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DomainSherpa Review – July 17: UIQ.com, KidsApprove.com, DustPan.com…

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

In this DomainSherpa Review:

  • We learn what the Sherpas bought or sold recently: UIQ.com, KidsApprove.com, DustPan.com
  • An investor’s portfolio is appraised: Ocho.ca, Investigations.in, WomanWoman.com…
  • Get your bids in soon for these NameJet auctions: Housecall.com, FreshCuts.com, SkyStream.com…
  • Plus, much more!

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

Review (89:26): Watch | Listen/Download Audio | Domain Lists

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Investor Submitted Domain Names

Ambidestro.com
CabeloColorido.com
ChopBarbers.com
ColorBlindSunglasses.com
ColourBlindGlasses.com
ColourBlindSunglasses.com
Desai.ca
DiscountedToday.com
DrugTreatment.ca
GlassesRepair.ca
HardwoodLand.com
Investigations.in
Japafood.com
LasCanitas.com
LensRepair.ca
LigneGraphique.com
MarinaRoyale.com
MicroPagamentos.com
Nuturally.com
Ocho.ca
Okapi.in
PeixeAmarelo.com
Pentaxial.com
Perverte.com
PlantBasedMeats.com
PlasmaSurgery.com
RetailCondo.com
Singhara.com
SmakFood.com
SubContractServices.com
SuperiorPersonnel.com
VisualAgencia.com
WomanWoman.com

NameJet.com Pre-Auction Listings

bullwinkel.com
freshcuts.com
herballiving.com
housecall.com
medicalcoverage.com
onlinesex.com
skystream.com
twosocks.com
whrgroup.com
wwwhome.com

This Show’s Sherpas

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

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

More shows with Andrew Rosener »

Josh Eisenhower
Josh Eisenhower
Josh Eisenhower is a paramedic/firefighter at County Government in Maryland, an individual investor in domain names, and is a regular contributor to DSAD.com.

More shows with Josh Eisenhower »

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

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

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

More shows with Shane Cultra »

DomainSherpa Advertisers

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Interview Raw (Non-Edited) Transcript

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

Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/review-20170717/

MICHAEL CYGER: On today’s DomainSherpa Review, Andrew Rosener, Josh Eisenhower and Shane Cultra discuss the blockbuster sale of X.com, some recent deals they’ve done, what an investor should do with his portfolio and a killer auction with NO RESERVE coming up on NameJet. Stay tuned.

MICHAEL: Hey Sherpa Network, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m Michael Cyger, publisher of DomainSherpa.com, and this is “The DomainSherpa Review.” This is the show where we get into the minds of successful domain name investors using real samples, so we can learn strategies and tactics to become better investors. We have three segments to the review. We’ll start off learning what the Sherpas recently bought and sold, next, we’ll discuss and value an investor-submitted domain name portfolio, and finally, we’ll preview some domains going to auction soon at NameJet.com, and whether the Sherpas think they’re good investment opportunities for you.

Joining us today on “The DomainSherpa Review” are three past Sherpas and industry thought leaders. In order from left to right we have Andrew Rosener, CEO of the domain name brokerage firm MediaOptions.com, and CEO of Ganjapreneur.com, the leading B2B magazine serving the cannabis industry. Josh Eisenhower, domain name investor and contributing writer at DSAD.com, and Shane Cultra, publisher of the blog DSAD.com and owner of the Country Arbors Nursery in Illinois. Sherpas, welcome to today’s show.

JOSH EISENHOWER: Hey Michael.

SHANE CULTRA: Hi Michael.

ANDREW ROSENER: Great to be here.

MICHAEL: Hey, it’s been kind of a slow week for news — up until yesterday. Bam! I heard that x.com sold to Elon musk. It was his second company, that he originally bought x.com. There’s only three single character domain names that are in dotcom that are available for sale, and the last one that sold was z.com back in 2014. It was sold by Nissan Motors to GMO Internet for about $6.8 million. So the question then becomes, how much did it sell for, and who sold it? Drew, what do you know?

ANDREW: I know he bought it.

MICHAEL: You know he bought it. So, rumor mill has it…but I don’t even think it’s the rumor mill. Didn’t you post something on Elliott’s blog, saying that you brokered it?

ANDREW: Yeah, so there was a lot of rumors flying around, and I’m not entirely clear that any of this was supposed to be public. But there was a lot of rumors flying around and a lot of misinformation, and so we did confirm that we helped to close that deal. But I, you know, can’t comment much…

MICHAEL: Gotcha.

ANDREW: …beyond that.

MICHAEL: Because it’s under a nondisclosure agreement or something?

ANDREW: Multiple.

MICHAEL: Gotcha. All right. So as long as it’s out, can you tell us the purchase price?

ANDREW: Yeah, sure, no problem.

SHANE: This is when your internet should go bad.

MICHAEL: I know, exactly.

SHANE: No idea, [inaudible 00:02:43].

MICHAEL: You should say something, and then I’ll pixelate it.

ANDREW: Guys, I can’t hear you. What are you saying?

MICHAEL: Right when you say it, I’ll pixelate it in the volume, and then we’ll just continue the discussion.

SHANE: We’ll act surprised there, “That’s amazing.”

MICHAEL: Well, that is amazing. That’s an amazing domain name. You know, wouldn’t that just be the capstone for anybody’s portfolio, let alone a billionaire?

ANDREW: Yeah, I mean, personally, I feel quite strongly that it’s the most valuable domain on the internet. You know, I don’t wanna harp on it too much, but it literally is…it’s the best domain. You just cannot get a better domain name.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

SHANE: And it’s nice to go to the leader of our present-day [inaudible 00:03:35]…

ANDREW: No, this is the best feel-good story of my domaining career. I think that this domain couldn’t have gone to a better home, I think it’s the best domain, going to the best entrepreneur the world has potentially ever seen, and it’s just a…it’s a great story all around. Very, very happy and proud to have played some part in it.

MICHAEL: Congrats for being a part of that. I’ll let you know if he’s the greatest entrepreneur because I just started the Elon Musk biography, and so I’m looking forward to reading that. Probably finish it off this week.

ANDREW: It’s a great book.

MICHAEL: Yeah, awesome. Well today’s show is sponsored by six awesome domain name industry providers that I’m gonna tell you about more during the show that include Estibot, Escrow.com, David Weslow legal services, domainIQ, Efty and DNAcademy.com. But before I tell you about them, we’re going to start off with a segment called ‘What’s New, Sherpas?” where the Sherpas share one purchase or sale that they’ve made over the past few weeks, and we get to learn what they paid or received for the domain name, why they said it was a good deal, and how negotiations progressed. I’ll lead you through the questions, and the other Sherpas will get to comment during the process as well. This segment will go Drew, then Josh, then Shane, in order. Drew, what’s one domain name that you personally bought or sold in the past couple of weeks? Tell us the domain name, and not the price yet.

ANDREW: I’m gonna go, you know, a little bit left field of what I’ve generally talk…No I’m not, no I’m not. No…

MICHAEL: X.com.

ANDREW: …never. Yeah. No…

SHANE: [inaudible 00:05:08]

ANDREW: …I’ve got uiq.com. Uiq.

MICHAEL: Uiq.com. Interesting one. All right, let’s go to you, Josh. I’m sorry, Drew, did you buy it or sell it?

ANDREW: Bought it.

MICHAEL: Bought it, okay. Josh, what do you think Drew paid for uiq.com?

Josh: I think it makes a good brand. I like kind of, like, the uiq. It’s maybe a brain game type thing. I don’t know, $25,000, $30,000?

MICHAEL: It’s $25,000?

Josh: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Somewhere in there?

Josh: I guess. I have no idea. I mean, it could have slipped through as just a random three-letter, but…and I don’t even know what the price is if there was anymore, but I think it’s a good brand and it’s got liquidity just as a word, so…

MICHAEL: Well Shane, you track three, four letters pretty closely.

SHANE: Yeah.

MICHAEL: They have been decreasing recently, haven’t they?

SHANE: Yeah, but I mean it’s like saying that decreasing, that’s BS. It’s, they’re three-letter dotcoms. But where Drew being Drew, he’s gonna pop in right before I say it and say, “Oh, that stands for Urinary Intelligence Quotient, which is the hottest thing in Cambodia right now, and they’re doing…” And so it’s always something I’m missing. And generally the q, we like to see the q towards the left in the Western letters, but that iq changes everything. So I will say, knowing Drew, it depends where he got it, but if someone came and said, “I need some cash. Drew, I want to sell it to you,” Drew would take 20 grand. Eighteen grand, 20 grand.

MICHAEL: Yep, all right. Drew, what did you pay for uiq.com?

ANDREW: So, got it from the original owner.

MICHAEL: Wow.

ANDREW: A company in Sweden. They were acquired, I believe…I forget by who — one of the big Swedish companies. And it was 15 grand.

MICHAEL: Nice get.

ANDREW: Yeah. You know, it wasn’t really on my radar, but I really like those iq names, I’ve had a tremendous amount of success with them. I think we had piq, niq, miq, oiq. We’ve had five, six, seven of these three-letter with the ending in iq. I think we sold all of them, except for we still have aiq.com. Which, you know, is a particularly good one, given artificial intelligence. Arguably almost as good as ai.com, aiq. But anyways, yeah, we’ve got eiq is the last one…eiq and aiq, the last ones we’ve got left, so uiq is a nice addition. And yeah, I like it.

MICHAEL: What do you typically sell a somethingiq.com for?

ANDREW: They’ve all gone in the six figures.

MICHAEL: Six figures.

ANDREW: One of’em we sold for $80,000, you know, years ago. I think niq, maybe. Which unfortunately, that was one of the better ones. That’s, like, Network Intelligence. That’s a really good one. The uiq, the reason I love it is User Intelligence. You know, talk about the core of big data right now, and where the money is in big data, it’s user intelligence. So I thought uiq is a really nice brand.

MICHAEL: Yeah, definitely. So I just went to NameBio, typed in ‘iq’ at the end, dotcom — three letters to three letters — I do not see any of your end-user sales listed in NameBio. The highest sale I see is eiq.com sold on NameJet in 2016 for $30,000 bucks. That might have been you buying it? Does that sound right?

ANDREW: No, so that was actually us selling it. That was one of these big sales we made. We sold that, and then subsequently bought it back from the guy that bought it in the auction, because I really, really regretted selling that. So we actually paid a pretty high price to buy that back, but you know, it’s offset by buying something like uiq for $15,000, so…

MICHAEL: Right, right.

ANDREW: [inaudible 00:09:34] in numbers.

MICHAEL: So original registering, that means that you guys are blocking and tackling. You’re getting emails out to the original registrants, following up with them on a regular basis, and it…You know, this can’t be the first time. That you didn’t just reach out to’em for the first time, right?

ANDREW: Yeah, so this actually got brought to us by one of these guys that is out there chasing down these things all day long, so I can’t actually take the credit for tracking this guy down myself.

MICHAEL: Yeah, gotcha. So somebody else was doing that, following up, they got the deal, they probably made a little split fee on it. They didn’t have to put out any money, you bought it, they got a commission.

ANDREW: Yep.

MICHAEL: Gotcha. Nice.

ANDREW: Yep.

SHANE: There’s money to be made by bringing stuff to the table.

ANDREW: Like, no doubt about it, man. You know, look, there’s a lot of people out there that are willing to work but don’t have the money to buy names like this, and a lot of people shrug it off and go, “Oh, I can’t afford to buy those names. How am I gonna compete?” But, there’s guy…there’s a lot more people just like me that would love to buy those names but don’t have necessarily the time to be chasing down all the names that I…that we would love to own. And just putting yourself in the position to do the work, and find those deals, and bringing them to people that you know to be good, trustworthy buyers that pay quickly, there’s money to be made there, you know. It’s a quick 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%. It depends on the deal that you’re bringing.

MICHAEL: I’m sorry, Josh. And it’s a great way to start off in the industry and determine whether you’re finding great names or not, right? If nobody…

ANDREW: Absolutely.

MICHAEL: …wants to buy it, it’s not a great name so…you know, to flip it and make a commission.

ANDREW: Great way to make a name for yourself. If you’re out there helping people get deals, you’re making friends, you’re making business partners in this industry, or any industry, and helping others will…you know, comes back around.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Josh, what were you gonna say?

Josh: How do you set that up? Like, if I wanted to go do that and I start contacting these people, I mean, what price am I throwing out there to even bring it to you? Or am I just looking for interest?

ANDREW: So most of the time I really…unless it’s something that’s…you know, it’s like, “This is a name. He brought me this name.” And you were like, “Hey, man, I got uiq, and I think the seller’s ready to go, but I need to make an offer,” I’d probably make an offer. But usually I like to…I like there to be a price on the table, I like to have a starting offer so that I know I’m not wasting my time, that we’re [inaudible 00:12:16].

