In March, Jeff Gabriel, Saw.com co-founder was interviewed by Bill Hartzer from the Digital Marketing Podcast. In the interview, Jeff provides his knowledge and expertise on all things domains. He gets into domain investing, appraisals, acquisitions, sales, and portfolio management.
Transcript
Bill Hartzer –
Okay hi this Bill Hartzer and today is March 5th, 2020. This is the digital marketing podcast with Bill Hartzer, digital marketing with Bill Hartzer podcast, and I have Jeff Gabriel from SAW.com and we’re talking specifically about domain names and dot coms that you know; whatever.com, Hartzer.com, SAW.com, tell me a little bit about yourself Jeff and how you got into the domain name business.
Jeff Gabriel –
Sure and thank you Bill for having me as always. I got my start many moons ago, close to ten years ago at Sedo. Prior to that, I was doing numerous sales jobs and I came to Sedo because I thought their business model was something really interesting I didn’t know. If you remember the old Sedo site it would have all the auctions and domains for sale. It’s changed a little bit but it’s still relatively similar, and I was like, “What is this?” I used to actually try to sell products to them, HR staffing products, and when the economy kind of imploded on itself a little over ten years ago I went back to companies that I thought had interesting business models and Sedo was one of them. I worked there for a number of years where I sold sex.com for thirteen million. That was the highest .com sale for a while but it’s recently been broken obviously. GoDaddy sold voice.com for thirty million, money.com sold for twenty million and 360.com sold for 17 million. I’ll still be happy to take fourth place and the other thing is I’m happy to see that my record’s been broken multiple times because that’s showing us that the market is growing, and the value of domains continues to rise. I sold it in 2010, so I mean ten years later if I was still the top sale I’d be worried, I wouldn’t think that the market was growing. So, then I left Sedo and I founded a company called Domain Advisors, we rebranded that to Igloo that sold to Brand IT or Brand It, however you want to call it. From there, I worked at Uniregistry which was called Main Aim Sales prior to that for just under seven years, built a sales team from four of us to just under forty people. We did over three hundred million or three hundred fifty million dollars in sales in my tenure there and it was a wonderful time, great experience. I left there that’s recently sold to GoDaddy for I think close to one hundred ninety million dollars, one hundred eighty-six I think is that the word on the street. I’ve launched Saw.com recently,; we officially launched in mid-December. I really am counting the first of January because you’re still working on some of the technology. I think like that, so we just launched, and it’s been great. We have myself, three salespeople working with me, including my co-founder Amanda Waltz and we have a good little team of support staff as well. Even you, you’ve helped us immensely in our business so it’s been a really great experience. It’s great to see that the little piston engines running – one of the cylinders was running but now we got all full bar chugging so hopefully in a few months it will turn into a nice six-cylinder and then an eight-cylinder and then a twelve-cylinder and it’ll really start to fire and really get going. I’m happy to be here I’m excited to be here so let’s talk some domains.
Bill –
Yes, so acquiring domains… I mean let’s talk a little bit about the process of starting a new business. You’re trying to get a brand and you look and see whether the Twitter handle and the Facebook page and the different handles that are available. But then you find what is available, and also, ideally, whether the dot-com is available as well. It’s a little bit difficult now, more and more, to find a good dot-com that’s not already taken. Certainly, then the next step is to approach the owner and figure out how much the domain is worth and whether or not you even should spend a fair amount. So, you know how to domain.
Jeff –
I think that’s the question that a lot of people should ask themselves right, is and look themselves in the mirror and say, “What are my goals for this company, how long do I want to be involved in this company, and where do I want to take it?” Also, what is the style of your business? Are you relying on especially your business to consumers? Are you relying on repeat business word-of-mouth marketing? Are you relying on somehow establishing credibility quite quickly to get conversions to happen?
Having a half-assed domain name is not a good thing and you cannot tell me one company that has a half-assed domain name that’s a household name. A domain that has one with a dash in it or is really long or it’s just really bad. Market leaders have usually a very strong dot-com domain and it gets so ingrained in people. This is an extreme example that I’m gonna give you but I urge anybody who uses Google as a search engine to switch to Yahoo for a week and tell me if you can actually do it. When I type in Google, even if I say Yahoo out loud, I type in Google like my fingers are trained. I’m trained for Amazon and they also do come trained for other places that they go to on a regular basis and those domains 99.9% of the time are dot-coms. The only one that I go to that’s a major player that’s a dot anything else on a regular basis is Verizon to pay my phone bill. Verizon dot net is really one of the only big ones that is not dot-com. They’re just still pushing that dot net. But not everyone has, including me, a million dollars to spend on a domain name.
