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[Music] hi this is alvid and welcome to the kickstarter commerce podcast where we share search marketing and domain investing strategies to help grow your business in today's episode our guest is deepak daftery a longtime domain investor serial entrepreneur and angel investor based in india today deepak and i discuss how developing online portals for head hunting and education paved the path to full-time domain investing how cornering the dot co dot in market led to birthing and refining of bulk portfolio buying and selling a premium domains for deepak also hear how deepak drives sells by limiting renewal length and aiming for quality rather than quantity deepak also reveals his 50 50 approach to bulk domain portfolio investing as well as angel investing in domain brokering and last but not least deepak insightfully shares a handful of his latest domain sales his strategy when pricing domains to sell as well as just what domain investors can expect in the global market as well as the local indian market when buying and selling domain names so with that deepak welcome and thank you for making time to join us today thanks alvin thanks for having me on the show looking forward to talking on the super show for quite some time now yeah certainly so to kick things off deepak briefly share at a high level with our listeners a bit about yourself who you are your personal and professional background so i i've been a dominion for a couple of years now i i think almost 10 plus years now but that's not how i started my journey i started a education portal online learning portal in india and at the peak of it i i think we were one of the largest and then we signed it off to another player and then i started a head-hunting firm and we used to head on for some of the largest tech giants who have their back office in india so we did that for a couple of years and then i think since the year 2005 i stepped into dominic but really started serious domaining probably three or four years down the line from there and you can say probably 2008 2009 was when i really started full-time domain wow so then so when you say education portal like what type of topics were you were you covering so we were helping students prepare for online entrance exams so mba medical entrance exams they are a huge thing in india and there are millions and millions of students who take these exams for a limited number of seats during the time i started was the time when the indian education system was taking these tests slowly from the offline world to the online world and people really did not have a clue how the online system would work so we created a test engine we were which would actually create a create a mock-up exam the exact way that you would be doing on on the d-day so we created that kind of a platform with a question bank and we help students prepare the journey from the offline world to the online world and get them ready on a subscription-based model wow and then like how many uh subscribers did you did you grow it from and two so finally when we went it off into a separate company i think we had a subscription bait of almost 2 million users in india and a sizable chunk of them were paid subscribers so that that was a huge business at that point in time when the internet space was just about opening up in india that was the year i think 2000 now did you have any prior experience um in terms of before you actually launched that education portal like were you familiar with online or was that kind of your first foray into uh online straight off college and and i started my own business wow i had a rough idea about the power of internet because i studied in australia so so when i came back from australia yeah the penetration of the internet vis-a-vis in australia and india was a huge difference between the two countries so when i came back i i saw that this is the next wave and that's when i took my first business online and had the conviction that that is going to really take off because that's the way i i saw things moving forward so from there so that educational protocol like how long did you run it it still goes on but but it's on autopilot but the other other it's it's the other other uh business people who take care of it now but i ran it actively for five years till it reached a run rate of two million subscribers and then i spinned it off into another business because i then jumped into my second big business which was the head hunting business so i guess are you still doing that head hunting business today or oh i shut it down i shut it down in the year 2015 i i shut it down because it was getting too competitive and and there were a lot of players and and it was just just getting too much plus the domain business was growing very rapidly which required a full time gotcha so you went from the education portal into really head hunting and then now how did you make that turn or that intersection with domain names like when did that come across your radar so that happened by fluke by chance in until 2005 you couldn't really register a domain name in india the two primary extensions in india dot i n and dot co dot i n until 2005 that it was a manual intensive process if you wanted to register a domain name but in the year 2005 the government decided to declutter the space so that anybody and everybody with an internet connection and a credit card could get a domain name that uh when i back ordered a lot of names and i ended up with a very valuable dot co dot i n portfolio i read i was the original registrant of domain names like internet dot co dot n law dot co dot and technology dot co dot in a lot of these names uh were cornered by me and when i when i finally sold off that portfolio that's what gave me the initial capital to build my portfolio the domain portfolio which everybody sees today it all started from the thousand dollar which i invested in 2005 and thus the capital i even stayed till date so you started then basically 15 years ago in 2005 uh kind of cornered that the dot co.i.n market and then now how did you i guess work your way up in terms of stepping your way into dot com investing so i i took that portfolio and i approached some of the largest players in in the us market who wanted a piece of that action but couldn't really get those domain names because they were not aware that these domain names were coming out and then i sold a majority chunk of that portfolio and then i started reading more and more on it see me selling that portfolio was more like fluke because there was somebody interested in getting that and i was the only one with a certain set of domain names which they were interested in so that was more not a business decision it was more like a luck favoring me kind of a thing but then when i really started reading into the industry it got me interested that this is a real viable business which is backed by data points and it's not that you would just go and register a 10 domain name and overnight it becomes rags to riches that's what still the general perception is but once you go deep down and then you dig into the