Josh: I’m just interested in the dialogue between that person and that [inaudible 00:12:19]. You know, how do you get to even a point where you would accept the offer without…You know, it’s like you’re negotiating for somebody else, so…

ANDREW: Yeah, so I think a lot of times these guys are out there making lowball offers. I think some of them are maybe more sophisticated and approaching it saying, “Look, I’m a broker or I’m in networker,” or whatever it might be. “I’ve got clients that are looking to buy domains like this. My job is to track down sellers. Are you looking to sell it? Can you give me an idea of price?” There’s a million ways to skin a cat, but I think generally that’s probably the more likely scenario of how that dialogue goes. I’ve got one guy who I actually really don’t agree with his tactics and he pisses me off because I end up getting all his emails too, but he’s out there just scorching the earth with $1,000, $5,000 offers, he doesn’t even know what he’s making offers on.

And so some of that fishing gets a bite, and throw it at me with, “Hey, this guy accepted the price,” or “this guy countered at this price.” But to be honest, I actually…reprimand is a strong word, but I discourage that behavior, because it pisses me off because I’m getting hundreds of those emails too. But at the end of the day, whatever. He’s doing what he needs to do, he’s creating value where he sees value, and ultimately he’s making money for it, so I can’t…hard to knock the hustle.

MICHAEL: Does that answer your question, Josh?

Josh: Yeah, no, that’s…

MICHAEL: And then basically this intermediary, Drew, will set it up in escrow, where you’re making the payment, the seller’s getting the money, and then they’re setting it up like they’re the broker, so they get a commission. And then, I don’t think they seller actually sees how it all goes down, do they?

ANDREW: Yeah, to be honest, it varies pretty widely on how these transactions end up getting closed. I would say more often than not, I end up closing the deal directly with the seller, and then paying the guy afterwards.

MICHAEL: Gotcha.

Josh: That’s the trust factor you were talking about.

ANDREW: Yeah.

SHANE: See, that’s what I did too. I mean, if a guy comes to me and finds a name — you know, a lot of people know that I like four-letter dotcoms [inaudible 00:14:47] names — if they find it for me, that’s where the trust comes in. They know who I am. If I treat’em right, I know they’re gonna bring me more names. So, you just give’em something that you think is fair, and hopefully, they think it’s fair. I’ve never had an agreement where, you’re gonna give me 15% of that, and then you don’t want them really making a bid on it, because if that guy paid $1,000 and you bought it for $8,000 and you go through this whole thing in a [inaudible 00:15:10]…I just wanna finish it myself, and then I’ll take care of the guy, and that…

MICHAEL: So what do you guys typically pay on somebody that brings a deal to you?

SHANE: Depends on how good the deal is, but to me, at least 15%, 20% if it’s…but if it’s a really good deal…And I’ve even done it with Drew. I mean, I found Drew even taking care of me before, “Hey, here’s a name.” It’s just how it works, you know. I don’t think anybody ever said, “Aw, man, I found him a great name, and then, shit, he gave me $400.” No, I couldn’t have gotten it anyway, so really getting anything is positive. But I never really have much concrete…it’s not a true business deal with a contract and go through the broker. It just is a lead, an informal lead that you pay off a guy, or a girl, and make sure it’s fair.

ANDREW: Yeah, there’s no contracts, it’s all informal, and it’s all about just trust. Honestly, to be successful in this business, there’s the obvious things — you know, you gotta understand domains, you gotta understand domain values, you gotta understand how this market works — but ultimately it comes down to building a network of people that you honestly and truly trust. Because if you don’t have that, it’s gonna be very difficult to repeatedly be successful. You’ve got to have those people that you can run names by, run values by, say, “Hey, look, I got this name. Do you want it? Throw me a bone.” Or vice versa. It’s key.

MICHAEL: Yep. All right, congrats on that buy, Drew. Josh, let’s go over to you. What’s one domain name that you’ve bought or sold in the past few weeks? Tell us the domain name, and not the price.

Josh: You just want one? I sold three yesterday, at…

MICHAEL: Three yesterday?

Josh: …different order…

MICHAEL: Give us the best one.

Josh: Okay, I was going to say, there’s all different orders of magnitude. I could list’em, you could try to guess which is which, but…Okay, kidsapprove.com.

MICHAEL: I like that one, kidsapprove.com. Did you buy it or sell it? You sold it.

Josh: Yeah, I sold it.

MICHAEL: Okay. Shane.

Josh: If I was doing a buy, it would be…

SHANE: [inaudible 00:17:10].

Josh: …you know, it’s eight dollars…

SHANE: [inaudible 00:17:11]

Josh: …every time and it would [inaudible 00:17:13].

MICHAEL: Eighteen dollars. What do you think Josh sold kidsprove.com?

SHANE: Well, I know he does a good Buy It Now, but I never can tell what he’s gonna do the Buy It Now.

Josh: I can’t either. That’s why I wanted to show all three, so you could the randomness of…

MICHAEL: All right, well maybe we’ll come back to all three, but let’s talk about this one.

SHANE: But it’s plural. Kidsapprove, right?

MICHAEL: Kidsapprove, right, Josh?

Josh: Right.

SHANE: Right.

MICHAEL: All right, yeah.

ANDREW: So plural and past tense.

SHANE: Yeah, kidsapprove.

MICHAEL: Right, but there is a phrase, right? Like, it’s…

ANDREW: Approve?

MICHAEL: …kid-approved or it’s mom-approved?

SHANE: Kid-approved.

ANDREW: No, that was mom-approve…kid-tested, mom-approved was the commercial.

MICHAEL: Kid tested, mom-approved. That’s the phrase.

SHANE: Yeah.

ANDREW: What was that from? I remember that phrase, I don’t even remember [inaudible 00:17:53].

SHANE: [inaudible 00:17:53] cereal.

ANDREW: I can’t remember the brand.

Josh: A cereal.

ANDREW: Oh, you’re right, you’re right, it was…

Josh: Cheerios or something.

MICHAEL: Cheerios?

Josh: I don’t know.

ANDREW: It could have been Cheerios. It was one of those, one of the big cereal brands.

Josh: Yeah, it’s Corn Flakes, maybe. I don’t know.

MICHAEL: Television commercial, kids…Kix.

SHANE: Kix.

Josh: Oh, right.

ANDREW: That’s right, Kix.

MICHAEL: All right, Shane what you think…

Josh: [inaudible 00:18:06]

MICHAEL: …he sold it for?

SHANE: Yeah, that was the worst cereal, Kix had no sugar in it.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I know. That’s why mom’s approved’em.

SHANE: Yeah, I can’t believe the kids approved that shit. Anyway, I will say…

MICHAEL: They didn’t see the kids liked it, they said…

SHANE: Oh, that’s true, they just…

MICHAEL: …kid-tested.

SHANE: …approved. Oh yeah, that’s right, mom approved it, kids tested.

ANDREW: We tested it on kids. You know, doesn’t matter if they liked it or not, but we tested…

SHANE: I know. They just…

MICHAEL: We tested it…

SHANE: …did the test.

MICHAEL: …they didn’t like it, but mom’s approved of it.

SHANE: Oh, that’s fantastic. All right, I will say $18,088.

MICHAEL: Eighteen eighty-eight. All right, Drew, what do you think Josh sold kidsapprove.com for?

ANDREW: Yeah, I mean, I would’ve been around that same…I’m gonna go $2500, but I feel like it probably was…yeah.

MICHAEL: All right, Josh, was it a Buy It Now, and what was the price that you sold it for?

Josh: Yeah, it was a Buy It Now $19,099.

MICHAEL: Wow!

ANDREW: There you go.

MICHAEL: You guys nailed it there, $19,099. Where’d you sell it?

Josh: GoDaddy Premium.

MICHAEL: GoDaddy Premium. So you paid a 20% commission, there?

Josh: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Twenty percent.

Josh: Yep, 20%. It used to be…

MICHAEL: Any idea…

Josh: …30%, now it’s…

MICHAEL: …if the buyer typed it in and saw the Buy It Now page, or if they searched their portfolio at GoDaddy? Do you have any insights on how that happened?

Josh: I think it was in the registry path. If they would’ve searched in ‘auctions’ it would have came up, but it also…it would’ve given me an auction sale and the premium listing sale, so it didn’t…Basically I get this thing about…from auctions that says it’s sold, and then right after that your premium listing is sold, so I think it was somehow in the registry path. And it was definitely at GoDaddy. You know, it wasn’t Afternic — which hopefully, it’s listed. I don’t know. Afternic confuses me. I’m working with’em they’re getting better. There’s a guy that I can contact and give’em the listings and the prices, but still, they have some problems, so…

MICHAEL: Because I only list mine in Afternic, and then I can see them in the registry path at GoDaddy.

Josh: Yeah, so…but they don’t always show up, and you have to wait 60 days for the instant transfer. So the GoDaddy Premium listing is up as soon as you list it.

MICHAEL: Oh, interesting.

Josh: And you could put different prices to mess around with it, because nobody ever researches the price. I’m serious, 50% of my names I sell, even with’em through the landing page, are higher than I have’em listed for Buy It Now at the auction platforms. So, I like to mix it up to see which one sells it.

MICHAEL: Well that’s a good sale. What’d you pick up kidsapprove.com for?

SHANE: He doesn’t know.

Josh: I’m pretty sure I just transferred that one in. I think I transferred that in from Name.com, I think, and I just priced it. So that was on Afternic before, I have no idea what the price was, but I think I just moved it in from Name and put it on premium listings.

MICHAEL: Gotcha.

SHANE: You had to pay for it somehow to get it on Name.

Josh: Oh, yeah, no…Yeah, so either there, it was probably $20 bucks, or somewhere around that. I just assumed everybody knows the prices that I…you know, depending on the venue that I pick’em up, right? So there, I pick…it was, like, 20 to 30, maybe 15, but yeah…You know, NameJet, 69.

MICHAEL: Nice.

Josh: And not be any…

MICHAEL: Have you owned…

Josh: …more than that.

MICHAEL: …that one very long, do you know?

Josh: Huh?

MICHAEL: Have you owned that one for very long, do you know?

Josh: No, I think that was the first renewal, when I transferred into GoDaddy, so a year and a couple days.

MICHAEL: That’s awesome.

Josh: [inaudible 00:21:55] it was expired…

MICHAEL: So that’s just one…

Josh: …when I transferred it [inaudible 00:21:57].

MICHAEL: …of three that you sold yesterday, huh?

Josh: What’s that?

MICHAEL: That’s just one of three that you sold yesterday.

Josh: Yeah, that was the highest.

MICHAEL: Nice. All right, let’s go to Shane, and then we’ll come back. If we go really fast in the user-submitted section, we’ll come back to your other two. So, thanks, Josh. Congrats on that sale, man.

Josh: Yeah, thank you.

ANDREW: Are you trying to ensure that you’re sterile? Josh?

Josh: Yeah, no, it’s…And I didn’t really sleep last night, I did the list…

SHANE: Yeah, [inaudible 00:22:28].

Josh: …and my internet doesn’t work, so yeah.

SHANE: If anybody wants to know why my list is 80 names long and his is 400, is he literally stays up all night working on it, and I actually have to get to sleep.

Josh: [inaudible 00:22:43] Mountain Dew. You know, I can stay up for days.

MICHAEL: That’ll do it.

SHANE: [inaudible 00:22:48]

ANDREW: Until you die.

MICHAEL: I know. You need to go get your vitals taken, like Shane just did.

Josh: I mean, I can give myself a 12-lead every day. I can do an EKG on myself, so…

SHANE: Yeah, that’s true. And he saves lives, just not his own.

Josh: Yeah.

SHANE: Yes, [inaudible 00:23:09].

MICHAEL: All right, thanks, Josh. Shane, let’s go to you. What’s one domain name that you’ve bought or sold in the past couple of weeks? Tell us the domain name first, and not the price.

SHANE: Well, Josh does all the selling and I do all the buying, so I bought dustpan.com

MICHAEL: Dustpan.com. My kids do not understand the concept of a dustpan.

SHANE: It’s funny how people’s…like, when I say it they’re like, “What is that?” I go, “You gotta be kidding me, there should be one in every house.”

MICHAEL: We’ve got two, and my kids have never used it.

Josh: Yeah, we have a robot household.

MICHAEL: Drew, let’s go over to you. What do you think Shane paid for dustpan.com?

ANDREW: Me?

MICHAEL: Yeah, Drew. What do you think Shane paid for it?

ANDREW: I’m gonna say $2800.

MICHAEL: Josh, what do you think Shane paid for dustpan.com?

Josh: I was shooting for $2500.

MICHAEL: Twenty-five hundred? All right.

Josh: Was it NameJet? Where’d you get it?

SHANE: No, but…well, I’ll ya’ in a second.

MICHAEL: Yeah, go ahead.

Josh: Okay.

