew: You know, Wadsworth.

Michael C: Michael, what do you think that Drew’s company picked up Wadsworth.com for?

Michael K: That’s an interest yeah. It’s a different one, which is great. I will say yeah, English, yeah, it’s like I’m sure like a financial institution. There’s plenty of financial institutions with Wadsworth. Let’s go with 25K.

Michael C: Wow. All right. Shane, what you think drew picked up Wadsworth.com for?

Shane: Oh, there’s definitely lots of end-users because there’s one, a real famous golf course designer, and I know because his street is right next to mine. And there’s a greenhouse equipment, one of the largest automated greenhouse equipment manufacturers, so there’s lots of Wadsworth’s.

Michael C: You guys are amazing like how you know about…I’ve never even heard of a Wadsworth before.

Shane: Oh yeah. I’ve got a greenhouse that’s like, oh, it’s on a Wadsworth system, you must have [crosstalk].

Michael C: All right. So, what do you think you paid for it?

Shane: I’m going to say $7000 just because I think people in the know, know. But I don’t think that anybody would know that there’s so many end-users with so much money. So I’ll say $7000.

Michael C: Okay. Drew, what did you pay for Wadsworth.com?

Andrew: On the money, man. $7000.

Michael C: Wow.

Michael K: Wow, that’s awesome.

Andrew: On the money.

Shane: Man, you’re getting better at this.

Michael C: Yeah, well maybe you know Drew’s buying habits a little too well.

Shane: That’s a good value. That’s right.

Michael C: So, how’d you come across this deal, Drew?

Andrew: So, it was an end-user who we had been speaking to about a different domain name. And I happened to look at what else they owned.

Michael C: How’d you do that?

Andrew: Using Domain IQ. And I saw a few names they owned and I liked the Wadsworth, made them an offer, took about two months back-and-forth, and actually, I walked away because they didn’t want to move off of 20 grand. And ultimately, they came back and said if you still want it for $7000, it’s yours. And 24 hours later, the domain was ours. I made an offer for five grand.

Michael C: And they wanted more?

Andrew: Yeah, they wanted a lot more originally. I actually did not think I was going to get it because for seven grand it’s almost not worth moving the needle, but I did, I built a relationship with these guys, they trust us. I have done business with them. The company’s Cengage, which is an online educational company. I had done deals with them in the past and so there’s a level of trust and they knew that it would be a straightforward deal. We got the deal completely done, you know, agreed-upon, signed, paid, transferred in under 24 hours.

Michael C: So, did you have to go back to them later on? It sounds like you made them an offer, they countered, you said I can’t do that. And then they came back to you some period of time later.

Andrew: Yeah, there was a few weeks of like back-and-forth, and then it went dead for at least a month, month and a half, and then they came back and said, hey, if you still want it for seven, things are changing, we’re ready to move.

Michael C: What do you think they were doing between that last communication and when they accepted your 7K?

Andrew: Don’t care.

Shane: Good answer.

[crosstalk]

Andrew: So, by…here’s the deal. What I saw in this name was not only are there a lot of end-users, but it goes into our antique shop. This is a 1992 domain registration.

Michael C: Wow.

Andrew: 1992.

Michael C: Yeah, somebody wanted it way back when.

Andrew: The way that I had actually kind of originally come across this name and put it on my short list, was that I had gone out and mined a lot of these British surnames because…you know, it’s funny we talked about animals last week. We talked about something else…what did we talk about? Yeah, mostly we talked about the animals, how getting an animal name is very difficult. Well, getting British last names, surnames, common British surnames, specifically historical ones, historically relevant ones, it is basically impossible. I think it’s actually the most difficult category I’ve ever mined. Ever. We built a list of the top 200 British surnames, and this is the only one we were able to get. The only one. So, yeah.

Michael C: So, what do you think, what’s the retail price on this one?

Andrew: Probably, it would have to be at least 75, probably will be asking 100 to 125 grand, 150 grand, something like that.

Andrew: So, exact match searches per month, according to EstiBot, 10,000. So, it’s a popular word as you guys [crosstalk]

Andrew: Yeah, I think it actually has a lot of traffic.

Michael C: Yeah. And a lot of value. Before this show comes out and EstiBot updates their pricing with what you said the retail should be, EstiBot value says $58,000. So, right around the order of magnitude that you’re thinking about.

Andrew: Yeah.

Michael C: Awesome. Congrats on that buy, Drew.

Andrew: Thank you.

Michael C: Nice get. Michael, let’s go to you. What’s one domain name you bought or sold in the past few weeks? Tell us the domain name and not the price yet.

Michael K: All right. A little different than Wadsworth, but it’s a sale. We’re going to go with verylocal.com.

Michael C: Verylocal.com.

Michael K: Yes.

Michael C: Love it.

Michael C: All right. Shane, let’s go to you what you think Michael sold verylocal.com for?

Shane: I know where he sold it, how about that?

Michael C: You think so. Maybe sold it on MediaCloud. We’ll find out later.

Shane: I will say…and I know this pricing model, so I’ll get the last three digits right, on Price Is Right. I will say.

Andrew: Probably that the first one or two digits are so much more important.

Shane: Yeah, normally, but in this when I know the last… I will say $3800.

Michael C: $3800. Drew, what you think Michael sold verylocal.com for? This seems like a Michael Birkin’s most wanted domains type of domain name, doesn’t it?

Andrew: Yeah, I like verylocal a lot. That’s a really nice little name, verylocal.com. It’s like hyperlocal, it’s a nice little branding small local advertising type of services. I’m going to say $12,500, it is what I’m going to say.

Michael C: Wow. So, there’s a big difference between your two guys and this brandable domain name, 3800 to 12,500.

Andrew: Yeah, I think it’s one of these names it’s like it’s two words, they fit together very nicely. Probably commonly used in language, makes a nice little brand. I can easily see someone paying 12 grand maybe 15 grand. I would never sell that under 8 grand probably.

Shane: I don’t disagree with him. I just know that sometimes the pricing models to move. You want to move names.

Michael C: All right, let’s go over to you, Michael. What did you sell verylocal.com for?

Michael K: So, yeah, closer to Drew’s range. I sold it for $9000.

Michael C: $9000. Wow.

Shane: That’s a [crosstalk] I don’t believe you.

Michael K: What did you say?

Shane: That’s an even number, I don’t believe you. I’ve never seen you [crosstalk]

Michael K: $8995.

Michael C: $8995. That sounds much more believable.

Shane: Yeah, okay. So now I believe him.

Michael C: Did you sell it on Brand Bucket or did you sell it on your own website?

Michael K: It was through Brand Bucket and it was a straight no negotiation, that was the by now price on it.

Michael C: They bought it. Because I’ve always thought maybe setting buy it now prices for everything under $5000 makes sense. And I know a lot of people go back and forth maybe up to $10,000, you set it for $8995 and somebody just pulled the trigger, didn’t even want to try and negotiate.

Michael K: No, no. It was an easy sell, yeah.

Michael C: So, what was going through your head when you bought this domain name, Michael? Were you thinking like some local advertising type…

Michael K: Yeah, no, I mean. everything it is, yeah, like you were saying, everything is going to hyper-local, you know, beacontechnology, you know, along those lines. I think… I don’t know exactly what I bought it for, but it was like a Go Daddy auction and I paid like $30 I think for it. So…

Michael C: Yeah.

Michael K: So, it was a no-brainer to buy.