But it’s saddening to me to see companies that are spending more money on a printer or on a coffee maker than they are on their domain. So can’t tell me any other way, if your domain name is really poor but you’re spending millions in other places or hundreds of thousands in other places, that you aren’t looking at the front door to your business. In order to be taken seriously, you really need that. I find it interesting to see a lot of these startups using the dot IO the dot AI the dot CC. You know, I don’t know if people even realize that dot IO is Indian Ocean and it’s a CC TLP, and ccTLDs go to their own rules and regulations. You could wake up one day just like the Chinese did on dot CM and said you have to be a Chinese citizen in order to own these domains and what would happen if something similar happens there and your business is totally built on that IO? You’re in trouble. The other thing is that if you walk down the street and you tell someone about cars dot IO. How many people in the public actually even know that exists or what that means? They don’t.
So we’re going to spend a lot of money to change that perception and change habit to get them to go to your business or to convert over radio advertising. We’re both advertising conference advertising and then you get into email and email security with phishing. What would happen if a scammer got the dot-com on you or something similar to your brand or the dot-net and started hitting your customers or your customers are emailing them or something? You have the dot CO, they hit him with the dot-net or anything like that. There is a lot to do with security these days and privacy and people have held companies hostage based on this stuff. So there are many levels and reasons why you should have the right domain and it’s important. If you have a small budget, there are ways that you can find maybe a second tier rather than your sex dot-com or cars dot-com. You could go and spend ten million dollars but you easily can find domains that are two thousand, five thousand, eight thousand, ten thousand dollars, and a lot of the sellers that I work with on a regular basis would even let you pay for them over time. So there is no real excuse if you’re really serious about building something. You can get something good and you know that’s one of the things that we specialize in. We hear what entrepreneurs, visionaries, ideas guys, or established businesses have to tell us about where their business is, where they want to bring it, and the money they have to spend. We use this information to see how we can make it work and then we go out there and we find them some good solid options at reasonable prices based on what their goals are. And like anything in life, you need to pay for quality and need to pay for the best and that’s just the way it is.
Bill –
Yeah, I mean nowadays especially, we start to think about, even in the past week, with everybody talking about companies going remote. That means if you’re remote it’s online and more and more people are online and that domain is one of the first things or the thing that people see all the time in the web address. So it’s that branding that they’re seeing over and over again. It needs to be presented in the best light as possible. There are several parts to marketing… having a good brand, having a good name, having a good logo, having the right colors and color scheme, and good web design. But again, having a good domain presents your company and your business in the best light possible. And we talked earlier about some companies that are using ones that are not dot-coms. Think about Zoom… dot-us right? I think you mentioned that to me the other day. I mean there are not many out there that are not a lot of major companies out there that are not using a strong dot-com.
Jeff –
Yeah. Especially in the United States, right? Yeah, I feel like when I travel to Canada, dot-CA is quite strong. I think if you use dot-CA in the US, a lot of people think it’s dot-California, right? But I travel quite a lot, and Zoom.us is a company that I see with billboards all over airports throughout the United States and internationally. I scratch my head about it because I know the person that used to own the domain name for a period of time. He doesn’t own it anymore, and I’m sure he would have worked out monthly payments with Zoom even if the price was exorbitant for them to pay that on a monthly basis and fit that into their budget. But they’d rather spend it on those billboards. Then, at the same time, their potential customers are going to the dot-com that could have other pictures on it. It could have something totally different and they’re like, then that opportunity is gone. How much money are you leaking out of the bucket with holes? It just doesn’t really make sense to me.