MICHAEL: We’re to you. They’re pretty closely clumped right here, Shane.

SHANE: Yeah, so I paid 2k…

MICHAEL: Two k.

SHANE: …for it. Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah, where’d you pick it up?

SHANE: Well, it was on NameJet and it didn’t sell, and I was high bidder. And then we waited a little while and I finally…I can’t remember if he got in contact with me or I got in contact with him, because I sometimes go back to it, and eventually we settled on 2k. And I don’t think I was that high, I wasn’t that high at auction, I was a little ways from where I was, but I like the name. You know, I like those monkeywrench, blowtorch, dustpan. Those are brands that I like. They don’t sell…

ANDREW: [inaudible 00:24:41]

SHANE: …real quickly, but I’m not in any hurry, as you can tell, selling names.

ANDREW: Don’t forget toolchest

MICHAEL: Yeah, Drew has thrown out…

SHANE: Yeah, toolchest.

MICHAEL: …toolchest. But who owns toolchest now?

SHANE: It’s still me. I’ve been hanging on for…

MICHAEL: Oh, you still own it.

SHANE: …I think he sold it to me, what, six, seven years ago? Something like that.

ANDREW: [inaudible 00:24:59]

MICHAEL: Do you get a lot of offers on toolchest?

ANDREW: Four or five, I’d say.

SHANE: I do get some, but they’re always, like, 4, 5 grand. I think that’s probably what I paid for it. Drew gave me a good deal back then. I mean, it’s a good name, it’s just…it’s not toolbox, is what everybody tells me. I said, “Well, shit, you could have made an offer on toolchest. You contacted me.”

ANDREW: Yeah, exactly.

SHANE: Like, it isn’t, but you know.

ANDREW: Yeah, you can have this one for $50, or you can go buy toolbox with $350.

SHANE: Yeah, exactly, so…

MICHAEL: So why do you like dustpan so much?

ANDREW: Or $1 million.

MICHAEL: You know, toolchest, toolbox, I see. Dustpan, I don’t quite see.

SHANE: It’s a brand to clean up. You know, to some kinda…

ANDREW: [inaudible 00:25:40] cleaning.

SHANE: Yeah. I mean, it could be for anything related to cleaning, and for 2 grand, I think I’ll get my 2 grand out of it. That’s a price I can live with on a shorter name like that, and I’d rather have it than some generic that’s real generic, can’t to be a brand type name that people are still buying. So, that’s what I shoot for. That’s why I like four letters, they’re good acronyms, I like one-word, two-word simple brands, and that’s what I’m sticking to, so I’m not getting away from it.

MICHAEL: And so, you watched it at NameJet, it had a reserve, you were the high bidder, it didn’t hit the reserve, the auction ended, you kept your eye on it. Later, you reached out to’em, you made’em offer, and then you negotiated down to $2,000.

SHANE: So there’s two ways to go about it, though. You can contact NameJet. If you’ve got a name and you weren’t there, good name…I work with NameNet, they’re great about it. Say, “Hey, I’m interested in this name. Could you contact the seller?” That’s ideally what do first. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. But that’s really what you should do because NameJet is the venue that made that happen. So I wanna make sure I put that out there, especially since their name is behind ya’, and I like’em.

MICHAEL: Yeah, fair is fair, they [inaudible 00:26:47].

SHANE: Yeah, fair is fair. They earn their commission, so I don’t wanna steal anything away from’em. Although I do steal their commission in this way, but in general, I don’t like to do that, but that’s how sometimes you see things. There’s a reason why we put names up for sale on…at prices sometimes they’re not gonna sell for because you want’em seen. So that’s why they go on the newsletter, that’s why they go to the top of domaining, that’s why they go on NameJet, because you want the publicity of being for sale, and then you work from there.

MICHAEL: Yep. And so, what was your original offer to the seller? Do you remember?

SHANE: Well I think that bid, if I can remember, like, $1500 or $1700 for the name at auction, and then went 2k, I just didn’t argue very much, that’s close enough. When you’re pretty close to where I was thinking, I’m not the greatest negotiator. I’ll just take it and keep moving.

MICHAEL: Totally. And I typed it into Estibot just to look at the stats, and it looks like dustpan sold in February 26, 2017 at NameJet for $1655, but it doesn’t look like that’s…

SHANE: That’s not me. No.

MICHAEL: Or, was that the prior owner that bought it for $1600?

SHANE: No, the prior owner that bought it…I am always surprised how I will go and get an offer at NamePros or privately, that they’ll offer me the name for less than what is sold for in the previous month at auction. And it used to scare me, and people just are trying to move, I guess. They’re gonna take a couple hundred dollars hit just to cash out and keep going. But they don’t give it much time at all, they’re giving it two months, three months. I bought two or three, and maybe because the market’s moved down, but I’m paying a lot less on four-letter dotcoms than they sold for at auction. But sometimes it’s only a month or two months. No patience at all.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Josh: You think it’s stop-loss? I mean, is that what they’re doing?

SHANE: I have no idea. I’ll look at it and say, “Man, is this stolen? They’re taking a $500 hit on a 4-letter dotcom.” But it’s in the reg, it’s in the name…

MICHAEL: It’s a good…

SHANE: …of the person.

MICHAEL: …question, Josh, but I don’t think most investors are doing that. I think they’re just thinking, I haven’t made a profit, I’m gonna liquidate it and maybe put that money into something else, or I need the cash, or…

Josh: You got a whole year. You pay eight bucks a year, I would…

SHANE: That’s exactly what I’m thinking. But I’m glad on the other end of that, people thinking, “Hey, if I wanna move a four-letter dotcom, call Shane.” I love being that guy, no problem at all.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Patience pays off, right? It’s hard to wait.

SHANE: Yeah, I know that’s…I have learned that if I had just kept all my names all along, I probably would have been better off than all this hustling and flipping that I have done the whole time.

ANDREW: For whatever reason, it’s just part of human nature, I guess, but [inaudible 00:29:25]…

Josh: You wouldn’t have learned, though. There’s all kind of ways you’ve learned through that process.

ANDREW: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Josh: I think this whole thing’s a process and…

ANDREW: It is.

Josh: …those things help.

ANDREW: It’s life, man, it’s life, everthing’s a…

Josh: That’s true.

ANDREW: …You know, you learn it as you go. But yeah, Shane’s right, though. If I think back and I think, “Oh, I should have just kept all those stocks that I’ve sold over the years, I should have kept all those domains I sold over the years. Wouldn’t that be wonderful if I had 20 plus 2-letter dotcoms today?”

SHANE: Yeah, I mean, you just think, if you had the patience and if I had had some other great hobby for the last five years I’d probably have more money.

ANDREW: Yeah. Well Warren Buffett said, “You can’t give Trump too much credit about the money that he’s made.” He said, “The amount of money that his father gave to him, if he had invested that into Berkshire Hathaway at the time he received it, he would have something, like, two or three times the amount of money today than he would have going through his whole exercise of building this empire he’s built.”

MICHAEL: Without doing any work.

SHANE: Without doing…

ANDREW: Without doing…

SHANE: …anything.

ANDREW: …any work.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah, but he wouldn’t become president because the brand wouldn’t have been out there.

ANDREW: That’s true.

Josh: It was all about he built the brand.

MICHAEL: That is true.

SHANE: I always kid Elliott Silver about, he had a really strong three-number dotcom, and I said, “You know, if you had just bought that and never sold that, you would have made as much money as all this other work.” And he’s like, “Rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr,” you know? But it’s true, as a…it’s a really nice 3-number dotcom worth half a million, $800,000. But, you know, we can all look back and say stuff like that, but I do look at it and say, “Dang, I should have just done nothing.” And so that’s what I’m doing now, I’m doing a great job of selling nothing.

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MICHAEL: All right, we’re going to move on to the next segment of the show. In ‘The Domain Portfolio Review,’ we take user-submitted domain name portfolios and provide honest and constructive feedback to the owner, so they can either cut their losses, continue to hold, or figure out a sales strategy going forward. Today’s portfolio is submitted by Rajesh [SP] Duggal [SP]. As part of Rajesh’s submission, he made a generous donation to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to help us all find a cure for cancer.

Rajesh’s list of 33 domain names starts with ambidestro.com and it ends with a double word, womanwoman.com. If you’re watching this show, this is the point where you should pause the show, review the domains yourself, price’em, pick your top three, your bottom three, and then come back and listen to the Sherpas share their insights. This segment, we’ll start with Josh, then go Shane and then Drew. Josh, let’s start with you. First, what’s your overall impression of the domains in Rajesh’s list?

Josh: You know, we thank him for his donation, but like I just said a little bit to these guys, a little bit ago to these guys, this one gives me chest pain. It hurts right here when I look at it, it hurts my eyes, you know. We need to be constructive and helpful and let you know that this…you’re on the wrong path, because this is…I don’t even know what these are, half of’em, I can’t even…It’s a combination of different languages. Like, seriously, if I had alphabet soup, and I took a spoonful and I plopped it on the table, I could find a better domain in there with those letters. Even if I had Cheerios, I could scoop Cheerios out and put’em on there, and we could find better domains that are shorter, that are sellable.

MICHAEL: So those are gonna be taken because all the brandable short ones are taken.

Josh: But, no. No, I figured…

MICHAEL: So let me just back you up for a second, there.

Josh: …like, half [inaudible 00:33:02].

MICHAEL: He’s got real words in the domains, doesn’t he, Josh?

Josh: What’s that?

MICHAEL: He’s got real words in his domain names.

Josh: Yeah, but some of’em, but some of’em are just…like, I don’t know what they are. I mean, they’re different languages.

MICHAEL: All right, so give me an example of one that you have no idea what it is. Let’s get specific, here.

SHANE: I think the…

MICHAEL: Ambidestro, I don’t know what that is.

SHANE: …[inaudible 00:33:22] color is really confusing him.

MICHAEL: He’s like, “The Mountain Dew is making everything rainbow on the…”

Josh: Yeah, what’s the second one down?

MICHAEL: Cabellocolorado [SP]?

SHANE: [inaudible 00:33:36] the city.

Josh: It’s spelled wrong.

MICHAEL: Cabello, isn’t that that outdoor place?

Josh: Cabela’s.

MICHAEL: Oh, that’s Cabela’s. Yeah, I don’t know what cabellocolorado is.

Josh: But it’s not Colorado, it’s coloreado [SP].

SHANE: Oh, you’re right. You’re right, that’s not even Colorado.

MICHAEL: Okay, okay, so there’s an example. It’s not even Colorado, and we don’t know what cabello is, it doesn’t look like it’s a city, so it just doesn’t make any sense at all to you, so it’s…

Josh: I wasn’t trying to be mean there…

MICHAEL: No.

Josh: …but to show the gravity of the situation, here.

MICHAEL: Right. No, no, no, I get it. And I hear what you’re saying and it’s…we joke around, but we gotta get into the specifics so Rajesh understands…

Josh: Oh, right, right.

MICHAEL: …why none these domain names are selling. And it’s because cabellocoloreado.com doesn’t make any sense.

Josh: Yeah. But so, we got the whole list. Like, all his domains, Mike sent’em to us, so he’s…in my opinion, he didn’t pick the best ones out of his own damn list. So, there’s cafemadre.com — that was in the big list. That’s not bad, there’s places named that. Comportada means ‘behaved’ — and that’s another one he had in there. It actually kinda looks like a brand too. Grapelime is not horrible. It’s actually words I recognize, first off, and it could be used for something.

ANDREW: Regardless of the combination, at least…

Josh: Right…

ANDREW: …it’s something we recognize.

Josh: …right.

SHANE: Delicious combo.

Josh: Oh, and another one that I thought was kinda a cool brand is sugarmatrix. I kinda like that, it’s kind of a sugarmatrix…If you were talking, like, you sell it for $1,000 bucks just to some random maybe…

ANDREW: Says the guy pounding a two liter bottle of Mountain Dew.

MICHAEL: Well, says the guy who just sold…

Josh: It’s one liter.

MICHAEL: …three domains just like that yesterday, may be similar.

Josh: Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, sure. Good point. But, no, yeah, it’s stuff like that that makes…Like, linguaperfecta is also not bad, it’s, like, the perfect language. I don’t even know if that was on the regular list or not.

ANDREW: I thought even think that’s [inaudible 00:35:51]…

MICHAEL: No.

ANDREW: …[inaudible 00:35:52].

MICHAEL: No, it was not.

Josh: I looked it up, it’s translated.

MICHAEL: Yeah. All right, so…

ANDREW: That doesn’t always mean anything.

Josh: Oh, I think it’s Portuguese or Italian. So I don’t know.

SHANE: The two romantic languages, I’m told.

Josh: Romanian, it was Romanian. No.

ANDREW: [foreign language 00:36:08] — you’re going places with that.

SHANE: Yeah.