Michael C: No-brainer. Local.com clearly the winning domain name for this niche, but it’s going to have a price that’s magnitudes higher. Similar domains names to local.com might be mylocal.com or local with three L’s, like LLocal. I don’t know what. I’m just making some up off the top of my head. What all of those be worth about $9000 or do you think that very local is better than my local, for example?

Michael K: I mean, mylocal is very good. And I think that’s…like, yeah, that would be worth more than very local.

Andrew: I disagree. I disagree.

Michael C: Really?

Michael K: Yeah. Because my local is like my town or my…

Andrew: [crosstalk] taken actual… I don’t actually see the commercial implication.

Shane: I think… [crosstalk]

Andrew: My local is really, really good brand for localized marketing practices, services. My local is like, you know, my local package store. It’s like… I don’t know. It’s not a bad brand. The lower tier of the sort of “my” names.

Michael C: Yeah.

Andrew: I like very local. I think that’s a really catchy little brand.

Michael C: So, you’re saying it’s a catchy brand, there’s not much search volume on it, 70 searches per month for very local. But as far as brandables go, you like it, Drew, it sort of strikes your fancy.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, again, like he bought it right, he paid 30 bucks or something [crosstalk]

Shane: The new owner’s job [crosstalk]

Andrew: It’s not a name that I’d be like, oh, I’ll pay 5 grand for it because…I’d be hoping to sell it for 8 to 12 or 8 to 15. So, you’ve got it buy it for $255 or less, I would buy that name all day and I’d be stoked about it.

Michael C: What were you saying, Shane?

Shane: No, I’m just saying that you’re…they’re searching for local, you’re just adding an adjective on it. Now, the new owner’s job is to become the person that makes them type that in. Now, that’s what the branding’s all about. Once they get a brand going and then people [crosstalk] it was very local or something along those lines, so yeah, you’re not going to find that. But I think a call to action probably is worth more. Go local, stay local, shop local…

Andrew: Oh, yeah. Go local, shop local, for sure, those are…

Shane: Yeah, those are the ones you’re going to be worth more.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael C: Awesome. Thank you for throwing that out, Shane. I was trying to come up with what are some good prefixes for local. So… yeah, awesome. Congrats on that sale Michael. Phenomenal.

Michael K: Thank you.

Michael C: Shane, let’s go to you. What’s one domain name you’ve bought or sold in the past couple of weeks? Tell us a domain name and not the price.

Shane: All right, we’ll bring it down another notch.

Michael C: That’s what you said last week. [crosstalk] That’s what you said last week and Frank’s like, I’ll give you $13000 for it today, even though you only bought it for $300.

Shane: I mean it’s only been a week since our last show. I’ve been a little busy…

Michael C: I know, running a marathon, passing out…

Shane: We’ll get a lesson out of it. So, I bought lsfa.com

Michael C: Lsfa.com, you bought it.

Shane: Yeah. I’ve been all over the four letters lately.

Michael C: Four letters, ends in an a. Drew, you like it?

Andrew: I do.

Michael C: What do you think he paid for it?

Andrew: I think he paid $455.

Michael C: Why do you like it?

Shane: Because it’s four strong letters. It ends in a. It’s a four-letter .com, four strong letters ends in a. That’s all there is to it.

Michael C: And like you’ve talked about on our show last month, you like the four letters that are western facing, not the Chinese investment ones. And this one is one where a company would want to shorten to three letters plus association or whatever the a stands for.

Shane: Let’s just say I’m not prejudiced. I don’t care if it’s Western or Eastern face, I just want to know that there’s end-users. If there’s buyers, if there’s money out there for this name, I love it.

Michael C: Right. Right. And you’re going to get higher dollar amounts with an end-user.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

Michael C: Cool. $455. Michael, what do you think Shane paid for lsfa.com?

Michael K: Yeah, I immediately thought like $500. So, yeah. $500 is what I’ll say.

Michael C: Shane, what did you pick it up for?

Shane: All right, so here’s my lesson. I paid $881. And where the lesson is here, too, when you’re busy and you want to spend money, we all like to buy domains. I like to buy four letter .com’s that don’t and in o. I don’t buy o’s because of organization and they start conflicting with .org, so I stay away from that. I try to get a, n, and c, good strong letters at the end. So, if I don’t have a lot of time, I just add some of those. I mean, I know if I’ve got… I like to buy those, I see them coming across but they have gotten more expensive over the last month because everybody’s starting to realize these are the end-user names. They’ve gone from $500… I’m glad you guys said it because they were $500 two or three weeks ago. I was buying them all day. Now they’re $800. They’re starting to cross $1000 and catch up to the chips, so-called chips, because these have end-users. I bought rpon, I like the o second to the end because it’s the word of. Because there’s always something, something of…and then a city or a place. And [crosstalk] go ahead.

Andrew: To make you feel better, I literally just bought yesterday lotp.com, lotp.com four also $880. And the reason was I like that same thing, with the o in the middle. It’s like left of the something…

Michael C: Dot.

Shane: Yeah, no, that’s exactly [crosstalk]

Michael C: I think I saw that one and I thought about it, too. Left of the… Yeah.

Andrew: I’m not going to say what it could stand for.

Shane: Left of the nut…

Michael C: Hey, Shane I know why you like a, association. I know why you like c, company, corporation. Why do you like n’s in the fourth position of a four-letter .com?

Shane: Well, network is always good. It’s just a good letter that’s not a j or k. Tough letters to put words to. Any of those letters I like, i is international. I mean, and they used to be really good value, in my opinion, for the amount of end-users for those, the Chinese were all hitting all these other ones. You used to just pick them up easily. And I joked last week, but it’s true, if you looked, you know Uniregistry is all over every one. If it’s under $500, $600, they’re going to be the top bidder. Then you step in the Chinese first and second and guests and all these things, but for me, if I can’t find anything I like I just keep adding those. I just keep building a portfolio of them that I feel very comfortable I’m not going to lose money on those names, they’re good assets.

Michael C: Do you get very many inquiries on your four letters from end-users?

Shane: I do get them. I don’t get great offers, but when I do, it pays for pretty much the entire month or year of purchases. Michael can probably talk about this. You’re going to get maybe 5, 8, 10, 12 for them all day long. But it’s only a couple a year, I’m not going to lie, out of 100 I might sell 2 to 4%, but it pays for everything and I still have the rest of the assets.

Michael C: Well, you’re holding them for appreciation because you’re betting, you’re playing the long-term game [crosstalk]

Shane: I could sell them tomorrow. I could sell them for what I paid the next day. I mean almost everyone…I’ve never lost money on a four-letter .com and I’ve been doing it since 2005 when it comes to four letters. So…

Michael C: Are you worried that like the four letters are going to go down in value sort of like what the three letters have done recently? You know, the floor price for a three-letter has gone down over the past year.

Shane: You’re looking to close to the screen. Three-letter .com’s have not gone down in value. You’re looking at a short window, pull that chart out again.

Michael C: Last year.

Andrew: Exactly.

Shane: Yeah, yeah.

Andrew: Exactly. Yeah.

Michael C: So, you’re saying over five years they’ve gone like this, then there was a little dip and then it’s [crosstalk]

Shane: Five years? 15 months. No, no, no, people are like are you worried about them going down? I go dude, you’re new. Because I’m very happy with a $22,000, $23,000 three-letter .com. I sold one to Drew for like $5000, who he sold to Oliver, who he sold it to somebody who sold it… I mean, that was less than 18…two years ago. I mean, and that now goes for 25, no, I’m not…yeah, I’m worried about it only going up 400% in two years.