matrix and you you see the data points then you get to know that it's a data backed process if you spend the time to understand the process if you spend the time to understand the data sets if you spend the time to understand it as a business there's more to it than a 10 registration using a credit card it's a totally science different practice but once i started treating this as a business it opened my eyes so then i took that money which came from the dot co dot i n portfolio and i took a big decision and i bought uh you won't believe it by what three number.com names so how did how did that even come to mind like you know because most people would say okay well i'll just focus on words but for you to kind of go okay well let's let's just kind of narrow this down to get a three letter like where does that kind of come from in the in the thought process i was reading all these blogs they used to be d and forum they used to be name pros there used to be a couple of other places and and then i was reading the three letters and three number dot coms so rather than three letters i went for three number.com and traffic used to be the conference during that time and monica used to run the online auctions so that's where i made my first big ticket purchase of if i remember correctly three number dot coms and then once i bought i i remember correctly i bought them for six thousand five hundred each and i sold them on sido a couple of months down the line for nine thousand three hundred a piece had i not sold each of them would have been at least a quarter million dollars each today that's the way i i built this business of of buying and selling and then once i got rid of the three number dot coms i went into three letter dot co dot uk so there was a big portfolio of six hundred and fifty three letter dot co dot uk which i bought in in a chunk from one of uh the then famous brokers of the industry and then i i started selling them on on acorn domains the largest platform the forum for dot co dot u okay and uh i i sold the majority of my domains there multiplied the money a couple of times and then by doing this over a period of time and then i i make two made two big disasters of my domain career till now i invested in dot moby and dot asia i earned a lot of money but valuable lessons learned and then from there on i just tucked two dot coms interesting now why now why do you think that dot asia asia.mobi were not successful to give you example i think i had almost two thousand dollar asia domains and i sold two and they were sixty dollars of pop for two years that was a lot of money sixty euros i think so if i'm not wrong and and everything was dropped after two years i and i just managed to sell two dot moby was a different story that was a story of greed i i had a very valuable.mobi portfolio probably uh if you search the internet one of the biggest portfolios among the others and and they were during during the hype the crazy peak of the dot moby scenario there were a lot of good offers which i could have taken and and made a couple of million dollars but then as as greed takes over we all all humans and when the graph keeps on going up we think we'll make more and then it all crashed suddenly and you won't believe after a couple of years i dropped everything for a big zero but overall i i broke even but that taught me the lesson that money in pocket is any day more better than money on paper oh man that is that is so true and i think that that's the i think that that's probably at least a good percentage of the domain investing population that that tends to be the challenges will do do i take the offer today or or you hear you know versus something like uh i think rick schwartz he just recently had a sale like go bet dot com that was netted him something like 850 000 so you you hear things like that and so people like well uh you know i have a similar name so do i take the 3500 the you know 7 500 or do i try to wait uh and pull the proverbial rick schwartz move you know to try to net six figures like you said i mean it's one of those things that depending on the name the name may have a short shelf life um and so you gotta gotta get what you can while you can versus you know just sitting there waiting and then uh it's it's like holding on to a uh a name like dvd or something like that you know it's like okay well yeah there may be other industries with the acronym dvd but in terms of dvd today it really means nothing you know as opposed to streaming you match both of those up and likely is the case streaming.com is going to be way more than dvd although dvd like i said outside of the comparison of both of those being mediums dvd obviously it could go for way more but it would be likely a different industry that would pull the value upward rather than downward but yeah you're so right that's the biggest lesson i learned that irrespective of any extension things will come and go dot com is here to stay so coming in in 2005 really kind of getting domains on your radar you you dip your toe in begin to develop a process so then uh in terms of your process and strategy like when did data start becoming important um and when did you start actually using that to make decisions on what you purchase and what you're purchasing at what price also when you sell and at what price i think it was more like towards 2010 when i became really serious with my domain journey and started treating this as a full-time business and and not as a side hustle that because i have a personal philosophy that if you try to do something don't do it as a side as i'll do is do it with full conviction as if you're running a fully funded 24 7 business and unless and until you do that the sincerity the seriousness of it doesn't come within the business you really are not going to succeed if you keep taking it as a side hustle and not not really serious with it so that's the the time when i i started acquiring names as a portfolio and and when i started doing that i made a theory that i'm going to have three buckets for all the names i acquire one is a long-term bucket which is when i get the ideal price which is like a retirement price i'm going to sell it at that point in time only so nothing doing that that there is no compromise with those domains then there's a middle bucket which which i typically buy for anything from 10 to 500 and these domains typically say for say for five to eight years time frame but but they gave me a five figure return and then there are the food soldiers domains which i buy anything from ten dollars to two hundred dollars which typically are the bread and butter of my business and they sell any day and every day between two thousand five hundred to five thousand and which give me my cash flow of acquiring more and more inventory and once in a while i have outlier and then i use that money to buy a bigger better domain name and either put it in a middle bucket or the bucket which is the long-term bucket so that's the theory i follow now with your with your mid to long term uh domains now do you renew those you know first for some so like for instance myself i have certain names that are