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DomainSherpa Review – May 7: Fertilization.com, Karpool.com & Bitcoin.LIVE

This 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: Fertilization.com, Karpool.com & Bitcoin.LIVE
  • An investor’s portfolio is appraised for a specific industry, the cannabis industry: TokersWild.com, MJ.vegas, Herbage.com…
  • Get your bids in soon for these NameJet auctions: EatVegan.com, RemoteAccess.com, StudentCenter.org…
  • Plus, much more!

We’re joined by three Domain Sherpas: Michael Cyger, Jebidiah Burnett and Andrew Rosener.

Review (97:43): Watch | Listen/Download Audio | Domain Lists

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Investor Submitted Domain Names

OilPen.com
HydroBud.com
THCLevels.com
Herbage.com
Resinous.com
MJ.vegas
Nuggage.com
AquaBud.com
BioMeds.com
KingCola.com
Potentness.com
co2s.com
BudBites.com
SkunkBud.com
Marijuanax.com
FrostyCola.com
FlowerPass.com
OilChill.com
PotentFlower.com
VapeOils.com
HempsKitchen.com
Delta9x.com
MiracleBud.com
NugsAndKisses.com
TokersWild.com

NameJet.com Pre-Auction Listings

Zut.com
Jaz.net
Pate.com
EatVegan.com
CertifiedVegan.com
JuiceCafe.com
BuyCar.com
Skydivers.com
Shotput.com
RemoteAccess.com
MagicPillow.com
SuperStore.com
StudentCenter.org

This Show’s Sherpas

Jebidiah Burnett
Jebidiah Burnett
Senior Domain Consultant at Donuts., Jebidiah has a demonstrated history of high level domain investment and portfolio sales. Currently owning 4 of the top 20 all domain tld sales, including the record setting sale of www.home.loans.

More shows with Jebidiah Burnett »

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 Cyger
Michael Cyger
Michael Cyger is the founder and former owner of DomainSherpa, and is currently publisher and lead instructor of DNAcademy. He is recognized as an industry veteran in the domain name industry, has been named Blogger of the Year and Developer of the Year, and has been inducted into the Domain Name Hall of Fame.

More shows with Michael Cyger »

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Interview Raw (Non-Edited) Transcript

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

Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/review-20180507

Tess: On today’s “DomainSherpa Review,” the sherpas talk about Fertilization.com, Karpool.com with a “K,” and Bitcoin.LIVE, including how much they paid or received for then. Then a cannabis portfolio is evaluated with specific investor questions about investing in the cannabis vertical. Plus great brands like SuperStore.com and EatVegan.com are heading to auctions soon on NameJet. Hear what Drew Rosener, Jebediah Burnett, and Michael Cyger, think are winners and losers in auction this week. Stay tuned.

Hey Sherpa Network. Thanks for joining us today. I’m Tess Diaz, Executive Producer of DomainSherpa.com. And this is the “DomainSherpa Review.” This is a show where we get into the minds of successful domain name investors, using real examples, so we can learn strategies and tactics to become better investors ourselves. We have three segments of the review. We’ll start off learning what the sherpas recently bought and sold. Next, we’ll discuss in value an investor-submitted domain name portfolio. And finally, we’ll preview some domains going to auctions soon at NameJet.com, and whether the sherpas think they’re a good investment opportunity for you. Joining us today on the “DomainSherpa Review” are sherpas and industry thought leaders, two past and one new. Joining us today for the first time, we’d like to introduce Jebidiah Burnett, Senior Domain Consultant at Donuts. Hi, Jebediah.

Jebidiah: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Tess: Yeah, we’re delighted you’re here. You might be new to Sherpa, but you’re not new to the domain industry. Real quick before we chat, I also would like to introduce Andrew Rosener, CEO of domain brokerage firm, MediaOptions.com. And we’re delighted to have back again, Michael Cyger, the founder of DNAcademy.com, and the founder and original owner of our very own DomainSherpa. Drew, Mike, welcome.

Andrew: Hey. Thanks for having me again.

Michael: Thanks Tess. Jebediah, [crosstalk 00:02:07] man. I got to do a little selfie here. All right. Hey, and Seattle is in the house. Jebidiah is on the other side if you just stand from where I am on Bainbridge Island. Love to have other Seattleites. And fun fact, if you go back through the DomainSherpa archive, you’ll see Jebidiah on stage with me at DNSeattle 2015, I think.

Jebidiah: Yeah.

Michael: At the Rightside Headquarters. And that was that was a fun talk. That’s when new Gs [SP] were just getting [inaudible 00:02:43]. We had Dan Schindler, and Rob Monster, and Jebidiah on stage talking about how to make money with the new Gs.

Jebidiah: That’s right. Yeah. There was a lot of fun. So, I’m glad to be back. It’s been a while. So, I’m glad to be back.

Tess: Cool, cool. Well, are you guys ready to start?

Jebidiah: Yes.

Andrew: Let’s go.

Michael: Let’s get it. I hear there’s a birthday party that one of us needs to get to later.

Andrew: Yeah. Today I got to, you know, just…I might as well just do a quick shout-out. Today is my daughter Mila’s fifth birthday. So, we’ve got a big day on that front. It’s also the last day and last night that I will spend in my house in Panama.

Michael: Wow.

Andrew: [inaudible 00:03:21] we’re moving to an Airbnb while the packers are packing up the house, and in three days, that’s it, we’re on the road.

Michael: How many years have been in Panama?

Andrew: Ten years.

Michael: Did you cry?

Andrew: Ten years in Panama.

Michael: Are you going to shed a tear?

Andrew: You know what, I’m not sure I’m going to shed a tear. But it really is emotional.

Michael: Yeah. I get it.

Andrew: I’m not a particularly emotional person, but this is…you know, it’s 10 years, both of our kids [crosstalk 00:03:51].

Tess: The end of an era. And you’ll see Drew is out of his office, so he doesn’t have his amazing MediaOptions banner behind him.

Michael: I always thought that was a shed.

Andrew: You know, you wouldn’t be that far off.

Michael: Yeah.

Tess: It is a beautiful office. And there’s even an extra room in it that I called my room, but never quite did get to move in there. But when I was down in Panama I insisted on working from that room. Do you remember, Drew?

Andrew: Yeah.

Tess: It’s my own little loss. I’m not sure it quite compares to yours. Hey, let’s jump into the first segment of the show called “What’s new, Sherpas?” where the sherpas share one purchase or sale that they’ve made over the past few weeks. Since Jebidiah is a broker, you might be sharing a brokerage instead of your own personal sale or acquisition. So, anyway, either way, our Sherpa Network gets to learn what they paid or received for the domain. What they thought was a good deal, and how the negotiations progressed. I’m going to lead you through the questions, and then the other sherpas get to comment during the process. This segment, we’ll go Drew, them Mike, then Jebidiah. So, Drew, what’s one domain you personally bought or sold in the past few weeks? Tell us the domain name and not the price yet.

Andrew: Okay. I’m going to say Fertilization.com.

Tess: Oh, too bad Shane’s not here. Fertilization.com.

Michael: Did you buy it or sell it?

Andrew: Yeah, purchased. This was a purchase. Fertilization.com, like in vitro fertilization.

Michael: Look at that, you just ruined it for me.

Andrew: Why?

Michael: Like, I was going to go low, like it was a landscaping domain.

Andrew: It can go both ways, kind of like you, Mike.

Michael: Hey, that was [inaudible 00:05:46]. I was just experimenting. All right. Fertilization.com. Let’s see here. I’ll go…you know, if you’re bought it off Shane, I would say that you got a heck of a deal. Probably owned it forever and marketed it as a landscaping domain. But the IVF, in vitro fertilization is definitely a bigger market. So, now that you gave us that hint, I’m probably thinking…So, I’ll work my way back from retail to wholesale. I think that’s probably a retail value of…I don’t know. [inaudible 00:06:26] with an exact match keyword for people that are looking for, that could also be a brand without knowing what kind of search volume it has, you know, if it’s 10,000, or 100,000, or more. So I’m going to go with…

Andrew: I’m gonna throw it out there that it’s got…actually I forget, I don’t remember.

Michael: No, you shouldn’t because…all right. So, I’m going to say that probably it has over 50, 70…well, because fertilization, if you do a search, it’s going to bring back some landscaping, some IVF. I’m going to say, I mean, like, it’s $150,000 domain name, so I think you bought it for $15,000. That’s a guess.

Tess: Okay. That was like the longest [crosstalk 00:07:07] ever.

Michael: I know right? I’m not good off the cuff. I think it through.

Tess: Yeah, that wasn’t off the cuff. That was like the whole sleeve. [crosstalk 00:07:15]. Okay. So $15,000, Mike, that’s your final answer?

Michael: I think. Don’t make me rethink it.

Tess: No, your connection still isn’t awesome. Okay. Cool. Jebidiah, what you got?

Jebidiah: I like the word. I think most people would be looking at it for landscaping though. I think it might be a stretch for in vitro, but sort of where Mike was, maybe a little bit lower, I was thinking it was closer to $75,000 to $100,000 retail. So, I was thinking right around $7,500 is probably what Drew paid for it. So, I’d say $8,500. Let’s go with $8,500.

Tess: $8,500 or $85,000?

Jebidiah: $8,500. I think Drew paid $8,500 for the domain.

Tess: Okay. Cool. I was thinking MJ. And fertilization, that is weird like for in vitro fertilization, I think, but anyway. All right, Drew, what you got?

Andrew: So, paid $7,000 all in, which I thought was a very good deal. I didn’t even negotiate it. They said, “$7,000, Fertilization.com.” I said, “That’s a fair deal. I’ll take it.”

Michael: What do you think retail value is on that one?

Andrew: You know, it’s a tough call. I’m trying to remember exactly what the search volume was. It was sufficient that I thought, okay, this is a real business, even without a qualifier like in vitro, or yard, or grass, or you know, whatever. There are two possible spellings, one with “Z,” one with an “S.” But the one with a “Z” is like 10x the one with the “S.”

Tess: And you got the one with the “Z?”

Andrew: Yeah. I got one with the “Z.” There’s 22,000 searches a month.

Michael: Twenty-two thousand?

Andrew: Yep. Five dollar CPC, you know. I think it’s a $100,000 name. I think it’s a $100,000 name. I think you both are right in that ballpark. I think, at the low-end it’s 75 grand, and at the high-end it would be just over 100 grand, maybe $125,000, $150,000 if you’re really hitting the nail on the head. So, for 7 grand, I’ll take it.

Jebidiah: That’s good money.

