How to Sell a Domain Name - with Adam Dicker

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Interview with Adam Dicker, DNFCollege.comWatch the full video at:http://www.domainsherpa.com/how-to-sell-a-domain-nameBefore we get started, you know DomainTools.com, right? I can typewhois.sc/domainname really fast and I do it daily, but until recently I didntknow how powerful their other tools were. If I want a domain name, I can seta free alert to notify me when it changes status. If it goes to auction, I can usetheir sales history tool to find comps and determine my maximum bid price.After I buy it and develop the domain into a business, I can set up alerts forany domains registered that contain my trademark, and I can set up registrantalerts of all my competitors so I can keep an eye on what domains theyrebuying and know what theyre up to before they make any announcements.DomainTools.com needs to be in your toolbox, like it is in mine. Go sign upfor an account on DomainTools.com today.My second sponsor is David E. Weslow at Wiley Rein. Imagine having alegal issue, like a UDRP or cease and desist, imagine having to get anagreement put together quickly for buying or selling a domain name, andimagine going to your family lawyer who just doesnt get it, or one of theexpensive law firms in your city who are going to invoice for thousands uponthousands of dollars. Then imagine going to David E. Weslow, who willunderstand your domain name portfolio and your intellectual property assets,understand the domain name environment, and be able to help you out. DavidE. Weslow. I trust him, and I suggest you give him a call. Your initialconsultation is free. Call David E. Weslow at Wiley Rein.Finally, our newest sponsor is Protrada - The Domain Exchange. Protrada isan amazing new platform for professional domainers and new-comers alike.Protrada makes trading domain names easy. With just a few clicks, you cananalyze, bid, buy and sell domains across all major marketplaces includingNameJet, Go Daddy, SnapNames and Craigslist. You can also developstagnating domains you own into great-looking, content-rich, socially-activewebsites that will rank at Google and Bing. This tool is more comprehensivethan any other Ive seen. If you only use it for its 21 powerful buying filters,Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 1 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority youll get your moneys worth. Get your free 14-day trial now atProtrada.com.Heres your program.Michael Cyger: Hey everyone, my name is Michael Cyger. Im the publisherof DomainSherpa.com, the Domain Name Authority, and the place whereyou came to to learn how to become a successful domain name entrepreneurdirectly from the expert themselves.If you are like me you want a bunch of domain names that you have acquiredover the years that some of which you want to sell. But how do you selldomain names and what are the most effective domain name sales tactics.Joining me to answer these questions is Adam Dicker. Adam is the CEO ofDNForum.com – the largest online domain name discussion forum. He is alsothe founder DNFCollege.com, an online school dedicated to mentoring asmall group of people who want to learn how to become successful domainname investors. More than 3,000 students have gone throughDNFCollege.com to date.Adam, welcome back to the show.Adam: Thank you and I appreciate you having me on the show.Michael: For those of you watching this show and havent seen Adamsprevious DomainSherpa show, after this show you can go visitDomainSherpa.com/Adam-Dicker for an in depth look at how Adam built hismost recent lead generation business in the medical industry - Specifically inthe cord blood bank market. It is a great example of how you did not need tobe into domain names in the mid 1990s to establish yourself and make moneytoday. And hopefully we are going to have Adam back many more times. Soif you hear a topic during this show that you want to learn more about in thefuture please scroll down to the comments and let Adam and me know whattopic you would like a show dedicated to.Today were going to be talking domain name sales, Adam. Those peoplewho are watching this show maybe from the entrepreneurial community, theAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 2 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority startup community, just business owners that want to learn how to selldomain names that they may own they may not know you as a domain namehall of famer, as the owner of the largest discussion forum in the market. Canwe start off with some stats on your domain name sales? In a previousinterview you told us that you currently own about 40,000 domain names.Some weeks you will go out and buy from five domain names to thousandsof domain names. What is the highest domain name sale that you have evermade?Adam: Well lets start with your original comment. Just yesterday Iregistered about 400 new names in fields I plan on entering for more leadgeneration areas. Ive done some more research and like everybody else Ifound about 500 good areas for lead generation. So Ill go back to leadgeneration for just a second and then Ill hit the other question. A good topicfor lead generation site is any product or service that sells for over $500. Thatallows you to make 20% and at least earn $100 per lead. Dont bother settingup lead gen businesses for costs or services under $100 like florists or limoservices. You wont make more than $10 or $20 per lead or per sale, so forthose set up affiliate links.So like I said Ive come up with a whole bunch of new ideas for lead genbusinesses. Ill give you a few nuggets now and then they can ask about themmore later. So a couple that I am entering now are landscaping because it is agood time to set up landscaping sites with most of Canada and the US hittingwinter. You have plenty of time to build out your site before March or Aprilhits.Michael: Is that landscaping design, landscaping installation, landscapingmaintenance, all of those different areas?Adam: All of those things. Mostly just basic landscaping and stone patiosand things like that. And so I am dealing with landscaping, architecture(which is a big commission based business) and them dealing with manydifferent types of lawyers like family lawyers, criminal lawyers, real estatelawyers, and even intellectual property lawyers like we deal with on theinternet. So alright lets hear your question.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 3 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Michael: Highest domain name sale you have made.Adam: I have been lucky enough to have quite a few high end domain sales.Elephant.com was a good one but it is protected by a non-disclosureagreement. The store is quite famous. They UDRPed me and they lost. Sothey had no choice but to buy the domain name if they still wanted it, whichthey did. I believe the domain name sold in 2006. And I have sold quite a fewother domain names like Forums.com, pw.ca (which I will get into a little bitmore with a story later). I sold sm.com to a bank in the Philippines.Michael: Are any of these public information Adam? Like Forums.com?Was that a six figure, seven figure domain name?Adam: I think Forums.com is public. I think it sold for $400,000.Michael: What about sm.com, a great two letter domain name that could beused for probably thousands, tens of thousands of companies out there?Adam: Yes sm.com is a good story because I paid $15,000 for it and sold itfor mid six to upper six figures. There are a lot of good stories but there arestill lots and lots of ways to get into this business. Its not hard like you say toget in and earn money in this business.Michael: Have you sold a domain name in the seven figures?Adam: Yes but like I said I cant talk about the exact price. Two or three butI cant talk about them because of the non-disclosures.Michael: Elephant.com was one of them being a non-disclosure. Since yousold in 2006 doesnt the NDA expire after a certain while?Adam: To be honest with you I never checked on it. I dont know. If theyask me not to disclose that I have to respect that.Michael: So you own 40,000 domain names, you are buying a bunch itseems like every year. How many domain name inquires do you receive inany given month would you say?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 4 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: About 100 to 200, both through email and through sales lin,000s onlanding pages or through the marketplaces like Sedo, Afternic and Go Daddyauctions and things like that.Michael: So you receive basically a handful a day and that leads to 100 or200. For 40,000 domain names you receive 100 to 200 per month. And howmany domain name sales do you typically make in a given month?Adam: About 20 or 30. I mean it really depends. Of course that numberwould be higher if I was a motivated seller which I am not, which means Ican afford to hold out for a better price. So it all depends. In some monthspeople need to make their rent so they sell a little bit lower. There are certaintimes a year where you will get better bargains like between November andthe end of January because people are trying to save money for trips or forChristmas presents. And in January they are looking to pay off their creditcard debts.Michael: Alright well you heard it here. If people are looking to buy now isa good time to get out there and start making inquires because people need topay off their credit card or pull together some money so they can buy theirholiday gifts. And if you are getting 20 to 30 sales per month what is youraverage domain name sales price per say? Leave out the sm.coms and theForums.com, you know those are the ultra premium domain names that Ithink that are in a different class for a majority of your domain names. Whatwould you say was the average domain name sales price?Adam: Right now Id say the sweet spot is between $4,000 and $9,000 butobviously some larger sales skew those numbers like you said. But $4,000 to$9,000 is about right. I own 3,500 four letter .coms and if I wait (and Itypically do wait) they sell easily for $4 and $5,000 and I see people sellingthem on the boards all the time for $150 to $200 which is because they areimpatient.Michael: I get a few email newsletters with domain names for sale and I justlook through them to see what is interesting and I noticed on one of themthey had I think 3,500 four letter .coms for sale and you had to inquire to seeAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 5 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority what the portfolio was but at one point they were listed at a certain price andthen they were reduced and then they were reduced and I think right nowthey are selling for around $60 or $70 per domain name if you bought thewhole lot of 3,500. Is that a good deal considering that you are selling themfor…?Adam: Well I can tell you one thing those arent my 3,500 domain names.But yes $60 at 3,500 is a very good deal. You would be surprised at some ofthe inquires you get. Like I have got one guy, and some people arent thatbright, his name is Clay Luy so he wants cluy.com and we negotiated a priceand then he backed off and I know he is going to come back because he hasno other way to get it besides to come through me. So at $60 a pop it is a verygood investment, you are definitely going to recoup your money but you aregoing to be willing to wait.A good example of that recently I sold a domain that I bought in 2005, I soldit last week, it was seals.com. I paid $6,300 for it in 2005 and last week itsold for $65,000 plus another $7,000 which was the broker fee which thebuyer agreed to pay. So my take away was $65,000, which is pretty much1000%.Michael: That is pretty amazing. Clearly spread out over six years, you hadto wait six years, you had to have enough capital to be able to put that on theside, wait your six years, pay your $10 a year renewal fees and finally it paidoff. In those six years did you receive other offers that were for $3,000 or$5,000 and you said agh why did I buy this?Adam: I mean I did get a good offer from the US government who wanted(it was a general or some sort of commander) who wanted to set it up for aNavy Seals type project but that never went anywhere. Ive had some goodoffers on seals.com before but really the company that bought it they sellactual seals, not the animals, but seals to seal products, I dont know what thehell kind of seals they really are really. When you are getting 1,000 timesrevenue you dont really care what the seals they are actually using it for. It isnot the club Seals I made sure of that.Michael: Is that the clothes for baby seals.