i won't sell them likely in my lifetime it'll be you know with my kids and so with those names i tend to renew them at sometimes five to ten year stretches do you take that same approach in terms of your renewal strategy i think the max i've renewed the domain name is three years in advance i i look at that this way it's a thought-out decision that if it sells why why why to give give somebody a uh approach that i have renewed it for 10 years so i have no intention of parting it with for a long term see many times it happens that before gdpr we used to go through the voice data and when we see a domain name which is registered till 20 20 20 28 2025 that gives me a psychological input that the guy is not really too keen to sell or has a different purpose see these are basically psychological games which we play in our own mind i might be totally wrong but it puts me on the back foot so for me i if it's a really valuable domain name i i renew it for two or three years because i i go through my list every day i go through my portfolio almost on a daily basis so i i know what's coming up for renewal in the next one month and i i renew them in advance but that that's the philosophy i i follow that i i don't want to put anybody on the back foot and and make them uh already have a wall in their head that okay this this guy might be a tough and not too inclined to sell because everything sells it just has to be the right price right indeed everybody has a price and certainly if you if you call the right number then you know you you're certainly willing to let go of it or or even purchase it um just depending on on what that price is and so like now how has the how has your strategy evolved over the years in terms of because you like you said you were buying portfolios and you've mastered having a strategy that has a long-term midterm short-term bucket like how is the ebbs and flows of your domain portfolio in terms of its size and quality how has that evolved over time i think quality wise as as you mature as you progress as the sales data from your own sales plus the sales data from in an industry references like dn journal name bio and all keep on copying it it's an ongoing journey always i say this way that the more more we dig deeper the more inputs come in and the more refined your strategy is provided you are willing to put into time so i take it as ongoing journey but it has helped me define my portfolio into a much shorter one but a more valuable one now i only acquire a couple of domain names a week but they are really strong domain names rather than the the strategy of acquiring a lot of names before which was the quantity versus the quality game now i like to play the quality game i would rather have a portfolio of just 800 names but with the 800 names the annual turnover which i'll achieve can beat anybody with 8 000 names so that's my strategy now and that's evolved over a period of time now i buy very selectively but i i buy names which i see a potential upside of anything from 5000 to 50 000 which helps me have a more leaner approach easier to manage and it's something i can take a decision on on this for quick i can move my portfolio direction quickly which wouldn't have been possible had i had five thousand six thousand eight thousand names maybe it might be not a good strategy for the long term but i'm building my portfolio slow and steady now that makes that makes complete sense and so you you know you're like you said you literally started out probably leaning more towards the quantity side and we all know that the by leaning that way the quantity then ultimately impacts uh the quality as well as the time that it takes to either sell a domain versus now you're leaning more towards the quality of a domain whereas your your quantity is likely lowered but then the time to sell is probably i would imagine a bit a bit quicker than than the the former yes it's certainly the case but see you have to see the important lesson i i learned from my previous two businesses was cash flow is king many a times when we grow a portfolio to three thousand five thousand domain names within a year's time frame or two years time frame what happens is the renewals pile up really fast and before we realize we start taking decisions based on the payout which has to happen for the renewal of the domain names when you have a leaner portfolio you don't need that money really that much because one good sale might cover the renewal cost of the entire portfolio so then the rest is gravy the rest doesn't compel you to take decisions because you are in a cash flow or a tight crunch so that's been a theory that if your cash flows are taken care of if your renewals are taken care of and your life sustains doesn't depend on on what you're earning that's when you can take decisions more based on a free mind and a free will and that's when you can extract maximum value out of a real portfolio right and i would imagine that having a a lean renewal strategy then also offers the the flexibility in terms of even purchasing private sales as well as probably even participating in expired auctions true see i'll again the cash flow strategy has helped me so brilliantly is that i've always maintained that there should always be a sizable kitty that you keep for unseen one for scenic events which might happen to give you a very pertinent example four years back i i came across a portfolio which which was being sold by one of the prominent brokers in the industry was a good friend of mine and and he gave me an option to have the first dips on the portfolio because i had the money because i had the cash flow i was the first one to acquire and these were some of the best domain names i have purchased ever till date one of the domain names i can tell you co-founder i just recently rejected a half a million dollar offer which i had shared on twitter sometime back which was over a period of four years but it's the kind of cash flow which gave me the opportunity to acquire that portfolio wherein one domain name might have offer of half a million dollars that's the kind of opportunity we should always be prepared because you don't know what's coming at the next corner if you have the money you're going to have the first dibs on some of these portfolios is there a rule of thumb that you use in terms of what what percentage you allocate for you know reinvesting into the portfolio versus renewals versus just kind of set aside waiting for those type of purchases i do so every sale i i make i invest 50 back immediately into the domain business which is ongoing uh business 50 i set aside from everything which is a part of the strategy of scrolling money uh because this is another of my personal philosophy that if you keep making money and keep putting the entire money into the same business there's no personal upside to that business so that's where i keep in in a separate kitty you can say and that what helps me that there's a huge opportunity which comes up if i have the money i can immediately put in or i can utilize the business as i also do angel investment so i get a lot of companies coming to me uh with wonderful