Tess: Yeah. It’s nice.

Andrew: Without thinking twice. So, the thing that I’d point out is that, I didn’t know it was only 22,000 searches, I totally thought there would be more on Fertilization.com.

Michael: Yeah. So there’s a huge long tail, there’s a really big long tail on it. But there’s a singular bang on word, which doesn’t really surprise me. I think 22,000 is actually a pretty healthy number, because like me personally, I would never use just the word fertilization. I’m not even sure…you know what I mean, because it needs that qualifier.

Andrew: It’s too broad.

Michael: Yard, landscape, you know, garden, some specific plants, or in vitro, or human, or you know, whatever, pets, breeding, you know, whatever. It needs some kind of qualifier. I would say, you know, 99% of people searching are going to be using some kind of qualifier, meaning a second word along with fertilization, or third word. And so, I don’t know. I think 22,000 is a pretty healthy number for that word, and I like the long tail you know, long tails pay.

Tess: So long tail…Mike, I’ve been getting all into the DomainSherpa dictionary, and I just looked up, long tail is not in there. And I assume a lot of our listeners already know, but let’s just throw it out there. Drew, real quick, define long tail for us.

Andrew: So, yeah, the long tail…I wish I was super smart and could give out the appropriate references.

Tess: Okay, never mind.

Andrew: I mean, maybe Ray Kurzweil, who…there was a book, there was a marketing book. It was a marketing and advertising book that came out 15 to 20 years ago, that talked about the long tail, that the money is in the long tail, that you’ve got, you know…the word like insurance, like the money, the conversions are really in the long tail, so car insurance, health insurance, life insurance, long-term care insurance, motorcycle insurance, right? So, those are all long tail, even though each of those is actually a very large vertical.

So, long tail can be relative, but for fertilization, the long tail would be in vitro Fertilization, landscape fertilization, grass fertilization, garden fertilization, you know, whatever type of…hydroponic fertilization, you know, whatever type of fertilization that you’re specifically looking for. And, obviously, the more specific you are, the more targeted you are to the person doing the search. And so, in theory, the higher your conversion should be, because you’re really targeting the long tail.

Tess: Nice.

Jebidiah: Sounds like new TLDs.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean, the new GTLDs are essentially chasing the long tail, right? It’s like, you’ve got the one word, bangon.com, that’s like, you know, the whole city block. And then, you know, you’ve got these verticals, they represent the long tail that come out of that sort of greater…

Tess: Yeah. So I just…

Andrew: The broader meaning of a particular word.

Tess: Thank you. I think that’s going to come up later in our show. Jebidiah, I love that you link back to the new TLDs, because that’s definitely going to be where we’re going with it. Cool. So, Mike, you got a new sale or acquisition?

Michael: I’ve got an acquisition. So I made a purchase, and the domain name is Karpool.com.

Andrew: Ooh.

Tess: Is my face on it?

Michael: With a “K.”

Tess: Oh, with a “K.”

Michael: Karpool, with a “K.”

Andrew: All right.

Michael: And here I was thinking you were getting real gangster on me, and then, you know, you put a “K” on it.

Andrew: Damn. Come one. I’m still gangster.

Tess: That was pretty gangster, how he did the “K.” If anyone’s listening to the podcast, like you’ve got to come back and find that one. Do it again. Do it again.

Michael: Make them [inaudible 00:13:38] the first time. I’m…Stop.

Tess: Oh, Drew’s got it. Oh, yeah.

Andrew: Throw it off, K town baby.

Tess: Okay, “K” for Karpool. What do you got? Jebidiah, what do you think?

Jebidiah: I don’t know. That one’s…we have this car wash near my house that uses the “K.” And every time I drive by it, I just keep thinking it’s misspelled. It’s all that comes to mind right away is, they did it wrong, they messed up. But I think the fact that there is that car wash there, it could be a cool, you know, brand, like Uber, or Lyft, or something like that. You kind of play with it a little bit more. I’m going to go three grand. I’m not going to go a lot on it. I don’t think that whoever owned it or sold it to you Mike, knew the possibility of a brand name. I’m going to take a shot with that one. I’m going to say three grand.

Tess: Okay. Cool man. Drew?

Andrew: I’m going to go lower. I’m going to say $800.

Michael: And the answer…

Andrew: And, you know, I think the retail value is probably 10 to 25 grand.

Tess: That’s pretty good for K-Karpooling. All right.

Michael: K-Karpooling. So, I’m not big into brandable domain names. You can go look at my portfolio, and see that I saw it on GoDaddy auction. It was like Friday, end of May, I put a $700 bid on it. I said if I get it, I get it, if I don’t, I don’t. Picked it up for $627.

Jebidiah: Wow.

Tess: Wow.

Michael: And, you know, it just sort of stuck out to me that like Karpool with a “K,” it’s sort of familiar. And so after I won it, I went back and did a reverse who is look up on it, and Michael Krell, past managing director of BrandBucket, past sherpa, was the previous owner. And so I tried to find it on BrandBucket, I tried to find way back archive price on it, and couldn’t find anything. So I pinged him on Skype, [inaudible 00:15:58], “Did you use to own this?” And he’s, “Yeah. I sold it to Ryan Deiss, founder of DigitalMarketer. You know, i.e. an incubator, like a pretty well known brand in digital marketing space. He bought off BrandBucket.” And I’m like, “Can you tell me how much? Is it under NDA, or is it public information?” because I couldn’t find any info on NameBio or…and he said he sold it for 6,500 bucks.

Tess: Wow.

Michael: You know, just click right now, took it right then. I was [inaudible 00:16:25] could be, to the right company, a $10,000 to $30,000 brand, depending on how bad they want it, how much they liked the K, as Jebidiah was saying. As a differentiator, you know, it makes it stand out a little bit. It’s trademarkable, whereas carpool with a “C” may not be, because it’s so generic, unless you use a logo with it. And car sharing is hot, you know, Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, Maven, car2go, ReachNow. Some guy was telling me about how he’s renting BMWs, and taking them for the day for 80 bucks up to like Tulips [SP], Jebidiah, just north of here. And so then yesterday, as I was preparing for this show, I’m like, “Who owns Carpool.com, I wonder? I hope it’s developed.” And turns out past sherpa, Braden Pollock owns Carpool.com.

Jebidiah: Nice.

Michael: I’m sure he has that one priced for hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if you want Karpool with a “K,” come to me.

Jebidiah: Nice.

Tess: Nice, nice. And that’s a good point about the trademarkability too. So we have another example here, though, of someone not as knowledgeable about domains just let their domain expire. They invested $6,500 in it, and they didn’t know there was a liquid market, they didn’t know they could turn to a broker, they just said, “Oh, we’ll right that off, and let it go.”

Michael: Well brandable domain names are notoriously hard to sell. Unless there’s a company that has that brand already, there’s no way for you to know who to sell it to. So, you’re pretty much going to wholesale it out. [inaudible 00:18:05] or GoDaddy, and then sell it for 600 bucks. And for a company like DigitalMarketer to try and do that, it’s not worth their time, right? Like, it’s not worth it.

Tess: So it wasn’t expired, it was they did put it for sale?

Michael: No, no, no. It was expired. They didn’t renew it. They probably bought it as an idea for one of their, you know, digital companies in their incubator. I have no idea. And, you know, they decided not to go forward with that project, and they just let it expire.

Tess: Interesting. Yeah. All right, cool. Thanks, Mike. All right, Jebidiah, what you got?

Jebidiah: Let’s go with Bitcoin.LIVE.

Tess: Ooh, Bitcoin.LIVE. And was this the name you brokered?

Andrew: Okay. I just read an article about Bitcoin.LIVE. Not a domain article, like…I got an email or something. Somebody…It’s like a website already, isn’t it?

Jebidiah: It is, yeah. I’ll preface it. It is a brokered name directly from the registry. So yeah, Bitcoin.LIVE.

Michael: [inaudible 00:19:16] first on this one.

Andrew: Yeah. I had no clue what it sold for. I know that I saw Bitcoin.LIVE, and that it was a real business. I got an email from them, I believe. I think it’s…

Tess: That was quick.

Andrew: What was it? It’s like a coin market cap competitor maybe.

Tess: Hey, stop it with the hints. You can say that after.

Andrew: Anyway. I’m going to say $25,000.

Michael: I’m going to go…you know, these new Gs are capped, right. Like the best new Gs in the world are publicly…the information that we have, some for $500,000.

Andrew: Hold on, one second. I think because of the weird structure, some of these new GTLDs, we got to know two things. One, was it paid upfront? Number two is…

Michael: Was it cash?

Andrew: No. Is it in a normal renewal or is that like a premium renewal? Because if it’s $5,000 a year, then I would expect the price to be lower, but $5,000 a year is, you know…you know, the equivalent of [inaudible 00:20:32] grand.

Jebidiah: It has a standard renewal.

Andrew: Standard renewal.

Jebidiah: Standard renewal. And it was paid up front, all cash transaction.

Andrew: All right. Then I stick with my initial 25 grand.

Tess: Okay. All cash transaction. Okay. And even like .tv, this isn’t new, you know, some domain names like .com, whatever you buy it’s, you know, 10 bucks to renew it. But then other TLDs like a .tv, if you have a premium .tv it’s 50 bucks or something to renew.

Andrew: Well, some even more. We have dl.tv, which…

Tess: That’s right. That was $500.

Andrew: After [inaudible 00:21:07] it has $1000 renewal price.

Tess: So every TLD is different when you have a premium. When you’re acquiring that you want to find out if there is a different renewal rate. So that’s what Drew was asking about. Okay. So you got all your hints, cut it out. Drew, you’re still going with how much?

Andrew: Twenty-five grand.

Tess: Twenty-five grand. Mike?

Michael: I’m going to go a little bit lower. I think I’m going to go…you know, this is when I go into NameBio and take a look at .LIVEs, and see sold. But I’m going to go with…

Andrew: [inaudible 00:21:43] Jebidiah before.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m going to go with $18,500.

Tess: I think you’re both too low, just saying. Okay, Jebidiah, what you got?

Jebidiah: What was Mike’s thing? Everybody froze on me.

Michael: Eighteen thousand five hundred.

Jebidiah: Eighteen-five? Thirty grand.

Michael: Oh. [crosstalk 00:22:07] Jebidiah killed it.

Tess: Yeah. Good job.

Michael: What kind of comps do you give on a domain like that, Jebidiah?

Jebidiah: What kind of what?

Michael: Comps. What do you give the domain like Bitcoin.LIVE sold for $30,000?