One of the examples I was thinking about talking about today is a domain we’re selling called login dot-com. And we’re also selling the domain name password dot com and we have companies like one password dot-com and log me in dot-com and dash lane dot-com that we have approached about these domain names to see if they’re interested. And it’s been radio silence with no interest. We find it very strange that they, especially Dashlane, had some ads up. They did a Superbowl ad a 30-second Superbowl ad and then they had a blog that they sent the traffic to. There were pictures on both sides of somebody in a robe floating in the air with clouds talking about taking back the internet and you weren’t really sure what they did. In the comment section, somebody said they sell clouds or bathrobes as a joke, and when you visit the site and it’s a one password solution. But if I’m gonna give them five bucks a month, they’re asking you to give them every username and password to your entire life. They’re asking you to give all of your credit card numbers, write everything, and they’re saying they’re gonna protect it on you and their name is Dashlane. I don’t understand and they have a guy in a bathrobe with clouds in the background as their person. I don’t understand, and I don’t feel comfortable giving them all that information. If they own the domain name password dot-com, which is exactly what they’re selling, and then they made the site almost look like it’s a fortress, I’d be a little more into it. I mean, at the very least, I’m gonna go and talk to maybe log me in. The log me part doesn’t really make sense because you don’t say “log me in.” I feel like someone’s trying to bang on the door. I would think that login is probably a better name for their business. It’s more memorable, it creates more credibility, it’s easier to spell, you can advertise it on the radio. it is it checks off every single basic box of marketing. It hits all the basic marketing rules and it’s perfect for any of these three businesses. So you know, I find it strange that those three haven’t. I mean, we’ve still got interest from other parties but those three players haven’t shown interest. I guess I’m kind of calling them out here today on your blog. Hopefully, they’re listening and I’d love to have a fruitful conversation.
Bill –
kind of recently though, let’s look at Amazon. Amazon originally sold just books, and now Amazon has nothing to do really with what the word is. So there are exceptions out there as far as branding goes. Another example is Target, which makes me think about target practice or something.
Jeff
What do Amazon and Target have in common? They’re one word.
Bill Hartzer
Yes, that’s very true. There is a lot of money, unfortunately, in branding at this point over the years and sure.
Jeff
I mean and then look at ring dot-com. So ring dot.com is a domain that we sold when I was at Uniregistry. And they sold the company. That company was sold within two or three years of launch to Amazons for over a billion dollars. And the owner of that company, who was an ex-employee of Amazon (I’m not sure if you know this story), said they would never have gotten that valuation and they never would have gotten that purchase price without owning ring. They never would have gotten the market share, they never would have seen the growth that they were supposed to get, and they never would have gotten the purchase price that they got out of Amazon if they ever knew exactly, right? so I think that it’s imperative for some of these companies for market share, that they’re one of the first to the party. I mean, same with one password. They’d love to get a piece of log in’s market share. They’re late to the party, so how do you do it? You find the best possible brand that people are going to trust, and this is a massive leap of faith to any of these companies to give people this kind of information, and I think that that is a perfect opportunity for them to prove that they’re here for a long time. They’re not going to get hacked and that we are the leader in our space.
Bill –
Sure. Give us a little bit… say I have a domain or a couple of domain names that I bought. Say I woke up in the middle of the night and said “Hey, that’s a great idea for a company I need to go and see if that domain name is available.” I go on my phone and it’s available and I purchased it and now, six months later I haven’t started that project. I still own this domain, but now it’s a year or two later, or it’s eleven and a half months later. Do I renew it or not? How do I figure out that those domains that I bought a while back… how do I figure out if I should drop them? What is the value? How would I go about selling them?
Jeff –
Okay, so I’m gonna take you through kind of a speed version of this. So the first thing I would do is go to a website like EstiBot. I put the domain name in there and hit enter. I would see what comes up there. I would look at different data which would be comparable sales on there, look at those. Then I would take out the ones that are inferior. So you might see ones I just don’t meet the criteria. If you want to go into great detail, I have a YouTube channel called Saw Sells. We’ll have videos of me teaching how to appraise domains. But this is the lazy way of doing it. I would see what on there kind of catches up to similar quality. Similar quality means if the words make sense phonetically in a sentence and you’ve heard both in words together before that’s a plus and if you haven’t, or it’s the wrong tense or it doesn’t quite make sense, I’d immediately put like a little red X next to that one. Then I would certainly look there, then I would think to myself, “Am I going to do this project if I wake up two years from now? Will I revisit it? Will I regret selling this?” And if the answer is no, it’s probably time to move on. So my suggestion to you would be to go to a website like GoDaddy, put some sort of a low reserve on the domain name, and get rid of it now. If you multiply this, because I know entrepreneurs like myself and like you Bill, the gears are always spinning. So this isn’t something that happens just once, it happens a lot, so then all of a sudden you wake up one morning and now you have 200 or 300 of these and now you’re spending two thousand, three thousand, five thousand, ten thousand dollars a year on renewals on ideas that are never gonna happen and you’re carrying these and even if you’ve invested five hundred or a thousand dollars in this name, take the loss, get your money and move on to the next one. You’re gonna let them go. That’s the best advice I can give you. There are so many people that have come to me that have these big portfolios of thousands of names, carrying them year after year after year. There’s no reason to carry half of these names. And they’re just throwing money in the trash because they spent hundreds of dollars on renewals and they’re just unwilling to let it go. Let it go. Take that money and buy something else. Buy a new dream and move on with it. Get you right off on your taxes and take it. Sometimes you’re gonna make money, and you’ll say, “Wow, that was great!”
