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Doron Vermaat on Growing Efty To 900K Domains & What We can Learn to Sell More Domains Ourselves

Doron Vermaat, co-founder of Efty.com, the unique commission-free domain name sales and portfolio management platform, joins us to discuss his insights into the industry. We discuss:

– Efty growth and usage stats
– How certain segments of clients are utilizing the platform in new & creative ways…
– New features coming for ALL levels of users, including the new enterprise feature

Any domain investor interested in making profitable flips or managing a domain portfolio will benefit from today’s show!

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Doron Vermaat
Doron Vermaat
Doron Vermaat is the co-founder and head of product at Efty.com, software that helps investors manage, market and monetize their domain name portfolio. He uses Efty to sell his brandable domain names, and his Efty-powered marketplace can be found at NameRockstar.com.

Vermaat is also the publisher and owner of DNGeek.com, a blog that focuses on the brandable domain name market and allows him to share his investing financials with other investors.

Prior to entering the domain name industry, Vermaat served in a number of business marketing and business development roles for technology startups in both Europe and Asia.

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Today’s show is a great conversation with Doron Vermaat, the co founder of Efty.com. Now Efty, while they do not do any data mining, they do see tremendous insights, trends in what’s going on in the industry today. They develop new features. He discusses new features really for all clients that are coming out in 2019 but we also talk about new ways he’s seeing certain types of clients utilize the Efty platform. We do a little bit of screenshare to see some different features that they’ve rolled out. Uh, we also talk about their enterprise level integration with a quite a few CRMs and so much more. It’s really great show. Enjoy!
First, serious about online trading. Secure your funds, keep your merchandise safe and use a company that keeps the buyer and seller protected the whole way through. That’s escrow.com payments you can trust.
EFTY was built by domain investors to increase your inquiries, sales and profit. Forget spreadsheets and archive emails. Manage your entire investment portfolio in one place using a secure and completely confidential platform. Learn more at Efty.com that’s E F T Y .com.
Hey there, I’m Tess Diaz, executive producer of DomainSherpa.com and today we’re doing a one on one interview with the cofounder of Efty.com, Doron Vermaat. Doron, thanks for joining us all the way from Hong Kong. How you doing?
Doron Vermaat: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
Of course. You know you have long been an advertiser on domain Sherpa sponsoring this free educational opportunity, but I felt like it was time regardless of that status to have an update on Efty itself. It’s such a valuable platform and uh, there’s been so much talk about it lately. We need, we need to hear what’s going on over there. Um, you know, you founded it in 2014 and you’re just rolling out your first enterprise, um, level opportunities. Um, let’s can, can we start out with some statistics? You good with that?
Uh, yeah, sure. So, um, we uh, started the building Efty in 2014 so me and my co founder Lionel. Now I’m just based out of the Netherlands where actually most of our, uh, uh, developers are based as well. And, um, I think we, we rolled out a, uh, B top version of the side, the six months or so, and after he started really, really small, we started a bit like a domain name management tool. So artificial, it was, uh, uh, instead of using the spreadsheet to stay organized, you like a web based school and we build all these very difficult features to pull in dab. Now we want it to sync up with all the other platforms. Uh, there was the, the first fission of FD, but very quickly we realized that what, um, what our users really wanted was more like a, uh, that form helping them to sell them by names instead of really, uh, staying organized.
Um, uh, it was nice, but selling domains is even better. So we quickly, um, kind of, uh, grew the, uh, the features and started to build a lending pagers and later on a usage, uh, very quickly, uh, launched our own marketplace site with FD. And that’s when, uh, we really started to grow really quick because instead of, um, uh, charging our commission on sales, we decided that we would, uh, just Oscar users for small, uh, monthly or annual subscription fee. Um, so the moment, uh, sellers realized they could use our landing pages and, uh, uh, sell domains without paying permission. We started to grow really fast and, um, so we’re a few years in now and I’m more than happy to share some jumps, some statistics. Um, so currently we have more than 1000, uh, active paying sellers on the platform. Um, we had probably a few thousands over the years, but have see people come and go within the industry, uh, but where, um, uh, currently more than 1000 sellers, uh, active, uh, on the platforms. Um, and together they’re managing, uh, more than 900,000, uh, domain names for EFTY. Um, not all of those domains are necessarily parked with us around one for each domain. Names, uh, are hosted, uh, with our name sharpish. Um, and, um, last month in September, we, um, these landing pages reached, uh, just under 3 million, uh, unique visitors.