Jebidiah: You keep cutting out on me, Mike. What [inaudible 00:22:20]?

Tess: He’s asking about the comps, the comparable sales, how you come up with a $30,000 valuation?

Jebidiah: So, the value is going to be based on a lot of different things, obviously the SLD in this particular case is very relevant right now. .LIVE is actually one of our better performing TLDs. You know, there’s been a couple of them that I brokered that are, you know, low six figures that are public. There’s been others that are not public that are in that range or higher. So just sort of internally, we were able to come up with…you know, our asking price was a little higher than that. There was some negotiation back and forth. Being in the registry, we were able to take a few more things into consideration as far as price breaks. So, you know, you mentioned that the site is already live, they are already marketing to you, so that’s important to us. So we’re able to sort of accommodate that a little bit.

Tess: Because that builds the value of the ecosystem?

Jebidiah: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, we settled that at $30,000. And like Drew said, they’re already live, rolling, super excited. So, we love seeing [inaudible 00:23:32].

Michael: Hey Jebidiah, can you hear me?

Jebidiah: Yeah.

Michael: All right. If you can say, what was your opening offer on Bitcoin.LIVE?

Jebidiah: I wanna say $50,000, between to $50,000 and $60,000.

Michael: Got you.

Tess: Good to know. Yeah. And that’s an excellent domain. Good job. Yeah, that’s really good to see it live, already getting some work done, both for them, for the Bitcoin market, and for the .LIVE market. Nice work.

Jebidiah: So we are seeing, I mean, if I can just side to it just a little bit. We are seeing a lot of our domains, especially the platinum level domains, like what I work with, coming to market very quickly. You know, these are entrepreneurs or end users that really know what they have in store, and are really putting it out there. So, you know, the price points are, you know, I think fantastic, almost pennies on the dollar comparatively to legacy TLDs. So, they get that value, they’re able to push out their websites or their brands faster. So, kind of a cool little added note.

Tess: It is, yeah. And I see more and more entrepreneurs looking for the GTLDs to show that they are on the cutting edge, ready to go. It’s perfect. I mean Bitcoin is a perfect match with any GTLD really, but .LIVE, woo-hoo, good one.

Michael: So, I just typed in BitcoinLive.com into my browser to see what’s there, and an FT landing page came up. It’s got a buy it now price of $48,000. So [inaudible 00:25:14] buyer decided that Bitcoin.LIVE for $30,000 was a better investment than BitcoinLive.com just priced.

Andrew: Wow. That’s pretty interesting.

Michael: That’s interesting, yeah.

Jebidiah: Well, we have…

Michael: Because at $48,000, they probably, you know, looked at your $60,000 opening offer or $50,000 opening offer, and looked at this one and said, “Oh, 30,000 bucks, that’s a better deal.”

Jebidiah: We are seeing…I know that you guys on a couple “Sherpa” shows have touched on it before, but we are seeing a lot of blockchain companies, cryptocurrency companies really embrace the new TLDs, as sort of the next evolution. I mean, that’s really how they want to be seen. You know, we’re different, we’re changing the internet, we’re evolving. You know, there’s a couple companies out there that are evolving humanity with blockchain. And, you know, the new TLDs sort of speak to them in a great way. And so they are willing to spend or to buy a new TLD over a .com based on that.

Michael: Yeah. And it totally makes sense. You know, all the companies that are launching Bitcoin companies on .io, or, you know, do startups providing SaaS services to other entrepreneurs, like it totally makes sense. They can use a .io because they’re customers get it, understand it. Remember to type in .io, it’s a differentiator. Versus, you know, people like in the Six Sigma space where I work, if I owned SixSigma.io, it wouldn’t make any sense. Like, they’d be like, “Six Sigma.what?” Like I want to [inaudible 00:26:47] for training and certification, I’m not going to a .io. I’m going to go to SixSigma.com or whatever. You know, just what they understand. So, you know, knowing your customer base is where to start.

Jebidiah: Right. Right.

Tess: Yeah, that’s key. Well, thank you sherpas. I’m going to tell you about our sponsors for today’s show, who support us in our mission to educate people in the domain name industry.

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. Go to ESQwire.com, payments you can trust.

All right. In the domain portfolio review, we take user-submitted domain portfolios, and provide honest, and constructive feedback to the owners. So they can either cut their losses, continue to hold them long-term, or figure out a sales strategy going forward. Today’s portfolio was submitted by John McGavern [SP] of Juanadomain.com. John’s list of 25 domains, 24 .com and 1 .vegas, include HydroBud.com and MJ.vegas. John also made a generous contribution to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research, and it’s particularly special as it’s in tribute to his mother who passed. This is her anniversary, the anniversary of her passing. And so, you know, John, we really like to acknowledge, thank you for making that donation. And we know it goes towards a good cause.

So gentleman, do you have your list in front of you there? We got 24.com. And this is where I thought the long tail would come in interesting, especially with MJ.vegas. Not that that’s the only name we’re going to talk about, but let’s take a look here. In this section, we’re going Jebidiah, Drew, Mike. So Jebidiah, what are your thoughts on here? What would you keep, what would you lose, what do you think?

Jebidiah: So, I’m going to preface it. I live in Seattle. And as Michael might be able to attest, every time we turn around there’s a new dispensary, or new pot shop, or something opened up. There’s this statistic floating around that there’s 289 Starbucks and 287 pot dispensaries.

Michael: I even hear you can score pot outside the 13 [inaudible 00:29:13] at 3 a.m. from an Uber driver. What do you think about that?

Tess: Drew, you sure you’re going to Lisbon?

Jebidiah: So, I see…

Tess: Drew, but you know what you’re talking about.

Jebidiah: So what I see, I see a list of a lot of brandables. What I’ll say I like up front is I like TokersWild. Here, it just sort of stuck out to me. It’s definitely a brand. It could be a good…you know, like a hookah bar or something more than just a marijuana related domain. Obviously, I like MJ.vegas for two reasons. A, it’s short. I like the geo play to it. Vegas is definitely an up and coming market for that. I also like that one actually for…there’s rumors of the Michael Jackson holograph show in Vegas. So there’s the opportunity there for cross branding. That being said, I think those are kind of the two…oh, wait, there is one, HempsKitchen. I like HempsKitchen. Again, Seattle being very culinary oriented, it’s great opportunity for a lot of cannabis-related menus.

Other than that, it is sort of, I don’t want to kill it, but a dime a dozen kind of brandable things to me. Obviously, there’s a few more that are keyword, like OilPen and stuff like that, but I think a lot of those get oversaturated. Yeah. I would say I like those. Ones I don’t like, and Drew might be able to answer it, I don’t know what Delta9x is at all. I actually had to look it up, and I still had trouble figuring out what it was.

Andrew: So, the active ingredient in cannabis to get you high is THC, and the scientific name is “Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol..

Jebidiah: Okay.

Michael: I looked it up too, and I saw some back support. I’m like, dude, that’s not going to sell.

Jebidiah: You know, I’m a big fan of…On the “Sherpa,” it’s been said a gazillion times that keyword domain names, you know…save your money and buy really valuable keyword domains. And I think, again, a lot of these are brandable, and it’s a crapshoot on if you can find a brand. Again, being in the middle of it, you know, anybody can just change one letter, and they have their own brand.

So, I think finding a buyer would be difficult for a lot of these. That being said, they’re good names. So at the right price point, I think they could sell. I mean just moving down the list, I would probably do some…you know, I would hold them, and do some outbound sales to them, find existing shops that might be really generic on their name, or have trouble in a market and give them an opportunity, you know, with like PotentFlower. That’s kind of cool. But I think maybe I like it more than I thought I liked it, now that I’m looking at it again, I guess.

Michael: We’re just so saturated here in Seattle, it’s tough to look at cannabis names.

Tess: Yeah. Well, thank you. And I apologize, I went in the wrong order. I hope I didn’t throw you guys off. Who wants to go next?

Michael: Let Drew go next. The master.

Andrew: Okay. I think pretty similar to what Jebidiah said. He said, “There’s a lot of just great brandables in here.” I don’t think this portfolio offers a lot of liquidity. But they are really good. I mean, as far as brandables in this space go, these are really good. I mean, I think, you know, Herbage.com, that name particularly stood out to me for whatever reason. I just Herbage, it’s like a kind of a slang word, you know. I like it. I think Herbage is a really good brand in this space. And, you know, herb is a very common term used for cannabis. And then it’s like HerbAge, or Herbage, you know, it’s sort of got a multi-role there, play on words, or just, you know, as a straight…made it brandable. I like that one. And it’s got a little bit of search, so that tells me that there is some use in culture or commerce.

And OilPen, I mean, I would like OilPens.com a lot more. But OilPen is a good name. I mean, the hottest segment of the entire cannabis industry is these oil pen vaporizers. And so, you know, I…it’s one of the fastest growing industries in America if not the fastest. And that’s the fastest growing vertical in that industry. So even if it’s not the best version, it’s still got decent value. I could definitely see that name selling for 15, 25 grand to the right buyer.

Tess: The singular, even though you like the plural better?

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, that’s one of the names where it is worth doing some outbound, because like Jebidiah mentioned, a lot of the brandables, they don’t offer liquidity because you got to wait for somebody to pop up and says, “I’m going to be called that,” right? And then they come knocking. And if your price is right, and you’re not being greedy, you’ll probably get a sale. Oil pen is such a hot segment, and there’s so many players, that if you go out and contact 50 or 100 people that are white-labeling oil pens, particularly those guys, I think would find value in that name, less then consumer-facing brands. There’s a lot of people that are like contract manufacturers, producing these oil pens for brands. And I think those folks would probably find a lot of value in that name. And I think that you can get, you know, 10, 15, 25 grand.

What else? Yeah, I mean, MJ.vegas, I think that is a great name just because it has multiple meanings, which are all super applicable and super valuable. And I think both sides would not want the other side to have it. So there’s a defensive mechanism, which always makes a sale a little bit easier. So, like the MJ, Michael Jackson is already the Michael Jackson Show, the MJ Live or MJ something in Vegas. And so, MJ.vegas would be a really interesting name for them to have, probably a name they should have.

And then, marijuana is fully legal in Vegas now. Anybody can walk into a dispensary and buy cannabis. And MJ is “the” term. So, MJ.vegas would be a hell of a name for, you know, somebody who’s got a chain. You know, if it’s one store, I think you’re going to have a hard time getting more than 5 grand out of them, 10 grand maybe, unless you give them a payment plan. But if it’s like a chain of stores, or a company that is maybe a bit more vertically integrated, I think you could get, you know, maybe 25 grand, 15, 25, maybe, if you’re, you know…you have to really hit the nail on the head but it’s a good name. There’s buyers for that name. I’ll leave the rest for Mike. There is other names on here that I really like. I also like the TokersWild, I think that’s great brand. But, yeah, Mike?