Bill –
Yeah, now there are certainly some exceptions to that. And the ones I would, from my experience if you are actively getting offers [it’s a different story]. I mean it depends on what your definition of actively getting offers is, but if somebody is sending you multiple emails or contacting you giving you an offer, then you probably would keep the name, right? You can’t just drop it.
Jeff –
it’s like a volcano. It’s popping out a little ash and a little smoke and a little lava and then eventually it’s gonna fill up. So what I would certainly do is I’ve put it on the market places, get it the exposure, put a price on it, get a good landing page. It’s a good little affordable solution to have the leads dumped into your email. You can connect it on to some CRM out there and then work those leads or give a guy like me the opportunity to work on those opportunities. Sure, put it up for sale. Those kinds of names are the best names because there’s demand and I would never let those go. Yeah, the stat that I would look at is if you have one, even one, interested party or two hundreds of parties a year on a name, I probably wouldn’t. I wouldn’t just put it up for auction. I would probably sit on it, right? If it’s making parking and it’s making close to registration so you’re carrying cost is a buck or maybe nothing if you’re making ten cents a year on it I wouldn’t drop it because there are people coming to that name. That’s showing there’s something out there. There’s a pulse, right? So I keep it. But if it’s not making registration it’s not getting inquiries and there’s no action on it. When they give the hot potato to somebody else, take your losses unless you’ve invested a lot of money in it. And let it go. That’s the best advice that I can give you.
Bill –
Yeah or if there’s any chance that you could potentially develop it or actually have a writer write some content and put it out there.There’s potential for it rather than just having it. Developing it into 5 10 20 page site that potentially could get it going again.
Jeff –
Yeah. But again, now you’re getting even deeper. And there’s a reason why there’s nothing happening with it in the first place, right? That’s why it was the plan that never took off. The idea that never happens. I had this brilliant idea a long time ago that you can make a party table that was disposable so we’ve come with a bag that you get at the party store for like ten dollars. But then when I figured out what design and engineering involved to make it. And then pitch that to the party store and all these things. I mean I considered how to pay every penny I had in the bank on a chance and I didn’t even understand the industry.
Bill –
So that was a disposable party table dot-com.
Jeff –
But that dream is over like it’s over now. So I’d say knowing that even if it had an opportunity nowt, I just have too many other things. Selling domain names for myself is a much more sure bet than me investing all this time, money, and resources and energy into this. It just doesn’t make any sense. Yep, take it off the chin, right?
Bill –
Sure. So with that said, we’re just about out of time. So thanks for joining me today. How do we get in touch? I know you mentioned your YouTube channel Saw Sells. Or go directly to saw.com. Is that the best way to get in touch?
Jeff –
Yes, go to the contact page on saw.com. We do domain acquisitions on behalf of buyers, we sell super premium names, we also manage people’s domain portfolios where we work on an entire portfolio where they point their names to us and then we would also be taking some of those names to market and selling them and then appraisal services as well.
Bill –
All right thanks again Jeff! This has been the Digital Marketing Podcast with Bill Hartzer. Thanks again, Jeff. And we’ll see you Online
Jeff –
Anytime. Thank you.
Unedited Transcript
Bill –
Okay hi this Bill Hartzer and today is March 5th, 2020. This is the digital marketing podcast with Bill Hartzer, digital marketing with Bill Hartzer podcast, and I have Jeff Gabriel from SAW.com and we’re talking specifically about domain names and you know dot coms that you know; whatever.com, Hartzer.com, SAW.com, tell me a little bit about yourself Jeff and how you got into the domain name business.