My goodness. That’s a lot of traffic now.
Great. And um, yeah, that’s also probably one of the biggest growing pains you have. The, when we started to grow really quickly, um, it suddenly you have to deal with a huge influx of traffic and all sorts of, uh, things that come with that. And uh, at that, some people have been working very hard on OBS to make sure that, um, uh, it’ll run smoothly. No,
yeah, that, so 900 fouls and domain names with a thousand users, um, uh, Oh, sorry. Is your average, um, is your average user have hundred domains or do you have, um, you know, like, I know it go daddy for example, last I knew their average client had five to 20 domains with, you know,
um, if you would just divide that number by the number of users you’ll be, we’ll probably end up with an effort. So like 700 to 800 domains per user. Um, um, so currently before we rolled out a enterprise solution, FTE was offering three different tiers, uh, basic plan up to 50 domains and a growth plan up to 1500 domains and a professional plan for up to 5,000 domains, which used to be our largest plan. And traditionally most of our users, like more than 60% has always been in the growth then. So you could say that most of our sellers always had a portfolio, uh, well less than 1500 domains. And I think when I look at myself, I have a small investment portfolio. I own around five to 600 domain names. And I think I’m kind of like the efforts type of, you know, investor, you know, it has a portfolio on the side.
That’s really neat. I’ve always felt like Efty was so good at listening to its customer feedback and making adjustments. And maybe that’s why. Cause your, the attitudes or, yeah,
after he was really built because I was looking for a better solution for my own portfolio when I started to invest in domain names. But it’s, it’s always, uh, we started building it around my needs and very quickly we started listening to you should be back in sure. Phase. And, uh, the way the platform has evolved over the years, surely based on that popular, uh, request fro my useless. So yeah, that’s spot on.
Okay. So tell me about, you said, um, I, I didn’t, I don’t recall the percentage you said, but a certain number of domains are not on FTS landing pages. So how are those found? So when you go to Efty.com, you get the offer to sell more domains not to buy them. Sure. So walk me through that.
A good question. A lot of people have asked us of VSL, where is the Efty marketplace where I can find all the domains from Efty sellers or we’re not really in that business. We’re not a marketplace where like a sales platform, uh, like software as a service. And, um, but after the sellers can create their own marketplace. So we have a lot of users who may be parked their domains with a union registry or an off the mic. Um, but they use Efty to, uh, host their own, uh, domain named marketplace where their buyers can go and search their entire infantry. So about one third of the domains on that form are parked with us on our landing pages and the rest, um, is parked somewhere else. But you should still spill, uh, managing these domains in within Efty codes or they can showcase them on their own portfolio side. And of course, FDA is also used by a lot of users, not necessarily for selling them through our platform, but they, they want to use our management tools, uh, because when you input all your domains and FTE pull in, like, uh, like, who is that I and so on. So we also have users who might use another sales spec or, but they, they use Efty to, to, to keep track of renewals. Um, and so, yeah.
Wow. Oh, that’s, that’s a lot of options. Okay. So, and when you said visitors, that’s really only for 300,000 out of the 900,000 domains then?
Yeah. So last month we were just under 300, uh, users. So, um, in terms of Patriots would do a ton more than that. Uh, but that’s, that’s the unique visitors we had through the landing pages. And that’s just on the domain names that are parked with us. Yeah.
Okay. Um, is there a, not to put you on the spot, but um, can, can I see, do you have an idea of an example of someone who I could go to their page and then see their whole, um, their whole ft portfolio there?
Uh, yes. So there’s basically two, uh, core features of the athlete platform. We have the landing pages and then we have the marketplace feature. And some uses only use the marketplace. Others only use the, uh, landing pages. So if you want to have a, a example of an Efty powered a landing page, uh, you can go to a firewall.com or you can go to, um, a ai.com and these are Efty powered landing pages. Um, or another example of the power landing page when you go to hoc, uh, H U G they’ll come. It’s more like, can I, one of our older themes. Um, but if you want to see an example of the portfolio, so a Efty powered, uh, marketplace, um, a portfolio which has been covered quite a lot within the domain name in the stream, uh, uh, blog, most of them. The news is book temple was probably a friend actually who previously sold HostGator and he owns a lot of ultra premium adult Combs. His portfolio is on oxley.com. That’s M O X L E y.com. That’s an example of an athlete power portfolio site.