MICHAEL: All right, Josh, let me ask you about a couple of specifics on here — chopbarbers.com. Barbers might give you a chop haircut or something like that. Why is that not good?

Josh: Unless maybe their last name is Chop, and then it would work, but no…It’s plural too. I mean, is there a group of them? Is it the Coalition of Chop Barbers? I don’t know. You don’t want to get your hair chopped, I don’t think.

MICHAEL: I don’t think so, yeah. So it’s just not something people wanna do, plus it’s the plural, so it’s not…

Josh: Right.

MICHAEL: …a great brand. Investigations.in. It’s the India CCTLD. What do you think about that one?

Josh: So if we’re going to CCTLDs and looking at the…you know, I do look at that as necessarily investment-grade. Maybe I just don’t know that market. So I have a bunch of .USs, right? But I’m not gonna put one on review. I’m just, I bought a bunch of’em and I know some will sell. So I don’t know about the .CAs or the .in.

MICHAEL: Okay, so let me ask you, nuturally.com? Nuturally.com, N-U-T-U-R-A-L-L-Y. Does that sound…

SHANE: No…

MICHAEL: …right?

SHANE: …it’s nuturally.

MICHAEL: It’s nuturally.

SHANE: [inaudible 00:37:24], nuturally.

Josh: Or nutur-alley, ally.

SHANE: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Okay, so maybe it’s a brandable spelled wrong. So it’s like naturally with a U, right? Plenty of brandables are like that. Any value?

Josh: What’s that?

MICHAEL: Any value to it, in your eyes?

Josh: Not to me, but it could have value to somebody. Sure, fine, put it up…put it…a Buy Now price on it everywhere you can…

MICHAEL: How much would you price it at?

Josh: I mean, I think anywhere, like, $799 to $999. Like, somebody sees it, they like it, they’ll take it. I mean, you could put a little bit less, but you’re trying to…try to recoup some of the rest of the portfolio. I’ve had people ask me about outbound marketing for stuff like this. And like, no, you’re like, “This is…” So your time is, you have to put that into the equation too, right? Your time and your money in this. So I would, as quickly as possible, list them different places, this portfolio, and then move on. Right? Because you don’t wanna waste more time on it and you don’t wanna waste more money on it, so put Buy It Now prices on’em, and then maybe study…Or look around your room and look at different objects, and then pair words with’em and make domains that makes sense, and register that but…or go through the drop list.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Josh: That was a joke. I was just like, “Look around, you can make better…”

MICHAEL: All right, let me ask you one more before we go over to Shane — superiorpersonnel.com. I typed it into Google, right at the top is…without the dotcom, I just type in ‘superior-space-personnel,’ superior-personnel.com is right at the top. “A Fresh Approach to Staffing” in Chicago area. Good domain, bad domain? How much would you price it at?

Josh: I think people have trouble spelling both of those words, there’s a lot of vowels. “Is it personnel, personal, is it A-L, O-L, E-L?” It sounds like a staffing company.

MICHAEL: Yep.

Josh: I can think of a lot of better names for a staffing company. So, since it has a specific use like that, intrinsically it might not be a horrible domain, but I don’t think you’re gonna have any buyers for it. Unless the hyphenated one, and I didn’t know about that, but just looking at it without knowing that, so I don’t know what I’d price it at.

MICHAEL: Okay.

Josh: Just something random, like I’d normally do.

MICHAEL: Yeah. All right, thanks, Josh. Let’s go over to you, Shane. What’s your sentiment on the list?

SHANE: Again, I just can’t believe that with DNAcademy, and all the shows, and all the blogs, and all the places to read, that you can compile 230 domain names that I can’t find one. I mean, it takes a lot of work, or not work, to do that. And again, I don’t wanna personally demean him, but there’s too much information out there to have this portfolio, and I’d literally have to put my glasses on…When I have to put my glasses on to make sure everything’s not misspelled because there’s so many…it’s not very good. And this has got a holding cost of $2500 a year — $2500 bucks. There’s not $2500, even through Josh’s method of putting the $999 out there.

You can’t hold these another year. You just can’t do it. You gotta put a Buy It Now, like Josh says, on Afternic on all these names. Get’em on GoDaddy, get’em out there, give’em time to expiration — let’em all go. I don’t see anything here that makes any sense to me that’s gonna be, even with the world’s greatest broker, Drew’s, not gonna touch’em or be able to help ya’, and the world’s greatest mass seller, Josh, isn’t gonna be able to move these names for ya’, so…

MICHAEL: So these 33 domain names, you would set a Buy It Now price on Afternic or GoDaddy, get’em into the registration path, maybe list’em for $99, $199 — whatever — try and sell as many as you can. If they don’t sell by the renewal date, drop’em all, let’em all expire, and use that $2500 to buy other names.

SHANE: To buy other names and to get on a better path, and watch how people go through…And I think, to promote Josh, Josh is…I don’t think he should, but he’s gonna reveal some of his secrets on how he goes through the names on an upcoming seminar. Of how he does it.

Josh: I thought we were just doing a, how to set up the filters on there.

SHANE: Oh, okay. Okay, so I hear you.

MICHAEL: Yeah, so he’s coming on DNAcademy…

Josh: Wait, wait…

MICHAEL: …this week…

Josh: …I’ve been tricked.

MICHAEL: …when this airs, and he’s gonna show us all his filters and all of his secrets.

SHANE: And again, I use’em now too. There’s a couple he’s probably gonna show ya’ that I use, that will get you better names than that. That will say, “Hey, these are being used in the following places, they’re being used in other TLDs and CC…” and it just makes…You know, I’m not the kinda guy who says, “Buy one domain for $2,000 and buy…” But dustpan — I’ll take dustpan over this list, for 2 grand. I mean, I’ll just do it. It’s easier to spell, I got a much easier chance of selling it than the stuff off this. Again, I am kind of disappointed, I just don’t feel that with where we are in the domain investing world and all the information, that you should have to have this type of list. But he’s trying, he’s putting himself out there and he is gonna get better for it, just because he’s willing to take a hit and try and learn, so this is a good start.

MICHAEL: Yep. Drew, Estibot has some values in here, let me start from there. Ocho.ca. It’s clearly ocho. What is that? Like, uno…

SHANE: Eight.

MICHAEL: …dos…

ANDREW: Eight.

Josh: Eight. Octo, ocho.

MICHAEL: But it’s a .ca. Do you think it has any value?

ANDREW: I mean, yeah it does. You know, look, of all the numbers, ocho is one of the…you know, I think…let’s say many people would know that ocho would be eight, and there might be a restaurant out there that’s called Ocho. We’ve got one here in my neighborhood, although I live in a Spanish-speaking country.

Josh: That’s right.

ANDREW: You know, look, ocho.ca is probably the only name on this list that I probably would not let expire. Maybe investigations.in, but I’m not all that excited about having .in domains in general, after some of the stuff we’re seeing with property rights or…for .in.

MICHAEL: Oh, right, the recent news, yeah.

ANDREW: Yeah, as it pertains to EERPs and government regulations, doesn’t seem like a space that I’d wanna be speculating in very strongly. So yeah, really awful list, really. You know, look, at the end of the day, I don’t wanna be mean. I’m really trying to be constructive but…

MICHAEL: Yeah, we’re trying to be helpful, here.

ANDREW: …really and truly, somebody has wasted a lot of money, here. And, you know, hopefully these were all hand regis, and they really need to either go back, do a DNAcademy or go back and watch every episode of “Domain Sherpa” ever and…

MICHAEL: Yeah, just all the reviews, right.

ANDREW: …or maybe find a different hobby. Or maybe he’s just doing this for fun and this no sweat off his back, and he’s like, “Ah, I don’t really care.” And that’s great, right? And then I would encourage you to just keep learning and find some better names. But this is a pretty bad list. I mean, there’s really no value in this list.

MICHAEL: Hey, Drew, let me ask ya’, because I know you guys all get people emailing ya’ because you’re on the show, or you’re…you have your own blog or whatever. So people email ya’, they send you the list, you look at a list like this and you sorta get…I’ll say that I get paralyzed. I look down the list, I’m like, “Ah, chopbarbers and marinaroyale. Like, what is that?” But just right now, browsing through the list again, I saw lascanitas, and I typed it in ‘las-space-canitas’ into Google, and it’s got 2 million results. It’s actually a neighborhood in Buenos Aires. I don’t know how big it is, but it seems like it’s got a lot of search results. Could there be a couple of gems hidden in here that we just aren’t aware of?

ANDREW: Yeah, I mean you could totally fly down to Buenos Aires and take a wheelbarrow full of worthless money, and sell that name. Totally. Totally.

MICHAEL: All right.

SHANE: Don’t be fooled by search results. Just because people are searching for it doesn’t mean they wanna pay money for it.

ANDREW: Yeah. I mean, in general, Latin America, they’re not paying a lot of money. I mean, to your point, it’s like, don’t judge a book its cover. Sometimes it is worth digging into some of these names and sometimes they…there is gold in them thar hills, but I don’t think it pertains to this list.

MICHAEL: All right.

ANDREW: I think this is a scrap it…

MICHAEL: Yeah, and in this case…

ANDREW: …move on.

MICHAEL: …I went to the Spanish version of Wikipedia, translated it to English on my Chrome browser, and it says, “Las Canitas is an informal and unofficial denomination of a sector of about 20 blocks within the neighborhood of Palermo in the autonomous city of Buenos Aires,” right? So you’re like, niche, niche, niche, niche, niche.

ANDREW: Yeah.

Josh: There’s still 20 million people there.

SHANE: [inaudible 00:46:37] 5k.

ANDREW: There’s, like, one person who also would hand register this domain.

MICHAEL: All right, so maybe I didn’t find the one needle in the haystack. Let me ask you guys a couple of questions that Rajesh had. He wrote, “Would I have been better to have”…

SHANE: Yes.

MICHAEL: …”to have invested in 1 great $300 domain name rather than 30 hand-registered domain names?” Who wants to take it?

Josh: I will trust his judgment, so no. I don’t think he could identify it. Seriously. And that’s not being mean, I’m not trying to be mean, but…$300 name, I don’t think he has the ability to, at this point — and I’m sure he’ll learn — but he does not have the ability to identify that $300 name.

MICHAEL: The characteristics that make a domain name valuable, you’re saying. So if you can’t identify’em for hand registering, you probably can’t identify’em for buying higher value domain names in auction.

Josh: Right. Now, he could give $300 to you and say, “Hey, find me a domain for $300 bucks.” That would work. But then, I mean, just go, “I don’t understand what I do with that.”

MICHAEL: Right. Drew, what were you going to say?

ANDREW: Yeah, I’m going to go back to what I said I think in the last show or two shows ago, that if you are not very capable at assessing what makes a good domain for investment, then watch auctions. I mean, obviously, aside from the learning that we’ve encouraged you to do already, go to an auction. Participate in an auction that’s, like you said, $200, $300 bucks, wait for one that has 3 to 5 bidders, that are within 20% of the high bid, and get in there and get a little uncomfortable. Go beyond your comfort zone, because you feel…you know, because you could bid with a little more confidence that you’ve got 2 or 3 people behind you that are bidding within $10, $20, $50 bucks of what you’re bidding. And so your downside is limited and you know that you’re bidding on something that other people agree has value. It’s not a sure bet, by any means, but it’s a lot better than the judgment that you’re making now.

SHANE: And we set up our blog to paper trade. I mean, we go through the auction every day, and then next day we list exactly what is sold for. So, look at it. What would you pay? What do you think it’s gonna go for? And then go tomorrow and see what it sold for. It doesn’t cost you anything, and you get a realistic, at least auction value of the name. So you can do kind of what Drew did without even spending money. It’s right there, every single day you can see what they go for, so that’s much better than just going out and spending money. It takes a while to figure out the value.

ANDREW: I found one needle in the haystack, here.

MICHAEL: What’s that?

ANDREW: The ambidestro. Ambidestro.com. I don’t want anybody to get excited about it because I think it’s probably a domain that would sell for, like, eh-eh, ee-ee. If you’re super lucky it might cover the cost of the registration of half, to all, of this list. But ambidestro.com looks like it could have some legs, it’s got 3500 exact matches searches, it’s Portuguese, and there’s…I don’t even know what it means, actually, but there’s an architectural firm that’s ambidestro.arq, which seems to send for architecture in Brazil, .br. I’m looking up what it means.

MICHAEL: It’s, like, for…from [inaudible 00:50:13] ambidextrous, so with both hands.

ANDREW: Yeah, it could be his saving grace.

SHANE: There you go.

ANDREW: Actually, Google Translate doesn’t even actually pick it up as any language. Interesting.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I’m looking in Wiktionary.

ANDREW: It’s, like, some weird form of…

MICHAEL: Right.

