Domain Buying Tips from Monte Cahn of Moniker
08/30/2006 - Chris Pirillo
Moniker is one of the leading companies in the space of buying and selling domain names. They offer services well beyond the basic domain registration. If you have a domain name you want to sell, Moniker can help in appraising the value and assist in brokering a deal. If you’re actively seeking the perfect URL, chances are Moniker or one of their competitors is handling the transaction. In this conversation with Chris from SES San Jose, Monte Cahn of Moniker offers some helpful tips on making sure you get the most from your domain purchases and sales no matter which company you use for the transaction.
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Chris: Have you ever tried to register a domain name, only to discover that it was already taken? And that person wanted to sell that domain name back to you for, oh, let’s say, just $5. That probably never happens because domains are worth a lot more than that and one person who can speak very well to that is Monte Cahn of Moniker.com and this is kind of what Moniker.com does is help people manage domain names that they want to sell.
Monte: Yeah, Moniker.com is an ICANN accredited registrar. We’ve been an ICANN accredited registrar since 1999, but our real focus is on domain portfolio asset management. We’re more of a domain asset management company; we help people build, develop, their portfolios, monetize them and increase their value and we do the monetization through turning dead domain names into live domain names and revenue through traffic and PPC programs and then turning around and selling those domain names if they’re interested in selling them for a lot more than what they paid for them.
Chris: Okay; so do you have, like maybe 5 to 10 tips for somebody who’s just starting and thinking, well, maybe I want to get into the whole domain name selling business ‘cause my dog washing business isn’t doing to well in the offline world.
Monte: Sure. One of the key things is, is to be very focused on what kind of a brand that you want to be launched out into the marketplace with. The domain name is the #1 most important thing to have, because that’s what people are going to come to everyday. It’s what you’re’ going to brand yourself, it’s your online address, just as important as your real address is. So you want to be very strategic and focused on what you want to get. You want to cover yourself in all extensions that you possibly can for the minimal investment that there is, spending an extra $10 per extension - .Info, .Biz, .Us, .Com, .Net, .Org and so on. You would definitely want to cover yourself. Also, all the misspellings of your particular brand. So one of the biggest tricks that I tell people to do, or one of the biggest tips is to have you or your family or your staff type in your brand name a hundred times in the browser as fast as you can and take all those misspelling results and register those – because that’s what other people are typing in from all over the world. If you’re going to bring your business Internationally, look into the country codes that you want to serve from those particular countries, so that you can focus and cover yourself in those various countries as well. Also, if you have any question of valuation of your domain names, you should always get them appraised. If you’re going to ever . . .
Chris: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You mean, appraise, like a gemologist would appraise diamond?
Monte: Yes.
Chris: There are “domainologists?”
Monte: Yep, yep. We’ve done 450,000 domain appraisals since 1999. We actually invented the whole concept of domain appraising, similar to what real estate is appraised for, same metrics: traffic, brandability, extension, does it have linguistic meaning, how often is that search term searched across the Web. Those types of things are all considerations that we take into place when we appraise domain names. If you ever sell a domain name, always use an escrow agent. Don’t try to do a transaction by yourself or with another individual without having an escrow agent involved so that you don’t end up getting in trouble with either transaferring a domain name before you get paid or paying before you get your domain transferred to you.
Chris: That’s about 3 solid tips. Got a couple more? Or a few more? I mean, hey, you’re a fount of knowledge here.
Monte: Well, never let any of your domain names sit dormant. Always have them doing something. Either up on a landing page that’s generating some kind of revenue, collecting e-mail addresses, even something as simple as having a little newsletter or some important content that somebody would be interested in so that the domain always has life to it. We recommend, if you’re not doing anything, developing others to make sure that you have those names up on a parking page at the very least. Maybe have an affiliate program going and develop that website out so you can earn revenue and generate profit from it.
Chris: How easy is that to do in some of the larger registrars? I mean, Moniker.com, is that where someone could go register a domain name? But what about, like, GoDaddy or any variety of domain name registrars out there?
Monte: There’s 575 some odd approved registrars; GoDaddy, Moniker, NetworkSolutions, Register.com, are some of the largest registrars. It’s very important to look and see what type of business that they serve and what kind of customers they serve. If you’re interested in a single domain name and want to develop a single website, somebody like a GoDaddy or NetworkSolutions might be more towards your category. If you’re looking to build a portfolio and use it as another investment vehicle and really look to domains as another way to generate profit and revenue, then somebody like Moniker.com might be somebody that better serves you.
Chris: Can I get into the business by just registering maybe about 2 or 3 domains or are we talking about having to buy, like 10,000 to 10,000,000?
Monte: No. You can register just one domain name and be successful and build a brand and be popular with it. You don’t need to have a minimum amount of domain names. We do . . . our general customer, average customer, has a hundred domain names in their portfolio, on average; but, we have many, many that have single domain name and you know, a handful.
Chris: What does a domain name go for on average? $100? $1,000? More?
Monte: New registrations on Moniker, current average price is about 10 bucks per year. But if you’re buying a domain name in the aftermarket, our average sale price for a domain name, what we sell domain names for, is around $25,0000. But we sell very high premium domain names, so it’s a much higher caliber of domain names. But you can go on other sites, such as AfterNick and SEDO and pick up domain names for several hundred dollars. Also, there’s the expired name market and the drop market, like SnapNames and Pool, where you can pick up domain names anywhere from $60 to thousands of dollars if it’s a domain name that’s been expired and you want to try and get it before somebody else does.
Chris: Why would you want to pick up an expired domain name, though?
Monte: Expired domain names have inherent value because someone else registered before you; so somebody else thought it was valuable first. So that’s one reason. Generally, a lot of expired domain names have pre-existing links and page rank and ALEXA ratings and other things that make that name more valuable and so a lot of people look to expired names as having characteristics that give it a head start if you’re going to try and do something with it, such as development. A lot of the big domain owners now really play the expired name market because a lot of the old domain names from the past, in the early nineties, mid-nineties and early 2000s are now becoming available due to companies letting their registration lapse, not having accurate information in WhoIS so that people aren’t getting their renewal notices or just generally feeling its not important to their business anymore, so they do that.
Chris: Well, thanks again for your time and maybe I can be the next person to sell [inaudible].com.
Monte: You’d have to spell it first. [laughs]
Chris: That’s how it’s spelled! Exactly how it sounds.
Monte: Well, there’s only 64 characters allowed in the space. I’m not sure that would fit. [laughs]
Chris: I’m only at 54, so I’m safe, I think. Anyway, thanks for your time.
Monte: Thank you. Glad to be on the show.
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