This is amazing. So he has his own branded Oxley, um, logo and then this very catchy,
um,
yeah, me and then you can feel category. Now did ft create each of these logos or did you create them individually? We’re not in the business,
a logo design. Um, but I with FTD you can upload logos or your portfolio. Um, and a lot of our users do that for some of their best domains.
So they can upload that inside Efty and then wherever they connect it will pull. So I opened [inaudible] just in Halloween theme here or create.com. And then this is pretty typical Efty landing page except all with his logo and his giraffe background. That’s pretty wild. Yeah.
Actually like an older, uh, design that, uh, Brent is using for his market place. We quite recently, uh, edit two brand new marketplace designs that are a bit more modern, even though there’s one that’s still very popular. And I like it a lot too. Um, for example, if you go to my own personal market space, you can see a more recent, uh, design and my marketplace has hosted that name, rockstar.com
name, rockstar.com. Yeah. So this is a newer, um,
or, um, uh, one of our recent themes. And if you go over the logos, you can see that, um, um, you know that,
Oh, make an offer or favorite.
Yeah, you can favorite it. And then, uh, the domain names are safe.
So that’s a little more catchy than this. Boring. Make an offer. Well,
it really depends on what we like. Um, it’s just a one, uh, SMX sample. Um, you know, we keep adding new themes because, uh, things change on the web, right? So design trends change, um, um, you know, that black design, minimalistic design. So a lot of the new themes are more, uh, based on current design trends. But, um, even the, the marketplace freedoms we started out with are still, usually won’t be there.
Okay. And then these categories look very customized, but I see on your new one and on Brent ox Lee’s landing page, there are quite a few categories. So these, it looks like you must be able to create inside ft and then roll them out if you like. And you can create what the categories are yourself or
a bunch of, uh, default categories you can choose from. But you can also create custom categories. So,
yeah. Okay. All right. Cause like ex real T or reality, it must be custom, right? Reality. Yeah. Okay. And then tell me about this, um, or, or is this coming up later? So there’s making offers. The one choice, the other choice, I was on gaming hero and it’s a bind now and I see this Stripe option. So, and tell me if you want to wait and talk about this later. Um,
w we can talk about that now. Um,
so is this like at GoDaddy, you just pay your credit card? It’s not like going through an escrow or what and there’s an instant transfer, um, what’s happening here with no escrow
if you, um, so with Efty, currently we have three different payment integrations. Uh, we have escrow paid, so that’s powered by escrow.com. And so we do have a license, uh, escrow partner. Um, so escrow has been a longterm partner of FB and they’re integrated into the platform. Um, but we also have, uh, a integration with, uh, both PayPal and Stripe. And, um, that’s really if you instantly want to take money for a domain, but then there’s no, uh, escrow, uh, partner in between. So you know, you basically, if someone hits the buy now button and then you use PayPal or escrow, you just receive an email that Hey, you’ve been paid like 200,000, 300,000, and then it’s your sole responsibility and responsibility as the seller to then to go into the FDA town, get the contact details of the buyer and then get in touch to transfer the domain names. Um, so it’s a really fast way to get paid, but obviously, um, by using a PayPal or Stripe decimals, so rich and full people, someone can do a charge back after you’ve transferred domain. So we really, uh, advice it to use it for, um, you know, lower value domains. And if you have like a, you know, five figure domain named them, you should probably want to use, uh, our escrow integration. Yup.
Got it. Makes sense. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. So, um, as we’re looking at these, you know, the portfolio type, um, I understand that you’ve seen another shift in how, um, folks are utilizing the FDA platform, especially with brokers. And personally I happen to know, and we didn’t discuss this before anything, but I happen to know, you know, media options is now listing quite a few of its domains on like the, the lower value domains. We’re listing them on FTC F to getting a lot of traffic. Um, but tell me, um, I didn’t know before we started this call and chatted prior to recording that it sounds like a number of brokers are doing this and seeing this, um, as kind of an ancillary or complimentary tool for their brokerage or how would you describe that or give me a bigger picture than just the little bit that I have?