ANDREW: …ambidextrous in Portuguese. But anyways, there is an actual existing business, big or small, using this name, and if they have a half a brain in their head, they might pay $150, $250, $500 for this name. You know, I’m gonna leave it up to you to go assess how big they are and what they might pay. They are Latin American, they definitely are not willing to spend a lot of money, I can promise you. Don’t shoot high and hope for the best — they probably won’t even make you a counter offer. I would go in cheap and thank…

SHANE: [inaudible 00:51:09] cheaper.

ANDREW: …your lucky stars if they say yes.

MICHAEL: All right, so he’s got it listed on Afternic for $5,000. You don’t think it’s gonna sell for $5,000 Buy It Now?

ANDREW: No, no. Take the crack pipe out of your mouth, and…

MICHAEL: All right, last…

ANDREW: …start working that keyboard.

MICHAEL: …question for Josh. Josh, Rajesh wrote this question, and it seems right up your alley. He wrote, “If I own 500 domain names, it would cost me $5,000 every year to renew that portfolio. Assuming I maintain a portfolio of this quality and size and I price all my domains at marketplaces at $5,000 Buy It Now, what’s the likelihood that at least 1 will sell every year? Or is there a better pricing strategy?”

Josh: So you’re saying this quality or…

MICHAEL: This quality.

SHANE: [inaudible 00:51:53]

MICHAEL: All at $5,000 Buy It Now.

Josh: Not at $5,000.

ANDREW: Pay me $5,000 a year, I will pay you back $5,050 at the end of, like, 5 years — and that will be a better return for you.

Josh: So, I think if he puts the price lower, right? There’s a chance that somebody will put it in their cart by mistake. Right? So there’s always that. As long as you have it in the registry path, you put a low enough price, that when they get to the end they can’t tell if it’s part of the taxes or the ICANN fee, and then…

ANDREW: We’re talking about $3.47.

SHANE: Yeah.

ANDREW: Per name.

MICHAEL: Can you price a…

ANDREW: Three dollars and forty-seven cents.

MICHAEL: …domain name at $3.47?

Josh: Yeah. No. What?

MICHAEL: Can you price a domain name down at $3.47?

ANDREW: If you wanna…

Josh: If you could [inaudible 00:52:44].

ANDREW: …disguise it as taxes.

SHANE: Yeah.

MICHAEL: I didn’t know you could price one down that low.

SHANE: That is a new strategy right there, a dump.

Josh: Yeah. So no, I would…

MICHAEL: You would not advise that.

Josh: I would really just think about…

ANDREW: Let’s move on.

Josh: …all that.

ANDREW: I think he’s got the point, this is, you know…He’s got work to do.

MICHAEL: Right. All right, last question. Josh, what would you price everything at, assuming that Rajesh is gonna take your advice and price everything, and then let’em expire at the end of the year? What would you price’em at?

Josh: If somebody was gonna buy one, legitimately and they liked it, I think you could get around $399 to $599. I mean, that’s if they liked it.

MICHAEL: Three hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Right.

Josh: Yeah, so there’s that range, right? Where if they like it, they’ll pay this or this. And then there’s the bottom range where you’re like, “Well maybe somebody’ll just like it just enough to just hit that button.” And then they’ll regret it later, but we’ll get it right then. But if you’re going another route of, but well somebody…it really resonates with somebody, I think you can get them to pay that much, $399 or $299. You never know. I would probably just take the safe bet and go to $50 bucks on the…I think that’s the number you could do on Afternic.

ANDREW: Forty-nine dollars across the board, all with one or two sale…But honestly, God’s honest truth, don’t do any of that. Take the one name that we found that might have an end-user, and spend the same amount of time it would take you to go list these names at a Buy It Now price, and just contact this person. Beg, plea and steal, and tell them to just buy it from you, for the love of God — and move on. That’s it. Honestly, your time is worth more than this.

SHANE: My suggestion is, don’t get caught renewing’em all.

ANDREW: Yeah. Listen, you had the guts to put your portfolio on here, you obviously have taken some time to hopefully watch a show — maybe not — but you’re not shy, is the point. It’s not that you’re not willing to learn, it’s not that you’re not willing to try and grow — otherwise you wouldn’t have submitted a list, you wouldn’t be watching these shows — so just stop. Just stop what you’re doing, don’t register more names. Educate yourself, try and sell the one name, recoup some of your cost — whatever that might be — and then move on. But don’t go out and buy more names until you’re really got something figured out.

MICHAEL: Yep, good advice. Rajesh, thanks for submitting your portfolio and making your donation to cancer research. We hope the review has been helpful to you in your domain investing activities going forward. Before we jump to the domains going to auction soon, I wanna tell you about our three other sponsors that support us in our educational mission.

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MICHAEL: All right, we’re gonna move on to the marketplace list. This segment is sponsored by NamJet. We’re reviewing 10 no reserve domain names going 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 and be a part of the auction, or even just watch the results.

The link’s below, go directly to NameJet. They’re not commissionable links, they just wanna see what kinda traffic we’re sending’em. The list starts with bullwinkel.com, and it ends with wwwhome.com. No, I didn’t say www.home.com — dub-dub-dub.home.com. For transparency I always ask if any of the Sherpas own or are auctioning any of the domains listed below? I don’t believe so?

ANDREW: I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so.

MICHAEL: Nope, all right. Again, if you’re watching the show, press pause now, review the domain names, pick your top three, and then come back and listen as the Sherpas share their insights. They’re all no reserve, so you got a shot at all these domain names. I don’t know what they’re gonna go up to, we’ll maybe find out from the Sherpas. This segment will go Shane, then Drew, then Josh. Shane, let’s start with you. What do you like on the NameJet list, and why?

SHANE: Well first of all, that’s not how you spell bullwinkle, so get rid of that.

MICHAEL: It is too how you spell it.

SHANE: It is not.

MICHAEL: Hold on.

SHANE: It’s a L-E.

MICHAEL: “Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

SHANE: Yeah, it’s L-E. Yeah, dingdong.

MICHAEL: B-U-L-L-W-I-N-K-E-L. Oh, Vivian Bullwinkel. Hold on.

SHANE: I typed it, it says, “Did you mean Bullwinkle?”

MICHAEL: And mine didn’t say that.

SHANE: Bullwinkle J. Moose. Yeah, his name…

MICHAEL: Oh, you’re right…

SHANE: …is Bullwinkle.

MICHAEL: …”Rocky and Bullwinkle” is spelled K-L-E, but there are a lot of…

SHANE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s other…In Hindi, if they spell…No.

MICHAEL: What about Vivian Bullwinkel? She’s number one on the list.

SHANE: No. So anyway…

MICHAEL: All right.

SHANE: …those are the kind of names that screw people over.

MICHAEL: Yep.

SHANE: Not saying you did, but just in general, you get caught up in it and you say…first say, “Oh, that’s my favorite cartoon character,” then you get it wrong. Yeah, I wish you wouldn’t have put a couple…or one of these on there, because we’ve been talking about…

MICHAEL: Sorry [inaudible 00:57:36].

SHANE: …going in there, so I’ll start off with housecall. I’m not gonna get into too much detail, but I do like the name a lot. The whole world’s about delivery right now…

MICHAEL: Yeah, it is.

SHANE: …and housecall is a pretty strong name going into that. Other than that, I hate it.

MICHAEL: Well, it’s at no reserve, but the bid last Friday was at…you know, we’re taping this on a Tuesday, it was at $2,000 bucks. Even though it’s no reserve, it’s not going for pocket change.

SHANE: No, it’s gonna go for over five figures.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

SHANE: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s gonna be a lot. Another one that a good example is freshcuts. I think the name will do okay, but if you took the S off that, it’d be a much, much stronger brand. It’s amazing how much — well, that’s a simple statement — but you take an S, add an S, you do different forms, and that’s where experience comes into play in this industry. Where people, “Aw, freshcuts!” Freshcut’s really good. Socks. I’d rather sell socks than sock. That’s a totally different — totally different point. But we could have a whole show on that kinda thing because it is, every single word, sometimes it’s good to be plural, sometimes it’s not. Freshcuts — I’d much rather have freshcut. Twosocks sounds like a rap name — like 2 Chainz — so I thought…

MICHAEL: Tupac…

SHANE: …that was cool.

MICHAEL: …always wore two socks.

SHANE: Yeah, twosocks. And then I don’t like wwwhome. I remember back in the typo days, though…

MICHAEL: Yeah, that’s why I threw…

SHANE: …that was gold.

MICHAEL: …this on. It was, like, the OG, man.

SHANE: Those typo names, I remember having a whole portfolio of L in front of the word, because when people reached for the dot, they would hit the L accidentally — and aww, you’d get so much traffic. I could buy and sell L names all day. They suck now. [inaudible 00:59:25] worthless. You know, again, nothing on here really excites me. I’ll just say medical coverage is a name that we all talk about, it’s in the news. Am I going to start a company called Medical Coverage? Probably not, so again…

Josh: I guess it looks like a marketing name, though, too. I mean, you could market, you could set up something with it.

SHANE: No, it has value. Undeniable. I’ll let you guys discuss that, but it just…When a picture myself starting this brand and I want an incredible term, you’re like, “Who do you work for?” “I work for medicalcoverage.com.” Yeah, I get who you work for, I get what you do, but it doesn’t excite me, it doesn’t give me wood — as they’d say in the industry.

MICHAEL: [inaudible 01:00:07]

ANDREW: But, you know, it could be an SEM name.

SHANE: Absolutely. And it looks good on Google Ads. That’s a very important…

ANDREW: Exactly. Using it for Google, for an ad campaign, and helps with conversions, probably.

SHANE: Absolute value in that. Yeah, I mean, there is a whole different [inaudible 01:00:24].

ANDREW: Search volume is a little low for doing SEO.

SHANE: Well you go in the street and somebody’s not like, “Hey, man, I’m looking for Medical Coverage.” No, they’re looking for insurance, or you know, that’s not something they do. Online sex — boring. I won’t even say other words that work, because then it might incriminate me. Yeah, that’s it. I mean, nothing’s terrible on here. I don’t like bullwinkel because it’s wrong, I don’t like wwhome. I’m sure the other ones have value, but…

MICHAEL: But nothing’s really, like…nothing that you’re in love with.

SHANE: Housecall stands out way above everything else for me.

MICHAEL: So do you wanna…

SHANE: I like [inaudible 01:01:01].

MICHAEL: …throw out what a retail price for housecalls might be?

SHANE: Yeah, I’m…

MICHAEL: Housecall.

SHANE: …at six figures on housecall, I think it’s incredible delivery name. I mean, I think it’s really strong.

MICHAEL: All right. Thanks, Shane. Let’s go to you, Drew. Do you like housecall just as much?

ANDREW: I really like housecall. Yeah.

SHANE: That’s what I was afraid of.

ANDREW: Yeah, like that name. Yeah, you gotta be playing with big boy money to get that, I think that’s gonna go pretty high. Just real strong name.

MICHAEL: Twenty, $30,000 bucks, you think?

ANDREW: You know, honestly, hard to speculate right now. The market is really messed up. We are making the best end-user sales I’ve ever made, and I discount the whole x.com thing. I mean, literally, the last three, four months, man, we are crushing it with end-user sales, but there is literally, like…I’m not even going to say that the whole aftermarket is slow. You know, the wholesale market? It’s not slow, it’s literally nonexistent. There’s nobody there. It’s like, “Hello!” And there’s nobody home, nobody is buying. I saw filet.com on NameJet yesterday sold for 9 grand. Filet.com? Like, what?

So, yeah, man, there’s some crazy names selling for stupid, cheap prices, so this one might be a sleeper, you might end up getting…grabbing this cheap. My expectation on a normal…you know, in normal land, would be, like, this would go for 10 to 15 grand. I bet maybe it does go for $7500, 8 grand, 9 grand, but it should go higher. We’ll see. Who knows? Filet.com sells for nine, and this should go for two.

SHANE: But filet has a double L problem, where there’s also a fillet with two, so…

ANDREW: Yeah, yeah. I like it, though. It’s a verb, it’s a noun.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

ANDREW: …Yeah.

MICHAEL: What about freshcuts? Comment on that one. Shane said he liked it without the S at the end. Do you think it’s a great [inaudible 01:03:24]?

ANDREW: I think it’s a great name for a franchise of haircutting salons, or salons…

SHANE: Yeah, that’s true.

ANDREW: …or barbershops. Freshcuts — I mean, what was the…When I was growing up, I got my haircut always at a place, it was…

MICHAEL: Supercuts.

ANDREW: Oh, Supercuts, that’s right.

MICHAEL: That’s where I used to go too.

ANDREW: You know, freshcuts is almost better than Supercuts.

SHANE: That’s true.

MICHAEL: And then at my local mall I’ve got Great Cuts.

ANDREW: Yeah, Great Cuts, Supercuts, Freshcuts, I mean…

MICHAEL: So I look at it, I like the plural of this, I just don’t know how many franchises for hair cutters are gonna start up.