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 6 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: It is nothing like that. So I am feeling good about it. And it was agood deal and you have to be willing in this industry to wait and part of theproblem is people are very impatient; they want to get the quick fix. And theydont realize that the only people that make money right away (and I take usback to the gold mine days) a lot of people or a lot of gold miners went out inthe mines and they worked days and days, and months and months, to get alittle nugget of gold and when they found it it was worthwhile. But what theydont realize is that most of the people that made all the money were the guysthat sold the picks and the shovels. So to me in our business the registers arethe ones that are selling the picks and the shovels and domainers are the goldminers. And once in awhile you get a nugget but you have got to be willing towait for it and you have got to dig for it and you have got to be very patient.And I am in a position and a lot of people are in a position where now withparking revenue as low as it is. To going back to full time jobs which allowsthem a steady income to support their families so they can be a little bit morepatient in waiting for better numbers on their sales.Michael: And I think that is a great point because so many people love RonJacksons weekly emails and sales chart summaries that show what happenedin the last week. He takes the sales from various marketplaces SEDO,Afternic, Go Daddy, anybody that publishes information he verifies it anddoes a great job listing them for sale. And I look at them as Im sure otherpeople do look at them and it is very easy to think wow that is easy money.You know I can go out and buy domain names like that every single day andI can just flip them. But that is not actually the case. These arent lotterytickets that somebody bought yesterday and are selling today. These are infact domain names that people owned for awhile and it takes awhile forinterested parties to contact them, to agree to a decent sales price and then tosell them.Adam: Well you can go out and you can buy decent domain names and flipthem very quickly but you are not going to get near as much if you wait forthe right buyer to come along. And one of the things that I am going to getinto later is it is very important to understand that as a domainer we dont setthe sales price for a domain name. The price is set by the buyer, what thebuyer is willing to pay. So that part of it is really out of our control. So if weAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 7 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority can get a buyer for seals at $1,000 and he wont go any higher we can get abuyer that goes up to $6,500, we get a buyer that goes up to $300,000because the name has value to their business. But that sales price is not set byme no matter what I do or how long I wait.Michael: Good point. Before we get into the actual tactics themselves, youhave already mentioned a couple of domain names that you sold recently. Doyou have a few more domain names that you sold yesterday, the day before,the day before that you can throw out a domain name and a price so we canget an idea for the kinds of domain names that you are selling on a regularbasis. Not the sensational ones, the great ones like seals.com that you sold for$65,000 but the nuts and bolts.Adam: In my head I dont really have any but I sold a few four letter .comsthis week and late last week and again they sold between the $4,000 to$5,000 mark. Those are the ones that are in my head. I sold permissions.ca toa school board. It hasnt completed yet but I know it will because they sendme the contract and we both executed on it. There are a lot of other sales thatdo go through. The CA market is starting to heat up a little bit. So there aresome good sales coming up on that. Off the top of my head, Im sure I willthink of something later on as we go through the interview.Michael: Alright, we will get through it. So I went to DNF College, I lookedat the website, I looked at what you are doing there. Some great, great contentis being delivered on DNFCollege.com. You have been gracious enough togive me access to it so I could take a look around. On the course outline thefirst bullet that you list you say: You will learn that buying domains is only5% of the work and 95% is knowing how to sell. Why do you say that?Adam: I mean for selling a domain I always start out by saying anyone canbuy domains. It doesnt take a lot of brains to go out and buy any kind ofdomains, go to our beds (and I know you and I are going to do another videoon how to buy the right domains later on) but the problem is you can go outand buy domains and that is only 5% of the work because anybody can buy adomain. But actually understanding how to negotiate a sale and how to sellwill get you the most value for that domain name. So I can take a $2,000 andmake it a $60,000 or $80,000 or I can take a $2,000 that you bought for $7Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 8 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority and you sell at $2,000 and you think wow great, but the problem is you haveleft a lot of money on the table. And you also have to remember and the mostimportant thing, like I just said before, we dont set the price, the buyer does.So you have to understand how to negotiate to get the best possible price.Always know what you paid for a domain name before responding to anoffer. That way you know how much you stand to make or lose on a domain.And you dont always make money on domain names. Sometimes youactually lose money on a domain name. But hopefully those times are rare.We are in a great business so dont be too greedy or you will blow a sale.Three days ago a gentleman popped me up on MSN asking me my opinion.He had an offer for a two letter .net for $36,000 and then they went up to$57,000 and then he said what should I do? I said take the $57,000 as fast asyou can and close it. And he got greedy and he asked for just over $70,000and he ignored my advice. Well the next thing you know the buyer pulls outcompletely, got pissed and the most they want to offer him right now is$35,000. Hes upset. I warned him he should have taken that $57,000, hedidnt listen and now he has learned a costly lesson. So you much rememberthough in our industry if we buy a domain at $8 and it sells for $100 you havemade 1,250% profit. You will never get that kind of money on a return froma bank. So now Im not suggesting that you sell all your domains for $100 buttake it as a good example to show our business can generate profit like noother is done correctly. He didnt take the advice at $57,000. It was a twoletter .net. He should have taken it. Now he is going to have to sit out andwait a good six months to a year before they come back and if they still wantthe domain then.Michael: Lets talk about that because I agree it is a fair market, the marketis set by the buyer. If you are offering a domain name for sale the offers thatcome in will determine the value of that asset. But, just like you said earlierwith seals.com you paid $6,300 for it. It may have been a buy it now price,you bought it right then, the buyer set the price, why didnt you sell that for$12,000 when that person came to you that you sold it to and looked at it andsaid I just received 100% return on my investment? Then over six years soyou can reduce the value of it or whatever. Clearly the market sets the pricebut on the other hand you also determine the value of it. How do you wrestlewith those two things Adam?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 9 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: Part of becoming a professional domainer is understanding how toevaluate domains. And I personally evaluated seals at about $125,000 and Idid that because, like I said, Im not a motivated seller so I can sit and wait forthe right buyer to come along. I did most of my big transactions back thenthrough Escrow.com (which is great because it keeps a great history of whatyou paid for a domain name). So I was looking at the offer, and looking at theoffer and then I went back and I looked and I saw I only paid $6,300 for itand then I realized 1,000% return is a pretty damned good return in anybusiness. So I decided to let it go. And this is one that I actually used a brokerfor which I dont usually do. And they sold the domain and I told them Iwould let it go for $65,000 but the buyer is going to have to pay your feebecause I want to walk away with $65,000. And yes I could have sold it for$20,000 and I could have earned whatever, 400% on it and that could havebeen the scenario and if I had needed the money for something or I wasbuying a new house or I needed a down payment for something I may have.I mean there have been times when I let domains go for much less than Ishould have. I am going to get to one of those stories probably at the end ofthis interview where I lost a lot of money because I had left a lot of money onthe table but I still made a lot of money. So at the end of the day I cant alsoworry about (and this is something that domainers do) I cant worry aboutthat I sold it for $64,000 and somebody else is going to turn around and flip itfor $300,000 or $350,000 because that doesnt matter to me. The bottom lineis I made money on my investment. I can take half and invest in moredomains or I can bank the whole thing and think okay this was a goodinvestment for me. Ive learned how to make money. I learned how to selldomains for a profit. Pat yourself on the back and say this one was a goodone.Michael: How did you determine that seals had a value of $120,000 to you?Adam: Just over the years Ive come to set up my own valuation tools andsystems that I run through Excel and a lot of it is based on traffic, it is basedon how much it is earning on Pay Per Click, it is based on brandability, itsbased on is this an industry defining term (which this one is)…Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 10 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Michael: With seals you werent thinking about the animals, you werethinking actually about the seals that are in pumps or whatever to makesomething leak proof.Adam: Well I happen to be famous for loving animals. I have been ananimal lover my whole life. I watch Animal Planet all the time. So I boughtElephant.com, I bought Giraffes.com, I bought Seals.com and probably abouta host of others. And it turns out that all my animals have been very nice tome.Michael: Alright Adam for those that dont have the 15 plus years – 20 plusyears – Im not sure exactly how many years of internet experience that youhave what is a good bench mark for them to determine the value of a domainname? What is a good tactic for them to use? Should they go to an onlineevaluation tool? Should they pay for online valuation or online appraisals?Should they send you an email? What is the best way for them to determinethe value of a domain that they own?Adam: To be honest with you at the beginning, and I did this myself, I waslucky enough to find somebody that I could trust that I would run by thingsthat I was thinking of purchasing or things that I was thinking of selling andsay am I getting a good deal? And that is the best benchmark you can get.Find somebody you can trust, whether it be me or somebody else and usethem as a benchmark. My advice on appraisal tools and all the guys that writethem wont like this but it is dont ever pay for an appraisal. And why isbecause they are useless. Remember what I said earlier the buyer dictates theprice. You little piece of paper saying it is worth trillions of dollars wont getyou any more revenue for your domain.Appraisals are just a way for you to get an ego boost and a waste of money atthe same time. There are also known scams of people asking you to getappraisals before they buy your domain name. Then you get the appraisalfrom the lowest company that they send you and that is where it ends. Theynever buy the domain name so please dont fall for that either.Michael: But what if you go to one of the more reputable services likeSEDO.com is the largest marketplace in the world. They offer an appraisalAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 11 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority for I dont even know what it is. Lets say its $30 or $40. Im not sure, on thatorder of magnitude Im sure. If you got an appraisal for $10,000 doesnt thatgive you more ammunition when somebody comes to you and offers $5,000or $1,000 for it? You could say hey SEDO the largest marketplace in theworld said it was worth $10,000?Adam: Not really because if the buyer is not going to give you any moremoney for it, it is completely useless. Plus in most cases the people doingthese appraisals are running algorithms. They put in your domain name andout comes a price. So you are not really getting any value. They dont knowhow many competitors there are for that domain name for that keyword. Likeif you are selling insulation. You have 10 companies that are famous forselling insulation so Insulation.com may have more value and it may comeout on an appraisal. But at the end of the day an appraisal is like a jewelryappraisal. A jewelry appraisal is only good if it is stolen and you want toreplace it. You domain name hopefully