Um, so we have a lot of, um, our, our users are a brokerage like boutique brokers, uh, but also from some of the large brokers, we see individual brokers paying for their own Efty subscription just to put the occasional name on that form. Um, and I think currently we have around 15 or so of our users are a brokerage. So most of the, uh, brokers, uh, well known brokers have an FBA account. Um, why do they use us instead of maybe parking the domain on like marketplace or their own solution? It’s, it’s most likely. Um, well the, the main reason is Efty is a commission rate self platform, right? So if you’re brokering high failure domain name, you don’t want to pay, uh, any type of commission to a marketplace, right. Because you are doing all the work. Even if you’re doing inbound brokerage, your handling the leads, you’re closing the sale. So F the not charging your permission. Only a monthly, uh, fee. That’s the, I think the main reason that I love brokerage. Uh, um,
so it’s just the man is really as a management tool. Yeah.
And of course if you, if you have a high failure domain name and you do brokerage for it, then you get a lot of inbound leads. And, um, when you parked a domain on an FTP for sale landing page, um, you control, uh, uh, that, uh, customer information that backfires all yours. So at FTD we have a very clear government that we do not have access to. [inaudible]. Uh, we don’t do brokerage nutshell. We do not have our own portfolio, like GoDaddy has name fine, uh, union registry as Frank Schelling’s portfolio. Uh, so we do not have our own portfolio of names to sell where we do not analyze sales data on the platform or mind data. Um,
does it say anyone else approach it? That, I mean that’s very, um, very private is I don’t think there’s anyone else on the market, any other platform like that.
Um, well with, with go daddy now owning a really large portfolio themselves and um, union registry having a very large portfolio, you’d say, um, a marketplace who doesn’t own their own portfolio is a CDOT from simple, but CDOT on the other hand, they do brokerage. So there’s always kind of this conflict of interest. And obviously with, with, with the CDOT, you will be paying them commission at the park with them. So a broker will not put a high failure name on the C the landing page because, uh, one of the things that makes FP so powerful is when you get an inquiry for your landing page, you’ll get the name, email address, phone number, and the IP address of the person that’s sending the inquiry or the offer. So we have all the customer data. You need to do some due diligence or the charts on the lead. And if a marketplace or platform holds back any of that information, um, you have less tools as a broker to work elite and closed sale. Um, so shimmer commission who access to customer information when someone makes an inquiry. Uh, that, those would be the two main reasons I think of brokers are using the platform. Uh, and of course we have, you know, we have more than 40 different landing page designs. You can uh, write your own, uh, text on the landing page or bullet points. Uh, so there’s lots of customization. Lots of choice. Yeah,
that’s neat. What made me reach out to you, although this has been, you know, a long time I want to say percolating was I saw the FDA announcement about the integration with Zapier and, um, that you’re building out for your first enterprise level clients. Um, so Zapier, um, you rolled that out what about two weeks ago? And I’m seeing that, I mean, it is, um, is it, sorry, I should just let you from the beginning instead of trying to frame it just right.
Um, so set year is, you know, let’s maybe start with explaining what is set PR because not everyone knows CEP here, but, uh, separately as a platform, uh, it’s a marketplace for web applications, uh, where you can connect these web applications with each other. Um, more than 1500 web applications are listed on their marketplace. This could be anything from Google, uh, Google dogs like Google sheets, uh, g-mail, uh, to sorts of customer relationship management tools like Salesforce, HubSpot closed, we’ll call them, uh, two email clients like mill chain or checkbooks, many chat, I don’t know, a Spotify, uh, Shopify, you know, you name it. This, like pretty much all of the big web applications. Uh, project management tools, uh, like a Sinai based them, they’re all on SAP yarn. And what separate yard allows you to do is to create work flows between two different apps.
Um, so by listening SDN and integrating with SAP IA, you can now send a incoming inquiry on a domain, uh, with an offer, uh, from SD directly to your customer relationship management tool. So let’s say someone makes an offer on, uh, uh, viral.com and the COO, the company who owns this domain, it’s using maybe HubSpot sales or close, no problem. Uh, the name, phone number, email address, IP. At rest of that potential buyer goes straight into their CRM where their sales person can then start working the lead. Um, or in other externals, you can create a set as they call it, [inaudible] great. Two apps on, on the platform, they call this out. So you can create a separate between FDN and Slack. So whenever you get an inquiry on domain or your team is notified through Slack, um, or, uh, what I do personally is even though after these ready, which form, uh, keeping track of your domain names and, and, um, I still, I’ve build a step that inputs all the inquiry data, uh, from Efty into a Google sheet. Um, so, um, you still have all your doc within like a Google docs, uh, and you can choose which columns, et cetera. It’s, it’s really cool and most important than BD num, uh, need, uh, any code. So you can just go into CPR and this is kind of drag and drop and say what you wanted to do. Um, so we,