Michael K: Yeah, really nervous about that.

Michael C: I feel for you, buddy.

Shane: Yeah.

Michael C: All right. Thanks, Shane. Congrats on the buy. And thanks for sure but as for sharing that information. I want to tell you about three of our sponsors for today’s show that support us in our mission to educate people for free.

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Michael C: We’re going to move on to the next segment of the show. In the domain portfolio review, we take user submitted domain name portfolios and provide honest and constructive feedback to the owners. So, they can cut their losses, continue to hold long-term or figure out a sale strategy going forward. Today’s portfolio was submitted by Tom Treanor. As part of Tom’s submission, he made a generous donation to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to help us all find a cure for cancer. Tom’s listed 25 domain names, starts with addmonitor.com without the e and it ends with writerli, and that’s li instead of y. As you’ll see, many of his domain names are brandable domain names. Tom said all the domains were purchased on the drop via hand reg or by name catching, with acquisition costs ranging between $9 and $40. If you are watching the show, this is the point where you should click the pause button, scroll down, look at the names, figure out what you think has value and doesn’t value, and then come back and listen to what the Sherpas have to say about it. So, you cannot gauge how your evaluations of these names are progressing. This segment, we’re going to go, Michael, then Shane, then Drew. Michael, let’s start with you. Before you get into the specific domain names, Tom wants to know what your general impression of the brandables listed here is.

Michael K: Sure. So, I think there’s definitely room for improvement in this list. There’s some strategies that I can see what he’s trying to do, but may be taking it like a step too far or kind of like another…one too many caveats. But there’s one or two that I think are worthwhile and that have end-users for them.

Michael C: All right. So, let’s get into what do you like on Tom’s list and why?

Michael K: Sure. So, just going down the list, techmorsal.com, morsel isn’t the best keyword to use, but we have sold quite a few tech keyword names. So, tech… I don’t know if we’ve sold exactly these, but like techbison or techbytes or techcrumb, along those lines, so techmorsel, it’s… It’s good enough to kind of fall in there like around maybe a $2000 range or something like that. And then the only other one for me is really turfpal. And there’s obviously a lot of lawn services out there, they probably aren’t going to be willing to pay you very much for it. But turfpal to me it’s possible that there might be like a larger brand that might… brand fertilizer or soil additive or something like that. Turfpal. So, I think that’s a good enough brand for a big box to buy.

Michael C: What would you price that one as if…

Michael K: I don’t know. I mean, you might wait for that and say like 5 to 10 or something and kind of like a hope and a prayer, but I think more likely it’s going to be at that $2000 range and you’re probably going to sell it to a smaller kind of lawn maintenance landscaping place.

Michael C: So, it sounds like he’s got some of the keywords that are trending and doing well on Brand Bucket like tech something or something pal. It sounds like he’s got part of the formula there.

Michael K: Yeah. I mean pal isn’t what it was like in PayPal’s kind of heyday. So that keyword isn’t great. But I think it kind of works for landscaping and the like as that it is like an older industry. And I think that maybe older keywords may resonate a little bit more in that industry.

Michael C: Yeah. Let me ask you, techmorsel or turfpal, but either of those make it onto Brand Bucket if they were submitted?

Michael K: Yeah, we’d accept textmorsel. Turf pal, it’s not…it’s end-users, but it’s not really kind of what we’re looking, like that end-user we’re looking for.

Michael C: So, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a good brandable domain, it just doesn’t fit the Brand Bucket model and customer profile that you’re serving.

Michael K: Yeah, we’re mainly going after tech companies. So, yeah, turfpal could definitely be a brand for a non-tech company.

Michael C: Give me one on the list that really misses the boat and why Michael.

Michael K: Well, so, like you can just go to the first one, like addmonitr. Okay, if it was just monitor spelled that way without the e then that’s good. We sell a lot of…think like Tumblr for example. Getting rid of that last vowel, that works really well. But when you’re combining, when it’s a double keyword name, you just really can’t do that type of like… there’s too many variations that someone could hand reg with like a double keyboard like that. I like his idea, what he was trying to do, but again, there’s just kind of too many caveats with doing that with a double keyword name.

Michael C: Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Thanks for that input. Shane, let’s go to you. What do you like on Tom’s list and why?

Shane: Well. Yeah…that’s right. First of all, I want Michael to come help me lay off employees because the way that he took that and made it sound so polite. He did a good job with that [crosstalk]

Michael C: He’s got a way about him. Yeah.

Shane: Yeah, I’d like to thank him for doing a [crosstalk]

Michael C: I think he’s done the same thing when I’ve submitted some of my brandables to Brand Bucket in the past.

Shane: Yeah, no, he’s great at rejection [crosstalk] buy him lunch later. Yeah, I’m not going to be as nice. I’m disappointed with Tom. I think Tom can do better. I just have a hard time believing… I’d love to sit down with Tom. If he went through a list and went through drops and said I want to pick up this one, I just, I can’t even, I’d love to be sitting down with him and listen to him think these through because I just…I don’t see how he could convince himself that these were good, so…

Michael C: Well, let’s play the hypothetical game, betting, gambling is a large industry. BetCred.com, people need credit when they’re betting, maybe betcred will give you credit when you go bet for online casinos, bit market.

Shane: Absolutely, you’re…once you have to start doing exactly what you’re doing, when you have to talk your way through it, you’re already lost. When people explain to me why I have to like the name or the thinking behind… Like I have an aunt who’s named Nancy who’s a little heavy and so Nancy chubby… You know, it just doesn’t make sense. There’s so many… If I had Josh next to me, within 12 seconds he would produce a list of 50 names that are available to hand register [crosstalk]

Andrew: Sorry. I have to interrupt you [crosstalk] and touch on the point that you just made I have an uncle… His name is Matt, he is very overweight, although he’s working on losing that weight. And he likes to refer to himself as fat Matt. And so, he told me he wants to open an ice cream store. And so, he told me to buy FatMattsIceCream for him. So, I bought that Matt’s ice cream for $8.50, it was at Go Daddy. And subsequently, I was contacted by somebody who wanted to open a chain of Fat Matt’s Ice Cream. We sold that —- domain for thousands of dollars. We got like $5000 for fatMattsicecream. So, lay off of chubby Susan because you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Michael K: That was awesome.

Michael C: So, did your uncle ever open his dream? His ice cream parlor?

Andrew: He has not. But he was actually over to visit me on Sunday here in Venice, and we were talking about that very situation.

Shane: So, you owe him a percentage.

Andrew: No. And subsequently, for whatever reason, I got notified by Go Daddy that fatmatt.com expired and was coming available. So, I got in on that and I got it for nothing. It was in an auction. But I got it for basically nothing. And so, I doubled down, I got FatMatt.com. And it turns out that’s like a 94 domain or a 95, something. I don’t remember offhand. But it was old, it’s old.

Michael C: So, Matt’s dream is alive again.

Andrew: Yeah.

Andrew: That dream is alive and well. And now [crosstalk]

Michael C: But you’re not giving him the domain name.

Andrew: The Fat Matt empire can be extended beyond ice cream. It could be Fat Matt’s [crosstalk]

Shane: Yeah, he’s not pigeonholed.