ANDREW: Yeah, I mean, you’re looking for the diamond in the rough there, but still, it’s a nice name. It’s not a name you wanna get into for a lot of money, but you pick that up for a couple hundred bucks, and you know, that’s a nice little jewel.

MICHAEL: Yeah. You know, knowing you’d have to hold it for a few years, you picked it up for a couple hundred, what would you price it at?

ANDREW: You know, these are the names where you almost have to, to make it make sense, because it’s not like you’re gonna buy just this name, right? So let’s say that you pick up 100 of these sort of really nice, good, brandable 2 words. Not the kind that Shane’s talking about that he likes, where it’s a real thing, it’s a household name, like tool chest, dustpan, but it’s two words that go together very nicely and could make a nice brand. And so let’s say you got 100 of those — you’re probably only gonna sell 4 over a 2-year period. So maybe you’ll do a little better, but probably not, and so to make those numbers make sense, I think you gotta shoot for the moon.

And so you got a name like freshcuts.com…And Josh is gonna disagree, because he’s doing different math than what I am, but he’s also operating…You know, it’s a different business. But from my perspective, then I think you gotta go for a 25 grand or an 18 grand, 25 grand on this name. And I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it’s worth that, because it’s not. It’s probably worth $1500 bucks, $2500 bucks, to the individual barbershop or hair salon that comes along and says, “Yeah, we’re Freshcuts.” But to make the numbers make sense in my head, I’m shooting for $15,000, $18,000, $20,000 $25,000, hoping that that franchise does come along, and you know, but…

MICHAEL: Because if you buy 100 domains at $200 bucks a pop, that’s $20,000 invested, plus a $2,000 per year fee to just renew’em. Right?

ANDREW: Yep.

MICHAEL: So you gotta price’em higher. And if you don’t think your domains will sell for that high, then economics just don’t make sense.

ANDREW: Yep. Yep. Now, again, if you’re gonna…if you buy 100 names and you’re paying $100 bucks, $200 bucks, and then you go Josh’s route and you list’em at $1800 bucks, $1900 bucks, $999 bucks, $2500 bucks — whatever the ranges are that Josh uses — you’re going to sell more names, right? So you’re not gonna sell 4, you might sell 20.

MICHAEL: Right.

ANDREW: And so, I don’t know, we can do that math. I mean, if you call it an average $1500 bucks and you sell 20 names, now you’re looking at what, 30 grand?

MICHAEL: Yeah, but Josh is also buying at a much lower cost of acquisition.

ANDREW: True.

MICHAEL: Right? Like, $20, $30 bucks at Name.com. You’re buying all of yours on expired…on auctions, right? Or expired domains?

Josh: Yeah, most are pending delete, and I’ll pick’em up. Either hand catch them as they drop or use a…I’ll use DropCatch a lot. I mean, I’m paying eight bucks there at DropCatch. You got your GoDaddy, the closeouts for under $20, the name for under $20, there’s a couple other places, but I mean, I think there’s so many…The key is looking through the list, and actually knowing how to look through it, and putting the time in to do it and going deep. I think that’s the thing that people need to do, new investors, figure out…just not even look at the…Take one of those lists and go over it, like, for five days in a row. Go over the same list, and each time they go through it, they’re going to find name…more different names. Just get their eyes focused on looking at this just group of words that they need to sort through. I think they need to practice that.

MICHAEL: Yeah, definitely.

SHANE: The problem is, things start making sense to people. They see a name and they go, “Oh, this is this and this is that.” But has no relevance to end sales. It’s just something that resonates with them that makes it seem like a good word, and that just has no impact on sales.

Josh: But training yourself to look through it and to recognize value…

SHANE: But how do you determine that it really had it, other than going to [inaudible 01:08:38]?

Josh: But at that level it doesn’t matter, right? I can make tons of mistakes at that level. You know, 90% of the names I make could be mistakes at that level because the…because I’m not paying $200 bucks for’em, I’m paying $8. So I could afford to make a lot of mistakes, and then just let’em go and then upgrade’em by registering new ones. So I mean, I agree, I’m just looking at, I don’t think people can process the list if they don’t take the time to do it, and some people just can’t, but if they did, that they would…I’m not even saying register it, I’m just saying identifying the ones and then going back through and parsing’em out as, okay, I just like this one because it sounds cool to me, and this one has value because it’s this. So just going through and identifying.

MICHAEL: Yeah, definitely. All right, let me go back to Drew. Drew, you liked housecall, you think it’s a six-figure name, you think it might…You know, who knows what the reseller market is gonna do on NameJet? Maybe it’ll go for 15k, maybe it’ll go for 40k. You liked freshcuts. Medicalcoverage you mentioned, I saw that as well as an SEM name. Estibot has that down at $36,000, that retail value. Do you think that’s a fair retail price for medicalcoverage, if you were gonna sell it to a company to use in an online SEM campaign?

ANDREW: …Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah, someone around that order [inaudible 01:10:04] retail value.

ANDREW: No, it’s probably a little high. I think it’s probably more, like, $10,000, $15,000.

MICHAEL: Okay.

ANDREW: Maybe $20,000, $25,000.

MICHAEL: All right.

ANDREW: But, you know, it’s only 1100…you know, 1200 searches, it’s got a decent CPC at $9 bucks, but it’s low search. I think it’s probably a 10 grand, 15 grand name.

MICHAEL: Would you think you’d have to do outbound marketing on that to sell it, or would wait for somebody to come to you?

ANDREW: It depends on what your position is. I mean, if you’re buying one, two, three, four, five names, and then trying to flip them, or one or two in order to re-invest, then you gotta put in the work. You gotta buy his name and then go out and sell it. If you got a little bit cash flow and you’re looking to just start building a portfolio, then you’re always gonna get a better price when the buyer comes to you. But not everybody has the luxury of time, so…

MICHAEL: Yeah. Anything else on the list that you think stands out to you that you would bid on, Drew?

ANDREW: There was a couple. I don’t know why, I like that freshcuts name. You know, herballiving, it’s okay. But again, it’s a name, like, I want that name at $69, I don’t wanna pay $500 for that name.

MICHAEL: Right.

ANDREW: I like skystream, that’s a really nice name, but probably gotta be real careful with trademarks there.

MICHAEL: Why do you like skystream.com?

ANDREW: You know, it’s just again, it’s like a freshcuts, it’s one of these names, you know that that’s a great brand, a skystream. I don’t even know, jeez, look how many frickin’ waves we’ve got floating through the sky right now, we’re streaming everything. Everything is streaming. So whether it’s an airline, or a cable network, or a content network, or whatever, who knows? Maybe it’s Sky Communications. Maybe they come along and they’re like, “Hey, our new cable network’s called Sky Stream, our new answer to Apple TV, it’s called Sky Stream.” In fact, it probably should be. That probably should be the name of their answer to Apple TV, right? So it’s just a nice brand, you know? But definitely I would be very weary of trademarks there, and if you do buy it, probably protect your butt.

MICHAEL: Yeah, and I don’t look up any of that before I bring’em on here. So what would skystream, if you owned it, what would you price it at retail?

ANDREW: Again, it would depend on what that trademark…

MICHAEL: Assume there are none. Assume no trademarks. Because people are gonna need to do their own due diligence, go look at the trademarks, figure out if it’s gonna be an issue, but assuming there are none…

ANDREW: You know, look, if I know I’m not gonna get in trouble with it, that’s when I would definitely be shooting for the moon, because the guy that comes along and says, “I’m going to be called Sky Stream,” that’s not gonna be…it’s not gonna be a lemonade stand. So I’m probably going for 50 grand, 35 grand. I’m probably going for a decent number on that name.

MICHAEL: Yeah, cool.

SHANE: But Drew, I’m a student, I can’t afford $35,000. Can I offer you $1200?

ANDREW: My best domain sales all go to students. It’s amazing. Amazing.

MICHAEL: All right, thanks, Drew. Josh, let’s finish up with you. What did they say that you liked, the domain names that you liked? Or what did they not mention that you like?

Josh: First off, I wanna say that I don’t always deal in the slums of the domain. I bought one for 4 grand the other week.

MICHAEL: What’d ya’ pick up for 4 grand?

Josh: Medicineball.com.

MICHAEL: Nice.

ANDREW: Oh, nice. I love that name. I was bidding on that, I think I missed the end of it. Love that name.

Josh: No, no, it was a Buy It Now.

ANDREW: Yeah? Oh, really?

Josh: Yeah, I sent you a [inaudible 01:13:51].

ANDREW: Oh, that’s what it was. That’s right, I was…because I just recall things and I just assumed I was in the auction. You’re right, [inaudible 01:13:56]. That’s a great name. I love medicineball.

Josh: Yeah. It was Buy It Now on GoDaddy, so…

MICHAEL: Nice.

ANDREW: Fairly, over a few months ago, I bought squatrack.com. And, you know, rates — medicineball is actually better, but…

Josh: I like it besides the obvious medicine balls, it seems like it could be a brand to me of…for lots…

ANDREW: Great [inaudible 01:14:17].

Josh: …of other things. Yeah, right, so…

ANDREW: [inaudible 01:14:20]

Josh: I think there’s songs and stuff.

SHANE: Yeah, Josh hunts down the Buy It Nows, and then we bought…we won’t say it today, but we went in as a company and bought a name that he hunted down, and it was a good name for a good price. And it’s one of those where everybody’s like, “I like it, but when you divide it by three, it becomes easy.”

MICHAEL: Whoa, whoa, whoa there’s four…there’s four of ya’ at DSAD.

SHANE: Oh, yeah.

MICHAEL: What you mean divide it by three? Who didn’t go in?

SHANE: You know, we forgot to ask Aaron.

Josh: No, I did ask’em. He was off climbing a mountain or riding a bike…

MICHAEL: Aaron!

Josh: …down a mountain, or something.

MICHAEL: You gotta be…

Josh: He missed it.

MICHAEL: …available, man. These deals come up and you gotta make a quick decision.

SHANE: He makes more money than all of us, though. He makes the best sales.

Josh: He finally came into the conversation 10 hours after the fact, and he said, “Oh, I like the name too.” And I said, “Well, we’ll sell it to ya’. What’s your offer?”

SHANE: Yeah, we’ll sell the portion of it.

Man: You guys are mean.

ANDREW: We just did a deal with Aaron for a client. I don’t even remember what the domain was, but we just bought a domain off of Aaron for a client.

MICHAEL: Nice.

SHANE: He does very, very well. Yeah.

ANDREW: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah. All right, so, back to you, Josh. Yes, you’re not always at the bottom picking’em up for eight bucks, you’ll throw down if you see a good name.

ANDREW: [inaudible 01:15:34]

MICHAEL: What do you like on this NameJet list that a new…newer investor might wanna keep his eye on? Keep his or her eye on.

Josh: Yeah, I wanted to say that the freshcuts, plural or not plural, it completely changes the usage of it, right? It’s not just about multiple…about being plural, it’s when I think of freshcuts, I mean it could also…I think of meat. I do. Like, steaks.

MICHAEL: Flowers?

Josh: Yeah, flowers. Freshcut, I would think of fresh cut, flowers.

ANDREW: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Josh: Not plural. So that completely change…I wouldn’t think of freshcuts for flowers, I would think of it, freshcut, so the plural makes it…The usage changed a whole different industry, I think, in some cases, and I think that’s a good one.

Child: Mama.

Josh: So, I think we talked about everything. I do like skystream too. I mean, it sounds like a Transformer [inaudible 01:16:28] stream.

ANDREW: Transformer.

Josh: Yeah, skystream…

Child: Grandma!

Josh: …he was the…he was a Decepticon.

MICHAEL: Hey, Drew, would you mind muting your side over there…

ANDREW: Yeah…

MICHAEL: …whilst Josh is talking?

ANDREW: …yeah.

MICHAEL: Thanks, bud.

Josh: Twosocks, I don’t know. It could be one of those things where it sends you a new pair of socks every week, or five pairs, and twosocks, you get two socks, because you always lose one and you don’t have matching pairs, so… I mean, I can dream up a usage for it, but I do if I would pay $69 bucks, even, for it, so… But being able to dream up a usage is better than not knowing what the words mean, so just…

MICHAEL: Just to clarify, yeah.

Josh: Yeah, just to clarify. But yeah, I think we touched on all the other ones. Medicalcoverage, I think it’s a good marketing type name, housecall obviously is good. Herballiving is like a…it’s an ing but we have…LivingSocial is a popular app. So herballiving, it could be a…anything within that genre, right? It would…

MICHAEL: Yeah.

Josh: …work, so that’s…

MICHAEL: Yeah, and there’s a ton of magazines. I think it stuck out to me because I always think of “Country Living” or whatever. It seems like there are a lot of online and print magazines named ‘living.’