wont get stolen. And a domainappraisal has no value what so ever.Michael: What about DNForum.com? Your discussion forum. Do you havea special area of your board that is just dedicated to getting appraisal inputfrom other domain investors and those on your discussion forum?Adam: Yes DN Forum serves as a gut check to keep you realistic on yourprices. But I always tell people buy from domainers but dont sell todomainers. And remember if somebody asks you to do it for a price or theysend you an email about a domain name and ask for stats on a domain namedont sell it because they are a domainer. Only domainers ask for stats ondomain names. And you want to sell to end users. You dont want to sell todomainers.Michael: Okay so a domainer is going to ask you for stats, is it bad toprovide those stats. If they are great stats wouldnt that serve your purpose?Adam: Yes generally stats wont help the sale. If a gentleman is buying it,they are buying it because they want to brand their business, an end user theyare not buying it because you are getting 10 or 15 or 100 or 150 or 200 usersto the site. So I have never really provided stats to anybody. And I have neverAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 12 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority had any trouble selling domain names. End users simply do not know aboutdomain stats and they dont care about them. If they want Mikesblog.comthey want it because it has some value to them. They see the value. I dont seeit but they do and that is the important thing.Michael: I think we just gave the audience a great tip for those who want tovalue their domain names and clearly I think domain investors and otherpeople know when they generally have crappy domain names and when theyhave decent domain names. So dont go out and ping everybody in the worldon your crappy domain names. Everybody knows that they have them in theirportfolios. Rick Schwartz calls them pigeon shit. We all have them. EvenRick will say that he has them in his portfolio. But here is a great opportunityfor those in the audience. If you want to reach out to Adam and you dontknow Adam go down to the comments, post a comment to Adam, tell himthat you enjoyed the comments that he provided, the tactics that he providedin the interview. Start forming a relationship with Adam. And then maybeyou join DNForum.com. Adam has been very open with his email addressand with his telephone number and other contact details. Once you create arelationship it is easier to ping Adam and ask him for a quick piece of advicemaybe on a domain name that you are thinking to sell. And there is a greatopportunity to interact with a lot of domain name experts throughDomainSherpa and other websites that are out there. The first thing you haveto do is create relationships. So I will emphasize that.Adam awhile ago I had Andrew Rosener on and he talked about valuingdomain names, generic .com domain names by breaking apart the domainname into the individual words, going to the Google Ad Words KeywordTool, typing in those individual words, finding out what the search volume isand the Cost Per Click on Google Ad Sense. So you have to sign into yourAd Sense account as well. And then multiplying those two things together,multiply it by a factor, by lets say 35% and saying if you buy this domainname and you work on the domain name you can get it up to the top ofGoogles organic search results and you should look at that investment as aportion of what it would take for you to buy marketing in Google Ad Sense tobe at the top of that keyword phrase. Do you think that that is one way tovalue a generic keyword domain name?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 13 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: Sure. Everybody has their own formula that they use. And what maywork for some may not work for others. To me in general if a domain makesat least $5 a year its a keeper. But everybody has their own way of valuatingdomain names and that is certainly a good one.Michael: So we have talked about setting prices. Clearly you are notproviding any hard fast rules but ping other people. Look at Andrew Rosenerfor another input on valuating domain names and his interview is atDomainSherpa.com/Rosener-equation. DNF College another tactic that youprovide is set your minimum offer requirement at $1,288. So when you go tosell domain names and you list them in different marketplaces your advice isto put a minimum offer requirement of $1,288. Why is that?Adam: I do say that and where possible I dont like to spend too much timewith low-ballers however if you filter your domain name properly you canlist what I call junk domains for $100 and still make 1,250% profit if it sellsand you paid $7. So what I tell people is it is pretty clear: get a spreadsheet inExcel of you domain names, go back through your emails (as far back as youcan), make a list of every domain name that you ever received an offer on,mark those domains in purple in the Excel spreadsheet even if it was a low-ball offer. These are keepers even if they make no money because someonehas a need or a want for that domain.Then I tell them to gather all their parking revenue for the last 365 days (ifthey can, if not grab the last few months and extrapolate) and highlight thosein green - any that made more than the reg fee and those are keepers.Then I tell them to go through the list again and look for any domains thatyou feel have development potential regardless of revenue, mark those inblue and those are keepers.And then the final time I tell them to look at the domains that you feel youhave a hunch are good but have no development potential and earn norevenue, marks those in red. These are probably not keepers. I classify theseas junk.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 14 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority So take a look at what is left without a color and then list them at $100 to sellthem. You may make 1,250% on them and get rid of them and you wont getthat kind of interest at the bank. Or it is time to drop and some domainers arealways afraid to do that.Michael: So those domains that are junk lets call them, list them for $100and then if you dont sell them within the year when it is time for a renewalthen you just drop them?Adam: If nobody else wants them you have no reason to keep them.Michael: Where do you list them?Adam: I list them on all the major marketplaces. I list them on SEDO, I listthem on Buy Domains, Afternic, Go Daddy auctions. I list them on GoDaddy premium auctions. I list them everywhere because they have moreexposure and overexposure never hurts anybody on domain sales. I list themon the forums. I list them on DN Forum. I list them all over the place. But Imake sure the prices are consistent with the commission rate. And then themost important thing is if you do sell a domain name do into all thosemarketplaces and delete that domain name. I cant tell you how many times Ihad offers on domain names after I sold them.Michael: I have never gone onto any of these marketplaces and sold adomain name. Isnt there one system that I can just sign into that will list it onall the marketplaces for me Adam?Adam: Not really. I mean it is not easy. You have to go in and you have gotto manually do it. The most important two are SEDO and Go Daddy becausethey command the biggest audiences. And are just good places to list yourdomains in.Michael: So if you want to get the biggest bang for your buck go to SEDOand go to Go Daddy because those are the biggest marketplaces.Adam: They have the biggest audiences.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 15 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Michael: And so you list it. Do you list it for a minimum offer of $100 or doyou set it as a buy now price on say Go Daddy?Adam: Well Go Daddy offers all different kinds of ways you can list it.There is a couple things here. I tend to list them as offer/counteroffer. Andthat way I still control the sale and I dont have to sell it at a set price. Theminute you set a price you could be leaving money on the table. But lets notconfuse Go Daddy auctions with premium domain sales. Premium domainsales are the names that appear on the front of the site when somebodysearches for domains exactly or similar to your domain your domain will popup. Those premium sales must be priced. And you can price them forwhatever you want. I only set minimums, I never fix prices. That is just theway I do it.Michael: Okay so you set a minimum so that the system doesnt even emailyou for a low-ball offer. And that reduces the noise. And then the offers thatdo come through are over the minimum and then you can either reject them,counteroffer or not respond.Adam: Usually I counteroffer. Most offers when they come in at $1,288they are serious. I mean you can tell a lot by an opening offer. If you get anopening offer of $50 to $100 you probably know you are not going to getthem too high. Maybe to $200 to $300 if you are lucky. But if you get anopening offer of $1,200 you know it is going to close somewhere around$4,000 to $6,000 because nobody comes in with their best price right away.Michael: So at Go Daddy they do offer for sale options. We just had aninterview go live with Paul Nicks from Go Daddy auctions. So you can do toDomainSherpa.com/Paul-Nicks and I know Adam you are saying I haventseen that interview because it is coming out on Monday but by the time thisinterview comes out Paul will have gone live. And he goes into a lot of thedetails. There are four sale options on Go Daddy. They have theoffer/counteroffer, you have the offer/counteroffer/buy now, a buy now onlybutton and then you can send it to seven day auction. So for example if I putin an offer on one of your domains Adam you could say I dont like that Imgoing to send it to the seven day public auction and we will see whathappens. What the market will bear on that price. So do you ever list yourAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 16 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority domains with a buy now price because you want to have it listed in the availcheck process of Go Daddy when people are searching for a domain name?Adam: Yes I list some of the ones that I want to list on the Go Daddypremium auctions with a sales price. Those are usually my four letter .comnames or some logo domain names that I cap at about $4,888. And if they sellat that price (and I tend to sell one a month or one every two months) and it isjust extra cash.Michael: So you do list your four letter domain names with a buy it nowprice because a lot of people are searching for those short domain names andit is easy cash?Adam: Yes $5,000 is a reasonable price to get for a four letter .com thatdoesnt make any sense. I mean I wouldnt list Worm.com for that but I wouldlist other domains with letters that dont make any words or sense on them forthat because to other people I have sold a lot of four letter .coms to people inother countries where the words actually make sense to them.Michael: Lets talk about sales inquires. You have got your 40,000 domainnames, you receive 100 to 200 inquires per month. Most domainers donthave as many domain names as you do. So you could probably scale it downif I have 4,000 domain names maybe Im going to receive 10 to 20 domainnames as a general rule of thumb. Who knows if it is going to be right if mydomains are going to be as good as your. But when sales inquires come in doyou personally manage every single one of those inquires that comes in or doyou have a staff or a team that helps you manage them?Adam: I have a staff. I have a team of designers and developers and contentwriters. Ive also had the same assistant for the last 12 ½ years. But the onething that he doesnt touch is anything related to monetary so I am the onewho answers all of the sales emails and I handle all of the transfers and thingslike that. He has never had has access to my account.Michael: So approximately 5 per day inquires that you get you managethem yourself.