[crosstalk]

Michael C: Weight loss. Motivational speaking. It could be anything. But I don’t want to make up… All right, let’s go back to you, Shane. I’m going to push back because when you have to start explaining it. Like I own deadbolt.com and you’re like, frickin’a dude, I’ve got deadbolt on my house I just spent $14.99 at Ace Hardware, I don’t need a deadbolt, the domain name. And then I’ll be like, no, Shane, you’re missing it. It’s about online security. It’s about locking down your data. It’s about blah, blah, blah. I just explained to you, you didn’t know it before, now you know it. You know it’s a trillion- dollar industry, why [crosstalk]

Shane: Yeah, but there’s a difference between something that good, and there may be things that we don’t know about [crosstalk]

Andrew: All right.

Michael C: Hey, you’ll get your turn. I’m coming to y’all, let Shane.

Shane: That was an awesome fat Matt story. [crosstalk]

Michael C: I’m going to dedicate this whole show to your uncle Matt.

Shane: That’s right. Apples and oranges. No, deadbolt is not even in the same class. It’s like a whole ‘nother world. And then there’s things you have to explain. Like I may not know about blockchain. You know, some of you say block chain, they’re like what is that? Is that a kid’s toy? No, no, I get that part. But wealthbid and vinobrand that just doesn’t make sense to anybody. He needs…if his wife was sitting next to him. Like I don’t know if you guys do this where I’ll just call something out on a drop, and I’ll call it out and my daughter or my wife will say, terrible or oh, that’s pretty good, just instantly. They don’t know —- about it other than that I don’t have to take money out of the bank account to buy stuff. They don’t know anything else about domains. But they could tell, they could go through this list, and I’m not demeaning Tom, but he’s overthinking it. And Michael said it perfectly, he’s taking it too far. THC, great, but why the comma in front of the T or the… I mean, I don’t… It just doesn’t make any sense to me. So, to me, he needs to take a step back and simplify it and maybe discuss it. I’d love for him at some point, and I’d do it on a phone call. I would sit through him and go over some things and get through his thinking because I don’t think he’s quite on the right path, but keep watching the show, go to the university, I think he’ll do better.

Michael C: Yeah, yeah. Drew, what were you going to say about… Were you going to say something about deadbolt?

Andrew: Yeah. Well, I completely agree with Shane, the moment you have to start explaining, you’ve already lost it. However, the caveat to that is that it depends on who you’re explaining it to. So, the moment you have to start explaining it to your buyer, then it’s already established that’s not going to be your buyer. But if you’re just explaining it to the layman that that you’re like, oh, I own this domain, they’re like, why do you own it? And you’re like, here’s why. Well, that’s a different story. But the guy that shows up at your doorstep, he either gets it or he doesn’t. There’s no reason to explain and every time you engage in that you are devaluing your name. So, the matter of once you start explaining you lose is absolutely correct, but the caveat is it depends on who you’re explaining it to.

Shane: Yeah, I completely agree. If you’re trying to explain it to a friend of or another person, they don’t understand the brands…exactly what you’re talking about. Like deadbolt, we all get it because it’s a sure brand, it represents. But they’ll be like what, are you going to sell deadbolts? I totally get that. But if somebody’s coming to you, that’s a different…they’re paying money.

Andrew: Yeah. The startup founder who, they’re sitting in a board room and they’re like, okay we just raised $4 million in cash, we are perfectly happy to go out and spend between 50 and $200,000 now on a fancy domain name. We are in internet security, like let’s think about it. Right. And then start brainstorming. And you’re like, well, they hit like the top 10 keywords and then they find synonyms of those words and related terms and then boom, deadbolt ends up in that last.

Shane: And then they choose…we have chosen a name everybody it is writerli. I just wanted to say that, it’s writerli. They pay $72,000 for it from Drew and we’re very happy with it.

Andrew: Yeah. That’s the difference between Michael’s clientele and my clientele.

Michael K: Hey, hey, hey…

Michael C: He’s talking about me, Michael. So…

Michael K: Everybody’s got different budgets.

Michael C: So, Shane, writerli, you don’t like because it’s li, not ly.

Michael K: If there was a y, yeah, we would take it and sell it for $4000.

Michael C: Because if it was writer.ly, that’s a great brandable, it’s got one thing to explain, it’s .ly, and it if was writerli, you’re taking the ly and moving it to the left of the dot and you’ve got the .com, it’s a great defensive, a good brand.

Michael K: Yeah.

Andrew: Because you’re sympathetic to Libya [?].

Michael K: Yeah.

Michael C: All right. Shane, did you pick anything? You didn’t like anything on Tom’s list? Nothing?

Shane: I’m in the industry turfpal, there is a ton of money in lawn care names. I mean, I sell [crosstalk]

Michael C: You like that one?

Shane: I don’t like that one.

Michael K: Oh man.

Shane: Because no…people will use trufmaster, turfking, turf…a name to describe that they’re good turf. Turfpal means like I’m going to come give you a hug if you have problems. Turfpal doesn’t work, that’s a product that helps you, but it’s not a service name. I like service names and that’s not one for me, so… I don’t even like that one. I like the word turf, though.

Michael C: Well, you explained why you didn’t like it and you gave some examples, so that should be useful to Tom.

Shane: Yeah. Again, that’s our job. If we told you that we liked this, we would be lying and not giving anything. I think he’s in the wrong direction and…but, yeah, that’s what we’re here to do and Michael’s much better at it. And I promise you it’s going to get worse here coming up because Drew’s next.

Michael C: Well, we shall see. Thanks, Shane.

Drew, let’s go to you. I know you like one name on the list.

Andrew: I like zero names on this list. However, I am sympathetic to turfpal.com. Unbeknownst to Shane, my father actually has a degree in turf science.

Michael C: Is this fat Matt’s brother?

Andrew: No fat Matt’s brother is my…sister is my mom.

Michael C: Oh, okay, other side.

Andrew: My dad has a degree in turf science, he has a bachelor of science.

Shane: That’s fantastic, yeah.

Andrew: And so, I know a little bit about turf. And I lik that name, I think turf…I agree, it’s not turfking.com, but it’s…trufpal. but here’s the deal, to get a win on a name like that you need several thousand of them. And the chances of out of the 2000 that you own, the chances of turfpal being the one that pops off for…so, the thing is, again, it’s math. If you own turfpal.com and you own…if you have 100 names and turfpal is one of them, your chances of actually getting any sale if the other 99 look like these other —- names, then you have a zero percent chance of success. You have a zero percent chance of getting a sale. If you have 2000 names or 5000 names and turfpal is one of them and the other ones are like turfpal, you’ll sell 10 of those a year. To make that math work, you need to sell it for $8000 or $10,000. And so, you are looking for…you really almost have to hit a homerun for the math to play out. If you own a thousand of those names and you sell turf power for 2000 or $3000, and you’re like, wow, sweetheart, I bought this domain for $9.50 and just sold it for $2988, let’s go have a fancy dinner and a bottle of champagne. Well, you actually just lost so much money because the only name out of your list that actually is going to sell, you now just sold for like one third or one-quarter of what you have to sell it for, in order to make the math work on your portfolio. Because the buyers only going to actually show up for very limited number of those sales. And so., for each of those sales, you need to maximize that sale. Because if you don’t you’re breaking the formula for your whole portfolio. So, I don’t like this portfolio it all because my guess is he might have 100 of these, he might have less, and one of them is going to look like turfpal, the other ones are going to look like writeli or whatever. And I don’t see that as a winning formula. So, I hope that he’s just doing this as a little side hobby.

