#1 – Great.com – why we paid $900k for a domain-name

Transcript

[00:00:00] Imagine you’re 16 years old and you’ve been crazy in love with this girl for like a year trying to get her. And you know that. And then suddenly an opportunity opens. George, your heart is pummeling like crazy. And you know that this might be your only chance of ever getting her into.

[00:00:27] Welcome to the great podcast. We are going to talk about the main base. But first, Eric, how are you today?

[00:00:38] I’m excited. I like domain names. That’s my porn, kind of. So it’s a.

[00:00:46] Oh, no.

[00:00:50] I really like domain names. Believe it or not. So, yeah, I’m really excited about the topic of the day. It’s the big passion of mine.

[00:00:58] It’s a lucrative fetish to have for sure. Or very expensive, wasn’t it? Yeah, it is an expensive one.

[00:01:07] Let me tell you some background of this. My two weeks ago, a good friend of mine, John, called me and I said, Hey, Matt. Emily, what is going on? Why are you on due to being naked talking? This is so weird. What is going on? And if you haven’t? If you have no idea what I’m talking about. Our first episode of the great podcast, you do not want to go back and look at that. After that, we had a strict shirt on policy for a good reason. But what he said was this man, the reason I found your channel is that I talked with you one year ago. We haven’t talked since. And I remembered your company name. Great dot com. So said. Tell your boss Eric that pay nine hundred thousand dollars for a domain name was a good deal. Eric, do you still agree that this was money well spent?

[00:02:03] Yeah, I really do. I really do. I am.

[00:02:08] Well, that was exactly what I’m going for as I was so happy. First, tell me the story. Like a week ago at. I believe that this is something that is so easy to remember and people who. Wow, that’s a cool name and we’ll have that reaction. So I think it was a good call.

[00:02:30] Mm hmm. I agree.

[00:02:33] So I don’t know much about domain names. So this was kind of shocking experience buying this. Would you please share with more people? How do you even buy a domain name for nine hundred thousand dollars? Where do I go? Who do you call?

[00:02:48] I got a guy.

[00:02:51] No, I don’t have a guy. OK.

[00:02:54] We can start in a in a different direction. Like why this name was so important to me and how I got to that part. That sounds like a good place to start. Go.

[00:03:05] I’ll go. Okay, so.

[00:03:12] I wanted to buy a great domain name, pun intended to build something back, and let’s get back to the story that John told to see if it makes sense to buy this a domain name for this kind of money. If you let’s say you are you’re selling clothes, you have a clothing store. And what is the what is the most important thing if you have a clothing store? You would say.

[00:03:46] I’m terribly bad up close, but I’m guessing the brand name would be important. That’s something that people recognize.

[00:03:52] Yeah. I think if you have a physical store, the most important thing is that people have fun in the store. So prefer the it should be on the main street in in any city. A lot of people walking by, a lot of people seeing it. And to an online company, the domain name is kind of the address. Well, it is the address. So it’s it becomes a very important address and all if you can take your angle, let’s say, or Nike or your Apple or your Red Bull. What’s the most important thing that those companies.

[00:04:27] Do you mean with their domain name or in general? No, I in general.

[00:04:33] Help me. What is it? No, it’s the brand. That’s why I was going for also off to far south. So you were right the first I was answering the wrong question. Good job. Yeah.

[00:04:45] So. So basically, do those companies, the brand is everything. I don’t know how many billions of dollars that Nike has put into marketing for their brand name and their brand is is night. And I believe that with great and great dot.com, you you buy a lot of that brand recognition already with the name John already remembers it. If the company would have called I don’t know, Garrick, this dot com or whatever. He would probably never have remembered it. So.

[00:05:20] When thinking very big about this, seeing this grand vision of creating something which 50 years from now hopefully is as big as Nike or Apple or Red Bull, then it makes sense to put a lot of money aside for the brand name because it will make all the marketing and all the other things a lot cheaper down the line. Now, a lot of people will remember it. If you were one year in with a company night and you had told John about Mike before the company existed, that they would probably not have remembered that name. Maybe apples. And it’s an apple.

[00:05:57] Possibly Red Bull. But it’s it’s still tricky to remember it.

[00:06:03] So I wanted a name like that and I wanted a word with with positive connotations to it that everyone has positive associations and can even come up with a way of using the word great in a negative way.

[00:06:21] That would be irony. No. I don’t know, but I haven’t touched on this, would you say no, it’s interesting. I haven’t thought about it this way, that a company like me like that, that word is just nonsense from the beginning. And then they’ve turned that into something that has a connection for everyone. But great is one of those words that have a that is you start off and then a lot of people have a lot of connotations to set up marketing. That becomes easier.

[00:06:48] Yeah. Huh. Because people will remember it. I think that Knight or Nike is it’s some goddess in mythology to begin with that more or less no one has heard of, but everyone has heard of the brand Knight or Nike. So it’s a shortcut to doing that. And thanks to the fact that I’ve started with a big budget, I can take the shortcut. And I believe that over time it will be way, way worth it. So, yeah, I asked you a question and now it’s left my head. What did I ask you?

[00:07:23] Well, you asked I was asking you, how do you even buy? I then I asked about negative connotations to the word to trade. Right. Right.

[00:07:32] Yes. I wanted I wanted the word that has all positive connotations, or at least a lot of them. I asked the same question to a friend and he said he had the Great Depression. And I’m like, yeah, that’s true.

[00:07:43] It’s not a good book. It was a Great Depression.