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 17 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: Yes.Michael: Do you have any examples of a sales inquire that came in, and Iam suspecting that some of them are low-ball, some of them are medium-ball, nobody comes in with an $80,000 offer right off the bat. Are most ofthem low-balls or do you receive a decent number of them as realistic ordecent prices coming in?Adam: Everybody likes to get the best price for the buck so everybody triesto low-ball you to begin with. Ill talk a little bit further on on how you dealwith some of those. I have a couple of stories at the end of this on how I dealtwith low-ball offers.Michael: One of your recent offers that came in?Adam: Yes. Sorry say again?Michael: Can you give us an example of one of your recent offers that camein via email and how you handled it?Adam: Nothing comes to mind right now. But basically what I do is eitherfollow it up with an email. And dont be afraid to say look we are not in theright ball park. I am looking for this much on this domain name so I suggestyou go pick another domain name. I have done that quite a few times. Andthey have turned out to come back to me with more realistic offers and wehave closed on much higher sales.Michael: Okay so I am going to do a role play with you. I want to buyabcd.com. I do a whois look up because I am educated enough to do that. Isee that dcg.com owns it or Adam Dicker owns it through the whois. So Isend an email to the email address on file, even though you have it listed ondifferent marketplaces and say Adam I would like to buy this domain namefrom you. I can offer you $100 for it.Adam: So the first thing I do is look at it and I figure out what I paid for it. Iknow I paid $7 for it. And then Im going to send you a note back saying Irespect your initial offer but it is far too low. I am looking for something inAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 18 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority the neighborhood of $4,000 to $6,000 for this domain name. And if this is nota raise that you are comfortable with in setting up your new business then Isuggest you look elsewhere and purchase a different domain name.Michael: And I respond back to you Adam and I say hey I watched yourDomainSherpa interview with Mike Cyger. I know that you understand thatthe price is set by the market, what the market will bear. I can bear $1,000 forthe domain name Adam. I think it is a reasonable price, I appreciate yourtime, let me know when we can close.Adam: Well I appreciate your offer, its a good one and it is a respectableoffer at this point it is still far below what I was looking to get for the domainname. What I am willing to do is drop from the $6,000 to the $4,000 and thatis pretty much my bottom line price at this time.Michael: So you know what you want to get out of the domain name. Youare willing to walk away from the sale because you know if you wait longenough somebody is going to think $4,000 for a four letter .com domainname is reasonable. And you are willing to wait.Adam: I am but you have also told a lot more information but in yourchange from $100 offer to $1,000 offer has told me that there is a lot moreroom to move. You can tell by the negotiation process. That is why it is soimportant how high somebody moves and how quickly that they are really inwanting this domain badly. So you went from $100 to $1,000 so I know forsure that I can probably close you at around $3,500 if I want to. $3,000minimum and on a domain that I paid $7 for.Michael: Now if I would have thrown in another sentence in that reply andsaid this is the highest I can go.Adam: Then I would have said okay, again I appreciate your offer, its a fairoffer, its just below what I am looking for the domain name. You need tospend a bit more money to invest in your business. Getting the right name isvery important and I give them a little bit on why the premium domain namethat they have chosen would be good for their business. And I say but I wishyou luck. And you can go register another domain name at Go Daddy if youAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 19 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority like for $7 but it is not going to give you the same kind of branding and thesame kind of client base, or instant traffic, that you are going to get from mydomain name.Michael: So you know that you want to get $4,000 so you start at $6,000 togive yourself some room to come down in price for negotiation tactics?Adam: Yes you have to leave yourself some room. But you also have to berealistic. You have to know that sometimes you are not going to get your$4,000, sometimes you are going to sell it at $3,000 or $2,500. But at the endof the day it really doesnt matter because you still only paid $7 for thatdomain.Michael: Private or public whois information on all of your domains?Adam: Always, always, always public. I mean dont make it hard for peopleto find you. Make it easy for people to find you. The only people that need tohide are the people that have trademark domain names and by now youshould have gotten rid of all your trademark domain names. If you currentlyown a trademark domain name, or trademark typos, get rid of them. They canonly get you into trouble. What I suggest is that people visit trademarkia.comto look for current trademarks or to register a trademark. And then Go Daddyhas a really cool feature in the domain control center called Delete Domain.And it sends it into redemption right away. So use that feature and dump baddomains. I have gotten a couple C&D letters in the past. I went in and just hitdelete domain and that was the end of it. The maximum fine for having atrademark domain is $100,000 per domain plus any revenue that you havemade off of their trademark in that domain name. Do you really want to riskthat? I dont.Michael: That is a great point. I am a big believer in karma as well. And Idont mess with other things that are going to reduce my karma. That is agreat tip also for the delete domain because I know that I have got crappydomain names in my portfolio. I set them to non-auto renew so they wontrenew the next year because I know that they are just crappy hyphened or .netdomains.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 20 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: I am even going to give you one better tip that I normally wouldntgive out. And that is when you go ahead and delete that domain name, beforeyou do it, go in and change the whois information to fake whois informationand then delete it so that while it is in redemption its not showing your realname and address. It is just showing junk.Michael: Oh that is a great idea. I dont want to receive those renewal emailsevery week for the six weeks leading up to the renewal or what have you. Sothat is a good idea to use. Okay so we talked about getting the most exposureas possible, make your whois on the domain name public. Do you have apreference whether it should be a company name or a personal name if theyactually have a company name that they are using to sell domain names forexample?Adam: Yes, generally you should list your domain names in a companyname because a company offers you extra protection should there be an issueor a law suit or something like that.Michael: But the legal entity aside for protecting your assets Adam. Do youthink that buyers looking up a whois will say it is worth more because theycan see that a company owns it versus an individual?Adam: It probably does but I dont think that that has any bearing on any ofmy sales.Michael: Okay, public whois information. Marketplace we talked about. Ifyou want get them listed on all of them, but if you have to minimize yourwork and try and get the biggest bang for your buck list them on SEDO andGo Daddy auction. SEDO being the largest marketplace in the world in termsof the number of domain names and Go Daddy being the largest domainnames in terms of the domain names sold per month. So get onto those.Should the domains be parked just to have a for sale link displayed. I know alot of domainers dont want to park them. They dont want to haveadvertisements listed on them. They dont want to have to manage them. Youknow they just look for inquiries to come in or they sell them through themarketplaces. Do you recommend that they do park them in order to have aAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 21 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority for sale link displayed like is done on SEDO.com pages or a host of otherparking companies?Adam: I park my domains. There is nothing wrong at all with parking yourdomains until you get around to developing them. Just make sure that parkingfor you is just a step towards development.Michael: So that is sort of the passive selling process. You list your whoispublic information, you list them for sale. Lets move to proactively sellingdomain names. Which domain names in your portfolio are worth proactivelyselling? And contrast those to which of your domain names are worth waitingfor inquires.Adam: Personally most of the time I wait for inquires. And sometimes I gofind them. But going back to that Excel spreadsheet anything that you didntlist or highlight is not worth going out and proactively selling.Michael: Any general rules, generic words, two-word domain names, threeword domain names, four letter domains.Adam: No because you never know what the buyer is going to be interestedin. I have sold some three and four letter word domain names that I wouldhave thought would never sold for anything more than $20 or $40. So youreally never have any idea what they are looking to sell.Michael: At one point you actually well let me come back to that. So if youwant to sell a domain name, lets say that Ive got a domain name that isrelated to pictures and I know that Flickr and other companies online thatmake money through the premium model. You can upload some pictures forfree and then you can get more space or more services by paying amembership fee per month. Lets say that I have a domain name that I thinkFlickr might like (which is now owned by Yahoo I think). Is it worth me toreach out to that company to try and sell it?Adam: Sure I mean as long as its not a trademark and you are not trying tocapitalize on their traffic it sure benefits you to reach out. It also benefits youAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 22 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority to use something like LinkedIn to find a contact within that company thatwould have more influence than you as a total stranger.Michael: Who would I want to reach out to in the company?Adam: Any VP, any CFO, anybody with any decision power. And there arelots of them. They are all listed in LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is the best place tohit somebody that can influence a decision on a domain name purchase.Michael: So I am looking for somebody with some sort of authority with thecompany. I am not looking for the customer service reps, Im not looking fora sales person, Im not looking for a developer there, Im looking for someoneat the VP level or above.Adam: Yes you are looking for somebody that can decide, or influence thedecision, or pass it up to the person who can influence the decision and makethat decision to purchase.Michael: Okay so I can go on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn gives me a certainnumber of in-mails per month so I can send that person a mail saying I havethis domain name, I think you might be interested in it, let me know if youwant to discuss it. And that sends it out to them. And I can upgrade myaccount and buy more in-mails to send to them.Adam: Yes and there is no harm in doing that what so ever.Michael: Is there any other ways for me to get names and email addresses ofpotential buyers.Adam: Yes this is going to take us into the longest part of the discussion thatwe are going to have.Michael: Is this the information on how professional broker sell domainnames?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 23 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: No we are going to get to that a little bit later. First of all I want totalk about when you get an offer with or without a price and how to deal withthat offer. So this is going to be me talking a little bit.Michael: Okay lets do that and then we will come back and I will join myquestions inline.Adam: Okay, so whenever you get an offer with or without a price you haveto look at it closely. You have to analyze it from top to bottom. It can tell youmany things about the potential buyer. Here is a list of things to do withinitial offers so you can get the upper hand. The first thing you should do is:Is the email from a company email? If yes, go to the companys website andsee if it is obvious why they would want to buy your domain name. If no takethe Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo or other email and Google it. People tend to keepthe same email and that may lead you to their real names.If the email is signed with a full name: If yes look for them on LinkedIn andthen Facebook. LinkedIn is the most powerful. It shows their company, theirtitle and their website. Follow where that lead takes you. That may help youunderstand why they want the domain name.Number three: Is the email written in perfect English? This will also help youas generally company inquiries from intelligent people cant get away fromtheir writing styles.Fourth one is if none of this works reply to their email with this (and I havedone this many times): We do not take inquires seriously when they comefrom a Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo email address. Please email me from yourcompany email and I will take this inquiry more seriously. And many timesthey have venues their real emails to continue the exchange and then I gettheir real names and then I can follow some of the steps as above.Michael: Great, let me back up for a second. The perfect English. Tell meabout that again. If something comes in with broken English what does thattell you and how do you respond?