Jeff –
Sure and thank you Bill for having me as always. I got my start many moons ago, close to ten years ago at Sedo. Prior to that I was doing numerous sales jobs and I came across you know because I thought their business model was something really interesting I didn’t know when I used if you remember the old SETO site it would have all the auctions and domains for sale it’s changed a little bit but it’s still relatively similar, and I was like what is this. I used to actually try to sell products to them, HR staffing products, and when the economy kind of imploded on itself a little over ten years ago I went back to companies that I thought had interesting business models and Sedo was one of them. I worked there a number of years where I actually sold sex.com for thirteen million. That was the highest .com sale for a while but it’s recently been broken obviously. GoDaddy sold voice.com for thirty million, money.com sold for twenty million and 360.com sold for 17 million. I’ll still be happy to take fourth place and the other thing is I’m happy to see that my records been broken multiple times because that’s showing us that the market is growing, and the value of domains continue to rise. I sold that in 2013 or 2000 2010 I sold it and 2010 I sold it so I mean ten years later if I was still the top sale I’d be worried, I wouldn’t think that the market was growing. So, then I left SETO and I founded a company called domain advisors, we rebranded that to igloo that sold to brand IT or brand it however you want to call it. From there worked at unit registry which is called main aim sales prior to that for just under seven years, built a sales team from four of us to just under forty people. We did over three hundred million or three hundred fifty million dollars in sales and my tenure there and it was a wonderful time, great experience. I left there that’s recently sold to GoDaddy for I think close to one hundred ninety million dollars, one hundred eighty six I think is that the word on the street. I’ve launched recently, we officially launched in mid-December I really am counting first of January because you’re still working on some of the technology. I think like that, so we just launched, and you know it’s been great. We have myself, three salespeople working with me, including my co-founder Amanda waltz and you know we have a good little team of support staff as well. Even you, you’ve helped us immensely in our business so it’s been a really great experience it’s great to see that the little piston engines running you know one of the cylinders was running but now we got all full bar chugging so hopefully months will turn into a nice six cylinder and then an eight cylinder and then a twelve cylinder and it’ll really start to fire and really get going. I’m happy to be here I’m excited to be here so let’s talk some domains.
Bill Hartzer
yes so acquiring domains I mean it yeah I basically let’s talk a little bit I guess the process of you know sure you know you’re starting a new business you’re trying to get a brand you know you look and see what you know whether the Twitter handle and the Facebook page and the you know different it’s a graham handles that are available but then okay will you what actually find also ideally something that where the dot-com or the you know it is available as well and certainly that’s not you know that not taken so it’s a little bit difficult now you know more and more to find you know finds a dot you know find a good calm that’s not already taken you know certainly then the next step is I guess if we find something I guess would be to you know somehow approach the owner and figure out okay well how you know how much this is this domain worth and you know whether we you know whether or not you even should spend you know a fair amount I mean what you know how to domain
Jeff-
I think I think that’s the question that a lot of people should ask themselves right is and look themselves in the mirror and say what are my goals for this company how long do I want to be involved in this company right and where do I want to take it and also you know what are what is the style of your business if you are if you are relying on especially your business to consumer right if you’re relying on repeat business word-of-mouth marketing if you’re relying on somehow establishing credibility quite quickly to get conversions to happen having a half-assed domain name is not a good thing right and you cannot tell me one company that has a half-assed domain name that’s a household name one that has one with a dash in it or is really long or it’s just really bad you know your market leaders have usually a very strong dot-com domain all right yeah and it gets so ingrained in people I mean to the point now this is an extreme example that I’m gonna give you but I urge anybody who uses Google as a search engine to switch to Yahoo for a week and tell me if you can actually do it because when I do it I type in Google even if I say Yahoo out loud I type in Google like my fingers are trained it people I’m trained for Amazon and they also do come trained for other places that they go to on a regular basis and those domains 99.9% of the time our comms the only one that I go to that’s a major player that I go to that’s a dot anything else really on a regular basis is Verizon to pay my phone bill you know Verizon net is really one of the only huge big ones so they I believe they also on the comm they’re just still pushing that net but you know not everyone has including myself a million dollars to spend on a domain name sir but it’s saddening to me to see companies that are spending more money on a printer or on you know a coffee maker than they are on their domain so and again you can’t tell me any other way if your domain name is really poor but you’re spending millions in other places