Josh: Yeah, I think it would work.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t do herbs. All right, thanks, Josh.

Josh: Yep, no problem.

MICHAEL: I hope that’s helpful to all the newer investors out there that are looking at NameJet and evaluating opportunities. We’re at the end of today’s show, I’d like to give the Sherpas an opportunity to share anything they want about names they’re brokering or selling, opportunities they’re looking for, anyone they wanna give a shout out to. Let’s go in order and start with Drew. Drew. You have to unmute your mic, please.

ANDREW: There we go.

MICHAEL: Good.

ANDREW: All right, so let’s see. I’m gonna talk about NameSummit coming up soon. We are going to do a little promotion, so anybody…I just wanna get my dates right, here. So first off, you can use the MediaOptions — MediaOptions, all one word — promo code, and you get a $199 ticket to NameSummit. Which is a huge discount, I believe. And in addition to that, anybody that signs up between now, when this show airs, and midnight, July 19th, will be entered into the contest to win a 1 hour coaching session with me. So you will get one hour on the phone, in person if you wanna come down to Panama, or over Skype. Whatever. Whatever is the most convenient. But one hour of one-on-one coaching, whatever that one…whatever that means to you. It could be analyzing your portfolio, helping you find good domains that are for sale, help showing you how to sell domains. Whatever it is I can help you with, if I am able.

MICHAEL: Wow.

SHANE: Can we just watch a movie together, maybe?

MICHAEL: Remotely.

Josh: [inaudible 01:19:38]

ANDREW: Yeah, we’re gonna limit the scope of that.

SHANE: Okay.

ANDREW: But yeah, so one hour one-on-one, one person that signs up and buys a ticket for NameSummit between Monday, when this show airs, and July 19th at midnight. One lucky person.

MICHAEL: Do they have to use the MediaOptions coupon code to be entered to win? Is that how you’re…

ANDREW: Yes…

MICHAEL: …tracking it?

ANDREW: …yes.

MICHAEL: Okay.

ANDREW: You must use the MediaOptions coupon code when buying your ticket, you’d be silly not to because you get a big discount, and…

MICHAEL: Awesome.

ANDREW: …the lucky winner will be chosen at the show. Randomly selected from those people who signed up in that time frame.

MICHAEL: Nice. And what if that person wants to ask you about the x.com deal?

ANDREW: They’re going to waste their hour.

MICHAEL: All right, all right, review name…

Josh: When is the show? When’s the show? NameSummit?

ANDREW: The show is the 6th to the 8th of August, I believe. I’m really bad with those dates.

SHANE: New York City.

MICHAEL: Awesome.

Josh: New York City?

ANDREW: Yeah, New York City.

MICHAEL: That’s a great deal, go get your tickets for…

ANDREW: It’s like this is shaping up to be a really cool conference. There’s some really cool speakers talking about all different aspects of digital branding. It’s gonna be a little bit different take than the average domain conference.

MICHAEL: Nice.

ANDREW: You know, not better, not worse, but just different. It’s gonna be really focused on the branding aspect of online branding and marketing from all different angles, there’s gonna be some really, really cool speakers. So yeah, it’s the 7th and the 8th, it’s a two-day show. I have the 6th in my head because…you know, for arrival dates. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to make it. We’re going to be flying to Germany for a family thing that I cannot change, but there is a small chance that I will try and do this last minute, if we can make it happen. But it is going to be a really, really cool conference, I think, and I’m really excited to participate in the next one. Some of my team will be there, and there are some awesome speakers already lined up from the industry and outside the industry. I’d encourage anybody that’s available to check it out.

MICHAEL: Yeah, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a great show.

ANDREW: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Definitely get over to NameSummit.com, check that out, use the coupon code. Anything else you wanna promote, Drew?

ANDREW: I think that’s it.

MICHAEL: All right, cool. Josh, let’s go to you. Anything you wanna promote or mention?

Josh: Yeah, due to Comcast and their continued issues with my internet, I’m taping this from Inovat.com, I-N-O-V-A-T. Has an umlaut or something over one of the letters, I don’t know, that makes it Inovāt. But so, they’ve let me use their conference room, they’re a digital agency in Lancaster County, PA, and in New York City they have offices, so check them out if you need any…I don’t even know what that means, a digital agency. They do digital things.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I think they probably do social media, websites, you know, things like that. Anything…

Josh: Yeah, so…

MICHAEL: …[inaudible 01:22:57].

Josh: …if you need anything, check’em out. That’s my plug.

MICHAEL: Nice.

Josh: Thank you.

MICHAEL: Awesome. Good to have ya’. Shane…

Josh: Thank you.

MICHAEL: …let’s go over to you.

SHANE: Yeah, same thing over at DSAD. Josh will probably…I haven’t asked him yet, but he may be doing an extra list or two next week because I’ll be on vacation.

MICHAEL: Where you going on vacation?

SHANE: We’re going to the mountain, we’re gonna go do some hiking and climbing in Colorado, so…

MICHAEL: Nice.

SHANE: I don’t know my internet situation, but it sounds like it will be better than Comcast, regardless.

MICHAEL: Yeah, that’s a guarantee.

SHANE: So I don’t think I should have too much problems, so I’ll be…But yeah, no, same thing. It’s been a good nursery summer too. You know, I’ve got another business, so that’s been going well, and it’s always nice when you do multiple things and one is going well and lets you relax on the other side of it. So, domains is…it’s been a lull summer, but that’s a good time, like Drew said, to take advantage of some good buys. And I have to admit, the lists are getting kind of tough, there’s not a lot of great stuff coming through like normal, but at the same time that’s any…I always like when the…everything’s bad, that’s when I really like to hit things because that’s great opportunity. And so, when it comes around, it’ll be fine. But that’s where we’re at, DSAD, and that’s it.

MICHAEL: Awesome. And yet, sign-up for DSAD’s newsletter, and do exactly what Shane and Josh were talking about. Look at the domains that are going to auction, then the next day, look at the post that they’re making of what those domains sold at, and you can do the same thing that we’re doing here on the show. You gotta put in the hours if you wanna build that muscle to become a better investor. There’s just no other way around it, we’ve all done it. You know, the one thing I wanna mention on…give a plug for, is at DomainSherpa. We just posted for a producer position. I’ve had a producer in the past who did a great job, but then he ended up taking off, and now I’m looking to fill that role again.

The producer is somebody that can be my right-hand person that can help identify successful entrepreneurs and domain name investors with inspiring stories, conduct the pre-interview that I do for everybody to make sure that it’s…has some lessons learned, schedule’em, write the script. And basically you’re interacting with who’s who of the industry. And all these three guys, I need to have back on DomainSherpa again, so we need to scope them out. Where has their business changed over time? So if you wanna be in the middle of what’s going on in the industry, if you wanna increase your knowledge, your network — even your influence. Deal flow happens when people get to know you. So it’s a great position with flexible hours where you can work from home, I’ll give you training at DNAcademy if you don’t have it, I’ll give you a mentorship, you’ll get more deal flow.

It’s just a tremendous opportunity for somebody that has technical skills and wants to grow in the industry. Go to DomainSherpa.com, look at the top of the webpage, there’ll be a little banner up there promoting the DomainSherpa producer position. If you received benefit from today’s show, please take just a moment and post a comment below to thank today’s Sherpas. I wanna thank Rajesh Duggal was submitting his portfolio and making a generous donation to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, I wanna thank NameJet for submitting their portfolio and sponsoring that segment of the review, and I wanna thank our DomainSherpas again — Andrew Rosener, Josh Eisenhower and Shane Cultra, for sharing their experience and insights. Thanks, guys. We’ll see…

SHANE: [inaudible 01:26:25]

MICHAEL: …y’all next time.

Watch the full video at:
https://www.domainsherpa.com/review-20170717/

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34 Responses to “DomainSherpa Review – July 17: UIQ.com, KidsApprove.com, DustPan.com…”

  1. Rajesh Duggal says:

    Today marks two years after this show aired. Here’s the update.
    Of my entire ~650 name portfolio I’ve sold exactly 34 domains (almost all inbound, buy-in-now) since this show aired.
    I’ve sold 6.7% of my portfolio in the last 12 months.
    And I continue to enjoy overall profits from my domain selection skills each year.
    Thanks!

  2. Rajesh Duggal says:

    Today marks a year after this show aired. Here’s the update:

    * Of the submitted portfolio only one domain sold: nuturally.com

    * Of my entire ~400 name portfolio I’ve sold exactly nine domains since this show aired. Which equates to about 2%

    Thanks!

  3. Jackie says:

    Question for Josh:

    I actually searched the transcript to confirm what I thought I heard you say – How are you getting drops at DropCatch.com for only $8?!

    Thanks –

    Jackie

  4. Jeff says:

    To Mr “dustpan.com” soon dustrobot.com is at namjet. gotta catch em all :-)

  5. Tom says:

    Around 50:00 Drew talks about getting in there with auctions where you feel a little uncomfortable. I have been doing this a lot lately, but haven’t won one yet. I find it to be helpful though overall. If only I had more to spend lol.

  6. Eric Jenkins says:

    Great show Sherpas……..Thanks!!

  7. Jivan Bansi says:

    I don’t know about outbound. why not trade ocho.ca for AthleticCentre.ca

  8. Jivan Bansi says:

    Rajesh; Think if will it look good on the side of a building, or on a truck. Use expireddomains.net for .ca min 1000 search volume, no hyphen, no numbers. I’m near Toronto, so here are a couple of ideas you can have. AthleticCentre.ca, ZenCentre.ca, GTAdj.ca. Watch every Domain Sherpa video and take notes. Good luck.

    1. Rajesh Duggal says:

      Thanks Jivan! So do you think i should consider outbounding ambidestro.com, renewing ocho.ca , and maybe SuperiorPersonnel.com. And then also consider buying names like AthleticCentre.ca, ZenCentre.ca, GTAdj.ca ?

      If you owned my portfolio which three names might you consider renewing?

  9. ikehook says:

    Ragesh,

    Suppose you paid $10 each for these names, they have no parking revenue and no inquiries then just drop them, because every single day you can find better names to register that are salable to a real person in business or thinking about starting a business. With these names you don’t have to over analyze, search deep for a prospective buyer, or do anymore pointless work. You can simply trade these names in for better ones.

    It seems one of your tactics is trying to get ahead of the curve with new tech and ideas. If that’s the case then it’s super hard, even impossible to value any in that category, we’re talking about theoretical value and ideas. There’s high risk and high reward should they pan out, but until then they’re completely speculative.

    Even within that category I don’t think super niche, exact match domains will be bought by any companies, not as brands and not as marketing names. They’re not call to action names, they’re not generic category names and they’re not buying keywords. (buying keywords are where the customer is ready to make a purchase or take action of some sort other than just browsing the web) If Shane decides to start growing plant meat in his greenhouses he’s not going to buy or use Plant Based Meat, let alone Meats. No one says “meats”.

    You’re going super in depth into the analysis of these names, and I think it’s paralyzing you from finding low hanging fruit. When I talked about conquering the droplists, I’m saying that taking the time to thoroughly process a list has value. To Shane and Ategy’s point, about finding names that you alone like, I say, who cares. You’re not buying them right then and there, you are simply identifying inventory as quickly as possible and finding names that you like, could be used by a business, or anything at all that flags the name to you. Later you can go back and analyze the names at a closer level.

    I’ve found that most of the names that I’ve sold are just that, names that I like for some reason coupled with an industry that will buy it. They might simply make sense for something, might be short and memorable, or a memorable phrase.

    There are no real metrics associated with the vast majority of these names. We are not buying and selling longtail exact match domains right now, nor have we for some time. We are essentially selling some sort of brandable domain on all levels. Not just made up brands, but even the short EMD keyword domains are selling as brands.

    Take Shane’s DustPan.com, the metrics on this domain (5K exact match) have nothing to do with the usage that shane envisions other than the idea that 5K searches a month show that it’s still a word that is recognized and used in everyday speech. The people typing it into google are actually looking to buy a dustpan.If Shane sells the name to a MultiNational company as a cleaning brand, those same people will still be looking for dustpans to buy when they type the name into google.

    One thing I’ve found, doing the DSAD lists, selling domains on numerous platforms and even to other investors on namepros, is that I usually have no idea what will sell. Everyone has there own criteria, parameters, ideas, visions, life experience that they apply to picking domains and branding. Names I think are great will not sell wholesale and then will sell to an end-user 2 days later for thousands of $.

    Also the idea that unregistered names will not sell is false. I’ve sold names on Afternic that were available to hand reg at the time they sold.

    This is by no means an efficient industry, there is no way to track all the names and keep your sanity, we have no idea what people are thinking when they have an idea, the general population does not have a clue about domains, There is potential to make a profit just for finding and MARKETING salable names, all the buyer has to do is see the name and buy it.