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 24 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: It tells me I am usually dealing with an individual and I could belooking for somebody who is prospecting or just trying to make money off aquick flip. They may not be using it for their own company. They may be andthey may not be but usually emails that are sent out in perfect English (andIve had a lot of those) do tell you a bit about the person. Writing styles - youcan tell quite a bit from that initial opening email that comes in. And if youhave any other questions Ill let you ask them.Michael: I love the idea we dont take emails through generic emailaddresses, please send it from the company name because then it opens upmore information from them. You now know their full name, you know theircompany name. You can do some research on LinkedIn, on the web, andgather some information. So I understand that perfectly.Adam: And 95% of people will send it from their business email less than10 minutes later.Michael: So that gives you a lot of information to move forward withnegotiation processes. Is there anything else that comes in that you look for?Adam: Yes there are three types of domain sales inquiries and how tohandle each one. So in all three scenarios you have to take control of the offerand not leave control with the buyer. The first way is when you receive anexpression of interest without an offer. These are usually a waste of timeunless you can solicit an offer from the person. So respond by saying thankyou for your interest in my domain planets.com. I currently have plans todevelop this domain but if the right offer comes along I may consider sellingit. Please feel free to submit your best offer. And then I just sign it with mycompany information and all my contact information. This way you willknow if they are a chain puller and it will lead you onto an appraisal scam orif they are just a bargain hunter asking for an offer. Lets you right awayknow if they are wasting time, if they arent in your ball park.Michael: But on one hand you say take control of the situation but then onthe other hand you say submit your best offer. Why wouldnt you just say Iknow that I want $120,000 for seals.com? Submit your best offer and it betterAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 25 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority be over six figures. Or it should be over six figures in order for me toseriously consider it.Adam: You can do that too. Sometimes Ive had best offers come in abovewhat I would take for the domain name. So that is why I do it that way.Michael: And if you were to say make sure it is over six figures or submityour offer of a minimum six figures. They may just come back and say hereis my offer of $100,000 whereas if you wouldnt have said that they may havecome back with $140,000.Adam: In that case because they havent submitted an offer to begin withthey probably wont come back with an offer at all if you say I want $150,000for the name. So you have scared off a potential lead whereas maybe theywould have come back at $10,000 - $5,000. And remember that as long asyou know ahead of time the domain that they are inquiring about and whatyou paid for it you can sell it for a lot lower than $100,000 and still bemaking quite the profit. And have more money to invest in future domains.Michael: So that was the first tactic. Get the offer.Adam: The second type of offer is an offer with a price. You can tell a lotfrom the original offer. For example if you get an offer for $500 that issomehow serious an offer and you know that you have room to negotiate.The final price should be between $2,000 and $5,000 if you handle itcorrectly. Whereas if you get an offer between $10 and $100 you know thiswill probably be a waste of time unless you paid $7 for the domain name andyou have no development plans for this domain. It is a good chance to dumpone of those junk domains we talked about. Take your 1,250% profit asdiscussed earlier but you should still aim for the $500 to $1,000. The worstthey can say is no.So at that point you can reply with okay what is your best offer? When theyreply you can decide to take it or tell them to pick another domain name. Ihave sold many domain names, even the high five to six figure range, bytelling them to go pick another domain name. They may get pissed off for alittle bit but usually they come back within a week to two weeks. Again theyAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 26 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority dont have much choice but to deal with you if they want the domain. Peoplewant what they cant have and thats why we see auction prices sell for muchmore than the name is worth. And dont be afraid to say we are not even closeon the price I suggest you pick another domain name for your business. And Iwish you luck in your future endeavors almost ending then conversation. Ihave used this many times and it has worked like a charm.Michael: That is an offer with a price. What is the third offer type?Adam: Well I am still sticking to that. When you get an offer and you dontrespond too quickly half the fun is the chase. Here is a good example. I madean extra $100,000 on a domain sale because I got an offer on Thursday and Ididnt bother responding until Monday. To my surprise they upped theiramount due to my lack of response by $100,000. That was Forums.com bythe way.Michael: They upped their response by $100,000.Adam: $100,000. Just because I didnt respond. I responded quick to thefirst few offers and then I paused. And they got scared that I wasnt going tosell it so they upped their offer and I was just about to type okay Ill take$350,000 and meet you half way and then in came my inbox saying fine wewill take it at $400,000. So stay in control. You have what they want and it isnot like the cookie cutter houses where they can go next door if they dontlike your price and get the same house for cheaper. There is only one domainlike yours and if they want it they need to pay for it. But dont be too greedyor youll lose it like that guy that lost the $57,000 earlier that we talked about.Michael: Alright. Third offer type? You did have three?Adam: I did have three but I am a little lost on what my third was is becauseI went off the trail there.Michael: So you get an offer. Either the offer comes in and there is no priceattached. You will contact them back and you will say submit your best offer.Second offer type comes in, its an offer with a price, either it is $500 orabove, you know you can get them up because it is a reasonable offer or it isAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 27 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority a high enough price that indicates that you can probably negotiate. Or if it isin the $10 to $100 range it is probably a waste of time unless it was a domainname that you knew you wanted to sell for that price range.Adam: Sometimes you will get an opening offer of $10,000. And thoseopening offers tell you how serious they are about wanting the domain, howmuch they want it and they give you a lot of room for negotiation dependingon that price. Plus the other thing to pay attention to closely is the price likeyou did in our little role playing example where you went from $100 to$1,000. That is quite a jump in a negotiation. Usually they will go from $100to $250, but if you go from $100 to $1,000 and then I know you want thedomain more and I know I can get you to the $3,000/$4,000 sweet spot that Iam trying to get you to.Michael: And if I went from $100 to $250 on a domain that you wanted$4,000 for it and your initial price to them was $6,000, would you considerthat to be a waste of time? You would respond back saying I dont think weare going to meet up here. I want at least $6,000 for it and you should go lookfor another domain name?Adam: That is pretty much exactly how I would respond. But I would keeptrack of their email and the offer and the domain that they were interested inbecause, in like I said filtering your portfolio earlier, you want to keep alldomains that you have ever had an offer on them no matter how crappy it is.Michael: So all these come into you via email. Do you ever get somebodycalling you up saying Adam, show the domain Ive got to have it?Adam: You are getting me to skip to some of my stories down at thebottom. Ill skip down to one of those right now just because I can tell you aredying to get this one. So there are a couple of good stories. Let me find theone that I wanted. Okay so its not even on here. So this isnt even one of mystories so I can go back up to where we were.I got a call from a guy who wanted to buy MegaCity.com from me. Heoffered me $2,000. I happen to be talking to my wife on the other line at thesame time, so I wasnt very interested or very motivated to talk to this guy. SoAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 28 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority what I did was say look Im not really interested in $2,000, your offer is notgood enough. We need to hit $80,000 to $90,000 for it to be serious.Michael: Let me pause the story here for a second. Megacity, if I go toGoogle Ad Words and I type in mega city it is probably not going to haveany search volume. If I go to EstiBot or Valuate and I type in it is probablygoing to come back with $7 reg fee or something. It is a brandable domainname right? Am I thinking through this correctly?Adam: You are thinking through it somewhat correctly. They onlyadvantage that I have over you, and this is one thing that I stress, is that theperson that owns the domain and the portfolio has to know it inside out. AndI will give you two examples for that. I always got traffic on a domain called96123.net. Now you wouldnt know what kind of traffic that way but knowfrom going research on it that 96123.com is a Chinese site that sells phonecards. So I am getting a lot of traffic from people looking for phone cards.So lets go back to mega city. Yes it is probably not worth on stats probablynot worth more than $500.Michael: Okay but you could argue that brandable domain names, anybrandable domain name is worth $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 if you are willing towait long enough?Adam: Right.Michael: Okay so lets pick up the story. He calls you, you are on the phonewith your wife, he says hey Adam $2,000, lets skew the deal today and yousaid I think that this domain was worth how much?Adam: About $80,000 to $90,000 and I wasnt willing to sell it for less.Now the reason that I wasnt willing to sell for less is because I live inToronto and Toronto and all of its suburbs is known as the Mega City. Sothat is why I got the domain MegaCity.com. So it has meaning to me.Michael: It does and it probably has a lot of meaning to a lot of people inthat geographical area.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 29 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: Well I have since learned that California and all its suburbs arecalled the mega cities. And then I also did some research after the phone call(and I will tell you how the phone call ended in a minute) and I found out thatMercedes was coming out with a new car called The MegaCity. So rightaway I thought it was them and I thought they wanted it because of the car.So anyway I said I wasnt interested and then he threatened that he has atrademark and that he would come after me and he would get the domainthrough UDRP. And I said thats nice, have fun and I hung up on him.About a week later he emailed me back, like they usually do and he increasedhis offer.Michael: By about how much?Adam: It may have been about $10,000. I dont know. But this whole emailstream of emails that happened is listed on DN Forum and it was a very, verypopular stream and youll see from on DN Forum if you do a search forMegaCity from the beginning of the sale to the end of the sale where it finallysold. It didnt take long. It took like three or four days of going back andforth, maybe five days. But in the end the final sales price was $65,000.