opportunities and from this money which i keep in set aside that 50 i do value investing in some of these angel investment in the upcoming tech sector and i've had a couple of exits with a couple of good times multiples what i put in so that's where my excess savings going interesting so then in terms of angel investing now how do how has that has that opened up opportunities for you to be able to purchase cell domains to up and coming companies oh that that is another story so when when i was doing domaining and i i was doing angel investments i've been pretty active in the space i have been pretty active with the chamber of commerce in my city i've been pretty active in the few entrepreneurship organizations which which are famous worldwide like thai.org due to my connect with this and due to my investing background i have been friends with some of the largest vcs in india who are very active investors writing a sizable check into these companies so because they know me as as somebody for them they hardly know anybody who plays at this scale in the domain world so i have been a first call of a point of reference for some of these vc's when they want to acquire the dot coms for their companies for their university companies who might be on a dot co dot io dot net dot org dot in and because they trust me because of our friendship over these many years i've been the first point of reference call help a retainership to acquire assets for their companies which helps them which helps me because somewhere i'm invested also in these companies and if these companies get more branded more better i get paid for that plus i i get upside because the company also grows right and so that that's an interesting so you really find yourself really not only as a serial entrepreneur not only as an angel investor and not only really as a a domain investor but also it seems like you you play in that that realm of brokering as well yeah but that that's for a select group 3 because uh the problem uh with with the indian domain space is that because it's it's growing it's in a very nascent stage there's too much to filter so unless and until you you keep a a cap over a certain uh limit it it really is not worth the file so if if you really want to play then it makes sense that you you broke her in the five figure six figure range and then play accordingly i have been into the broken game for some of for the largest companies in in the us tech space in terms of your domain portfolio i think you mentioned uh that you had a portfolio size of something like 800 domains and so out of that what's interesting to me like now are you redirecting or pointing those domains to sales landers or are you parking any of those like kind of what's your strategy when it comes to how you manage your domain portfolio in terms of are they sales landers are they not even resolving or you know are they parked kind of what's your strategy there so 90 of my domain portfolio uh which has very minor traffic in terms of hundred or less visitors a month they are on dan.com and the balance are on uh bodies and parking crew so that that's the mix 10 percent which make good parking income they they sit on bodies and parking crew and the balance 90 day on than which is uh i i think in the recent times a very good platform apart from that i list my domains on on aftonic on uni registry uh you can put your names for sale even on parking crew on body so whichever the the options i list them everywhere see though but the primary sales channel is dan and afternick how has dan changed your ability to uh sell domains i i think that was a much required impetus in our industry so since dan has been there uh it it's it's almost double my sales because of the plain and simple lenders the the low commission of nine percent if you import or read just five percent and it's a very simple interface people come people land people see they can interact it's a very clean and clear system the the back end is stress free so i i think dan has been really a breath of fresh air for our industry at least for me it it's really doubled my sales in it since the time i have migrated my domains on that platform now in a given week or month like how many sales are you are you producing or realizing so i as as i said i have a smaller portfolio so i i don't make a lot of sales but whatever sales i make uh they are quite good in in terms of the turnover of the portfolio so in in a good month i i might have five sales in a bad month i might have two or three sales but but most of my sales are 3500 to 15 000 range right now i had a chance to check out your uh twitter uh profile not portfolio but profile and saw that at least for 2020 looks like at least the latter part of this year you you had started reporting some of your sales that were online um and so i documented at least a few of them and saw like back in uh what was it july that you sold workfromhomesolutions.com which is one a phenomenal name in terms of it being four words but you sold it for uh 5 55 55 and so kind of what was the back story on on that that domain i saw that name i i liked it and and i i think i it on on a understand price i could have easily sold for eight to nine grand but then you win some you lose some i had bought it for 175 dollars i i think just a few weeks back and and it was there on on afternoon and and it i i think after nick or dan i'm confused uh so it one of the two platforms it it really sold very fast so that that was like zero effort you buy it you put it there and it just helps now now do you think that it sell played a lot into just kind of what we've lived through in terms of everybody being forced online due to covet definitely definitely see otherwise a full error dot com for word.com selling for that kind of money uh it's really tough but given given i i checked later on the the other permutation combinations for for that that combination of words were all taken and nothing was available for less than 10 grand so that's interesting so you had it set to a bin price a buy it now price now i guess was it just one of those that you just said and you just kind of forgot about it or you just i i just put in and i i should have done my homework before putting the pricing in so that that was a lesson learned that i i got a bit lazy didn't do my homework and but still it's happy i bought for i'll just check i think i bought for 175 dollars and i sold it for that price so not a bad roi so so then how did how did it come across your radar was that something that you went out and looked for or you know just how did you stumble upon it i it had a good cpc so typically uh i go through domain list every day so i i the primary tool i use is expired domains.net and and i i go through the pending deletes i i go through the inventory at namejet i go through the inventory at godaddy auctions these are the three venues i i keep looking at every day and i i think the reason this one jumped up was the cpc was good on that and that's the reason i i think for that point in time i acquired it nice and i also saw that uh what was it in september you sold the business of life.com for 3333. now