Michael C: Well, many of us do. So, let me throw out a couple more. You’ve got .io here, sleeplabs. I know a few things about a .io. if it were sleep.io, you might find a buyer for it. If it were lab.io, you might find a buyer for it. You’re probably going to sell it in the the $2000-$10,000 range. So you tack on another word and it becomes almost valueless.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean… I was leaning towards mentioning sleeplabs.io just because sleep is a really hot category. I’ve had some clients in that space where we’ve tried to acquire existing websites and good domain names in this space, and it’s picked dry, there is nothing out there. So, it is a space where there’s a very big constraint on availability. .io is good. The moniker of sleep labs is great, I actually love that name. But I don’t love sleeplabs.io. But it’s not a name I would let expire. I would probably hang onto it and if you’re paying 10 bucks a year to keep that name, that one’s worth a gamble.

Michael C: But your .io’s a Go Daddy, with pricing, you are going to run you 30 bucks a year.

Andrew: Yeah, so tough to…tough to sit on that.

Michael C: Exactly.

Andrew: You’ve got a couple, you’ve got ganjacall.com. I mean, if I owned that name I would keep it. If I hand registered that, and I would hand register it. But I wouldn’t pay…I probably wouldn’t back order it and pay 70 bucks.

Michael C: I don’t even know what a ganja call is. What’s…

Andrew: It’s nothing, is absolutely nothing, but it could eventually be like a delivery service or like a helpline, it could be whatever, ganja…I think we own ganjachat.com, right, so it’s not far off.

Michael C: t-hc.com.

Andrew: Why? Like Shane said, why? Why is there a hyphen in there? It just doesn’t add anything, it doesn’t mean anything, I mean…you know.

Shane: It doesn’t make any sense.

Andrew: If I said, guys I own gold.com, but I’ve got a hyphen between g and o, that makes me an old g. You know, I’m a gold o g. It just doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t add anything, it doesn’t mean anything.

Michael C: All right, so the same thing goes with cool-vr.com. Unless you’re Adam Strong, do not buy hyphenated domain names.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. One of those first…throw the money in the toilet domains that I bought was n-a-k-[crosstalk]-g.com. I thought that was super clever. [crosstalk] hyphen between every letter and I thought wow, what a cool [crosstalk].

Shane: Oh, that’s great. I think I may try and pick it up again.

Michael C: I know. He still owns it?

Andrew: We probably still own it. Do we?

Shane: Yeah. Renewed it for nine years. Yeah.

Andrew: It was so clever I renewed it for nine years.

Michael K: One thing I just wanted to add about strategy going towards… I think it is important to have a set amount of money that you’re willing to spend initially and to not go back to put more money into it until a sale happens. Because that gives you time, it forces you to learn more about what you’re buying and it gives you that hard limit and it makes you think a little bit more about, oh, should I buy this name. If my budgets $1000, is this really worth tapping into my bankroll to do that and building organically like the.

Michael C: Right.

Shane: That’s a good lesson. That’s the key to my success is when I got in this, I can’t take money out of the bills that I’m going to pay my mortgage, so the only way to buy something else was to sell something. In hindsight, I sold some names that are worth a lot more money. But at the same time, I had never at any point [crosstalk] yeah, I didn’t put anything in jeopardy financially. I was rolling it over. And so, if I wanted something else I had to sell something. And it forces you to be more aggressive and sell things. Again, yes, you sell some things may be a little too cheap, but that’s how real business works. That’s not how the startup world works, but in real world, you have to make money in profits to keep rolling.

Michael C: Yeah, but you bought some three letters that were increasing in value. And you have that opportunity to do it. With these types of brandable domain names, he’s pretty much stuck. He needs to let them drop. And then start over.

Shane: And that tells you, you just answer the big question…that tells you a whole bunch of it, yeah.

Michael C: Hey, Michael [crosstalk]

Andrew: You’re just…if you want to make money, you need to lose money. That’s the sign of the times.

Shane: Exactly.

Andrew: The more money you lose, the more money you’re going to make. [crosstalk]

Shane: …users.

Michael C: All right. Tom’s got three questions. Michael, is Brand Bucket, and I’m going to ask you because I know you’re unbiased. Is Brand Bucket the best way to sell brandables or is there a better way?

Michael K: Well, let me see… Yes, Brand Bucket is the best way to sell a brandable. Like I say, like techmorsel, we would accept that, and list it for something like 2K. The other one [crosstalk]

Michael C: But look, you target tech startups. Under your own admission, it doesn’t mean that another brandable won’t be a good fit for… It doesn’t mean that a domain name that doesn’t fit brand bucket model isn’t a good brandable that you should hold on to.

Michael K: Yeah, and we don’t only sell to tech startups. But like, for these niche ones, if there’s a niche it’s the tech. We’ll sell to other industries, but those are going to be more popular keywords, better names.

Michael C: Yeah. And then the alternative is it on your own website, right. You run MediaPlow.com for domains that either don’t fit on Brand Bucket or you don’t want to list there or whatever. You have your own portfolio.

Michael K: Yeah. I mean, you’ve got to put it on Go Daddy and just put a buy now for these at like $100 or something. And then, you might as well put it for like 99 bucks for almost all these names. Then if they don’t sell, just let them expire.

Michael C: That’s a great tip. I’ve done the same thing. Go to Afternic, but in a price of $99, it goes on to Go Daddy and others. And then just let them expire. If somebody types it in on Go Daddy, season $99, this could be yours, $99, just click done. Hey, you got 99 more dollars than letting them all just expire.

Michael K: Yeah, yeah.

Michael C: Good tip. All right, are there any domains here that would make you think they would be well served by outbound marketing? Shane?

Shane: No. Don’t waste your time.

Michael C: Not even turfpal? Maybe?

Shane: No.

Michael K: There was a trademark on turf pal, I know, but it did expire.

Michael C: Ah, okay, then you’re good.

Shane: No, you’re not can hustle your way on these.

Michael C: Drew, why can’t you hustle your way on a brandable domain name?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s like dead cat bounce.

Shane: Yeah.

Michael C: All right, no more explanation needed. It is very difficult to sell a brandable domain name to an end-user. They need to come to the conclusion that they want the domain name on their own and come to you to buy it.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean there’s no inherent value, right. So, you either need to be a really good salesman that can create a perception of value, create the demand or wait for somebody else to come up with the idea and then come to you. But it has to be…[crosstalk] really and truly by the idea of inception, I wish I could plant that little seed in their mind and be like [crosstalk] you are going to think this is the best domain ever.

Michael C: You can do that. Right. You can buy some advertising on Facebook and target people who only work at turfking.com and somehow [crosstalk]

Andrew: That’s too much hard work. I’d want to go straight to the source and plant it in their brain. I’m working on it. I’m working on it.

Michael C: All right. Tom’s last question, in addition to listing domains for sale on Sedo, Afternic, and Efty, is an auction the only strategy when you want to get rid of something fast?

Andrew: Depends on what it is.

Michael K: I guess so, yeah.

Michael C: Like look at any of these domains. How can he get rid of them fast?

Andrew: Delete.

Michael K: Yeah.

Michael C: You can go onto Go Daddy and Uniregistry and actually delete them. List them on Afternic wait for the expiration. Really if you want to wholesale it out, you can go onto NamePros and put it into an auction and try to get like $5 for a domain that you would let expire.