that’s a big deal, especially, you know, some of the smaller brokerage firms, um, might not have, you know, all the resources or just nobody wants to invest the resources. If you don’t need to know. And this really sets you up for those enterprise clients. What, what kind of size portfolio are you looking at? So you, you have your first few enterprise clients testing it out now before you release it to the general public, right?
Yeah. So previously we, we, we kept, uh, the number of domains or sellers at 5,000. So when we launched at the, we, we introduced two plans and the, the biggest plan went up to 5,000 domains. And what we show is that most of our users actually fell within that, in that range anyway. But there, there’s like a lot of people in the industry that have more than 5,000 domains and some of them they own 10,000, but you know, there’s companies out there that own 100,000, 200,000 domains. Um, and over the years we’ve all rates at to turn these companies down because we were just not competent enough in the, in the, if the platform was rubbed, used enough to handle the traffic and so on. Um, so over the, you know, the last year or so, a lot of the, uh, work that was done, done on ethical was done on the back end.
So we didn’t necessarily ship a lot of like new features, but we did a lot of work in making sure our named short set up is much more stable and, and uh, or abused. So loading, uh, pages have improved a lot. Uh, landing pages, marketplace, everything super fast now, and we’re finally ready to, to, to host these really large portfolios because we can, we can handle the traffic now. Okay. Um, so, um, we onboarded our first antichrist lion. Uh, uh, so we’re in October now, uh, at the end of last month and I, um, this is 40,000 a domain portfolio and it’s just fine for us to menace that kind of, uh, large portfolios now. Um, so enterprise is now officially open. Um, and we can do portfolios up to 100,000 domains. Um, yup.
Oh, I didn’t realize it is open. Congratulations. That’s a big deal. Yep.
Yeah. So we’re ready for any enterprise user. Um, and we start with being portfolios up to 100,000 domains. But if it is your business, then you have maybe 150 to two dozen domains. Just contact us. And you know, we can probably, um, work with that too. Yeah,
yeah, sure. Wow. So tell me, um, what trends are you seeing in domain sales even though you don’t mind the data? Um, give us some real examples, some domains that you’ve recently seen sold, um, some, some trends that you’re noticing of this quarter.
Um, okay. So I’m just gonna speak from I guess personal experience. I’m kind of what I see in the market phase. Uh, like I said, we, we, we sit on a lot of sales data at FD, but we do not analyze it. Um, um, so we only hear what our, uh, users tell us and we always lost the hear about sales made for platform. Um, and, uh, with a lot of, um, uh, of our customers. I speak quite often, so I get a lot of information kind of feed to me. Um, but as a company we don’t really, uh, uh, mine that data or analyze it. Um, but, you know, let’s just maybe talk a little bit about what’s been discussed a lot lately with [inaudible] the industry, especially the last couple of weeks. There’s been so much discussion about, um, uh, the use of, uh, two alternative extensions. I think XD, Chris, uh, so from media options just posted the video on LinkedIn.
Uh, I think it was named, this is the one extension that you shouldn’t use for your startups. And, um, this discussion was about dot. Dot co. Dot. CEO. Um, and, but another extension I see kinda fall in that same areas. Dot. IO. And, um, there’s a lot, a lot of shells happening in these two, two extensions. And, um, there’s lots of love, but there’s also kind of lots of hate in the industry. Well, not hate, uh, that, that’s, that’s a strong word. But you know, some people are kind of biased cause they, they own domains in these extensions. But the people, there’s a lot of people say that there’s only they’ll call anything that’s not lot comments. It’s just rubbish. So there’s lots of kind of discussion about that. But when you look at the, um, uh, sales data, then it’s, um, really clear that a lot of, uh, strong keyword domains within.co and.io sent.
I’ll read well lately. Um, and um, I’m really talking about short brandable one word, uh, domains and those extensions. Um, but um, I think the main reason for this is that a lot of these premium dotcoms are like off the market these days. So it’s, it’s um, you know, the ideal situation for a company of course is to own the exact match.com what our business, but if your company is called, um, I don’t know, bold or breasts or you know, like rice or you know, one of those words that is taken in two, 300 different extensions already, then you currently have two choices. Uh, you can go for a built home with w prefix for it, but I can get, you know, get ride stroke, call more elbow. We are arise.com so you can still see, yeah,