Michael: Well, I’m not in Seattle, although we do have our fair share of smokers here on Bainbridge Island. And I’m definitely not the expert in marijuana domains like, you know, fellow publisher Drew is, who publishes Ganjapreneur.com, leading, you know, magazine in this industry. So, I sort of looked at this portfolio from an outsider’s perspective, and I just tried to figure out whether John has great names or not, and I really had no idea looking at this whether they were or not at beginning. I will say thanks, John, I did look back through my notes, my e-mails, and he has been a previous “Domain Sherpa Review” with some other domain names. And I think that these domain names are much better than his last portfolio. And I want to thank him for coming on a second time and making a second donation to Fred Hutchinson.

Right off the bat, [inaudible 00:38:26] OilPen.com just…I think one of the only exact match domains on here. [inaudible 00:38:35] like Drew and Jebidiah have said. He paid $2,600 for this domain. I thought it was a little bit high when I first looked at it. Ninety-nine hundred searches per month, and then I thought, well, is this the best brand, Drew? And I know you said oil pens are all the rage. When I first looked at it, I thought it was like oil-based art pens or something. And it took me a while to like realize he’s referring to, you know, vape pens. You know, and I don’t know the industry, again, so I’m at a disadvantage. I looked at vape pen, and it’s got 1.4 million searches. I don’t even know what a dab [SP] pen is, and it’s got 90,000 searches. And I have no idea what a wax pen is, but a wax pen has 74,000 searches. Are those three things the same thing as an oil pen, Drew?

Andrew: No. No. An oil pen is very specifically cannabis-derived oil, you know, with a usually disposable oil cartridge that screws on to a battery. And it literally looks like a pen. You know, wax pens are where you would be adding wax as another form of extract from a cannabis plant, and you can add the wax yourself. There is one out there called The Dipstick, I believe it’s DipstickVape or dipstick.com, one or the other. And that’s a wax pen, or wax vape. And then there’s, you know, vape pens, yes, vape pens are…for the most part, an oil pen and a vape are the same thing. There are some vape pens, which are not…which are sort of reusable, where you sort of add the oil yourself or you add, you know, even small amounts of cannabis flour and it uses convection. There’s, you know…

Tess: Okay, stop showing off. You’re an MJ sherpa now.

Michael: Is dab pen like another type of vape pen?

Andrew: Dabbing is pretty much like wax.

Michael: Oh, okay. Great. So, anyways, I don’t know anything about it. I searched it Google, looking through some different options, and it did strike me as like the number one…or you know, clearly not all of us can afford the vapepen.com, which we’d love to have. But, I don’t know, 10,000 searches per month I thought was pretty good. I don’t know the retail market. I tried to find some comps and I couldn’t, so I’ll just defer to Drew on a $10,000 to $25,000 sale retail you thought for OilPen?

Andrew: I think so.

Michael: Nice. Is that the kind of domain that you would represent on an outbound from marketing or is it too low?

Andrew: No, it’s too low, you know. What I always tell people is it takes the same amount…actually Chris just published a video, I think yesterday or a day before, talking about it on Facebook. It takes the same amount of effort, and the same amount of time, and the same amount of resources to sell that $20,000 name as it does to sell a $200,000 name, but our payout is 10x more. And so, as much as I want to help all those people that comment and say, “Look, I got a $20,000 name,” I’m like, “Look, that’s a good name. I’m not going to tell you it’s not a good name, but it’s just not worth our time to go out and…” You know, it’s going to spend 20 to 50 hours on each of these names, and you know, the difference is getting paid [crosstalk 00:41:58].

Michael: All right. So, when I’m done, I’m gonna come back and ask you and Jebidiah for advice on how John can do outbound on OilPen.com to try and get it sold. But let me run through the rest. You know, MJ.vegas, if we can get a two letter or a single letter in any of the new Gs, I like those. It has a lot of different possibilities. People love the acronyms. But if you’re going for a geo, you’ve got to get [inaudible 00:42:17] and Vegas as the type of tourism that would allow that.

I looked up, you know, bud something or something bud, or herb something, you know, he seems to be focusing on these keywords. I think that they’re good. He’s creating brandables out of it. I love MiracleBud. I don’t even know, you know, HydroBud and AquaBud but I assume that you’re growing them without soil. I have no idea, but like, MiracleBud strikes me as a great brand. I think he picked that one up to $360, I found on a NameBio. I think that’s a great buy, because I think you know, the most brandable are going to be somewhere in the $2,000 to 10, maybe a little over, thousand dollar range, and depending on how big they are.

Andrew: He just sold MonsterBud.com 2 days ago for $3,800.

Michael: Thirty-eight hundred, so right in that range. And I think MiracleBud is probably like…you think MiracleBud is better than MonsterBud? I think they’re both good brands. Monster’s a good brand.

Andrew: I think it’s equal.

Michael: Equal. So, you know, depending on how bad they want it, how bad you want to sell it, you know, it’s going be somewhere in that order, but you’ve got to wait for it to come to you, like Drew said on these brandables. I loved his creativity for TokersWild, HempsKitchen, play off of [inaudible 00:43:39] kitchen. I think my favorite was NugsAndKisses.com. You know, I typed it in thinking that there’s got to be something, and there’s Young Shanty song. It’s a reggae song that’s pretty good. I was listening to it all day yesterday. So, I’m sure you know that one, Drew? Young Shanty?

Andrew: Young Shanty? No.

Michael: “Nugs & Kisses.” He’s like just smoking the whole time and singing.

Tess: We’ll close out the review with that song.

Michael: Yeah. So, you know, I think it’s a great portfolio. If I look up retail sales on NameBio for things with bud in them, I found Bud.Club, for $2,000, sold by the Bud Club, BudNow.com for $3,500 from BuyDomain, HerbOil.com, $2,500 by UNO Registry. I like to go into NameBio, strip out all the stuff from NameJet and GoDaddy, and [inaudible 00:44:30]. Those are all wholesale sales. So, that tells you what your liquidation value is potentially for a domain. But I want to see what, you know, the companies that sell retail, you know, like Jebidiah, MediaOptions, the registries, UNO Registry, Buy Domains, Domain Market, what are they selling retail value for? And I found those three. I think that sort of sets the order of magnitude for these types of domains.

Tess: Sounds about right, yeah. Thank you.

Michael: So, I would like to hear from Jebidiah and Drew, both of which run outbound sales organizations, what advice they have for John McGavern to sell OilPen.com if he wanted to do some outbound on it. Drew, let’s start with you.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, pretty straightforward. I think, you know, just because of the volume of players in the in the vaporizer market, I think…you know, just googling oil pen, or vape pen, particularly cannabis oil, its extractors, or cannabis oil, pen, white-label, you know, things of that nature. Because I do think that the contract manufacturers are going to be the guys that see the most value here. It’s not necessarily the brand that you want to be pushing out to consumers. But if I’m a brand and I’m looking for somebody to make oil pens under my brand that I can sell to consumers, you know, having OilPen.com gives me a reasonable comfort level. They do what I’m looking for.

So, I think that’s where this name ends up living as far as retail. And, you know, I would just literally google, you know, start with 20. Find 20 companies that extract cannabis oil and make vaporizer pens, contact them. Try not to just send an email to like the “who is,” try and identify like who would actually be a the meaningful decision maker at that company, depending on the size of the company, that could vary from legal, to marketing, to CEO, business development, you know, any number of things. And then just, you know, shoot out an e-mail. And if you’re comfortable on the phone, then phone works even better.

Tess: Thanks Drew, great point. Jebidiah, you have anything to add?

Jebidiah: Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, I’m all about the phone. I think in today’s age, e-mails just get deleted, period. No matter…I mean, you could tell them that they just won a million bucks, and it’s like, trash, wherever.

Andrew: Yeah. That’s [inaudible 00:47:16].

Tess: Wait, that was real?

Andrew: What’s that?

Jebidiah: My uncle from Namibia is sending me money, yeah. But I really do like picking up the phone, sort of doing like what Drew said, do a Google search of just who those manufacturers are, or who might be currently advertising on those keywords. You know, Google lays it out pretty well if you do a search, you know, the little ad box next to it means that they’re willing to spend money for those terms. So, you kinda spend some time…you know, I’ve actually sold some domain names to, like, the domain managers or whatever just by reaching out, touching base with them on the phone where the company said no, but the domain manager understood the value. And so they personally bought it.

So, it’s a great opportunity to…I mean, if you can get them on the phone, usually, like Drew said, legal and stuff, they may not get it right away, but usually their IT person or marketing might understand it. So they’re able to take that next step or get the people involved. So, you know, one or two e-mails, and then definitely a phone call mixed in there if not…

Michael: How do you find the domain manager? Are you just referring to the IT contact on a domain name?

Jebidiah: Yeah. So like when you could read the “who is,” and they would have, you know, domain manager, or tech, whoever maybe [inaudible 00:48:38], it’s usually a valid phone number for the company. If not, you can usually find a valid phone number for the company. I’ve been known to ask for them directly, because usually the receptionist, or you know, the gatekeepers, “I’m not allowed to get you to CEO level or management level, but I can get you to the tech guy.” You know, that’s sort of their thought process on it. And so, you start that conversation with them. And you know, typically they’re the people that are managing it anyway. They may not be, you know, the decision maker on it. But they get to have a say in it because they are the tech guy or the tech gal. And so, that’s actually been pretty successful for me.

Tess: Yeah. That’s a good point. You know, sometimes if they can understand it, you’re right, sometimes they might be interested themselves, or they might talk the marketing or the CFO into it. Or, “I just hadn’t thought of…” or they might want it personally because they know what to do with it. Yeah. Other times, I find they get really standoffish, like they don’t want to get busted that they didn’t think of this, or they didn’t already register this or something. So, it’s a fine line, and that’s why you want to do it carefully, and not damage their ego as you go, you know, you want to build up a relationship, not tell them you know everything.

Jebidiah: Right. One thing I’ll say about, especially outbound e-mails, don’t spam people, like really don’t. If you’re going to send an e-mail, maybe send it to one or two people in the organization, and let it marinate for a while. If you hit everybody off of LinkedIn, and you know, all other sorts of ways to get information, and you hit everybody at once, you’re done. They will talk to each other, and they will say, you know, “Hey, that ‘not a blast’ e-mail that you sent to me is in fact a blast e-mail, and I’m not interested.”