Andrew: But I mean honestly, if your time… Even if you find a buyer on NamePros, it’s going to take you let’s say 30 minutes of work, if your time is not worth more than five or $10 per hour, honestly you probably should be finding a different hobby, like constructively. Like you know what I mean, legitimate. It honestly isn’t worth your time. Your time is better spent educating yourself than trying to make back five dollars on a piece of —- name that otherwise has no value. You know what I mean, like spend that 30 minutes it would take to recoup $5 and educate yourself. Watch more episodes of DomainSherpa. Read blogs, just read the newspaper. Yeah. That is not time well invested.

Michael C: All right. Your time is worth more, we don’t want to make comments about other people’s time. Maybe if people are in third world country five dollars is a lot of money living in a village where they only have power like five hours a day. That could be a lot of money. So [crosstalk] all of our judgment on that because people could make money doing that.

Andrew: But you’re not making money.

Michael C: Well you’re minimizing your loss. Right. You’ve already put… Let’s say they bought it with a coupon for like $2.99 for a.com and then they sell it for… Right. Like I get it. You’re not making a lot of money. But if you [crosstalk]

Andrew: I stand by my comment. I think your time is better invested educating yourself that it is trying to recoup $5. That’s where I stand by that comment.

Michael C: Fair enough. Tom, thank you for submitting your portfolio and making your donation to cancer research. We hope this review has been helpful and constructive to you in your domain investing activities going forward. Before we jump into the domains going to auction soon, I want to tell you about our three other sponsors that support us in our educational mission.

First, if you’re buying a domain name from a private party and want to know what else they own, domainIQ.com is the tool you should be using. View their entire portfolio, filter by Estibot value and be a better investor. $49.95 for 250 queries per month. Visit domainIQ.com/portfolio to learn more.

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Finally, if you’re struggling with how to buy, sell, and value domain names, you need to check-out DNAcademy.com. Published by me, Michael Cyger of DomainSherpa, and trusted by Uniregistry to train their new employees, you too can learn using the DNAcademy accelerated learning system for domain name investing. Learn more at DNAcademy.com.

Michael C: We’re going to move on to the marketplace list. This segment is sponsored by NameJet. We’ll be reviewing 15 no reserve domains 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, be part of the auction, or even just watch the results. The links below go directly to name jet, they’re not commissionable links, they just want to see what kind of traffic we’re sending them. The list starts with Acestorage.com, and it ends with webfolio.com. For transparency, I always ask the Sherpas if any of the domains listed below are owned by them or being broker to buy them? I don’t think so. Sherpas?

Michael K: No. I don’t think so.

Andrew: No.

Michael C: All right. Again, if you’re watching the show, click the pause button, review the domain names, price them, listen to the Sherpas share their insight. That’s how we improve by putting ourselves out there doing the analysis, listening to others and then adjusting our understanding of it. This segment we are going to go, Shane, then Drew, then Michael. Shane, let’s start with you. From an investment perspective, a newer investor perspective, what do you like on the NameJet list and why?

Shane: I’m Debbie Downer here, I don’t…I hate this list, too. I mean, it’s just… Again, we talked about how many hours we put into this. I see 150 better names than this every day for cheaper than these names. And I’ll go through why. I have no problem doing it because there’s some that seem obvious, like landscape company. I know that’s based better than anybody probably in the world when it comes to domains. You’re trying to define yourself and you’re not going to define yourself with a generic. You just changed landscape company to landscape company. You know, and then when you do an ad, a generic works well in the ads, so commercial vans. Big category. You’re seeing all these…I don’t know what they call them, the vans with the high ceilings, like a Mercedes… I can’t remember what it is.

Michael K: Sprinter.

Shane: Yeah, Sprinter. So, everything’s moved to a sprinter. Commercial vans are huge right now and I can see in a Google ad words at the right, commercial vans, makes you think they’re good in the industry. But when I see landscape company, landscape is local, landscape is personalized service, generic name does not work for me at all. So, I don’t like anything like that. When I say it’s too generic, I jokingly say that, like I said that about shoes.com and everybody responded on Twitter. Somebody asked, what you think they paid for shoes? I go I hope not too much, that’s too generic. And they went, what? Obviously, I’m kidding with shoes.com. But landscape company, I’m not. It’s just too generic. If I own a company, I’m not going there. Japan solar. They don’t even say Japan in Japan. It’s Nippon. I mean, that’s not the words you’re going to use. So, I get it if you’re…I get what Japan solar is. Solar is one of my favorite categories, I think it’s the future. I love solar names. But I want N-I-P-P-O-N solar. And they don’t even write it in Western letters anyway. So, all that’s working against it in this case. The kazooo’s got an extra o. I guess you get more o’s for the money.

Michael C: Yeah, extra charge.

Shane: Nancy K. maybe she’s going to be famous. Vaporization. I get vape, all of that, vape nation maybe, but vaporization is getting a little long on the tongue. Dine corp. it’s dino corp, dyna corp, dyna… you’re missing a letter. So, I could go on and on. I just, these names [crosstalk]

Michael C: So, you don’t like any of them. You’re not bidding on any of them and those are the reasons.

Shane: I don’t want any of them. I don’t want them at $69 and I don’t want $100 for Japan solar. And hopefully, I can talk these down enough so I can buy them all later. Yeah, you guys can have them, I don’t want any of them.

Michael C: Drew, let’s go to you, is there anything on the list that you like and why?

Andrew: Yeah, no, there’s nothing I love. There’s definitely nothing on here that I love. Pretty much the same sentiments as Shane. I don’t know, I guess I like vaporization a little bit, but honestly, we been brokering vaporizer.com for six months and we can get anybody to step up. So, I don’t know. Vaporization. That’s probably the only one on here I would even bid on. Maybe emblazed.com is kind of cute, webfolio is kind of cute.

Michael C: Uh-oh. We lost Drew. Darn it. I was just about to tell him that dinecorp.com is a 1994 registration. I know that’s going to get him excited. All right, when he comes back I’ll ask him. Michael, let’s go to you. Kazooo with an extra o. Shane didn’t like it. If it was kazoo.com, with only two o’s, I like that brand, I’ll throw down money for that. What about Kazoo with three o’s?

Michael K: Three consecutive is just, is a no go in general. No, it’s too many. If there was a name were three would work kazooo would probably be one of those.

Shane: I told you he was good at firing people. If there ever was a chance that you could put three letters, yours would be the best. But we don’t do that, so in this particular case, we can’t accept it.

Michael K: I really think kazooo, though because it kind of sounds like a kazoo when you say [crosstalk]

Michael C: It’s growing on you isn’t it Michael.

Shane: Yeah.

Michael C: It’s growing on you. All right. Are you being nice or are you just like…are you just saying that?

Michael K: No, no. I mean, I wouldn’t buy it.

Michael C: You wouldn’t buy it.

Michael K: No.

Michael C: Would it make it on Brand Bucket?

Michael K: No, it wouldn’t. But I’m…

Shane: But on you, it looks good. I mean, I would never wear that. But it’s so cute on you.

Michael C: I do like kazoo.com, I don’t know about the triple-o. Welcome back, Drew, we’ll come back to you. All right, Michael, what do you like on this list if anything?