or hundreds of thousands other places that you aren’t looking at the front door to your business and in order to be taken seriously you really need that and again you know I find it interesting to see a lot of these startups using the dot IO the dot AI the dot CC. You know, I don’t know if people even realize that dot IO is Indian Ocean and it’s a CC TLP and ccTLDs go to their own rules and regulations I mean you could wake up one day just like the Chinese did on dot CM and said you have to be a Chinese citizen in order to own these domains and what would happen if something similar happen there and your business is totally built on that IO you’re in trouble the other thing is that if you walk down the street and you tell someone cars dot IO how many people in the public actually even know that exists or what that means they don’t so yeah we’re going to spend a lot of money to change that perception and change habit to get them to go to your business or to convert you know over radio Advertising we’re both advertising conference advertising and then you get into sorry I’m taking over your whole podcasts I’m very passionate about this but then you get into like email an email security in fishing what would happen if a scammer got on the dot com on you or something similar to your brand or the dot net and started hitting your customers or your customers are emailing them and their back or something you have the dot CO they hit him with the dot net or anything like that there’s a lot to do with security these days and privacy and people have helped companies hostage based on this stuff so there’s many levels and reasons why you should have the right domain and it’s important and if you have a small budget you know there’s ways that you can find maybe a second tier rather than your sex comm or your you know your car’s comm I mean I must say go and spend ten million dollars but you easily can find domains that are between two thousand five thousand eight thousand ten thousand dollars and a lot of the sellers that I work with on a regular basis would even let you pay for them over time so you know there’s no real excuse if you’re really serious about building something that you can’t get something good and you know that’s one of the things that we specialize in in a business is we hear what entrepreneurs visionaries ideas guys or established businesses have to tell us about where their business is where they want to bring it and the money they have to spend and how we can make it work and then we go out there and we find them some good solid options at reasonable prices based on what their goals are and like anything in life you know you need to pay for quality and need to pay for the best and that’s just the way it is
Bill Hartzer
yeah I mean nowadays especially you know we start to think about yeah even in the past week with all of the everybody talking about companies do you know going remote that means okay if your remote and your remoting in you know that means it’s online and more and more people are you know are using you are sexually you know online and that that you know domain is the one of the first things or the thing that that people see all the time in the web address and so it’s that branding it’s that you know it’s they’re seeing it over and over and over again and you know it needs to you know it does yeah need to be presented in the best white as possible you know you’re it’s you know there are several parts to you know having marketing you know having a good brand which is your you know having a good name having a good you know having a good logo having you know the right colors and color scheme and good web design but again you know the having a good domain really yeah also is presents you know your company and your business in in the best light possible and rather you know we talked earlier you know about you know some domains that are or some companies that are using ones that are not comms you know think about zoom dot us right I think you mentioned that to me the other day you know and I mean you know that there are not many out there that are not you know that are major companies that are that are you know that are you that are not using a strong calm
Jeff –
yeah especially in the United States right yeah I feel like when you when I travel to Canada dot CA is quite strong I think if you use a dusty in the US a lot of people think it’s dot California right but I travel quite a lot in zoom dot us is a company that I see with billboards all over airports throughout the United States and internationally and I scratch my head about it because I know that I know the person that used to own the domain name for a period of time he doesn’t own it anymore and I’m sure he would have worked out monthly payments with that company even if the price was exorbitant for them to pay that on a monthly basis and fit that into their budget but there’s they’d rather spend it on those billboards and then at the same time their potential customers are going to the dot-com that could have you know other pictures on it could have something totally different and they’re like then that opportunity is going how much money are you leaking out of the bucket with holes it just doesn’t that stuff doesn’t really make sense to me one of the examples I was thinking about talking about today too was there’s a company we’re selling the domain name login comm and we’re also selling the domain name we’re representing it password calm and we have companies like one password calm and log me in and dash lane that we have approached about these three these two domain names to see if they’re interested in and it’s been radio silence and not showing any interest and we find it very strange that especially dashlane they had some ads up they did a Superbowl ad a 30-second Superbowl ad and then they had a