So, I’d like to say be calculated and precise, almost surgical, on who you contact, because we all know, you know, if you get the right person on the phone, or on an e-mail, that’s going to be the person that either carries your cause further up the chain. Or, you know, like with the success they understand, “Hey, if I could buy this domain name that my company really likes or could be interested in, I might be able to just resell it to them myself, and you know, it’s from my ownership.”

Tess: Excellent point. Yeah, thank you. So we have Jebidiah the surgeon, Drew the MJ sherpa, and Cyger the gangster karpooler. Nice. All right. So, John, thank you for submitting… Oh, shoot. Did you guys read his questions? He had specific questions that he asked as well. He is a sherpa at submitting domains, and he had four overall opinions to the strength of the cannabis domain niche at this time. You guys already talked about end user price ranges. Do you think keywords or brandables are a better fit for the cannabis domain market? And what are your feelings on using .co, .LA, .vegas, and so on, given that they’re different legal markets? So that was a bunch of questions all at once. But basically, I think the two we have left to talk about are your overall opinion of the strength of the cannabis domain niche at this time, and are keywords or brandables a better fit? Let’s start with that. Drew?

Andrew: Okay. I’ll just touch it real quick. So, yeah, I mean, we’re doing really well in the cannabis market in terms of domain sales. On Ganjapreneur.com, we also have a cannabis domain name market, and it’s very active, both people adding domains as well as buying domains, and it goes really well. I think if you’re selling brandables, like this portfolio, I think it’s a numbers game, I think you have to have a pretty large volume in order to see consistent sales. And so that can be a crapshoot, you’ve got to be really careful, you know, to manage cash flow, and you know, be very picky with the names that you pick up. But, yeah, overall, I’m seeing a lot of sales. In the cannabis industry, there’s a lot of new companies, there’s a lot of new brands being created, a lot new services, and so, all of those things need domain names.

I will say that I don’t see the industry paying, you know, massive prices yet, and I think that as…you know, there are exceptions. A lot of the best names have already been sold into the industry, and so those were big sales. But, you know, on the sort of lower tier and mid tier names, the prices have been fairly conservative, you know, they aren’t just throwing money out. And in terms of brandables or keywords, you know, what I guess we’ve had success with is…it depends on how you define brandable, what I would call a brandable. But things which are both a keyword that’s known in the space, but that can act as a strong brand. Those are the things that we’ve been selling. So, for example, bhang.com is a name that we sold for a lot of money, bhang.com. And bhang is an Indian drink. It’s basically a smoothie of yogurt and cannabis extracts, and it’s cultural. I mean, everybody in Northern India drinks bhang. It’s literally just a part of the culture.

Tess: But it must be, you know, really purchased for it’s brandability, right?

Andrew: Yes. But one of the companies in Colorado as well as in California, they’re called Bhang. They started out called Bhang Chocolate. And they became the largest edible manufacturer, maybe second largest after Dixie, but one of the two or three largest in the country. And you know, they moved way beyond just chocolate. So, they wanted to go from Bhang Chocolate to bhang.com. I think we actually sold it to a competitor who was pissed off at them. Just FYI, if you think that, you know, if you’re like, “I’m not going to buy it because nobody else is,” you might have pissed off your competitor, and they might buy it just to screw you. And because cannabis is federally illegal, you don’t have a trademark to protect yourself against your competitor doing that. So just keep that in mind.

Tess: Wow.

Andrew: Yeah. And then, you know we sold nugg.com as well, also for a very good price, you know, which is both a great brand, as well as a common slang word, you know, in space. So those are the ones that I find selling the best. But again, like I mentioned, we just sold MonsterBud.com for 3,800 bucks, you know, good brand, you know, reasonable price, you know, the price range I see those types of names selling.

Tess: So, I’m hearing that it’s kind of similar to the rest of the domain market. Brandables are, you know, the most premium things, especially if they have some relevance or connectivity in terms of a keyword to the industry itself. And then after that, you know, it just depends on the value, how it sounds, OilPen…

Andrew: Yeah. I think those rules apply. But I think crypto and cannabis are literally the two hottest industries on Earth today. You know, maybe AI as well, and deep learning, stuff like that. Go ahead.

Jebidiah: One of the things that we’re seeing just from a registry level is you have a lot of those brandables that people have already registered. You know, I can go spend, you know, $3,500 for MonsterBud.com, or I can take a look at getting something maybe a little bit higher like, you know, I mean, I don’t know what MonsterBud does, but like domains like marijuana delivery. There’s a company in California that had cornered that market. There’s no competition yet. But we’ve spoken to a couple up and coming competitors that understand that they might need to go bigger or higher on those keywords or those search terms as well as…and create that as their brand.

So, you know, Donuts has had some sales recently where the major keywords are the brand, and the entrepreneurs are sort of seeing how they can put those two together. And we’re starting to see that sort of trickle into the cannabis industry also. So I think the high-level keyword domains like marijuana delivery, marijuana for sale, stuff like that, could start to see larger price points and larger need or want just simply because the market grows outside of the scope of just a simple brandable.

Michael: Is there a .delivery TLD?

Jebidiah: There is. In delivery…yeah.

Tess: Nice. Is that with Donuts?

Jebidiah: Yap.

Tess: All right, .delivery, that’s a big deal. Okay, last question here. Jebidiah, let’s start with you on this one. What are your feelings on using .co, .LA, .vegas, and so on for cannabis, considering that they are all in different legal markets?

Jebidiah: I’m a little torn on this one. I think .co and .LA sort of fall in more of still the brandable, because they’re a country code, they’re not necessarily, I would assume he’s thinking Colorado or Los Angeles with those, and that’s not their geographic location. I like Vegas. I mean, there’s .Berlin, there’s .vegas, there’s .NYC. I think those would play better for a geo pick. But, you know, his portfolio is based of brandables. So, you know, if you did strong…you know, if you did TokersWild.LA, that could still be a really good name. So, I’m sort of torn on it based on based on he’s mixing a country code and a geographic location.

Tess: Now, if it is legal in a place, like I want to point out .NYC, .Berlin, .vegas, they have support of that registry, of a community. I know at Name Summit last year, I met a lot of .NYC people, and they were so connected, building each other up, you know. But for .LA, or .co, you’re just coincidentally some country…It’s like .tv, you know, all of them, it’s some random country that happens to have a code that means something to us, like Colorado or Los Angeles. So do you think that makes a difference, or just where it is and how popular people and things are there?

Jebidiah: I think, I mean, again, to me, it just goes back to sort of the braindability of what you’re doing with it. .co and .LA, you know, you’re not going to get any significant benefits search wise or anything along those lines. People are looking for that in Colorado or L.A. because you’re not using the country code in that manner. So it just falls into a brand bucket for me. You know, unless you use, you know, that community of .NYC, .Berlin, .Vegas, .Boston. I mean, there’s a really good handful of those that if you’re going to use a new TLD in a geographic way, I think it would be used a little bit better. Obviously, Vegas, I think is probably one of the best ones right now but…

Tess: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, good point. You guys have anything to add, or you want to jump on to the next section, Drew, Mike?

Andrew: I’m good.

Michael: Yeah, let’s go.

Tess: Okay. Cool, man. Thanks, guys. Thanks Jebidiah, those were good insights. So, John, thanks for submitting your questions and the domains, and creating an opportunity for the Sherpa Network to learn more. We hope this review’s been helpful to you in your domain investing activities going forward. And let’s keep in touch with you, and see how this advice helps you change your strategies moving forward as well. Before we jump into the domains going to auctions soon, I want to tell you about our sponsors who support us in our educational mission.

Finally, if you’re a domain name investor, don’t you have unique legal needs that require domain name technical know-how and industry experience? That’s why you need Stevan Lieberman of Greenberg & Lieberman, or Jason Schaeffer of ESQwire.com. Go search for Jason Schaeffer or Stevan Lieberman on DomainSherpa. Watch their interviews, and you can see for yourself that they can clearly explain issues, can help you with buy-sell agreements, deal with website content issues and UDRP actions, and even help you write your website terms and conditions. Stevan Lieberman and Jason Schaeffer are the lawyers to call for internet legal issues. See for yourself at ESQwire.com or APLegal.com.

We’ll move on now to the marketplace list. This segment is sponsored by NameJet. We review 13 domains, 11 .com, 1 .net, and 1 .org. They’re all 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, or even just to watch what’s going on in the auction. So, the links below go directly to NameJet, we don’t get commission off them, we just want to see what kind of traffic we’re sending them. So, for this list here, I start out, for transparency, always asking if any of the sherpas own or are brokering any of the names on the list. Anybody?

Michael: Nope.

Andrew: I do not believe so.

Tess: Okay. Cool, man. All right. So now to our Sherpa Network, if you’re watching the show now, it’s the time to press pause. If you got it going on in a background tab, take a minute here, press pause, look at the domain names, pick your top three, bottom three, price them, and then come back and listen to our sherpas. It only takes you a couple minutes, but really taking that time grows your perspective. So, once you’ve really committed your mind to thinking through something, and then you hear our sherpas’ perspective, that’s what’s going to help you the most to evolve your thought process. So in this segment, let’s do whatever order I missed last time. We’ll Drew, then Mike, then Jebidiah, sound good?

Andrew: Sure.

Tess: All right. Drew, you’re up.

Andrew: Okay. So, yeah, you know, good list of names. You know, I don’t see anything, I’m like, wow, that’s, you know, that’s a home run. But there’s really good names, and what I like about this list is, I think there’s probably names on here that you can probably get at a good value. So, for example, SuperStore.com, I think we might have even owned that name at some point in history. I don’t…or we owned something like it. But that’s a really good name. It immediately popped out at me. It’s not a huge search volume, but that’s a really good brand, it does have search. Everybody knows what a superstore is.

And, you know, as everything moves online, I think you’re going to see more and more of these sort of consolidation e-commerce websites where, you know, it’s one stop shop like an Amazon type thing, but for, you know, specifically for niche things. And SuperStore, you know, I could see it being like that online bulk shopping store. I don’t know. It popped out at me. I like it. I think it’s a really good e-commerce name. And I think you can pick it up for a reasonable value. I like [inaudible 01:05:02].

Michael: I’m sorry. I was going to say, what’s a reasonable value for SuperStore.com?