Michael K: The only one is webfolio, is the only one that I would buy and I think it’s… you try to get it for a couple hundred maybe. I think it’s probably worth maybe around $500. But yeah, like emblaze, like I should like that more, I think, but it’s like emblazender. You know, that’s more the common, emblaze is not…I don’t know if anyone says emblaze in vernacular. So, yeah, I don’t know. Nancy K, I don’t know, that’s kind of a cool…I don’t know. I guess maybe because I was thinking Mary Kay. Obviously spelled differently, but you know like a clothing brand or some kind of lifestyle brand, it’s kind of a nice… But again, to find an end-user with that is going to be very difficult.

Michael C: Yeah. All right.

Michael K: That’s all I’ve got.

Michael C: That’s all you got. Drew, let’s come back to you. When you were off I did a WHOIS lookup on dinecorp.com, 1994 registration. Does that make you like it a little bit more?

Andrew: No. I mean, I do like it, but the thing is it’s going to sell for too much money for what it been worth to pay for, right. So [crosstalk]

Michael C: Give me a scenario. What would it be worth to pay for?

Andrew: Yeah, well it’s already at $600. I’d pay a couple hundred bucks for it maybe. Just because it’s [crosstalk]

Michael C: And what would you ask for it?

Andrew: …name and you know… it’d probably never sell so I probably would never have to quote a price. But it probably has traffic. Probably has traffic. Probably has good backlink profile. I’m not even looking, I’m guessing. It was a CSC client, so… It’s okay but it’s probably good for like putting it into in SEO link farm, not buying and hoping to resell.

Shane: Look at Drew’s nails compared to my nails, that’s ridiculous. His look like they’re manicured.

Michael C: Well, Drew just came from like getting his cuticles…something, I don’t know.

Shane: Geez. That’s ridiculous.

Andrew: Not here.

Michael C: Not here?

Shane: They look like a masseuse’s hands while he was talking there. Look at these things, they’re all torn up and dirty, And Drew’s are so pretty. Okay, anyway. Go back.

Andrew: These fingers do work, man, let me tell you.

Michael C: So, I ran…I give you guys all of the domains run through EstiBot so you could look at the stats real fast. Dinecorp had an appraised value of $35,000.

Shane: It probably was a company before.

Michael C: Does that make you like want to take another look at it and trying to figure out why EstiBot gave it a high valuation?

Andrew: Good story. Thanks.

Shane: No. Sometimes I look at the future and not of the history.

Michael C: All right. That’s it for NameJet today. We’re at the end of today’s show. I like to give the Sherpas an opportunity to share anything that they want about names they’re brokering, deals they have going on, opportunities they’re looking for, anyone they want to give a shout out to. Let’s go left to right. Drew.

Andrew: So, all kinds of things. So, very excited, I bought my tickets and I will be at DN Seatle with Mr. Michael Cyger on May 25, I think.

Michael C: May 25. Thursday night.

Andrew: So, I will be there. I will be in Seattle. My first time in Seattle.

Michael C: Wow.

Andrew: We’ve still got a phenomenal auction running over at NameJet. We’ve got a ton of great games selling. We just had a huge end-user sale as a result of one of our names not hitting auction. That means all of you lost money because you had every opportunity to buy it at a wholesale price. You passed. I won.

Michael C: What was it?

Andrew: I will tell you when it is officially closed. Actually, we’re about to sell another one, we’re about to sell acrylic.com, which was literally, it was like $400 away from the reserve price and…

Michael K: Oh, geez.

Michael C: Were you looking at that one Michael?

Michael K: I was really considering. I love acrylic, yeah. I love…oh, my gosh.

Andrew: Now we’ve got this massive acrylic aquarium company that wants to buy the name and they’re already well above what our reserve was. But I think they’re going to go higher, so we’re probably going to close that one, too. So, you guys should be on these auctions, pull up your bootstraps and man up and just buy some of these names because these are phenomenal deals. And again, I want to remind you that reserve prices on 90% of these names is at or above, let’s say it’s within 10% of what we paid. Okay. So, if you think I’m good at picking names, take advantage of my generation skills.

Michael K: You’re doing all the work for us.

Andrew: I’m doing all the work for you. I’m doing all the work for you. Last but not least, I think that everybody buyer, seller, expert, novice, should go over to MediaOptions.com and read the latest blog posts that we just dropped. Chris Zuger has dropped some knowledge on domain valuation and how to recognize the opportunity in a given domain name. And I think that it as a tremendous amount on top of some of the discussions we’ve had here on DomainSherpa. It’s a really in-depth look at domain value and just recognizing the opportunity, some of what we talked about today, some of what we’ve talked about in the past, but pulling all together in one place. It’s really, really insightful.

Michael C: Yeah, it’s good all the way through but I will say look at the very last point that Chris makes where he breaks down different categories of buyers and how much they’re willing to spend on a domain name in general terms. I read that, I’m like, ah, that’s a great way to look at it. I haven’t explained it that way in DNAcademy, but it helps you think about the types of domains you’re buying and then who those categories of buyers are and if you’re buying and selling a domain for up to 500 bucks, then go for it. But if you’re trying to go upscale, then you think about your buying differently and target the buyers.

Michael K: Exactly.

Michael C: Great article. Cool. Thanks, Drew. Michael, let’s go to you. Anything you want to promote?

Michael K: Sure. Well, we have some exciting news about in an effort to get more premium names on Brand Bucket, we really had a pretty big increase just in the last 6 to 9 months of end-users looking for more premium names. And so, in order to track those names, we’re actually reducing our commission rate for these higher priced names. So, names between 50 K and 100 K are going to be a 20% commission. And then names above 100 K will be 15%. And we… It’s cool because a lot of these… I shouldn’t say a lot, but several of these increase for bigger budget names or entrepreneurs that sort of started with us six years ago, seven years ago, finding a name and they’re successful, have successful exits. And realize the value of these, of a good name right from the start. And so, we really are trying to attract those. And yeah, we announced that I guess a little over a week ago. Yeah, we got some pretty good ones on the side already. We have ten.com and edamame.com

Michael C: Edamame. I love edamame.

Michael K: Yeah. We have some really nice ones up there now. So, yet if anyone has a name in that range I’d love to talk to you and [crosstalk]

Michael C: How do people, how do investors decide whether they should just stick with their landing page on Go Daddy or Efty or Afternic, or list it on Brand Bucket? Like deadbolt.com. Should I just stick with my Efty landing page or should I list it on Brand Bucket?

Michael K: Well, you haven’t sold it yet so [crosstalk]

Michael C: I have not.

Michael K: Yeah, I would say to… I mean the normal… What’s the normal brokerage time, anywhere from a month to three months, something like that. And we would love to have a name like deadbolt and it doesn’t hurt to give us a try. We obviously have established customers and we have millions of dollars in sales and we’re definitely tied into the [inaudible 01:13:26] community. We think we offer a unique set of customers.

Michael C: All right. Thanks, Michael. Shane, let’s go to you. Anything you want to promote?

Shane: Well the one thing I haven’t said very often, but we do a list every day, that’s kind of what we are known for. And if people…you know, we talk about going through lists for hours and hours, if you have a name that’s at auction, we only do names at auction. But if you have it at Go Daddym NameJet, Flippa, wherever you have it at auction and you don’t think…you think that we can help give some promotion to your name and get you out of the crowd, for $10 we will list your name. I will say ahead of time, I turned down a lot of names. I’m trying to be honest with people, if I don’t think it’s going to sell at all, there’s no sense in wasting $10. I’m not going to take your $10. Unfortunately, Tom, I wouldn’t be able to help him. You know, I’m wrong all the time, and so occasionally I’ll put some names up there and out of the hundred times that I put a name up there where they begged, that sounds terrible, I’m taking money and begged, but said hey, this’ll sell. Two of them actually sold that I thought would not sell, so I am wrong sometimes. But in general, I can help. And if I listed I can usually get you enough eyeballs that at least someone will see your name and then it’s on its own. But there’s a lot of names to go through and there’s only so many that you can see. I think being on a catered list definitely helps do that. So, that’s a service we offer for $10. Other than that, just read the blog. I think Travis and Aaron in Josh do an amazing job. I’m honored to be working with them, I think they all are fantastic domain investors. So stop by the blog, you might learn. It’ll be worth your time, I think.

