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Royal Rumble over Forbes Domain Valuation Method

Serial entrepreneur Michael Gargiulo, CEO of VPN.com, rejoins us to discuss the ongoing success of VPN.com, the decreased cost of customer acquisition provided by an Exact Match Domain, and his novice Forbes article where he tries his hand at exact match domain valuations. He and Andrew Rosener of MediaOptions.com, the #1 global expert in domain valuation and creator of the domain industry standard’s valuation methodology, The Rosener Equation™, get into a heated debate about how to value EMDs, and a Royal Rumble ensues!

Hear about the eight recent offers on VPN.com and its increasing market domination, which Gargiulo says are in large part to permanent VPN market differentiation and mechanics in marketing offered by an Exact Match Domain. Plus, Andrew Rosener makes predictions about a major shift in EMD values in the near future…

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This Show’s Sherpas

Tess Diaz
Tess Diaz
Tess Diaz is SVP of Business Development for Buckley Media. Previously she was Executive Producer and host of DomainSherpa.com and Business Development coordinator for MediaOptions.com. With a passion for consultative sales and education, Tess grew to understand the domain industry during 7 years as Executive Accounts Manager at GoDaddy, while also serving on the Domain Product Sponsorship Team there.

A Massachusetts native, Tess enjoys hot yoga and hiking in the beautiful Phoenix desert.

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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.

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Michael Gargiulo
Michael Gargiulo
Michael Gargiulo is founder of VPN.com, a visionary company whose latest initiative shows progress towards a safer, more private internet.

Michael describes himself: I am a simple visionary. I love to dream and get seriously bored with people who do not know how. I enjoy building websites and driving quality traffic to them. I studied finance and risk management but my competitive advantage over others is in search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization.

I currently manage a team of 11 on our current project, VPN.com. Building the right team with the right chemistry is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do however it is one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had to go through (and continue to go through). Some of the best relationships I have in life come from my team members and I could not be more proud of what we have gone through to get to this point.

Some interesting things about my younger days: While in college I bought and sold more than $2 million dollars of unwanted gift cards, I built and grew 3 websites to 3,000,000+ monthly visitors (making $2-3k per day), I was a cheerleader at the University of Georgia for three years, I really enjoy playing pool, I play hockey, I am an Eagle Scout, I ran for National President of FBLA, I love God and my family a lot, and I am so excited about what my future has in store for this vision.

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16 Responses to “Royal Rumble over Forbes Domain Valuation Method”

  1. Snoopy says:

    Semrush shows barely any traffic to VPN.com, what terms does it rank well for?

  2. Albert says:

    Without a doubt one of the best shows this year. Keep it going especially with the people using those generics domains that Andrew says will make a comeback.

    1. ben pedri says:

      Hey albert ,I think Andrew is real close to the market that he sees the trend turning before its turning or should I say starts trending less the other way.To use an analogy,before there was high end computer systems on wall street I would use a calculator to figure out moving averages ,it would take an hour just to update a few averages ,but using this method you can actually see the trend turning in the simple numbers as you were calculating,where as getting the number from a source was actually a lagging indicator. So drew being in tune he feels the tide turning b4 its turning if that makes sense. All this being said my exact match 2 word keywords are up 300% the last 3 months a year ago I was it looked bleak .

  3. Green Jobs says:

    Thanks so much for sharing Michael. Gives food for thought for other entrepreneurs.

    1. You are very welcome! Like Drew said, few entrepreneurs this message and those have the foundation to separate themselves from the competition, forever.

      Looking forward to greenjobs.com!

  4. Data Glasses says:

    If I sold Hats I would want the domain of Hats.Com on my business card .

  5. ben pedri says:

    Great show,Michael is always great ,Drew should take a chill pill

    1. Thanks Ben! Drew got us fired up which allowed for some great conversation. Glad you enjoyed.

  6. Anunt says:

    Basically Drew wants to broker vpn.com

    And Michael thinks he can sell it himself since it’s a premium no brainer domain for any ceo of vpn business to own.

    I agree with Drew.
    Big companies don’t understand domains and are not interested.
    Drew gave a great example…if vpn was listed for $50k and you can call all ceo’s of multi-million dollar companies and they will still not buy vpn for $50k.

    Hey Michael, you really need Drew’s help in selling vpn.
    Hey Drew, since i just hooked you up…
    Hook me up…LOL

    1. Ben pedri says:

      i disagree with you any ceo in that business would kill for that domain.The more end users for a domain the more interest.if a ceo of a vpn company does not understand domains is like a ceo of a auto company not knowing anything about sales

      1. Ben, you can agree or disagree, but what I said is not speculation, it is FACT.

        I sold VPN.net years ago, I spoke to all of the companies. I sell 6 and 7 figure domains every week. We speak to THOUSANDS of CEO’s, CMO’s & other executives per year. 1% understand the value of a great domain.

        My job is less sales and more education.

  7. Brent Alan says:

    Kudos to MICHAEL GARGIULO’S article in Forbes! Educating business owners on domain value is good for our bottom line as domainers and even business owners. DREW has a strong point on the subjective value of estimating time to get your domain to No.1 in Google. I agree that that calculation is unnecessary because it is already accounted for in Search Volume and CPC (larger the CPC the more competition hence more time to get it to No.1). As an over simplified way to calculate domain value you could have left it as Search Volume times CPC. To MICHAEL’s favor I argue that presenting and average CPC such as the $1 you used here is a way to help most readers understand the article without having to research CPC value. As far as VPN.COM, it isn’t even in the top 20 of Google searches here from Lima, Peru, and as always I like to emphasize that more people speak Spanish than English and the growth rate in Spanish web development will always trump

  8. Josh Reason says:

    I agree with most of what Michael has to say. I’m a big fan of EMD’s (obviously).

    But where is VPN.com when “VPN” is typed into google search?

    I’m on page 8 of Google right now and still haven’t seen it… I’ve seen just about every other VPN service available but not VPN.com.

    You must receive a lot of type-in traffic but why is it performing so badly in Google?

    Thanks for a great interview.

  9. Drew and Tess, thank you for inviting me back on the show. It was a pleasure to share this knowledge and to have a great conversation about the future of the domain industry and exact-match.

    Sherpas: Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn if I can help you. And if you or anyone you know ever needs a VPN, visit vpn.com

    If you are thinking about buying an expensive, exact-match name, I strongly recommend it. It is one of the best investments you can ever make in your business and if you need a broker, Drew or Tess can certainly help.

    Cheers.

    1. Thanks a lot Michael. Was a lot of fun and I think it was a very productive and fruitful conversation. Thanks for coming back on and thanks for being a strong advocate for domain names!

    2. Ben pedri says:

      hey michael great show I look at your property vpn.com as a showpiece although you have the best diamond in the world your business is smaller by multitudes of others in the game ,This technology is exploding and vpn is becoming a layman term my kids are even talking about it .Even though your probably 10 times smarter than I am I suggest you sell the domain and the business you have and take cash and options deal for equity in the buyers company . This 3 letter .com will be worth 20 million in a year. Good Luck. ben

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