what's significant to me about this one was that you purchased it in 2012 for 31 dollars uh so i mean you basically what is that 100 100 times 100 time multiple or a little over that which is phenomenal i always liked like that one the business of life it got got that catchy slogan sales marketing page kind of a thing more towards the motivational side of things so there are some names you you just like the ring of it and i i never got rid of that one and it sold so now now one thing that that kind of struck me about both of these sales in terms of your pricing like do you often use the same number in four you know four times five times in a row is that something that you do on a normal basis so like you know with the business of life it's three thousand three hundred thirty three dollars work from home solutions five thousand five hundred fifty five dollars is that something that you do in terms of your pricing or kind of what's your strategy when you price so it again depends upon uh the kind of names i have the bucket i have put in and and to a certain extent uh the addressable market for the domain name based on that but i keep reworking the prices uh every every quarter based on the sales data which keep on coming in that the simple mantra i follow interesting so then you can find yourself changing prices then at least every let's just say 60 to 90 days then i'll i'll share the on on the pricing front also many times we underestimate a domain name uh recently four letter.com which i had posted on twitter but but then the buyer did not want me to put it and i removed it which i sold for a five figure sum i i won't have priced at that one but the earnings and the traffic on that one made me re-read that so it it's really a lot of combinations which play the traffic with the domain name if something happens which is relevant to the industry of the domain name if the matrix of the business itself changes and that that niche becomes like with the electric cars with tesla becoming the the stock uh going like oh over the dock the rocket the the electric the domains in the electric car segment have have rocketed after hearing particles hold a name for six figures so there are a lot of matrix unless and until we keep redefining the prices on our names i i think we have to be at our feet every time taking new information and keep repricing them yeah because if not and then you you could wind up in in those situations and i've had it happen uh to where you know i i had a health name that i you know kind of sat and for forget i forgot it and it ended up selling for something like fifteen hundred dollars that i probably could have gotten three to four thousand for um not but it's also dependent upon like you said unforeseen things happening like covet uh covet hit i for basically name was not even on the radar and it while it sold and it was a hand registration that's great but again i left a lot of money on the table so yeah so it i think that just goes to the point of like you said you're reviewing quarterly basing it on that data and then adjusting you know accordingly to give you example rick reported yesterday go bet 850k i just checked my portfolio last evening i have betting club which is not that bad a name so i would certainly reprise the name like betting club maybe it might not sell for the price range i might aspire but definitely i'll double the price right so even if it was let's just say it was seventy five thousand dollars then in juxtaposed to ricksell of 850 000 you know you could easily say well i could easily you know go to 150 000. uh 200 000 just based upon the i guess you'd say proximity of location to ricksell or proximity to riccell you have a data point to share with with a potential buyer because then you can show something which has almost similar value and and you can based on it that hey this might be out clear but there are future buyers who might be willing to go for that price so if you have a price point to base your decision on the buyer might simply ask you what's the data point you are using to quote me that price now that you have a data point to show the price point the explanation to your asking price at least you have something to base that upon right it's pulling you further north than south which is which is a good thing and so now you know another cell that that struck me as as an odd one was in october when you sold houstonfuneralhome.com for four thousand eight hundred and eighty eight dollars and it struck me as odd because one my wife is from a city just north of houston that's conroe and so at one point in time i had conroefuneral.com conor funerals.com but here it is i look in you sold houstonfuneralhome.com a three word for nearly almost five thousand dollars like kind of what goes through your thought process because that's the geo service domain and to a certain extent i would look and say man if i can own houstonfuneral.com or houston freedomrolls.com like i don't know that houston funeral home makes much sense like help kind of walk us through at least your thought process for what made you purchase it and then how you set the price on it you won't believe i actually lost two thousand dollars on that sale can you believe that i'll come to this story so i i get a mail out of the blue from one of the uni registry brokers again sheer laziness on my part is i had priced it at after nick for 4 44. so i i forgot that because this again was a pretty old domain name i think i had it for i think five or six years because of the high cpc not that not those many global searches but the cpc was really high on that one and i prized it and i just forgot about it and i get a mail from a uni registry broker uh that hey we just sold uh houston funeral and the buyer might be looking at other similar names and you have useful funeral home if you confirm then we can pitch the domain name to them so if you can give us a price so uh i forgot the price at aftonic and i gave them a price of 7500 and then i i forgot about it and in a week's time i get a mail from the broker that hey i had the buyer at 6500 he had climbed to 6500 but for what reason i don't know he went to arsenic he saw that domain for 4444 and he actually bought it then and there when he was actually ready to pay 6500 to the broker at uni registry that's interesting because i so i actually had a name like that to where a godaddy rep reached out to me and i actually responded and told him i was like hey you know that the domain is actually listed on a dan.com lander it's there it's buy it now it's priced you know i said year your buyer can actually go out and i think the domain was listed something like 39.95 now i was willing to go really as low as 2 000 but basically responded i told him i said i tell you what if you're buyer um i said if i can net basically 2800 from it consider it sold um and he's like ah i don't think it you know i don't think that that the buyer will do it and then the next thing i know it was sold um and so like i've had the that same scenario to happen but more so i guess mine was more intentional than yours where yours is kind of like no we wanted you to purchase