yeah. That’s why we all.com. But every flywheel and every time I go, I type in flywheel.com. Then it’s all this, not it. What was that stat
you see now is that these, a lot of these newer startups, they say all, we’re just going spend like five, 10, 15, $20,000 to get flywheel. The IO or the cow.
Yup. Well kept mentioning the CRM clothes.com and I’ve always called them close.io even since, I forget how long ago they bought clothes.com, but in my head they’re still closed at IO and that’s okay.
This is a great example of being, when they acquired closed on IO, they get so much praise from the domain name industry because they finally own the I the Komen. It’s great as an awesome move, but what it closed up call much already off the market, right? It’s in use by another real business or this literally scare out chance of owning that, that domain and in the feature in the future. So then what’s the choice you have? Are you going to get with uh, maybe uh, get closed or call, which sounds kind of strange. Get close look home, um, or you going to stick with close.io or close at cl anyway. So there’s lots of discussion around it as people who really like never use IO or the CEO because of, um, you, you will leak, uh, email, uh, emails to the, don’t call me. That’s traffic legal struggle. The problem if you use a another extension,
well it’s a delicate balance, you know, because you have to build your startup with the funds that you have and allocate them appropriately. And then when you grow to a certain point, if you have too much email bleed or the cost of your marketing is outweighing cost of buying the domain, especially if it’s still available, like clothes.com was, then it’s worth it. And so I, I just looked real quick. It was April of this year, April, 2019, close dot. IO announced the acquisition.
So my opinion on the whole matter is that, uh, as domain name investors, okay, our job is not to decide one company’s what’s best. Okay. So it’s not our job to say, Oh, you’re going to leak email traffic or you need, don’t call them because of this, this and this. And, and, and, and tried to be an expert on SEO or online marketing as an investor, your job is to buy the main, that sell. Okay. Where we’re investing in domains to make a profit. So we’re not domain name advisors with domain name investors, right? So if you’re smart, you stop saying, Oh, um, these companies are stupid. They should buy my adult poems. Just, you know, look where the market is and see what founders do. If they’re buying one word.com or dot iOS, then that’s where they spend their money. You better be there with your investment, right?
So, um, that’s the way I see it. It’s not our job to tell companies what’s best. It’s our job to have those demands. That company’s one and they want to pay money for because it’s not the company’s hand register. These don’t see us. No, they’re buying them for 10, 15, 20, 30 grand. Um, and if you pay attention, so that would be the trend I’m seeing. If you pay attention, you see these companies paying a lot of money for this, uh, to your, uh, second tier extension. Okay. So you can say, Oh, I think they’re doing, I think they’re not doing a good job at how they run the company, but that’s, that’s not our job as the main name. It’s our job to make money, right. Without portfolio. So just by what companies are buying. That’s, that’s mine. That’s the way I see it.
Lauren, you have such a practical approach and a very, um, uh, what do I say? Very centered. Um, like you’re not trying to change anyone else just to create a management system for the way that this the system is or the way that people see things. Um, that’s, that’s really, um, a neat perspective. Very satisfied. That’s what I wanted to say. Very satisfied
for, for, for, for me as, as, as a vendor. Like, um, you know, I’m an investor, but that’s second. My first, I’m like, like in the domain name industry, I think my first role is being like a, you know, supplier of software. So it’s, it’s, it’s in my best interest to seed investors are doing well, they’re making money on their investment that goes, if people knew, enter the industry and they lose money, they might have an the subscription for one or two years, but then in the end they cancel it. They leave the industry. So yeah, you’re right. And I think that that, that’s also why we were so happy with, uh, Mike Cyger investing in FBB goes, his mission really aligns with ours. You know, we want to see people do well with their domains and Pressman and what Mike and Stan with first domain sharp on R D and Academy is exactly that. Making sure that people do well in their investment then as FTE we win too, you know?
Yeah, that’s a great perspective. So what are your thoughts about the future Doron what do you see happening, you know, through the end of 2019 or in 2020 in the debate?