blog that they sent the traffic to and there was pictures on both sides of somebody in a robe floating in the air with clouds and in talking about taking back the internet and you weren’t really sure what they did and in the comment section in the comment section somebody said I think it’s a they sell clouds or bathrobes as a joke and then you click on it and it’s a one it’s like a one password solution but if I’m gonna give them they’re asking you for your to pay monthly X amount of dollars it’s like five bucks they’re asking you to give you give them every username and password to your entire life they’re asking you to give all of your credit card numbers write everything and they’re saying they’re gonna protect it on you and their name is dashlane I don’t I don’t understand and they have a guy in a bathrobe with clouds in the background is their person I don’t understand I don’t feel comfortable in getting all that information to them if they own the domain name password calm which is exactly what they’re selling and then they made the site almost look like it’s a fortress I’d be a little more into it to feel safe sure I mean at the very least I’m gonna go and talk to maybe log me in the log me and doesn’t really make sense because you don’t say log me in I feel like someone’s trying to bang on the door I would think about login is probably a better name for their Business it’s more memorable it creates more credibility it’s easier to spell you can advertise it on the radio it is it checks off every single basic box of marketing all the basic box and marketing rules and it’s perfect for any of these you know these three businesses so you know I find it strange that those three haven’t I mean we’ve still got an interest from other parties but those three players haven’t I guess I’m kind of calling them out here today on your on your blog hopefully they’re listening and I’d love to have a fruitful conversation
Bill Hartzer
kind of recently though lets you know look at Amazon when you know the Amazon originally was books and now Amazon the word Amazon and that brand has nothing to do really with you know what the word is so there are those you know saying what’s our target or for example target I think about you know target practice or something I don’t really necessarily think about so there are those exceptions out there where yeah I mean there are as far as Brandon goes right
Jeff
What does Amazon and target have in common they’re one words
Bill Hartzer
yes that’s very yes there’s been a lot of money unfortunately you know branding at this point you know over the years and sure
Jeff
I mean and then look at ring comm so ring comm is a domain that we sold when I was at unit is tree and they sold the company that that company was sold within two or three years of launch to Amazon’s for over a billion dollars and the owner of that company who was an ex-employee of Amazon I’m not sure if you know this story said they would never have gotten that valuation and they never would have gotten that purchase price without owning the defending they didn’t own ring they would have been they never would have gotten the market share they should have they never would have saw the growth that they were supposed to get and they never would have gotten the purchase price that they got out of Amazon ever know exactly right so I think that it’s imperative for some of these companies I mean they’d Ashley would love to get piece of log means market share and they’re one of the first to the party right I mean same with one password they’d love to get a piece of log Mann’s market share as well they’re late again late to the party so how do you do it you find the best possible brand that people are going to trust and this is a massive a massive leap of faith to any of these companies to give people this kind of information and I think that that is a perfect opportunity for them to prove that that they’re here for a long time they’re not going to get hacked and that we are the leader in our space
Bill Hartzer
sure give us a little bit you know say I have a domain or are me you know are a couple domain names that I you know bought you know I woke up in the middle of the night and said hey you know that’s a great idea for a company I need to go and see if that domain name is available I go on my phone and it’s available and I purchased it and you know now I’m six months later and you know now it’s I haven’t always started that project I still own this domain now it’s a year or two it’s eleven and a half months later do I renew it or not how do I figure out you know that those domains that I you know bought awhile back how do I figured out you know if I should drop all more what the value is kind of means and how do I how would I set go about selling them okay so I’m gonna take you through kind of a speed version of this sure
Jeff
so the first thing I would do is I would go to a website like Esteban I put the domain name in there and hit enter I would see what kind of comes up there I would look at different data which would be comparable sales on there, look at those I would take out the ones that are inferior so you might see ones I just don’t absolutely don’t meet the criteria if you want to go into like great detail I have a YouTube channel called saw sells we’re actually gonna there’s actually on there me teaching how to appraise domains but this is the lazy way of doing it is I would see you know what on there kind of catches up to similar quality when I say similar quality if the words make sense phonetically like in a sentence and you’ve heard both in words together before that’s a plus if you haven’t or it’s the wrong tense it doesn’t quite make sense I’d immediately put like a little red X next to that one and then I would I would certainly look there then I would think to myself am I going to do