it at the seven not the not the four so that is that's interesting and that's and that's the strategy that i often use sometimes is that i will set um a domain higher like on a damn page if contacted by a broker and just say hey either you know you can purchase it for that or i may knock fifteen hundred dollars off but in most cases like i already know if let's say if i want to net 5000 i may put a domain you know as high sometimes is 8 500 9 000 knowing that okay if i get anything in between anything really 5 000 or more then i'll be happy but yeah that houston funeral home.com that that struck me as one that was odd and i was just like man i said i don't know that i would have priced that as high but like you said there was some other factors involved like cpcs i mean not knowing just a cost per click behind it but just at a general level of thinking of just saying it's a geo service name most of those names like you hear things oftentimes uh well geo service you'll probably only get anywhere from 350 to 750 dollars and so to see one cell at this i mean says a lot and so the obviously you're you're breaking the mold here of saying that while that may be true there are cases like yours that that may be anomalies yes see there's another example if you would want me to share about this domain name which i i think reported on twitter a live go life grows green dot com and i i think i sold it within one week of acquiring and there was only one end user which was in the weed the medical cannabis industry uh they they had the exact site on our dot inc extension i bought this name for 79 just just on a hunch and they approached me within a week and i sold it for 3500 wow 79 to 3 500. a week flip yep i guess when you so when you go after a domain like that obviously the most domain areas are so are you looking for companies that are on non-dot com extensions in in that case certainly yes personally yes because the company might be growing the company might have funding the growing company might be in expansion phase they might be opening new branches so as as i said uh as as the business of acquiring new domains becomes tougher and tougher because the price for the generics is going through the roof indeed in the drops in the auction you need to work harder more smarter and and look for the names which nobody else is chasing that's where where you make your money see as a as in business they all they're saying is you always make money on the buy side not on the sale side right so as as long as you can buy names which others are not really looking at and not bumping them up i i think that's where you'll make your real money which keeps on adding up if you if you do this over a period of time it really adds up to a nice kitty definitely now you know i mean obviously we've talked about some of your dot-com sales now you've had some interesting non-dot com sales as well um you know as of recent because i think you sold friends.biz i think i saw on twitter a few days ago yeah what goes through your mind to go yeah friends. that makes sense i remember picking it up from a godaddy auction last year i think so when i was checking these matrix and i saw friends.biz i saw the word friends is registered in 350 extensions 360 plus and i just got it for 30 dollars so that was more like a lottery ticket that if it sells it sells it it's still a generic tld extension and for 30 dollars i think even if i sell it to one of the domain forums that's something which i can recover any day and every day so that that was just more like a fun kind of stuff and and the buyer approached me and said fifteen hundred dollars that's all i have i said if you pay me in two days it's yours and i created the buy now price on dan and they went ahead and they paid for it and it was done and dusted so sometimes you buy these names just for the heck of it because it's a generic extension and it really costs you peanuts and it's worth the risk i put it that way it's worth it when you put it that way you it it seems to me and this is probably a great lesson for for listeners just in general of hearing you speak about your strategy you're in a mindset of how do i limit and reduce if not eliminate uh risk altogether to create a you know an upside of you know the hundred multiple or the 100 times multiple or really any sort of three figure multiple and that's just something that one it takes it takes a skill it takes experience to know what to look for what the attributes are the signals if you will that are signaling you now we've changed this multiplier from five to ten now it's gone from ten to fifty so uh that's something that it's like hearing you speak that i pick up on it's like that's kind of your how do i limit risk while increasing uh the multiple it more depends upon the kind of risk you're willing to put in the kind of money you're willing to put in if you have access to a lot of capital either you can go and buy whatever you want at whatever prices is available or you can wait for the right moment keep on trying and buy a select few but at the right price see to give you a small understanding of how much work it now makes with so many new investors on a typical day if i'm going through the list from a list which is a couple of thousand i might maybe pick up 30 to 35 names which i decide to choose and chase and then i load them in in the backend system or i put my bids in into godaddy or name jet or snap names or or drop cash and then whoever catches them after going through that and after shortlisting the list to just 30 or 35 names in today's market i am still losing 99 of my options just imagine the kind of work which is simply going down the drain but i'm still willing to work for that one person because i know that one person which i'm going to acquire is from a select list is at a price which i want to pay is not overpriced and will definitely sell for a high four figure or a five figure price so the cost of portfolio which i'm building is maybe the speed is low but the cost is really low that is interesting and so then i guess are there extensions like that you don't touch you know because obviously you you've had dot com dot like are there extensions that you just kind of pretty much stay away from like do you invest in any cctlds or no nothing nothing i just had three biz domain names one i have sold i still have two that is also i bought last year otherwise i won't have touch.bits so i would say 95 of my portfolios.com and the balance five percent is equal between.net and dot orgs gotcha so so really then your not.com you're it's more about a a quick a quick flip uh more than it is just really kind of holding on to it then yeah and another face i i'm really bullish about and i really like is the dot co dot uk space so i'm also one of the largest uh portfolio holders of two letter dot co dot uk's so i have quite a few of those as well as one word dot co dot uk is like i recently had her offer of i i think forty thousand dollars on peach dot co dot uk i have names like modeling dot co dot uk surrogacy dot co dot uk so i am still bullish on the co dot uk space now what makes dot dot co dot uk uh special