$60,000 or $65,000, I forget. So I got close to what I wanted. He got thedomain. It turned out to be a Brazilian guy who is starting a game calledMega City and he wanted it to brand his game.Michael: So from your prospective as the seller it really made no differencewhether somebody contacted you via telephone or via email, you know thevalue that you wanted for the domain name, you countered with it and youstuck to your guns. They could have walked away and you could have beenleft with a domain name and held onto it until somebody else was interested.Adam: Yes but the other benefit that I have is, because I do all the buyingand selling, there is not really one domain name that I have bought or soldthat I dont know what I paid for it. And this was one of those where I paid$10,000 for MegaCity.com. I had no action on it for about seven or eightyears. This was the first guy that called on it. So I figured selling it at $65,000Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 30 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority I was getting a 600% return on investment over eight years and I decided tosell at that point.Michael: Have you ever been soft on somebody that called you up andcreated a bond with you over the phone to be able to get it at a better price?Adam: That is a strange question but yes I actually have. I once actuallygave a guy a domain for free because he came to me with a good story abouthis wife who started a business. I still remember the domain and this wasprobably about 10 years ago. The domain was called bottletree.com. And hiswife was running some business making bottle trees. And I went to check itabout two weeks ago and she is still selling bottle trees on bottletree.com. Itis a unique product. He came to me with the story about how he wanted it forhis wife. Told me a whole sad story and he was honest with me about it thatshe was nagging him and he wants it. And being just married about five yearsI could understand a little bit of nagging. So I felt for the guy and I gave himbottletree.com.Michael: Nice. Do you ever get snail mail sent to you through the postalservice where somebody will say I want to buy this domain name?Adam: No. Never.Michael: Any faxes ever come in?Adam: No. Never. Just phone calls or emails.Michael: If somebody is sending you a letter to buy your domain whatshould be in that letter? An email lets say. Somebody is sending you anemail, they want to buy that domain. What should be in there in order to getthe deal done?Adam: It should have their information, their personal information, theirreal information and it should have a price.Michael: And the price should maybe be in the three figure, four figurerange depending on the domain?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 31 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: Yes depending on the domain name.Michael: So your tip for somebody, for an entrepreneur that wants to buy adomain name if we said that brandable domain names, not Mega City, onethat has been used. If you go search for it on the internet it probably doeshave a good amount of search volume. But other brandable domain names,abclandscaping.com – well that one has probably –greentreelandscaping.com. If I wanted to buy that brandable domain name,any brandable anybody can argue that it is worth $3,000. If I came in with anoffer of $500 you would think that that is reasonable enough to have aconversation with?Adam: Yes especially if I bought it for $7.Michael: You did research on that person. You saw that they were alandscaper. Landscapers dont make enormous margins on their work. Wouldyou consider selling it for less than $3,000?Adam: Probably not. Landscapers do make good money on what they do. Itdepends. That is another good point and we will get into that in the discussionwhen we talk about buying domains but you will have a harder time selling adomain to a landscaper or a baker (like Seattlebakery or Seattlelandscaper)than you will say selling something Seattlecriminallawyer, Seattlelawyers.Picking the right domains to sell is also key.Michael: Do you use different sales tactics if youre selling a generic domainname, you know Forums.com versus a brandable domain nameMegaCity.com, versus a geo domain name Seattlelawyers.com?Adam: No. Well I mean there are different ways to find purchasers. Like ifthey came to me, no Id use the same strategy whether it is a $1,000,000domain, $500,000 domain or $100 domain. It is the same strategy.Michael: So the strategies that we talked about and the strategies that youuse are the same regardless of the type of domain.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 32 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: Yes regardless of the type of domain and regardless of the price. Ifwe are not at the ball park at the $100 we are not…and Ive had people saythey will just offer me a reg fee and that is it and I know even if I want $100for it Im not going to get it. So sometimes you are just not in the ball park nomatter what price it is.Michael: I read one of those. I was laughing because I was onDNFCollege.com yesterday, the forum part, the college part ofDNForum.com and I was reading through some of your examples on there.And I read about the one that offered you the reg fee and then decided todouble the reg fee. And they had actually lapsed on their registration and theywanted to buy it back. I thought that was a funny story. So Im going to getinto how you find the people to contact. And Im going to ask you what aprofessional broker does but let me ask you this first. In the emails that youare sending back to potential buyers, people are inquiring about your domainname and you are responding back to them how does your email address andyour signature help the sales process?Adam: Okay that is a good question. My signature is very professional. Isign it Adam Dicker and then under that it says CEO Domain ConsultingGroup Limited, then it has an address, then it has a phone number, a 1-800number, and then I have a fax number and I have my Skype ID, and then Ihave my website (which in this case Im selling a domain name is dcg.com)and it says SEO and Website specialist. That lets them know that they aredealing with somebody that knows what they are talking about and they arenot going to pull a fast one so it scares away re-sellers right away.Michael: And for those that are just entrepreneurs or in the business andwant to buy a domain name they look at that and they say this guy has somecredibility. You are basically establishing credibility with them through yoursignature that then causes them to maybe react differently to the counter offerthat they may receive from you.Adam: Definitely and chances are pretty good that they are going to Googleme.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 33 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Michael: So having an online persona, an online LinkedIn account, orGoogle Plus account, or a website where they can go read about you helps inthe negotiation as well because if they look at you as an authority in the topic(and clearly you are) they offer $2,000, you are countering at $60,000 theyare going to attribute more credibility to your counter offer than might beotherwise the case.Adam: Also dont be afraid to include a link back to DNJournal.comshowing them what current prices are and what domains are selling forbecause that will also set their expectations a little bit more realistic.Michael: Alright Adam. We are over the hour point. Do you have enoughtime to stay on for a few more questions about professional brokers andeffective negotiation tactics? You have been very generous with your time sofar.Adam: I do and there is a lot more that I have to cover.Michael: I know. Again if people are watching this show and Adam hastalked about a certain area or something about negotiations that you want toknow more about get in the comments. Let us know what you want to knowmore about. And we will see if we can get Adam to come back and sharesome more strategies and tactics. So lets talk about professional domainname brokers. People in the industry probably arent best friends with aprofessional domain name broker that they can call up and ask them how theydo things. Most people that own domain names probably dont even knowprofessional domain name brokers. What does a professional domain namebroker do on a daily basis?Adam: This is going to get me going for another five minutes here. So Ithink people are going to appreciate this once I am done. These days everydomainer thinks they are a domain broker. Domain brokers do not sell toother domainers. That is what I call a good contact list not a domain broker.So a true domain broker finds end users to sell to. And here is how they do it.I have personally bought software Im going to recommend here to helppeople sell domain names. Of course you can do this all manually withoutAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 34 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority buying the software but it will save you weeks and weeks if you buy thesoftware. Im not getting any affiliate links on this so I am just recommendingthe software that I use. So at the very least you will need a piece of softwarecalled Whois Explorer. It will save you days of work and its only $49.95.First Ill give you the easiest way which is why they sell more generics thanany other two word domains. So lets take an example like witchcraft.comwhich I happen to own but dont worry I dont believe in it. I dont practice it Ijust own the domain name. I bought it. I thought it was a good investment. Soif you have access to Zone Files and Zone Files are files that contain everydomain that was registered in lets say a .com. That makes this a little biteasier. But for now most of you dont have that so Im going to send yousomewhere where you can actually go find people for your generic domainnames right away like a broker would. So you would go to a place called Zed,I forgot sorry Im in Canada. ZFBot.com and see how many domains areregistered with the word witchcraft and spells. When you do that you willfind that 342 start with witchcraft and 341 end in witchcraft. Spells has 486which start with spells and 1,500 that end in spells. Witch has 3,500 that startwith witch and 10,000 that end in witch. And make sure you use the rightwitch, w-i-t-c-h. Now you can export those domains and now you have a listof 16,145 domains that relate to the premium domain witchcraft that youwant to sell.Michael: So I go to ZFBot.com and I can type in key words that tell meevery single domain name that is currently registered in say the .com usingthose keywords. So if I have autoloans.com, or I have auto-loans.com and Iwant to sell that one I can go and do a search on ZFBot.com to look for anydomain name that is registered with auto, automobile, auto loans.Adam: Yes. Okay so you get that list of 16,145 and you take a program likeAtomic Whois Explorer, you import those domain names and it will extractall the admin emails from those 16,145 domain names and then you nowhave a list of contacts that you can use to email. So then you need an emailclient. So you go after something by the same company called Atomic WhoisExplorer and this is designed to search through the global Whois data baseautomate the process of extracting contact information, domainadministration and website owners. You can use it to email out these 16,145Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 35 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority emails that you have just gotten and then you send them an email. Basicallyits called Atomic Email Studio and it has an unsubscribe link so it is good forall the canned spam and everything else that people do. And now you havebeen able to extract the…You have got your domain list, you have got theemails that are attached to those domain lists and now you are able to go anemail them and get people that are interested using Atomic Email Studio. It isan all in application for sending mass email customers and they can subscribeand unsubscribe.Michael: But I could go to Constant Contact if I have 200 Whois contacts,the email address and their domain name. I could go onto Constant Contactand input them in and create a list and write up my email and just send it outthrough them too and they would manage the unsubscribe for me as well.There are a lot of different email programs that you can use. Right?Adam: You can use anything you want. There are just a lot of extra featuresin Atomic Email Studio. Like for instance if you wanted to type in what wasyour example – auto loans? You could type in auto loans, the two keywords,and it would search Seattle auto loans and it would search in Google for anycompany that had Seattle auto loans listed and would extract 1,000 or 2,000or 10,000 results which would give you more companies you could contact tosell your domain or your local domainer or anything like that.Michael: And that is the Atomic Whois Explorer, right that does the searchand extracts the information?Adam: Atomic Email Studio.Michael: Atomic Email Studio will extract the information for you?Adam: It will extract the information. The Whois Extractor just extractsfrom the Whois information from the domain list that you got earlier.Michael: Okay so the Whois Explorer extracts the contact information fromthe URL and then the email program extracts what?