So we have a couple of school, uh, things still coming up for after this year because, yeah, I mean, I understand us doing enterprise, it’s not so exciting for most of our users because it’s not a new feature for them. Right. Um, but, um, before the end of this year, we’re, we’re launching something very cool, um, because we had so many emphasis over the years who really like our lending pages, but they do not want to use the marketplace feature, but they do want to host our lending page designs on their own URL so that they are fully in control of the, um, you know, the experience of, of, of, of their users. So we are going to kind of like building a hybrid type of marketplace and where you can plug in your own custom domain and then all of the, after the personal landing pages you can host on that custom domain, which is a SSL should yours. So you have like SSL secured landing pages, uh, powered by FTD, but then on your own domain name. Yeah. And, uh, so that kind of sits in between our landing page feature. And the marketplace feature. So it’s a bit of a hybrid type of product. Um, hopefully I’ll do a better job at describing it once we roll it out. But, um, I think maybe by the time this show will air, maybe so, you know, it’s already were [inaudible] beta testing it. So I think maybe a week or two from now this should be live. Yeah,
very exciting. Okay. And what else? You said a couple of things don’t, don’t hold back.
We’re working on some, some, some, uh, new landing page designs as well. Uh, so we’ll be adding more options to the foreseeable landing pages on the platform and, um, we’re actually quite open to crowd source some ideas. So, um, you know, people actually share it with us all the time, what they want. They say, I want to have a landing page where you can do this and this, but, um, if you’re an ft user and you have ideas about landing pages stop, you’re currently missing, just let us know because we will be adding a few more, uh, uh, designs to the, that formed before the end of the year. Okay, cool. Yeah.
Very cool. All right. What do you think about in the domain industry in general? Did you vote for someone for the, the, um, the ICA was doing the,
both of the lonely Brook,
the Lonnie Bork award domination.
Yeah.
A great contributor to the domain community.
I need to have a really good look at who’s been nominated. I know Elliot silver and Mike Cyger then nominated those guys. I think the shirt to be nominated. Yeah. And uh, but I need to have a good look at everyone. I will absolutely make sure I’ll put it in the throat.
Well, I’m really looking forward to seeing the results of that and celebrating each person who contributes like that at um, name’s con in Austin. So, uh,
yeah, of course we’ll, we’ll be there. So, um, I’m looking forward to, to see, uh, you know, our users as there were so many them as names go on every year. So that’s, that’s always,
well, you’re a cofounder lie and I’ll be there as well. Yeah.
Ben with me to Vegas like two or three times. And then at one point he said, you know, because he’s not a domain name investor, so three days of being surrounded by these crazy people, only talking domains, you know, it was quite some for it if you’re not investing in yourself, but you know, maybe now since it’s going to be in Austin, he might join it again because it was mainly after a few times Las Vegas, you’ve kind of seen the place as well, you know. Yeah. And um, so he might actually come with me to Austin and I still need to do a talk with him about, but I’ll definitely be there, uh, this year because for me, names Gomez definitely highlight the new, uh, owners are also doing a fantastic job at, uh, you know, how they run the conference and every year
putting together some things for this year. Yeah, I’m really excited. I’m excited for a different venue. I’m not a big fan of Vegas in general. I love Austin and I’m really excited for the conversations and the, um, type of, um, of momentum that they’re looking to help. Uh, I want to say like bill to help build, I’m looking for different words, but, um, and, but I would love to meet Lyon L I have not personally met him and I promise that I can have a conversation that’s not about domains.
Um, um, you know, I think a lot of people have to have met them over the years, um, because I used to drag him to come from. So as you know, perhaps I’ll be successful one more time. Uh, but the NamesCon Europe he found, I think I’ll definitely be there next year and because those are just very, you know, them, they are biased or lying down space in the Netherlands. And, um, so we’ll definitely be at both the global and the European one.
Good. Good. Well, Doron, thank you so much for your time walking us through this. Thank you for all your service to the industry. I’m excited to see what, um, what happens next with Efty. Thanks. All right, we’ll see you next time. Bye Doron.

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5 Responses to “Doron Vermaat on Growing Efty To 900K Domains & What We can Learn to Sell More Domains Ourselves”

  1. Alessio says:

    Great interview looks like a great platform!

  2. GeoYP says:

    Thanks for sharing knowledge.

  3. Martin says:

    Get Dynas and Domain Shane on the show for a Christmas special – Tess make it happen.

  4. Adrian Brand says:

    Great interview Doron. I like your style. Calm. Strategic. Keep up the awesome work. Great industry tips too.

  5. Francois says:

    Very proud of Doron success!

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