this project if I wake up two years from now you know will I revisit it will I regret selling this and if the answer is no it’s probably time to move on so my suggestion to you would be going to a website like main jet going to GoDaddy put some sort of a low reserve on the domain name and get rid of it now if you multiply this because I know that entrepreneur entrepreneurs like myself and like you bill the gears are always spinning so this isn’t something that happens just once it happens a lot so then all of a sudden you wake up one morning and now you have 200 of these or 300 leaves and now you’re spending two thousand three thousand five thousand ten thousand dollars a year on renewals on ideas that are never gonna happen and you’re carrying these and even if you’ve invested five hundred or a thousand dollars in this name and even if you only knee at 200 bucks in the name Kjetil action take the loss get your money and move on to the next one you’re gonna let them go that’s the best advice I can give you there’s so many people that have come to me that have these big portfolios of thousands of names or carrying them year after year after year there’s no reason to carry half these names and they’re just throwing money in the trash because they spent more than the renewal on at hundreds of dollars and they’re just unwilling to let it go let it go take that money by something else buy a new dream and move on with it you know get you right off on your taxes and take it sometimes you’re gonna make money you say wow that was great
Bill Hartzer
yeah now there are certainly some exceptions to that and the ones you know I would you know from my experience if you are actively Getting offers or people are actually you know at least let’s say I mean it depends on you know what your definition of actively getting offers but you know if somebody if you’re you know once a week or once or several times a month somebody is sending you an email or contacting you giving you an offer then you probably you probably would keep the name right you can just drop
Jeff
it’s like a volcano it’s popping out a little a little ash and a little smoke and a little lava and then eventually it’s gonna fill up so what I would certainly do is I’ve put it on the market places get it the exposure put a price on it you know get a good landing page now I’m in there I like ft personally it’s a good little affordable solution you know have the leads dumped into your email you can connect it on to some CRM is out there and then work those leads or give a guy like me the opportunity to work on those opportunities sure and put it up for sale those kinds of names are the best names because you know there’s demand and I would never let those go yeah the depth the stat that I would look at is if you have one even one interested party or two hundreds of parties a year on a name I probably wouldn’t I wouldn’t just put it up for auction I would probably sit on it right if it’s making parking and it’s making close to registration so you’re carrying cost is a buck or maybe nothing if you’re making ten cents a year on it I wouldn’t drop it because there’s people coming to that name that’s showing there’s something out there there’s a pulse right so I keep it but if it’s not making registration it’s not getting inquiries and there’s no action on it what they give the hot potato to somebody else you know take your losses unless you’ve invested it a lot of money in it and let it go right that’s my best advice that I can give you
Bill Hartzer
yeah or if there’s any chance that you could potentially develop it or actually you know have a writer rights of content and put it out there you know there’s potential for you know for you know rather than just having it’s it just actually you developing into 5 10 20 page sight you know that that potentially you know could get it going again
Jeff
yeah but again now you’re getting an even deeper and there’s a reason why there’s nothing happening with the day’s first place right that’s why we talking it was it was the plan that never took off right the idea that never happens I had this brilliant idea a long time ago that you can make a party table that was disposable so we’ve come in like a bag that you get at the party store for like ten dollars but then when I figured out what like design and engineering in and getting the everything started with it to make it and then get and then pitch that to like the party store and all these things I mean I went how to pay every penny I had in the bank on a chance and I didn’t even understand the industry
Bill Hartzer
so you know that was a disposable party table dot-com
Jeff
But that dream is over like it’s over now so I’d say knowing that even if it had an opportunity now I just have too many other things and selling domain names for myself as a much more sure bet than me investing all this time money resources and energy into this it just doesn’t make any sense yep take it off the chin right
Bill Hartzer
sure so with that said we’re just about out of time so thanks for joining me today how do we get in touch you met you I know you mentioned your YouTube channel saw sells youtube.com so I just look up you know the YouTube channel saw sells go directly to saw.com is that the best way to get in touch
Jeff
yes I comm go to the contact page you know we do domain acquisitions or react on behalf of buyers we sell super premium names we also manage people’s domain portfolios where we would work on an entire portfolio where they would point their Percy Landers to us and then we would also be taking some of those names to market and selling them and then appraisal services as well
Bill Hartzer
all right thanks again Jeff this has been the this has been the digital marketing with Bill hearts our pod thanks again Jeff and we’ll see you Online
Jeff
anytime thank you