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 36 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: It extracts, based on terms that you input it will also extract fromsearch engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. And then they will email outthe ones from both the web extractor as well as the ones that you extractedfrom Email Studio.And then the last thing Im going to give you is an example email that youwould send. You would send an email simply saying:Good afternoon,My name is Adam Dicker, I am a Senior Broker at the Domain ConsultingGroup Ltd.I am contacting you regarding witchcraft.com as I felt it could be an excellentaddition to your online business. The seller is motivated to sell and I amhappy to present any reasonable offers for consideration.Thank you for your time and I look forward to your feedback.Regards,And then you sign it with your name, your website and your phone numberand your company name. And you make it as official as possible. And youwill be surprised at how many tons of responses you do get back. Rememberyou are sending 16,000 emails out at a minimum you only need to get oneback to sell the domain but you will probably get a handful saying how muchand then you will be able to go from there. This is pretty much how seals.comwas sold.Michael: These people that you are emailing, most of which have no ideahow much domain names are worth, so if they respond back and say howmuch it is only out of ignorance, do you respond back saying make me anoffer? Or do you respond back with another email trying to educate them andgiving them a link to the weekly sales at DNJournal.com?Adam: Yes I would definitely try to educate them. You will be able to gauge– I mean if they just send the one line back saying how much then you wouldhave to send them more information than just the price of $200,000 -$100,000 because they are going to tell you to go fly a kite will be the nextresponse. So you need to educate them and make them understand that theycan have whatever…it would be like 2,500 daily targeted visitors to theirwebsites looking for witchcraft or related products. And if they are sellingproducts related to crystals or related to anything else, those are customersAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 37 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority that could potentially buy something and they can make revenue from them.So you want to put a little blurb in about how it could positively affect theirbusiness.Michael: You threw out a data point right there. Most domain names ownedby people probably dont have very much traffic and you have said in the pastyou that you dont want to provide that information because then if it is low itmay reduce their price. Would you simply respond back to them saying thiscould increase your business? It is a brandable domain name. Here are someother domain names that have recently sold to give you an idea of whataverage sales prices are?Adam: Well you can pretty much measure their traffic ahead of time andknow that they probably dont have much traffic. So in some cases it benefitsyou to include the traffic.Michael: Okay but if the domain name has no traffic then you wouldntinclude it, or if it has low traffic - if it only receives 10 hits per day. If you areparking it and you know is that worth including?Adam: No not really.Michael: Now you have written this letter back to them as if you were abroker for a third party. But if they do a Whois lookup they say oh AdamDicker owns this domain name. Doesnt that sort of throw a monkey wrenchinto the system? That you are representing yourself?Adam: No the question was how do brokers do it. You would do it morecustomized saying look we own this domain name - we have no current plansfor it. Some people go as far as to say look they sent it out to 10 possiblepeople and they say this domain is going up for auction. They set up theauction. They say here is a link if you are interested in bidding, go check outthe auction. So there are a few different ways you can handle it.Michael: Clearly you need to know what you are willing to take so areasonable offer would be based on that. But if you are sending out an emailAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 38 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority you are probably thinking the domain name is worth at least a few thousanddollars otherwise it wouldnt be worth your time.Adam: Yes you want to get an initial offer close to 20% to 40% of yourexpected price for the domain. And this will give you plenty of room to getthem higher, as a first offer is never usually their last offer.Michael: How many times a week do you do this process? You go from youtake a domain name that you are interested in selling, you go to ZFBot, yougo to Whois Explorer, you go to your Email Studio and you blast out anemail to try and sell a domain name that you own?Adam: Personally Ive done it a few times. I havent done it a lot. To behonest with you I am so busy with so many other different projects that I justdont have time to do it all the time. Ive done some testing with it with localdomain names. Ive done some testing with other domain names that arenthigh generic domain names, because typically those are harder to sell on acold call. But a name for $1,000 - $500 - $200 - $300 those are fairly easy tosell going about it this way. It is pretty easy to get $500 for a domain name ifyou get somebody responding back.Michael: Would you even go through this whole process for $500?Wouldnt you try to get them up to $2,000 or somewhere around that area?Adam: Ideally you want to get them up as high as you can but at the end ofthe day $500 is still good money. If you are looking to make $1,000 a day soyou dont have to work full time somewhere, you sell two domains a daydoing this and you are laughing and you only paid $14 and you have made$1,000. And most people dont need to make $1,000 a day. They would behappy with $500 a day.Michael: How quickly do you respond? When you blast out an email andsomebody responds back instantaneously how much do you want, do youwait or do you respond back in time.Adam: It depends on the situation. I never really respond right away as itmakes me seem too desperate to sell the domain. Half the fun is the chaseAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 39 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority like with anything else. And I already explained that I made and extra$100,000 on a domain sale because I didnt respond or counter offer on thatThursday or Friday and I waited until Monday. So sometimes people outthere will up their offer, they will increase their offer based on you waiting.And if you have got a live hot lead on a $500 to $1,000 domain name youdont really need to wait a long time because they are not going to increase to$10,000. So in that case if it is a lower end domain name and you are justtrying to get $500 to $1,000 or $1,500 Id respond fairly quickly because…Itreminds me of when people are in line and they want to buy something andthey are ready and they are all hot and bothered and they want it right nowthey want to click the button, like the auctions they get caught up on it andthey may close at a higher price just because they want to close and get thesale. Rather than giving them too much time thinking about it and then mywife leaves the store and she doesnt want the item any more.Michael: What do you use as the subject for an email that you send outsaying good afternoon my name is Adam Dicker; Im selling this domainname. What subject do you use? Do you put the domain name in there?Adam: I usually tend to put their domain name in there as well. And then Isay witchcraftforum.com and then I put dash and then opportunity. And thenthey will want to read more about it because it is addressing their owndomain name. So something relating to something they already own. Andthen if you are only sending out to a select few you can personalize the emailby getting the information off of the Whois extraction tool and getting theirfirst name and last name and you can personalize the email. And thenobviously if it is a higher sale you want to follow it up with a phone call.Michael: Should a domain name investor that is sending out an email likethis setup a "real" business on the web in order to give them more credibilityas we discussed you have? You list your website you list your LinkedInaccount and other things to establish that credibility?Adam: It certainly doesnt hurt to establish credibility. A proper emailsignature will give you instant credibility and it wont look like you are a flyby night organization or even worse a spammer. So it is really important tohave a proper email signature.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 40 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Michael: When you sell a domain name for $500 or $2,000 do you execute apurchase/sale agreement on each of those? Or do you just go directly toEscrow.com and wait for the money?Adam: Im pretty lucky. Most people (end users obviously dont know who Iam) but if I am dealing with a domainer I dont go to Escrow. If I am doing itand it is only a $500 to $1,000 domain, that is not a lot of money to me,where to some people it is. Ive had deals where I bought gardeners.ca andwebdesigners.ca and I just said, they wanted to go to escrow and I said lookIll tell you what. Give me your bank account information and they were inCanada. Ill go to the bank, Ill put the money in your account and then sendme the code and then we will do the transfer. So it really depends on you butif they are a total stranger they may want to go to escrow and the price of theescrow transaction is minimal, its pennies for that. The only pain is you haveto wait for time to get it done. I mean you are waiting for $500 or $1,000 so itis not such a big deal.Michael: Lets talk about some more negotiation. On one stream onDNFCollege.com you wrote about an exchange you had with a buyer of oneof the domain names that was priced at $80,000. The buyer started off with$2,000. Was that the earlier case where you actually walked away and theycame back and upped their price, and upped their price, and upped their priceand by you waiting you actually got them to meet the price that you wanted?Adam: Yes that was the Mega City stream. And it was I basically told themthat we are not in the same ball park here. So go find another domain name.And you cant be shy to do that because they have already expressed aninterest that they want the domain name for whatever reason it is they want it.It could be something to do with their kids name. You dont know what thereason is. But they have had an expression of interest. The hardest thing toget is an initial offer or an expression of interest. Once you have that you arein the drivers seat. So at that point with the negotiation…I didnt know I wasin the drivers seat, I paid $10,000 for it, I wasnt going to sell it for $2,000. Iknew I had to get the gentleman up and he did go up and it is an interestingstream to follow. And I post streams like that because its a really goodeducation on the process that actually happens sometimes. And it showsAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 41 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority people how much money they leave on the table by not knowing how tonegotiate or how to handle sales.Michael: So do I understand this correctly Adam that the entire reason youdont make the first offer is because their first offer may be over the value thatyou want for the domain name? Is that the only reason?Adam: I usually like to have them make the first offer just so I can see howserious they are. Now there are times where they will send me streams backand forth and then I will finally say okay here is the price because I dontwant to end the conversation or I want to know we are heading in the rightdirection. So I mean there are cases for both. Some people I know prefer, Iknow SEDO tells you to list your domains with fixed prices because they willsell more. Yes of course they will sell more but you are probably selling a lotcheaper than you should be selling. A lot of times domainers dont know howto set pricing on domain names. They have bought domains and they are notsales people so they dont know what it is really worth. They just know theypaid $7 for it and they figure if they get $1,200 or $1,500 or $2,000 wow theyhave had a great day. But they dont know how much money they left on thetable. And we dont have to look too far, to Facebook going out and buyingF.com, or any of the other websites that have been bought recently - Even theone that was in the news recently Meet.Me. I mean that was a great sale.Nobody would have expected it and nobody would have had a clue.They could have left a lot of money on the table but with Ammar andSchwartz and Berkens you are dealing with three smart people thatunderstand to do what they can to not leave any money on the table and theygot an excellent price for a domain that they would probably not get thatprice again for. It was a great deal for them.Michael: How do you reconcile the story that you told us earlier about thegentleman who wanted $60,000 or $80,000 for the .net and the highest offerwas $40,000 and the guy ended up losing out on the deal versus the RickSchwartz, Berkens, Ammar story where they get hundreds of thousands forMeet.Me and that could have been the same case you never would haveheard that story? How do you reconcile these two things?Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 42 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: You cant. All you can go by is at the end of the day the Berkensgroup is happy and Im happy. And we both got a good return on ourinvestment, much more than we would have ever gotten on any stock withoutrisk and a better return than we would have gotten with any bank. So I meanat the end of the day you have to be happy with what you sold it for or dontsell it. And at the end of the day if you are happy with what you sold it forand the buyer is happy with what he paid for it its a win/win scenario.Michael: Adam my final question is this: I belong to an email newsletter listof startup entrepreneurs in Seattle. Like clockwork every three to six monthsan email goes out to the list asking what to do with a small cache of domainnames that the entrepreneur has acquired over the years when they haddifferent bright ideas and they no longer want to pay the renewal fees for. Iknow its hard without knowing what domains they own but what generaladvice would you provide to somebody in this situation who has somedomain names that they want to sell.Adam: You would have to evaluate them like you would any potentialpurchase. And we didnt get into that but I mean but again there are three orfour different types of domains that people should be buying right now. Thebest domains in todays market have to do with products, services,occupations and information sites. Like flatscreens.ca is a great domain for aproduct domain. Kansaslandscapers.com is a great service people researchand buy and also make a great lead gen site. Alabamacivilattorney.com, Iregistered that yesterday. It was available. It is a good occupation domain, agood lead gen domain, registered yesterday so dont tell me that there are nogood .coms available. And then for informational sites I registered likegoat.ca. Its a good domain where people…everybody who goes to the doctorand goes home and they are told they have something the first thing they dois they jump on the computer. They figure all the symptoms that they arepossibly going to get and then they convince themselves they are going tohave them. And they do research on things that they are going to have. So if adomain doesnt fit into a products, services, occupations or informational youare not going to make any money with it so there is no point consideringdomains like that unless you get lucky once in awhile. But if you are bankingon getting rich in this industry on luck it is probably not going to happen.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 43 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Michael: So are you saying that all brandable domain names are luck?Adam: No brandable is good. Brandable fits that category as well. I wasthinking of a domain name (Ive got to see what it was but) it wasperfectlypressed.com. Great name for a cleaners or a laundry and it isbrandable. So I mean there are a lot of cute names that are out there, sobrandable names hold value as well. But products and services are the highestvalued domains right now and they are priced accordingly.Michael: I was at DomainFest a year ago. I met a lovely woman there whohad some great brandable domain names like Justintimepizza.com. Whodoesnt want to receive their pizza, a 10 minute pizza or something like that?So for a person like that that isnt getting any inquires right now you wouldsay make sure they have a public Whois, get them listed on SEDO and GoDaddy and maybe reach out to some people using the tactics that you saidZFBot, the Whois Explorer, getting the email addresses and reaching out toother pizza companies in their market.Adam: There is a feature that I added on to Go Daddy while I was there. Itsin the domain control center. You go to I think it is Exportable Reports andthen you export a report and click a box that says Whois searches and it willgive you a list of every time somebody went to the Go Daddy Whois box andtyped in your exact domain name and searched for it. So that alone is goodmarketing material. If nobody is looking for the domain name (and it does itover the last three months or the current three months) if nobody has done asearch for it in the last three months and you have had no offers on it chancesare it is time to get rid of it. I mean a 10 second pizza, even though it soundsgood or a 10 minute pizza, it is not very realistic. And I doubt that anybody isgoing to be able to deal with that.Michael: Anything you want to say in closing Adam?Adam: You know there is going to be a few things. Im going to give you acouple of quick stories. And then we will close on that. I received an offer onpw.ca through SEDO at $1,288. And this was one of the first domains that Iregistered back in the ‘90s. And I really didnt want to sell it. And my intentwas to scare off the buyer. I responded with a counter offer of $60,000.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 44 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Unfortunately they accepted that offer right away. And I knew that I left lotsof money on the table and I did. My biggest mistake was not researching whothe buyer was and could be and it cost me big money. The buyer turned out tobe Price Waterhouse. Lesson learned.Michael: And you could have figured that out by…sometimes when peopleoffer through SEDO you dont know who the buyer is.Adam: Yes but you can go to an acronym finder and type in pw and it willgive you a list of companies that begin with pw. And you can have a prettygood indication. Price Waterhouse was expanding into Canada. I mean Icould have got a lot more than $60,000 for it but again I paid about $20 forthe domain name. I could have got a lot more, I got a good return on myinvestment but it is not one that I am soon to forget.The last, two other things, one is a tip and one is a story. You know I recentlystarted a service DNF College where member email me on offer that theyreceived and a minimum offer they are will to accept. So an example adomainer sends me abdc.com and says they want $1,000 for it. I take over thenegotiations and sell the domain for $3,000. So my cut is 25% above whatthey would be happy with. So they end up with $2,500 on the domain thatthey wanted $1,000 on and I get $500. So it is a win/win scenario. So that isopen to obviously anybody who is reading the video or watching the video.Michael: You have got a million things going on. In the previous video wetalked about your lead generation business, you have got other leadgenerations businesses going on, you are consulting and you have got yourown portfolio. How do you have enough time to manage other peoples salesfor $500 on your part?Adam: You know what? When you love what you do, when you can helpsomebody out, when you can make that extra $500 and make that otherperson the extra $2,500 it just brings back the passion for the industry. Itmakes you feel good. You have accomplished something for somebody else.They are a lot happier and you know what you make time for things that areimportant. Ive got people who design websites so I dont need to do that. IveAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 45 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority got people that develop websites so I dont have to do that. So I can spendtime on the stuff that makes money.And then this is another point that I know we talked about, I saw you post inon DN Forum about it. And it is something that people arent doing that theyshould be doing that will add instant value to their premium domains or theirregular domains. So for all your good domains register an email address andgo get the Twitter and the Facebook name match. Your name matching yourpremium domain. It adds a great deal of value to your domain sale. You cango to Trademarkia.com and click social networks and then enter your termlike DN Forum and hit search and it will check 100 social network sites andthen it will tell you which ones are available and then you can go registerthem there or you can have Trademarkia.com go get them for you all at once.And it is extremely valuable to be able to sell a domain name like DN Forumwith Facebook.com/DNForum or Twitter.com/DNForum.And the last little bit, do you have any questions before we go on?Michael: No. I was just going to say I personally would have paid more forDomainSherpa.com. I think I ended up paying $500 for the domain name. Iwould have gladly paid a couple of thousand of dollars or a few thousanddollars if I could have gotten the DomainSherpa Twitter handle and Facebookhandle with them as well. I had looked at other domain names forDomainSherpa. I am much happier with DomainSherpa but I looked at otherdomain names but I evaluated some of them didnt have the Twitter handle,some of them didnt have the Facebook handle. I wanted everything to besimple and all to be my brand. And I would have paid for that.Adam: That is what it is all about. And the branding is out there and nowthere is ways that you can post all of your RSS Feed, there are plug ins todirectly post to Facebook so all of your stories go there. Its good. The lastquestion that I am usually asked is should domainers develop domains?Developed websites always sell for more than a park reg. So I recommendgetting acquainted with Word Press, buying templates from StudioPress.com.You buy them once you own them forever. You can put them on thousands ofsites. They dont care. Word Press templates are easy to use, you can usethem to build as many sites as you wish. We have a step by step guide atAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 46 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority DNF College from how to install Word Press, to picking your theme, towhich plug ins to use, all set up for free. All you have to do is sign up withDNF College and you are in. And if you dont want to bother building themyourself my company DCG.com will build them for you with original articlesand original content and all the plug ins for $199 apiece.And then the last thing Im going to say is anybody that took the time to listento this video you can shoot me an email at Adam@dcg.com and Ill get you afree DN Forum account so you can get set up. You dont have to buy it. Youcan go in for free and we will set you up and like Michael said I make myselfavailable for anybody that wants to learn about this great industry. So feelfree to contact me in any of the following ways for tips and advice, tricks andanything else to do with domains. You can reach me at Adam@dcg.com, onSkype at Adam.Dicker, on my personal cell phone at 416-884-0535. You cansearch for me on Facebook under Adam Dicker or on the Twitter user nameAdam Dicker.Michael: Adam you are amazing. Not only do you come on here and share alot of your information, your successful tactics for an hour and forty minutesbut you offer people a free membership on DNForum.com. You know I amgoing to take the time now to urge the audience, as I always do, if youreceived value out of this interview -- and man, and for an hour and 40minutes Adam and I talked the details, the tactics you can use to go besuccessful. If you stuck with us until the end you will clearly receive value –if you are not a DNForum member you received value just form that. If youdid, please go out of your way and find a way to say thank you to Adam. Postit in the comments, send him a Tweet, an email as he already said his emailaddress. Remember, when you reach out and do something as easy as sayingthank you, you establish a relationship – and that relationship that canbecome more meaningful for you later on. So I urge you guys to do that. Imgoing to say thank you again right now by mentioning Adams websites: Hiswebsites are DNForum.com, DCG.com where you provide consultingservices and – if you want to apply for DNF College and get mentored byAdam directly – you can go to DNFCollege.com.Adam Dicker, thank you for being a Domain Sherpa and spending the timeand doing this interview.Adam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 47 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

DomainSherpa.com: The Domain Name Authority Adam: Thank you Michael. I really enjoyed it and sorry we ran on a littletoo long.Michael: Oh not at all. People are going to love this. Again go down to thecomments and let us know what you would like Adam to come back on theshow and talk about and we will see if we can get him back in a few weeks todo that. Thank you all for watching. We will see you next time.Watch the full video at:http://www.domainsherpa.com/how-to-sell-a-domain-nameAdam Dicker (DNFCollege.com) Interview Page 48 of 48DomainSherpa.com: http://www.domainsherpa.com http://twitter.com/domainsherpa http://facebook.com/domainsherpa

How to Sell a Domain Name - with Adam Dicker

by domainsherpa

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Statistics

How to Sell a Domain Name - with Adam Dicker Document Transcript