Michael C: Yeah. DSAD, and if you want to read the synopsis of Shane’s marathon activities from this past weekend, go check out the Wednesday, April 19 [crosstalk]

Shane: You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’ll be amazing.

Michael C: You said you cried, buddy.

Shane: I did cry. I’m not going to lie, man. I don’t get very…I don’t think I’ve cried [crosstalk]

Michael C: All right. If you want to know why Shane cried, go read his blog.

Michael K: Yeah, [crosstalk] all the way.

Shane: I don’t think I’ve cried since my daughter was born. I mean I’ve never had anybody pass away, so I’ve never really been in a fight or… This guy’s walking me the last half mile, one arm holding me and then waving the crowd, and the crowds just screaming for me.

Michael C: They’re like, .com, .com…

Shane: That’s the other thing, VeriSign owes me because I had a shirt [crosstalk]

Michael K: Now we know why it happened. [crosstalk]

Shane: They were very kind to send me a .com shirt and it was the only legible thing. Everybody else had these little numbers so they’re like, go 2742, but mine said .com and I heard… Like I’m walking and I just want to get the f home and they’re going go .com, you’re almost there .com. that’s all they called me the entire [crosstalk]

Michael C: Dude, they got like $1 million worth of branding sending you that T-shirt.

Shane: Instead of getting three hours, they got 4 1/2 hours. I mean there was a helicopter flyover with me laid out in the road with .com.

Michael C: You probably got news coverage.

Shane: VeriSign needs to, they need to send me a giant check for all that.

Michael C: Yeah. All right. Go read that blog. I want to tell you DN Seattle is taking place at the Amazon headquarters in Seattle Washington on May 25. Our own Drew Roser is flying up from Venice California for the event. Amazon’s our premier sponsor, VeriSign just came on as a sponsor joining Go Daddy, Donuts, Rightside, [inaudible 01:16:58]. Escrow and Above.com, thank you to all of them. And if you’re like my kids, you’re into Sass, sassiness. We are giving away three Sass products.

Shane: Where you going with that?

Michael C: It didn’t work out well. Free software from EstiBot and domainIQ and DNAcademy, to lucky winners at the event, they are our festivities sponsors. There are only 20, 2-0 tickets remaining for this event. If you’re thinking of going to DN Seattle, now’s the time to go buy those tickets. By the time the show comes out, we may be down to 10. We’re probably selling a few a day right now. So, if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, get over there. We got DJ Staten from Rightside spinning tunes. We’ve got Mark.live live streaming the event. But you’re going to want to be there live. You don’t want to watch it on TV from behind your computer or whatever.

Andrew: I’m flying in from the Pacific Southwest.

Michael C: All the cool kids are going to be there. All right. And it all goes to benefit Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center right here in Seattle who’s helping us all find a cure for cancel. If you receive benefit from today’s show, please post a comment and thanked today’s Sherpas. Thanks to Tom Treanor 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 of the review. And thanks again to our domain sure buzz, Andrew Roser, Michael Krell and Shane Cultra for sharing their experience and insights. We’ll see y’all next time.

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https://domainsherpa.com/review-20170424/

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15 Responses to “DomainSherpa Review – Apr 24: DON’T Buy These Types of Domains…”

  1. Kazzia says:

    The Fat Matt story – mind blown! Very cool.

  2. Thanks Michael and the sherpas for a another interesting show. I’ve sold a few domains on BrandBucket. I’m a novice domain investor and it’s good to hear their opinions on domain values.

  3. Saro says:

    Thanks for the interview guys.

    I’m really surprised about the comments regarding BetCred.com. It’s a great name.

    – Self Explanatory, anyone can guess at first chance what it refers to
    – Passes the “radio test”
    – Only 2 syllables
    – Related to the financial industry
    – the .co.uk extension is somewhat developed

  4. Sumit says:

    Excellent show and really great advice from sherpas.

    Thanks Mike for your wonderful effort!

  5. Ategy says:

    Thanks for yet another great show guys … I’m ROTF at the Fat Matt story … but it’s a horrible story to tell to new domainers .. lol .. seriously .. FatMattsIceCream.com is a terrible domain name (unless you buy it for $8 because actually have an uncle named Fat Matt who actually wants to open an Ice Cream parlour). That type of long random word combo domain never ever should have sold for $5k! FatMatt.com on the other hand is a good domain that could potentially hit $xxxx.

    OK .. I take it back .. it is too a great story not to tell! lol

    It’s funny how we all see different things in names .. TurfPal was one of the few 2-3 names I didn’t think were that bad. I saw not as trying to be your pal .. but the pal of some lawn in desperate need of help (or a hug from Shane .. lol). The other 2 I didn’t hate were GanjaCall and SalaryFox .. those are the only ones I probably would have grabbed at closeout pricing (under $20 including renewal).

    BrandHero would have been amazing in .com .. in .net I’m not sure what to think .. might have grabbed it for myself.

    Good luck with your portfolio Tom and good luck in domaining moving forward! :)

  6. Carl says:

    Excellent show! Great, actionable tips to improve your domain portfolio! Thanks Sherpas!

  7. Eric Jenkins says:

    Great show Sherpas…….Thanks!!!

  8. Anunt says:

    Thank you Sherpas…

    Enjoyed the show very much…

    especially Drew’s fat uncle matt’s ice cream story

    hilarious!!!

  9. Robert Sines says:

    Always enjoy the shows Michael. Great work across the board everyone, always informative.

  10. Deborah says:

    Another excellent show. Although it was accompanied by the realization that some of the domain names I own are most likely absolute garbage. Fortunately I don’t have a huge out of pocket investment in them, but I wouldn’t mind passing them on.

    Any recommendations on the best companies to use to sell a batch of low dollar cost domains? I looked at some and I wondered if you guys thought it would be good to get privacy protection if I auction some of them off.

    I do have a two character .com domain that I get numerous offers on from speculators. But I can think of some end users that it could be terrific for. If you know someone who specializes in selling that sort of thing, successfully, let me know. You have my invites on Linkedin.

  11. Keith DeBoer says:

    Great show guys!!

    Just wondering……Has Drew sold Wadsworth.com already? It forwards to Cengage.com. It appears to owned by them too.

  12. brand says:

    Thanks for your time guys, great show.
    Deadbolt.com, i think i remember Ali Zandi talking about it on this show a few years back.
    Nice domain.

  13. tldboss says:

    Thank you Michael and the Sherpas for another great show and for knowledge sharing, much appreciated.

  14. Hi
    I am only a small domainer .Have been trying to have my domains reviewed by Brandbucket .
    So maybe if i post them here ,Michael will have a chance to view them and consider accepting them .Thaniks in advance
    [Domains redacted. Please read DomainSherpa’s comment policy.]

  15. Niz says:

    Another Great show Michael and Sherpas.. Thank you all

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