    We are in an industry that relies on timing, one that is so large our inventory contains every word in every latin character language, any word combination of any and all of these languages up to 64 characters. On this level our job is to narrow down as best we can names that will sell for a profit as easily as possible.

    1. Shane Cultra says:

      Wish there was a like button right here. Well said

    2. Rajesh Duggal says:

      ikehook, thank you very very much for this thorough writeup! Some real gold in there. V.Much Appreciated!

      * Many of my domains have a small trickling of hits every week, with pennies in parking revenue. I’ve owned most of my domains less than a year and generally price them with BuyItNow, and so I don’t get many enquiries just sales.

      * When I do a google search for “plant based meats” and click “news”. I see hundreds and hundreds of news articles published with that phrase in the article. Do you still think this domain is a dead end. Or is there a chance after spending $10 to buy, and renewals for the next five to ten years it might sell for a profit?

      * Perhaps you’re right about taking more time with the drop list.. I only spend about 35 minutes processing the list each day and then buying one or two. Perhaps I will stop buying for a while to learn more about how to select domains and then get back to the droplist and spend more time on it with better knowledge.

      * I hear what you’re saying about dustpan.com. I’ve been buying from the droplist at reg for the last year. The most expensive domain I’ve ever bought then flipped was AffordableImplants.com https://flippa.com/4424989-affordableimplants-com which didn’t make me much profit. And was finally won buy an end-user http://www.affordabledentures.com from the autction. Maybe I should switch gears and try buying and selling at the dustpan.com price range, and give up on reg domains? (I’d also like to know about some of Shane’s $10 reg domain he bought over the last 12 months, so I can get a sense of how far off I am.)

  10. Mike C says:

    Thanks again guys for an informative, and funny show! It’s always easier to lean when you’re laughing!

  11. I had a DomainSherpa audience member DM me on Twitter asking for what “news” I made reference to in the show.

    Here it is: “Goods and Services Tax (GST) on Domain Names in India”
    https://www.namepros.com/threads/goods-and-services-tax-gst-on-domain-names-in-india.1027807/

  12. Rajesh Duggal says:

    @michaelcyger You mentioned my LasCanitas.com domain in the review. Yes it is a very very small niche area in Argentina. But it’s also a brand name numerous businesses have chosen ranging from restaurants to gyms, to bakeries, hotels, spas, etc, etc.

    https://www.facebook.com/search/pages/?q=%22las+canitas%22&ref=top_filter

    I would love to hear your thoughts on which three names from my list you might $10 renew if owned this portfolio?
    V.Much Appreciated!

  13. Ikehook says:

    So the domain I sold and we talked about was KidsApprove.com. As I watched the show I swear we’re all saying “Kids Approve” but once you add “Dot” the D sound blends together and they both sound the same.

    1. Ategy.com says:

      lol .. it was KidsApprove and you thought it was Kidsapprove? I think you need sleep! lol
      I think you mean it sounded like KidsApproved .. even Michael put it with the D in the title .. but the transcript has it without the D.

      I’m thinking the extra D came from the excessive amount of Mountain D you’re on!

      I remembered the line from a commercial from when i was a kid .. and I was surprised (or should I say Surprise? lol) when you said it was a BIN at 1999! I would have thought that famous saying would have been worth more and figured you kept it at 2k so as not to go over the cost of a UDRP if the cereal people wanted to get you! lol

      1. Ikehook says:

        Well sure I probably do need to sleep lol… I read my comment again (on the phone) and it still makes sense to me. I’m saying they both sound the same and I think everyone else did think it was past tense, but I never realized they thought that, until I looked at the title and watched it again. Does that make sense?

        So the whole time we were talking about the name they thought it was approved, I thought they thought it was approve, even when I watched it I thought it still sounded like they were saying approve, but they weren’t, they were saying KidsApprovedDotCom and I was saying KidsApproveDotCom
        Does that clear it up ?

    2. My apology, Josh. You did say “KidsApprove.com” and that is what’s in the transcript. I mistakenly added the “D” in the title and description when I was publishing this show. I’ve since fixed the title and related post information to only list “KidsApprove.com”.

      ? ← Happy world emoji day!

  14. Ategy.com says:

    I took my dog for my now routine 3am monday morning walk .. and I was just walking down the streets dying of laughter the entire time .. great show .. super funny and informative!
    .
    First of all .. congrats once again to Drew for the big X!
    .
    The short little side discussion at the tail end of the NameJet segment is something that should be expanded upon in future shows. Basically when you’re going down the lists and “things start making sense”. That’s a big reason why I have multiple “filterations” on my personal list .. sometimes when I’m tired my first instinct is “Hey .. that’s a cool name .. it could be used for X” .. but in reality it is a cool name .. but with no commercial value. sure it would make for an amazing blog name .. but those kinds of names that initially look cool can kill you as a domainer because people won’t pay more than a couple hundred dollars for them, at likely the same turnover as smarter business geared names that sell for 10x more than a cool blog name.
    .
    There seem to be at least couple recruitment agencies called “Superior Personnel” .. so while I’ll agree it might not be the best name for such a service .. there certainly is value there .. certainly more than Ambidestro! :)
    .
    Good luck with your domains Rajesh! :)

  15. Rajesh Duggal says:

    Also, DrugTreatment.COM sold for $150,000 a few years ago. http://domainnamewire.com/2012/11/01/marchex-top-500-domain-sales-of-all-time/
    Is there a chance that DrugTreatment.CA might be worth a $10 renewal?

    1. Ategy.com says:

      Rajesh .. one thing you have to keep in mind is that the portfolio review portion of the show is only about 15 minutes .. so it’s more about a general analysis. I’m pretty sure you will have a handful of domains in your portfolio that are ok and possibly worth renewing .. but overall you need to be a lot more careful registering domains, as the majority of the names you’ve shared will have a very hard time selling for amounts that justifies the risk of holding them.
      .
      If you still feel very strongly about your portfolio, then maybe try to sort them by quality. Limit yourself to keeping only 10% of what you think are the best ones. Then ask around a few fellow domainers if they’d renew those names.
      .
      Most importantly, price the lowest quality 50% of names at $200 (or I would even go $100), then the rest maybe a little more, but not much. Most importantly don’t renew at least 90% of them.
      .
      Definitely go back and listen to older Reviews .. check out name pros and post some of your domains in the appraisal section to get more feedback. It’s important you understand why the experts don’t think most of your current domains are not good investments .. otherwise you’ll just end up getting different domains of the same lower quality.
      .
      Don’t get too discouraged .. we’ve all bought crappy domains . .the trick is to realise why and change our buying habits before we go broke! Even Drew (who just helped broker X.com for likely many millions of dollars) wasted multiple thousands of dollars on hyphen-domains when he started .. and now he’s selling millions of dollars worth of domains a year.
      .
      If English isn’t your first language, then that is also something you should work on before buying more domains. One small change of a word (even if technically correct) can make the difference between a multi-thousand dollar domain .. and a worthless domain.
      .
      Anyohw .. good luck with your domains! :)

      1. Rajesh Duggal says:

        Thank you very much for your sage advice. Yes, english is my first language. I was born and raised in UK and now live in Toronto.

        I would really appreciate if you would name three names from the list you might consider renewing.

        1. Ategy.com says:

          Honestly .. the only ones I would keep passively (with no intention of outbound) are:

          SuperiorPersonnel.com (If all your names were like this one you’d have a solid portfolio .. but this is far and away the best one)

          DrugTreatment.ca (I’m borderline on this one, but given the 150k sale of the .com I might be willing to give it a chance). I don’t think it’s as strong a term as at first look though, so consider switching to outbound sooner than later.

          For the ones you bought because there are businesses with those names .. that isn’t a bad thing .. but they are not good enough to be passive waiting for inbound requests .. you’ll need to do outbound and contact potential buyers. If you’re prepared to do this then you can make a bit of money, but go back and listen to what Drew said in the Review .. make sure you offer them at a reasonable amounts.

          1. Rajesh Duggal says:

            Thanks Ategy.com for your answers and including the additional reasoning/thoughts! You rawk!

            I agree with your many points here and the other comments on this thread. And I’ve also listened to Sherpa review carefully a couple of times. They made a good point that doing outbound adds to the cost of the inventory (time is money). So I agree with them, and you, that I need to be wise about which domains I choose to spend time on doing outbound and which I don’t are worth it.

            Perhaps I should just try to outbound ambidestro.com and hold ocho.ca and let the rest expire as Andrew Rosner suggested.
            Something to consider carefully.

            1. Ategy.com says:

              If there is an existing company using the exact some name, they would obviously want the exact domain. But price comes into play. If it’s a small family restaurant, then they likely will never pay $5000 .. or even $1000 if it’s in South America.
              .
              You also need to be weary of TradeMark concerns. If the domain is the name of a region, or simply a highly generic and common term then you SHOULD be safe (but not 100%).
              .
              Trademark issues are really beyond the scope of what can be discussed here though .. definitely look back at previous Reviews and Sherpa Interviews for more on this. You can also find info at NamePros. There are a couple of DNWire podcast episodes that touch the subject. Plus I’m sure Michael likely covers this to some degree in DNAcademy.
              .
              Before doing outbound you might also want to set yourself up with a website, or at the very least get a good domain to use for outbound email, if you just use a hotmail or gmail account your outbound contacts will likely be ignored.

  16. Rajesh Duggal says:

    Thanks very much for the review! Much appreciated! I’ll spend a lot more time learning about how to select domains to buy.

    One of the domains mentioned was ChopBarbers.com . When search facebook it seems like a potentially popular brand. https://www.facebook.com/search/pages/?q=Chop%20Barbers Can someone help me understand why this domain is not a good brandable when it appears there are numerous barbers using a similar brand for their business already.

    Also PlantBasedMeats.com appears to be a growing market? I’d like to understand why this isn’t a good name. http://www.onegreenplanet.org/market-trends/

    Much appreciated!

    1. Sarah says:

      My best advice is to try and sell one of the names you like the best. Once I started doing some outbound, I quickly realized that a lot of my names were never going to sell. I sent out tons of emails and got 0 replies. So I stopped registering and now I am going through and listening to every one of these interviews. You can learn so much just by listening and taking notes!

      1. Rajesh Duggal says:

        Thanks Sarah, great advice! I have sold a few domains, and made a small profit so far. Since many domainers only sell between 2 to 10% of their portfolio every year, one should expect that the majority don’t sell. The hard part is knowing which 90%+ won’t sell this year and should be renewed, versus which didn’t sell and should be dropped. And this is why I sent my list in for review.

        Sarah, if you owned this portfolio which three names might you consider $10 renewing? Understanding that it was purchased at reg fee and might take a few years before it sells. So a $10 buy and five years of renewals will have a total cost of $60. And then a sale of ~$150 means you’ve doubled your money.
        V.Much Appreciated!

        1. Ategy.com says:

          Rajesh .. I think the 2% theoretical average is when it’s inbound only.

          That being said, I think a much stronger factor is quality. Meaning that it’s about 2% of names that will ever have a chance of selling. So if only 10% of your names stand to have a realistic chance of selling then in theory you should expect a 0.2% sell through rate.

          Definitely do not get hung up on the 2% .. that is very far from being a guarantee … quality is far far far and away a more important factor.

          1. Rajesh Duggal says:

            Great point! Thanks!.

          2. Rajesh Duggal says:

            Ategy.com, Speaking of quality do you think my colour blind sunglasses names are quality? Google tells me about 8% of the world population is colour blind. (i.e. about 560 Million people on the earth). Of those a small percentage speak english, have internet access, have an interest in having more dynamic visual range, and have the means to buy sunglasses made specifically for people with colour blindness. A business might want to sell these sunglasses and might consider these names a good match for the product.

            Do you think these domains should be dropped or worthy of a $10 renewals?

          3. Rajesh Duggal says:

            Ategy.com, speaking of quality. Do you think my colour blind sunglasses domains are worthy of renew?. Google tells me that ~8% of the world population is colour blind. That’s about 560 million people and rising. Of those a small percentage speak english, have internet access, have an interest in improving their visual dynamic range, and have the means to buy sunglasses made specifically to improve their condition. A business might want to sell these glasses, and might think that these domain names are a good short match to succinctly describe the product on the internet.

            Do you think these names are worth of $10 renewals, or drop’em?

            1. Ategy.com says:

              That’s the beautiful thing about domaining. Everybody has unique knowledge that they can take advantage of in acquiring domains that other people might not have thought of.
              .
              Personally I don’t see the demand being enough to justify holding such domains. But you might have information that I don’t.
              .
              That being said .. generally unless you have very unique specialised information that most other people don’t have access to, then the general rule of thumb is that if a domain is available for hand registration, it’s because there is not sufficient demand to justify the holding cost vs the small chance of selling it for enough of a profit. (which I suspect is the case here .. but obviously can’t say 100% because i’m not a sunglasses specialist)

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