Andrew: So, I think that you pick up SupersStore.com for under two grand. I bet it goes for like $1,200, $1500, if I had a guess, you know, maybe 2 grand. And you know, I think over a 3 to 5-year period, I think it’s a pretty good chance you sell that, particularly if you do some outbound, you know, in the $15,000 to $25,000 range. I think that’s, you know, a reasonably safe bet. As far as, you know, as far as names we review on the show, you know, that’d be one of the ones I’m like, okay, if I could pick that up for, you know, 2 grand, I’m pretty confident I’m going to get, you know 5 to 10x return on that name over the next 3 to 5 years pretty confidently. So, you know…

Tess: Nice, yeah. All right. Any others you wanna give a shout out to, or…?

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, all these except for these guys. But the other one I really like is EatVegan. No search, you know, low CPC, but as we’ve discussed on “Sherpa” many times in the past, everything vegan sells. There’s a very clear and obvious trend of people moving towards eating vegetarian or vegan. It is a very rapidly growing segment, and all that stuff is super expensive. So, you know, anything, you throw vegan on it and it’s more expensive.

Tess: Okay, wait. If we just had an MJ portfolio review, we need an investor to submit a, like, vegan-paleo portfolio, and we’re going to have Drew on, plus your wife Ana, as an industry expert. That would be awesome.

Andrew: Good luck.

Tess: Just saying. Go on. Continue.

Andrew: Yeah, I just think, you know, EatVegan…everybody knows I used to be in fish business, and I had eatfish.com. And we sold that for £35,000, I think, £30,000 or £35,000, which at that time was almost 2 to 1. So that was like a $50,000, $60,000 sale, I believe. You know, don’t quote me on that, but I’m pretty sure that’s in the order of magnitude that we sold it. I wouldn’t have sold it for much less. And I think EatVegan is as good or better than eatfish. So, yeah, you know, I don’t think you’re going to get…that name will go more expensive than SuperStore, I think. I think EatVegan will go for three to five grand on a NameJet. And I think it’s a $25,000, $35,000, maybe even $60,000 sale, but you got to really hit the nail on the head and it’s not going to be liquid. It’s gonna be liquid for…what I like about this name is this is a name which will be liquid for…whatever you pay on NameJet, it’s liquid for that.

Michael: Which one, SuperStore or EatVegan?

Andrew: EatVegan. There’s going to be three other people that will pay what you paid on it.

Tess: Yes, I agree, most of the food is liquid. Yeah, it is, that is very liquid. Okay. Good call. Mike, thoughts?

Michael: I’m going to take a different viewpoint to Drew. I hate every single vegan name out there. I thought Scott Pruitt from NameJet put these on here just because he thought it Shane was going to be on here, and he knows how much Shane and I make fun vegan names every single day that Shane puts them on his list. You know, I follow the data and try and follow the money. I went to NameBio, I typed in “vegan” both at the beginning and end. I couldn’t find any retail sales except for letsgovegan.com sold by Buy Domains in the past year for $1,566. I don’t know. You know, I know that they sell wholesale, I’m just not convinced that they sell retail.

Andrew: Look, you can’t argue with that, right?

Michael: Well, but we know that the data in the industry is not complete. We know that there are tons of other sales that are happening every day that don’t get reported, but [inaudible 01:09:30], the data that we have is the data that we have.

Andrew: That’s true. And that’s one of the points that I wanted to bring up. But there’s also the rule of best in class, and I don’t think that other than vegan.com, EatVegan is a call to action, the kind of name that I love because it’s a call to action, it’s a clear and common expression. You know, I can see a gazillion hipsters walking around with T-shirt, you know, that say, “EatVegan.com, learn more.” But, you know, whatever, this is best in class.

Tess: And you don’t love it in a vacuum. You love it because you sell them, because they sell, because marketers love them.

Andrew: Well, actually, I don’t know that I’ve ever sold a vegan name. I don’t think I have.

Tess: But I mean, what you’re describing, EatVegan, a kind of name that’s a call to action, a T-shirtable kind of name, that’s marketing.

Andrew: It’s like, you know, we did the “Sherpa Review,” we talked about the profitable flip when we sold breakbread.com, right? Call to action, positive connotation, you know, those name sell, they always sell.

Tess: Yeah. Okay. So when we see EatVegan sell, we’re going to call the owner, the new buyer, and ask him if he’ll donate a T-shirt for Mike and Shane. Okay, Mike, what else do you like?

Michael: No, I do not like vegan names. Let me tell you about three that I like. One I’m on the fence with, Shotput. You know, nobody’s buying any shotput stuff or anything. For me it strikes me as a brand, sort of like, Drew mentioned earlier, there’s a vape pen called Dipstick or something. I don’t know, Shotput strikes me as a brand that could be, but I don’t know if it’s what it would be. I like it that everybody knows what a shotput is, and it’s easy to spell, it in the dictionary, yada, yada, but not exactly sure what it would be. So I liked that one at first glance but I’m not sure.

I like MagicPillow.com on the low end of, you know, the domains that are for sale. I think that I could see a product named MagicPillow. Like, God, just help me sleep through the whole night without having to get up and pee. And I swear to God, I’ll buy that pillow every single day. And so, I like MagicPillow. I think it’s a typical brandable domain name that sells for $3,000 to $6,000 maybe. And so maybe, if you can pick it up for a tenth of that, that would be a fantastic buy, long term hold.

My favorite pick on the list is RemoteAccess.com. It’s got the highest buy value of $225,000, but I don’t think that that’s valid, because I’ve owned domain names that have been listed at $225,000 that haven’t sold that high. I think it’s maybe a $50,000, $100,000 domain name, but I like it because it’s got 22,000 searches per month, and it says it’s got a $6 CPC on EstiBot. And if you actually go to Google and type in “remote access,” you see a ton of companies are advertising for software that allows you to have remote access to this. It can also…you know, corporations use it around the world every single day to help troubleshoot remote employees. And so I love it because it defines that niche of an industry of IT. And I bid in on it [inaudible 01:12:44]. It’s expired too, which I love. I love to bid the expired ones, not the ones that other domain investors are putting up for sale on NameJet. I don’t know why. I just like to feel like I picked it up when it expired. So, that’s probably my favorite on the list that I’ll be bidding on.

Tess: Good for you. All right. Well, good Luck. All right, Jebidiah, what you got?

Jebidiah: So, I’m with Mike. I can’t stand vegan names. I don’t have anything against the industry itself. My take on it, it’s is sort of one of these niches that I think perpetuates itself. I don’t think it’s going to get much bigger than the people who are already sort of buying them in a circle. So those were kind of out. I also loved RemoteAccess. I love the category killer part of it. Too many businesses, like Mike said, you know, rely on remote access. And so I think that’s a great opportunity. I actually [crosstalk 01:13:45]…

Michael: Hey Jebidiah, what do think the retail value on RemoteAccess is? Since, you know, you’re a keyword guy with the new Gs, what do you place the value at?

Jebidiah: I think there’s actually a .access, so I’d rather go that way. But I think RemoteAccess to the right business…Again, like you said, I mean, just doing some research on it, there’s a lot of people advertising on those terms. So there’s something there to them. I think, you know, you could broker it anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000 fairly reasonably quickly, and reasonably quickly is maybe a couple of months. You know, and maybe more than that if you get the right company that’s willing to not re-brand, but re-establish that that’s exactly what they do, I think there’s a good possibility there.

A domain name that I like, that I don’t…you know, I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if it’s really a super good investment long-term, but I really liked StudentCenter.org. I think that that name has an opportunity to have a tremendous impact, which to the right person could be worth, you know, maybe low five figures. I just really like that name. I guess having kids, and seeing an opportunity for something like that where they could go online, you know, it could easily be a great resource for all sorts of issues that are out there right now to, you know, peer mentoring to, you know, teacher peer, whatever it could be. I think that domain name has a good opportunity. So I like that one. And I said, I’m not sure if it got heard, but I actually do think there’s a MagicPillow. I think there’s actually a brand that uses that.

Michael: Sounds super familiar, right?

Jebidiah: Yeah. I know that there’s one here that gets advertised all the time, MyPillow. But I think the MagicPillow is like a kid’s pillow that lights up, and does this thing.

Tess: I googled it and it comes up “My Pillow has a Miracle Pillow.” But none of it is magic.

Michael: And there’s no trademarks on it, I did look it up. You know, I’m not a lawyer. My [inaudible 01:15:56] Trademark247.com didn’t show any act of trademarks for MagicPillow.

Jebidiah: Okay.

Tess: Yeah.

Jebidiah: It might be too close to a trademark for me then. It’s one of those squeak by ones that get dangerous. So, yeah, I like RemoteAccess, StudentCenter.org. And then, kind of the one of the ones that I liked, I liked Zut.com for some weird reason. I think that…

Tess: Zut.com?

Jebidiah: Yap, the Z-U-T. I don’t even care that it’s that short. That’s not really the reason I like that. I think that it could be pronounced different ways. It could be “zoot,” it could be “zut,” it could be a couple different things, so there’s a great opportunity for…I mean, it’s a three-character semi-expensive brandable, but I think there’s an opportunity there.

Michael: Zut means heck or damn it in French.

Jebidiah: Okay. Who knew?

Tess: Oh, la, la. Nice.

Michael: Drew, what do you think? And I’m not big into that into the wholesale prices of these domains, three-letter domains that sell on NameJet. Is that a $20,000 to $30,000 domain name? What do you think it sales for?

Andrew: Yeah, right around there, $25, 000, $20,000, $22,000 to $30,000.

Michael: So, does it worry you, Drew, when you’re bidding on it, not that you’re going to bid on it, but if you were to bid on this domain name, does it worry you that it’s listed for sale on [inaudible 01:17:21] for $125,000, and the owner probably hasn’t gotten any offers on it?

Andrew: You know, look, I absolutely…I always prefer buying a name which has not been listed in the market because in my experience there’s just a certain amount of pent up demand behind that. And my [inaudible 01:17:52] rate is substantially higher on those types of names. But at the end of the day, I like to, I try to evaluate names for their inherent…and you know, in a vacuum, as I said before. I try to evaluate them as, is just a great name? Does it have multiple use cases? Is there more than one buyer to buy this name? And, you know, if that’s the case, then it’s really only a matter of timing. So, you know, it just comes down to the opportunity if you can get it for good price, then it doesn’t really matter if it’s listed for sale somewhere else, because timing is everything.

And the interesting thing is a lot of times when something’s listed for sale and the price is maybe not cheap but also not crazy, you’ve got buyers waiting in the wings that are like, “You know, I like it. Maybe we’ll do it. But I don’t need to pull the trigger right now. Nobody else is going to buy it.” You know, they get this level of comfort. And then, you buy it, and then suddenly they have an alert, it tells them that domain just changed hands. And they’re like, “Oh, shit.” And then they immediately reach out and want to buy it, which just happened.