in in terms of how you view it as an investment certain markets are very specific to the country's specific tlds like with germany they are very specific with these even if it is with a hyphen i've seen names with three iphones you would never believe somebody having a website on a domain name with three iphones trust me i've seen it and it's a pretty popular site so with with germany they have absolutely no inhibitions with the hyphen but as far as possible 99.99 they'll like to stick with the de extension unless one until it's a multinational company wherein they'll also have a dot com but the primary site will be on our dot d so similarly with transits dot fr the same connotation applies to uk as far as possible 99 of the times they will try to build their site on a dot co dot uk space and i i've had some great success with selling domain names in that space and the way i see it i bought those two letter.com.uks i i think six years back or something like that and i i will probably start selling them in another three to four years so the day i bought it i i saw that it it's almost a 10-year weight cycle but i was willing to wait that much after i paid a sizable sum of money so that's my horizon i put it in the long-term bucket that in ten years time i'll sell my first two letter dot co dot uk so that's when they start maturing so now you know and it makes sense that obviously if you're local to uh that given country then obviously you can kind of keep up and keep tabs on everything now obviously you're located uh in india and so like how do you keep up with what's going on with dot co dot uk like i mean are you following publications kind of how are you keeping up with things in terms of the the ebbs and flows the pricing of of what's going on with the dot co dot uk market i think the biggest level one word is the internet as as long as you're willing to spend the time and research it's all out there so there are forums which are dedicated just like we have name pros today there's acorn domain dot co dot uh uk uh there are a couple of sites where they have these auctions regularly exclusively for uh dot co dot uk domain names so if you just read in the normal post maybe go there once a week once in two weeks just just read everything just read the sales data i think that's the best education you can give to yourself free of cost now in terms of uh just 2020 and and covet impacting the domain industry kind of what are your thoughts there in terms of where does the main industry go from now it has obviously coped has you know impacted the world in in a negative manner while at the same time you know it's also forced a lot of businesses online and so kind of looking forward uh from 2020 like where does the domain industry go from from here see it it's only northward although it has been a personal tragedy for so many uh so many of us have lost friends relatives elders neighbors but on a business front i i think uh this has changed the perception traditional businesses used to think that life's not possible beyond if there's not a drool front to walk into i think that mindset has now been broken and now that more and more companies are looking at viable options of either getting online or going on to the next phase or expanding their business i think it has been a blessing in disguise especially for the domain industry and we are heading into the price zone which which have never been heard before especially for good quality keywords uh and i i think the prices are only going to move northward from here interesting and then in terms of uh just the indian domain market like kind of what's going on kind of where's the pulse at today so uh over over the last 15 years the dot in and dot co dot n space has matured so there are now five figure series regularly happening in that market which are getting reported in dn journal uh dot com also as an end user market as i had shared in a few interviews a couple of years back the market is really maturing now you might have heard the indian company z.com just bought z-e-e.com for 700 000. even five years back this would have been unheard of unthinkable i recently i think the starting of this year helped the fourth largest company software company in india with a market cap of four billion dollars acquire a four letter.com for their business and they've paid a princely sum which wouldn't have been imaginable for them a few years back so the the end user mentality of indian companies is definitely changing and now they are opening up there they're more than willing to pay five figure and six figure prices for their exact match domain name which they wouldn't even have thought of five years back so that's how the mentality is changing and that rapidly interesting and now what does that mean in terms of like how are you seeing the domain industry within india are you seeing a new crop of domain investors come along there in india india is it growing uh just as well on that same trajectory huge i i think the influx of new domain news is defined by one word huge there are tons and tons of people who are getting into this industry see but as as i say there's there's a lot of fluff in every industry until the point that they start treating this as a real viable business most of them will lose money because for still the average domain here is i'll buy a domain name uh i'll flip it make 2x 3x the quantum is what defines your staying power in the industry in the long term if you buy a domain name for ten dollars and sell it for twenty dollars and twenty five dollars maybe it will give you instant gratification and happiness for the next ten minutes of your life is it real business no right can you do it a thousand times if you say yes then it's a business otherwise you're just having having a good time you're making some side money some pocket money be happy with it so that's what goes is going to happen with 95 of the new crop they're going to come burn that money not really understand the business and then move out of the industry but the five percent who are able to stay back are going to make a good career out of it and then and you know you hit it you hit an interesting point because there are you know many folks who are kind of fly-by-night-ish uh if you will in terms of they there's no longevity there it's a matter of i came i made i went in and in short order in some cases and so you know when now when you think about things like uh namescon so obviously rewind that rewind this this clock back 11 months ago and you and i were we were in the same location we were in person i mean we got to actually meet there in austin uh here we are 11 months later and we find ourselves in a total different world of having to virtually meet online like how does that change things in terms of the domain industry of like namecon really um going having to move online and then even moving forward into 2021 i mean what does that look like for or what do you think it looks like in terms of it impacting the domain industry so like having a hybrid event an in-person as well as a virtual thing all in one like how does that change the industry see i i think that