Domain Name Interviews

Many believe the .CO registry is the “poster child” for how a new top-level domain answers all the above questions and is succeeding in the minds of individuals, businesses and entrepreneurs. That makes the top-level domain a better investment than many, if not most, other top-level domains other than .com.

With new gTLDs going live every week for the upcoming couple of years, this interview contains critical information that both new registry operators and investors alike should familiarize themselves with.

Michael Cyger February 17, 2014 9

In 2011, Luke Webster found an underserved niche in the $13 billion shaving industry: straight razors.

He imported razors and sold them online using his vast experience in search engine marketing. As sales grew, so did his venture. When Webster came on DomainSherpa in March 2013, he shared that his business was grossing six figures per month.

So when DomainSherpa produced the first domain name meetup in Seattle, DNSeattle, it was a no-brainer to invite Northern Idaho-based Webster to keynote on how he built a business on an exact-match domain name – including his experience and how his business has grown in the last year.

Michael Cyger February 10, 2014 23

More often than not, hand registered domain name portfolios submitted to the DomainSherpa Review are not considered to be valuable by our panel of experts. Maybe there are a few domains worth keeping out of 50 submitted. Maybe.

Today, we’re turning the tables on one of the regular reviewers on the DomainSherpa Review.

Past Domain Sherpa and frequent DomainSherpa Review expert Rick Schwartz opens up his list of 390 recently hand registered domain names, and shares his thought process for how and why he registered the domains.

Michael Cyger February 3, 2014 65

Instead of hand registering a $9 brandable domain name like ShutterStock.com or iStockPhoto.com and paying for CPC marketing forever, Jon Yau plunked down $250,000 of his family’s savings to purchase StockPhoto.com – a domain name with 50,000 worldwide exact-match searches per month.

Yau considers this investment a “pre-payment” for the endless stream of potential customers that visit his website daily through direct navigation. And with plans to continue to grow his photography database, he expects only to increase his customer conversion rate and revenue.

DomainSherpa January 27, 2014 21

Listed among the DNJournal.com top domain name sales of 2013 are 114.com for $2.1 million, 88888.com for $245,000 and 1001.com for $100,000.

I would not have paid registration fees for any of these domain names, so I clearly don’t understand the value of domain names comprised only of numbers, usually referred to as numeric domain names.

Luckily there’s an expert ready to share what’s behind those high sale prices and who’s buying 80 percent of the numeric domain names.

DomainSherpa January 20, 2014 28

We all have domain names that are begging to be developed. Or an idea that we would love to test and see if potential customers like it enough that we can build a profitable business.

But what if we don’t want to design the user experience, hire a developer, build a website, sign up for hosting, or spend any money launching? Can it be done?

It can. And Raj Beri has returned to the show to tell us exactly how to do it. Listen in as Beri describes how to rapidly prototype and test a business idea, including with what industries or with what products or services, and how successful it can be.

Michael Cyger January 13, 2014 4

.Club is targeting one million registrations by the end of Year 1, and five million registrations by the end of Year 5. And they have the focus, marketing plans and public relations in place to help achieve their goals.

In this interview, .Club CEO Colin Campbell and CMO Jeff Sass discuss the winning auction (in which they beat out Donuts and Merchant Law Group with a bid somewhere less than $5 million), their registry mission, potential customer base, customer adoption, marketing, availabilities phases, valuation of both their domains and .com equivalents (e.g., wine.club versus wineclub.com), and much more.

Michael Cyger January 6, 2014 21

All domain name investors say their parking revenue has decreased over the past few years. Stop complaining and do something about it.

The last two weeks of the year are the perfect time to think strategically about building a business that creates cash flow in 2014.

The DomainSherpa editorial staff has selected seven interviews — our must-watch recommendations for entrepreneurs and wantrapreneurs.

Michael Cyger December 23, 2013 6

According to Consumer Reports, “of the more than 54,000 dietary supplement products in the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, only about a third have some level of safety and effectiveness that is supported by scientific evidence. And close to 12 percent have been linked to safety concerns or problems with product quality.”

Learn why Sol Orwell, the founder of Examine.com, came out of retirement to educate people about the waste and issues associated with the $10+ billion dietary supplements industry; how he partnered for success; why he chose the brandable domain name Examine.com over exact-match domain names like Supplements.com; how he iteratively grew the business while updating their business model; and much more.

If you are or thinking about developing a Internet-based business, this is a must-watch interview.

Michael Cyger December 16, 2013 6