We just acquired beacon.com [SP] and somebody who had been evaluating it, but it was like, “Nobody else was going to buy it. We’ve got all the time in the world.” We bought it, and then they immediately were like, “Oh, crap. You know, tell us the price, we need to buy that.” So, it, you know, there’s different ways to look at it. It doesn’t immediately turn me off to the name the fact that it’s listed in a marketplace.

Tess: Interesting. Yeah, great question Mike. I learn so much every time you’re on, you know that? I mean, I learn about hosting and about domains. All right. Thanks guys. This was good. We’re coming towards the end of today’s show. I’d like to give each other sherpas an opportunity to share what’s going on in their lives, personal or professional, brokering, selling opportunities you’re looking for. Anything you want to give a shout out to. Jebidiah, you’re new, you’re first. What you got going on?

Jebidiah: Well, we are releasing a domain name to take offers on, actually two, it’s a set. We’re pretty excited about it, especially in 2018, Soccer.Live, and Live.Soccer. I think, you know, the World Cup is here. Although the U.S. isn’t in it, we’re the smallest player in the world on that part, so it really doesn’t matter. Search term volume is enormous. It’s just ridiculous, actually. And I’m a big soccer guy, so I’m excited about these ones. So, we’re bringing those ones out to market, so hopefully those will be up and running soon. Somebody will snag those up.

Michael: You should put in that package, you should get like futbol, but like the German spelling, the F-U-T-B-O-L.

Jebidiah: Yeah. We own those too. Yeah we own .Futbol.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [crosstalk 01:21:02]. You can package all those up.

Jebidiah: Yeah.

Tess: That’s a big deal. And you’re right, when there’s a moment, like the World Cup coming, that can really help get your buyers interested, and help you to identify by buyers or outreach. Who’s your team, Jebidiah?

Jebidiah: So I work under Matt Overman, which I think most people know.

Tess: Oh, I mean your soccer team.

Jebidiah: Oh, my soccer team. I’m a Man City guy before they were [crosstalk 01:21:31].

Andrew: What?!

Jebidiah: So internationally, I like Man City. Locally, I’m definitely a Sounders guy.

Andrew: There we go.

Jebidiah: So, my daughter plays locally. So it’s great. We get to spend a lot of time doing DNAcademy, and stuff like that. So, I get sort of immersed in that world, so it’s exciting to bring domains that are part of my passion. So I really like stuff like that.

Tess: Yeah, that’s cool.

Jebidiah: Yeah. So, we’re bringing those out, and then you don’t just…Donuts is around and about. You know, we’re definitely…you know, we’re a global powerhouse right now, and just getting bigger so we’re excited. I think we’ll be at Domain in Europe, which I think is now called Names Con Europe, and we’ll be in quite a few other places coming up, they just haven’t been solidified. But we’re excited, very excited, actually.

Tess: Yeah, sounds like there’s a lot of movement in the premium GTLD space. And I’m really glad you came on today to give us a little more about it. Definitely want to follow what happens. What are the two soccer names again? Soccer.Live and…?

Jebidiah: Soccer.Live and Live.Soccer.

Tess: And Live.Soccer. Yeah, definitely, I want to follow those.

Jebidiah: I’ll just throw this…I like Live.soccer a little bit better because live can be pronounced either way, live or live. So as far as, you know, mixing both keywords and brand, LiveSoccer, and then you could also be SoccerLive. So, it’s kind of a cool little package together that we’re excited about. And then, you know, we do have some great names in what we talked about today, the cannabis space and Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and so, you know, selfless plug, reach out, let’s chat, you know. You know, we’re seeing big, big movement in new TLDs and we’re very excited about it, you know, there’s a lot of cool details that I won’t go super in-depth but, you know, a lot of them are ranking really, really well. So, we’re excited about that.

Tess: Yeah. We want to hear more about that. And you’ll definitely be hearing more from me because we are Man United family here, so watch out.

Jebidiah: I don’t live in England. I just like their jersey, actually.

Tess: Nice. All right. Mike, what do you got going on?

Michael: First off, thanks for having me back on the show. Every time I’m always surprised that you invite me back guys. I know I used to run it, so you had to have me. But it’s very kind of you guys to get me back on. Great to share the window with Jebidiah as well, which, you know, I know we were talking pre-show when I was on Instagram Live DNAcademy, you know, sharing. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, Names Con, but good to see you again, Jebidiah. Drew and Tess, I’m always [inaudible 01:24:25] chat with you guys. I get my fill of Drew calling me up and saying, “Guess what I just sold for way more than I thought?” But great to be back with you guys. I also want to give a shout out to Amar [inaudible 01:24:40]. He’s a past Domain Sherpa. He helped me acquire a domain name recently. The guy is just a teddy bear, right? Everybody loves Amar.

And you know, as a special thanks for having me on the show, I wanted to give a special price, one week only for DNAcademy, anybody that’s watching this show. And if you’re watching it like a week late, like I’m sorry, guys, I’m not going to give you the discount. But I just re-did the DNAcademy Valuation Worksheet. I am so freaking proud of the way that DNAcademy is coming together. And you know, the way I teach you the characteristics of a domain name, and then you look at all those characteristics and you’re able to find a valid comparable sales, and then you pull those comps and you are able to come up with your retail value, your wholesale value, and your maximum value. You know I really put together a methodology, a roadmap. Anybody that, you know, needs a step-to-step framework to get from newbie to intermediate investor, or intermediate investor to advanced to fill in missing skills, I recommend it. Anybody that signs up for the next one week from the airing of the show, I’ll give a special…I’ll do $179 for a lifetime subscription. Use the code NugsAndKisses.com, and think of Drew. That’s all I got.

Andrew: Is it NugsAndKisses.com or just NugsAndKisses?

Michael: Just NugsAndKisses, no .com.

Tess: All right. Nugs, N-U-G-S, NugsAndKisses.

Michael: A-N-D-K-I-S-S-E-S, NugsAndKisses.

Tess: For a $179 lifetime.

Michael: $179 lifetime membership. And includes, like, the software that we pay for, and the spreadsheets, and the valuation worksheets, and you know, a whole bunch of stuff.

Tess: That’s awesome. Good deal. Thanks, Mike.

Michael: Thanks for having me.

Tess: Yeah, great to have you. Okay, Drew, you have so much going on. What do you want to share?

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I’m like totally…my head is spinning. I just want to share, you know…basically, I just want to congratulate the MediaOptions team, Tess and Chris are doing just a phenomenal job with DormainSherpa and with outbound brokerage. We are kicking butt. And we just closed…we’ve been closing a lot of deals. Things are going really well. I’m super proud of the team. I’m really excited for some of the changes that we’re making, and for the rest of the year. We just came off the best quarter in the history of the company, and this quarter is off to an even better start. So I’m, yeah, pretty optimistic, pretty bullish on the on the whole domain market, focus on quality not quantity, and just keep learning, you know. The more all of you know, the smarter decisions you’re going to make, and the more efficient this market becomes, and that’s good for everybody. So, yeah. And thank you guys for coming on the show. Mike, you know you’re always welcome. We are super grateful that you were able to join us today. And Jebidiah, equally, you know, about time we got you on the show. Thank you, everybody

Tess: That was great. Drew, I think you forgot to mention MediaOption’s new crypto newsletter, just went out today.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s right.

Michael: New crypto newsletter. I don’t know if I saw that.

Andrew: Yep, so I think every Wednesday now, we’ll be doing a crypto-specific domain newsletter, just basically responding to demand. And we’ve been selling really a pretty…almost equivalent of all of last year’s sales, we’ve sold in the last, let’s say five, six months, we’ve sold that in crypto-related domain.

Michael: Wow.

Andrew: We thought we should create a dedicated newsletter for that. We’re going to be expanding upon that. We’re going to potentially break it off into a separate newsletter than the standard MediaOptions newsletter. It will be going out Wednesdays, and it is dedicated. And if you’ve got names that you think are appropriate for the crypto space, I can tell you that we have some of the top buyers in the entire crypto market on this newsletter. And equally, if you are interested in buying these names at wholesale or retail, there will be great opportunities and phenomenal names going out. So definitely sign up.

Michael: Hey, I had an idea when I was on my run today, can I throw it out?

Andrew: Sure.

Michael: So, I’m running along, and I’m thinking about like the domain name conferences, you know, and I of course like to go to them because I like to see the people that are just across the water from me that I don’t see it throughout the year like Jebidiah and you guys. And I’m thinking like, why isn’t there a conference, why isn’t there like a small group where investors can pay like single domain name price, like 5,000 bucks, you get to show up on a Monday, leave on a Friday, and you get like real domain name training? It’s like DNAcademy.

But then, you also get to, like, get Drew the whole time. And then, like, you go through evaluations, then you evaluate your domain names, and you go through like buying a domain name, then you go on the auctions and you actually buy domain names and different things. You go through sales techniques, and then you actually like make outbound phone calls on your own domain names, and like…so people get to see what you’re doing, or what like a successful broker is doing. Learn the materials, practice it real world, interact with like movers and shakers, limited to like 20 people. Go some place cool, like Seattle or Panama, or you know, on a vacation, so you get to party at night, learn during the day. I don’t know.

What do you guys think in the audience? Post in the comments though, let me know what you think of this idea. I think it’d be a lot of fun. I think it’d be a tremendous learning opportunity. I personally think that the domain name conferences that are going into Bitcoin and web development and all this other stuff loses the focus of what we got into the industry for, like buying undervalued assets, prime real estate, understanding the value of it, and helping, you know, people who build on it take it to the next level. So, please do post down in your comments. But I’d love to hear what Jebidiah and Drew think about that idea.

Jebidiah: I think it would be interesting. I mean, definitely plan it out. You know, I’ll just throw this out here. Donuts was just at…there was a real estate show here in Seattle. And, you know, one of the things we talk about with new TLDs is that they’re currently undervalued. And it’s amazing what people want to…that knowledge that they just want to have of what is a domain name, how do I use a domain name, how do I know if a domain name is valuable or garbage? So, if you were to put together, you know, a show like that, or an event, you know, where you had a minimum domain purchase price, but then you got the opportunity to learn how to either use that, or generate revenue off of it, or something along those lines, I think a lot of people would be interested in that. I think it would to be successful.

Tess: Yeah. It’s pretty cool.