was a brilliant decision for the simple reason that people who travel from other countries especially from south asia to us yes that that's the hefty cost forget about the at least for me it's a 40 hour door-to-door by the time i leave my house by the time i i check into my hotel it's a 40-hour journey three flights so for some it's two flights uh but and and maybe 30 hours door to door and that that also not only the time implication it it's a huge cost given the international airfares the the the currency fluctuation the price difference the hotels the meals everything the transportation so every time somebody decides to make a journey it's a cyber sizable decision for the average domain year in in this part of the world now with a 59 admission fee and an access to all the rooms the lounges all these sessions i think it has brought more value more content more opportunities for people to learn uh from some of the best the brightest and and the most successful in the industry and and get to share their knowledge in the comfort of their house without any additional cost at their comfort and at their convenience which they can hear again and again because these are recorded sessions and i i think that's a brilliant opportunity for people to listen and learn and upgrade themselves by listening to some of these people who are sharing this knowledge basically for free yeah and so like with yourself because obviously having as much experience as you have like what does namescom bring you like what value does it bring to you your strategy um and just your overall vision for for where it is that you see yourself going so i go there for two reasons the the network i make and meet old friends i i think once a year the the or twice a year the travel to us is is worth because i get to meet so many old friends uh make a new network my personal philosophy over the years have been that you never make business in a conference you make the connections you make some friends who are lifelong and if business happens later on because you've made all these connections so go there have a good time chill and and meet friends look at the way we we talked in in namescon and today we are here speaking virtually over a session which would have never been possible had there been not a physical version of namescon indeed indeed now like long term then in terms of uh where you see things going for yourself like what do you think's on the horizon just what do you see looking forward into 2021 i i think oneworld.coms are really going to get more price here the drop options are going to get really really expensive for the average guy but what i also see is the next set of dominions are are going to concentrate on their energy either on the long term uh long tail domain names or or the lesser extensions which is net and dot org because there are still plenty of opportunities in in that space and there's still money to be made uh in the drops in that segment nice well then wrapping up one of the last questions is you know what would be your advice to someone you know that's starting their journey into uh domain investing domain development like where should they start in your opinion i think if somebody wants to be in this industry i would seriously advise them to six months just sit and study it can be d in general it can be named bio it can be named pros it can be the the wealth of knowledge which we have for free the blogs the podcast which you do there are other podcasts there's so many blogs and all this is basically for free absorb as much as you can never sit and cry that i was not there in 1999 and i i didn't get this i didn't get that see crying never solved any problems if you're out of the box thinking how you think different from the majority of the people which is going to set you apart and if you can bring that one percent off of a differential thinking it is what is going to set you apart barriers always going to be there if you think differently and if you if you take that barrier as an opportunity i i think nothing will stop you from having a success in the domain industry we have so many examples from the new crop of dominions like yogi solanki and others who really came out of nowhere and and have had i think twenty five thousand dollars of sales and there are tons of names which drop which nobody even looks at great so there's always opportunity but invest your time in learning in researching in learning the tools of the trade never blame the trade if you put in the time and effort there's always an opportunity in anything you do treat it as a business and success shall be yours indeed and you mentioned yogi and and obviously yogi has uh has hit up on success but that that's not been without hard work of uh of outbound again so like now do you find yourself do you outbound any or no i haven't uh because there are two reasons i'm lazy the biggest reason [Laughter] the the second reason is that i have a strong philosophy that if you outbound the art of negotiation says the ball is already in the court of your opponent if you want to exact the exact price or a higher price if you expect to extract the maximum possible juice from your domain name that's when the other person is in your court that's when the other person wants the domain name for his business at your terms my personal philosophy is that's when you have the best price possible which is not at all without bound maybe you'll selling at half your asking price given the the lengths i go to to acquire my names and it being a small portfolio i don't think i i would be willing to do that if i need to extract the maximum possible juice out of that portfolio so it makes complete sense and and you know we you also have to look at everyone's circumstances are different like your circumstances are different than a yogi's uh but you're doing what what suits you best i mean that's the thing it's kind of like you got to find your own lane so i guess last but not least i mean is there anything else that you would like to share with listeners how they might get in contact with you should they have questions from this interview so i i'm there on facebook i'm there on twitter and they're on linkedin all three mediums are easily accessible my email id is deepak underscore doctory yahoo.com i still have a yahoo email id so don't laugh over it again as i said i'm too lazy to change my email id so feel free to hit me up and and i would try to answer to the best of my ability well certainly well with that deepak we're out of time so deepak thank you again for joining us today and sharing your uh entrepreneurial as well as your domain investing journey thanks for having me on your show always it's been really a pleasure thank you and thank you listeners for tuning in to kickstart commerce where we share search marketing and domain name strategies to help grow your business please subscribe to this podcast via itunes google play stitcher spotify or podbean last but not least please visit kickstartcommerce.com to subscribe to the newsletter sharing tips and tricks about the disciplines of digital strategy thanks and that's all for now [Music] [Music] you