Andrew: I hate planning events. I’m basically allergic to event planning. But I like the concept, and I think it would be very fruitful, and I think it could be a lot of fun if you get the right group. And I love the idea of doing, you know, like small summits where, you know, it’s more intimate and you get to really spend some face time with people, and get to know people, and really get some one-on-one, like, learning. And, yeah, I mean, I think it would present a lot of value for attendees. A lot of value, you know, to the point where it could be…they would be likely willing to pay a fair amount of money where it would be justifiable and, you know, make sense to bring in really top experts on various topics.

Yeah, I mean, for a different day, in a different show, I would actually love to bring on, like, Jebidiah and maybe whoever is running sales for one of the other sort of large consolidated registry operators. And you know, just to learn more, even myself, I would love to learn more about how to sell, how to pitch new GTLDS. What are the things that work in a sales pitch for a new GTLD, because it is a very, very different.

My argument is my tried and true sales tactics that I use in selling super premium, top 1%, 2% .coms is it doesn’t work for new GTLDs. Those metrics don’t work. The rationalizations don’t work. I’m almost arguing the opposite points. So, I would love to better understand what are the things that work to sell a new GTLD? I would…so, you know, both, to Michael’s point, that would also be a great [inaudible 01:34:16] for one of those things, those events. But I think it would be a great show also to have Jebidiah back, and maybe one or two other, you know, sales managers from, you know, larger registry operators.

Tess: Agreed. You know, and I have always wanted to do a conference even though Drew is allergic to it. And that’s, you know, why we’re involved in Name Summit. But I love the idea, Mike. I’d love to be involved. What I think would be most cost effective and community building because, you know, hotels can be so expensive, even their Wi-Fi is ridiculous for a conference, I wonder if your venue would be best served in renting out a villa with a private chef? Like, you know, I know in Mexico they’re super affordable, although I’d much prefer to be in the Amalfi Coast, if you can make that happen.

Michael: Well, I don’t want to run a conference. I’ve done that in the past. That does not interest me. So don’t get me wrong. I’m thinking like small group, intimate, everyone gets…you know, you build a support group. Everybody talks the same language, everybody knows what everybody needs to work on, and then you walk away with sort of like this group that you know and trust, and can go forward with additional sales.

Tess: It’s boot camp but…

Michael: It’s like a boot camp, yeah.

Tess: …less basic. Well, yeah, we’ll talk. I like it.

Jebidiah: I really like the idea of taking the info and putting it into action, like same day, real time, because I don’t know how many conferences we’ve probably all been to where you get this idea while you’re there, and you get back and you’re like, “Eh, I don’t know.”

Andrew: Until you pick up the phone and call somebody that you just sent an email to like four hours before you saw that they opened it, you don’t actually internalize how to do sales. And then you screw something up, and then you learn it for the next time. You know, you guys are masters at that, you know…

Jebidiah: Screwing things up? [inaudible 01:36:19]

Andrew: Very much so.

Tess: It’s true. It’s true. Okay. And then you mentioned Amar is a teddy bear. I agree. You know, Mike, I think this is the first format change I’ve made to the show. Amar asked me what I had knew at the end, and I don’t think you ever did that, did you?

Michael: I did not.

Tess: Well…

Michael: I like it.

Tess: It’s a thing now. So, for me, I don’t really have anything new. I just wanted to say that. My adopted daughter was just named valedictorian yesterday. We weren’t expecting that because some of her transcripts, you know, whatever. So she was very excited.

Michael: That’s awesome.

Tess: We went out to celebrate for Thai food and “Avengers: Infinity War.” My favorite part was the little Easter egg to…have you guys seen it?

Michael: Not yet.

Tess: All right. Whatever.

Michael: Don’t ruin it for me.

Tess: Okay. No. There’s just a little Easter egg tribute to Arrested Development, which I’m far more interested in that than Marvel, but I have children. So look for the Easter egg and enjoy. I think we’re going to wrap it up. Thanks, sherpas. Thanks for coming, Sherpa Network. We’ll see you next time. Bye.

Jebidiah: Bye.

Andrew: Bye, guys.

Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/review-20180507

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23 Responses to “DomainSherpa Review – May 7: Fertilization.com, Karpool.com & Bitcoin.LIVE”

  1. Greg says:

    Michael Cyger’s event may be a good idea but at a more reasonable price than $5K

  2. The majority of the world would prefer Football.Live or Live.Football I think.

    I’m a Man Utd fan as well Tess :)

    Josh

    1. 4 letter tdl always better than 8 :), easier on the eyes too.

  3. Dr. Todd says:

    Great show Tess!

    Michael, We have similar style in looking at as much data as I can for higher valued names.

    I love the idea of a domain investing intensive from the experts on how they buy and sell names. I am more interested in the selling aspect myself at this point. What about a 3 day version?

    Sign me up!

  4. ben pedri says:

    Great show, Jebidiah Burnett is a very very Great domainer and gave good advice ,would love to know more about and see him as a regular,I think we got a lot to learn from this guy.
    Michael Cyger cant help but to take over the Show (sorry tess its in his blood. This show is better than ever and I think there should be another 2 boxes for sherpas to make it even greater.
    Happy Mothers Day to all the Mama Sherpas.

    1. DomainSherpa says:

      Ha Ben, you’re right about it being in Mike’s blood! He’s amazing! And thank you for the Mothers Day wishes :)

  5. Steven Dragoo says:

    Great show and many top shelf ideas! Michael – a hard core boot camp for all levels would be very useful. Several years ago I belonged to a mentoring for free group and we had about 10 interactive calls every week. At least 4 of those were calling prospects while the group listened in on the call. When finished we discussed the merits of the call – open format – all learned a lot about prospecting, type, scripting, follow, metrics, and more…

  6. albert says:

    Great show guys and congrats. on your daughter Tess. You must be very proud.

    1. DomainSherpa says:

      Thanks Albert :)

  7. Saro says:

    Great show, great dynamic, Karpool definitely has a bright future, great great name.

    Thanks guys,
    Saro

  8. tldboss says:

    Thanks Drew, Tess, Michael, Jebidiah. Enjoyed the show, as always there is something to learn.

    I like Eatvegan, nice name.

    Already started counting days to the next show. Well done Tess.

    1. DomainSherpa says:

      Woohoo thanks!! Next one will be Zuiker talking about how domain names impact brands :)

  9. ikehook says:

    The issue with the “domainer” hot domain categories like, vegan, Vr, Drone, compared to Crypto or Mj is end user supply and demand. There are almost infinite keywords that can be spun within all of these niches to create brands that “work”.

    But no matter how good a Vegan name might be there are only so many people/companies that will sell vegan shit or blog about it. Contrast that with Mj markets opening up everyday and the latest BlockChain concepts. There will be a lot more sales of mid to low quality brandables because more end users will be looking for them. The other niches just get traded around between domainers.

    With that said, EatVegan is great, one of the best, but the same concept applies. I would rather have a mid range quality crypto or Mj name, because I will sell it that much quicker.

    If you want to sell more names, considering the quantity of potential buyers in any niche is almost as important as its quality.

  10. Matt says:

    Great show! Finally have it downloading automatically as a podcast.
    I just checked the superstore.com NameJet auction and “Reserve Range: Between $500,001 and $600,000″… I valued it more than 2k, but not sure about 500k.

    1. DomainSherpa says:

      Hi Matt, we have a great tech admin on board now and downloading the podcast was one of his very first priorities, glad it’s working for you. SuperStore- yikes $2 to to $500k is a big spread!

  11. Tess, Drew, Mike and Jebidiah…

    Sorry to be so late to reply. I’m having knee surgery tomorrow and today was crazy with last minute tests and getting things in order.

    Thank you all for your opinions and insight into my domain portfolio. These are but a small sample of the 1700+ CannaDomains I have listed on my site. This batch was mostly brandables, but I have many key word domains on my site as well. I knew Drew would have a lot to say as he is so well schooled in both domains and the cannabis industry. It was also nice to here Jebidiah’s view point as a knowledgeable gtld broker, as well as being in the heart of the west coast Green Rush. Then the added Bonus of having Michael back to review my domains was a huge plus. He even brought to my attention that oilpen.com was still resolving to a GD parking page. Which I quickly corrected. So many thanks for that Mike.

    I was surprised no one mentioned resinous.com or marijuanax.com they are very strong keyword domains. The cannabis flower is highly resinous. Dictionary definition: full of or containing resin. Herbage (which was mentioned) is also a key word as well as a common slang phrase for cannabis. Definition: the succulent parts, leaves and stems, of herbaceous plants. Potentness definition: the quality or state of being potent. All three are dictionary words listed in Merriam Webster. Marijuanax on the other hand could represent extraction as well as many other verticals within the cannabis space.

    Great job Tess, you are coming into your own and bring a lot to the table. Many thanks to all of you for your time and consideration. I would also like to extend a Big Shout out to Drew for his kindness in assisting me along my journey in creating my cannabis industry branding gateway.

    John Magavern
    Juanadomain.com

  12. brand says:

    Thanks again for another great Sherpa show.
    I enjoyed hearing from Jebidiah, i felt he had great insight on the industry.
    The only thing i missed was a song at the end, i thought Michael Cyger had one for us all.

    A Special Thanks to Andrew Rosener for keeping this show Alive…Thank you Sir..

  13. Mike Brady says:

    Thanks for this great interview. Way to go to have Jebidiah on.
    How do I sign up for the Crypto newsletter?

    Thanks
    Mike Brady

    1. DomainSherpa says:

      Thanks, yeah, it was long overdue to have Jebidiah join us! You can sign up for the Media Options crypto domain sales & acquisitions newsletter at https://x.co/monster

  14. JayBuk says:

    BitcoinLive.com WAS a steal at $48K USD. IMHO, if you’re spending 5 figures on a new gTLD you MUST acquire the corresponding .com if it is for sale.

    1. DomainSherpa says:

      Hi Jay, I hear you, but I wonder what our Sherpas think since this is a bitcoin domain- pretty much as cutting tech as you can get, so they’ll adopt differently than other users?

      1. JayBuk says:

        Here’s the bottom line: If the company has any measurable level of success they will likely pursue the .com at some point in the future. I love the new G’s but today the majority of netizens only know .com and will append .com to anything and everything . Sure, dot LIVE or dot WHATEVER is cute but the end goal is to attract as many visitors as possible to your website. Let’s not even mention the email bleed that is sure to happen / happening.

        1. JayBuk says:

          Here’s a recent example of a cryptocurrency travel startup rebranding simply because they could not acquire the .com:

          https://domaininvesting.com/concierge-io-rebrands-to-travala-because-they-couldnt-get-the-com/

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