[00:07:47] There’s a Great Depression.

[00:07:49] Third, but there are very few ways of using that word in a negative way. And it pops up in conversations all the time. I don’t know how many times I’ve said pun intended or pun and not intended talking about it. So I that a word like that. And I went for a try to by play dot com and I try to buy best dot com but landed on ungrateful com after way with way. So let’s back to answering your question how this actually happened. I’m sorry for the long slide.

[00:08:26] I hope it was enjoying a good show.

[00:08:30] I learned some stuff. I learned some stuff.

[00:08:32] Yeah. OK. So I had decided on this name. Great dot com. And obviously it wasn’t available.

[00:08:39] It was someone who owned it. So the first thing that I did was trying to figure out who owns this domain name, which is not always easy.

[00:08:48] And you can do that with services like who is dot com? So on who is dot com? You can put in a domain name and for most domain names you can find the owner of the domain name that way. And this turned out to be owners that had shitloads of domains. They had been buying domain so over and over for decades. And so I I realized already there. OK. This is smart people who know that this domain is gonna be worth a lot of money.

[00:09:17] So what was their Web site? I’m grateful. Com weren’t they doing some kind of business at this point?

[00:09:21] No, it was nothing. It was one of these Web sites. When you go into it and you’re like, hey, how can no one be using this name?

[00:09:28] Right. And then you think, hey, they should probably be very cheap because they don’t use it.

[00:09:33] It’s great. I realize that you’re wrong.

[00:09:38] It was one of those pages. You know, you Google, you look, I wonder what’s on this site about the book about me.

[00:09:42] Hey, there’s nothing you know, people don’t do that unless the main makes is for a good idea domain. They’re important. That’s for me. Yeah.

[00:09:53] I’ll get it. I realized that it was nothing on it. I still realized this was smart people.

[00:09:57] So I found an e-mail address to some owners and it was owned by a lawyer firm in New York, which seemed very weird to me. But I started doing some research and apparently they owed a lot of really good to me. So I e-mailed them and I tried to buy it for fifty thousand dollars.

[00:10:19] And they were like, oh, boy, big enough.

[00:10:24] You’re not even close. So I sat back and I chilled on it for a couple of months, not wanting to seem too eager.

[00:10:31] Still hoping I could get it for fifty thousand. No, not even close.

[00:10:35] Sighs So way to stop. What what was it like? At this point, you really want a good night? Great, right? Yeah. Had you decided that, you know, if you go into a store and you see a shirt that you really like and I’m getting this and then like you sort of tried to haggle, but, you know, you’re getting the shirt. Anyway, it wasn’t like this kind of situation.

[00:10:56] Yeah, I would say was like, I’m gonna buy this. But at the other end, I had no idea how much it was going to compete.

[00:11:03] But I wasn’t like then waiting for three months. And yes, playing being cool about it.

[00:11:09] I think the domain was first registered in 96. So someone bought the domain in 96. Well, plate. No, buddy, I’d use this for a commercial purpose since 96. So it was kind of like seeing a jacket in the store. But you knew that no one had afforded to buy it in 22 years and we felt like boom is gonna go away. Quite unlikely. Obviously, I was a bit nervous about it and at the same time I didn’t want to start developing straight away anyways. I was quite fine with this taking time, but yeah, I was always a bit nervous that someone would buy it.

[00:11:48] So three months in I sent another offer, maybe a hundred K or a hundred and fifty cannot remember saying thing like guy, you need to add another series that you don’t want to add another zero.

[00:12:04] So it took another three months and I upped the ante a bit more and I think I got to like five hundred thousand dollars on that offer. Still. No, not even close according to them. So I relaxed a bit more and then I got an e-mail from one of these domain giants who is arranging a domain auction in Las Vegas every year. It’s actually going on right now. Names com. I think it’s called and I was told that, hey, this is a list of names that will appear on this auction. And it was a lot of like really, really expensive domain names and it included great dot com. So it’s like, OK, it’s gonna be on an auction.

[00:12:48] Well, everyone’s gonna want to buy it.

[00:12:51] And I had no idea what that was like. So I was told that the auction was gonna be in Las Vegas on the I think, 8th of February last year, 7th of February or something like that. But the information was quite limited and there was an online auction before. And then it was gonna be there was kind of qualifying. I didn’t because I was shiploads of domain names, but apparently only the best ones got to be live in Vegas.

[00:13:18] So I didn’t understand how this would work out that I decided, OK, I’m going to Vegas on the 7th of January to be there in the room. I’m buying that name.

[00:13:32] And before that, I went to Iceland.

[00:13:37] Because I had this adventure trip planned to go up on a I feel like Europe cool, you know, this volcano that destroyed the airplane traffic for a couple of weeks.

[00:13:49] Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was great for Iceland. It was actually a really good market.

[00:13:55] Yeah, I think they were in every newspaper for, I don’t know, two weeks at their airports was working. Group of working. Right. It was. Yeah. They were the only airport in Europe. I worked because I was on the right side of that volcano.

[00:14:11] I think I think will start by. I did not know that. Oh, guys.

[00:14:14] I was going up there with this jeeps and we were snorkeling in two degrees water between the. What’s that called? You know, the volcanic plates kind of. Yeah. I remember the place. But you can swimming between them in Iceland in two degrees water. That was really cool.

[00:14:33] I was there to do all of these weird things and I was living in this shitty little hotel in the middle of nowhere, completely pitch black. When you looked out of it. It was snowing all the time was like storm. And I found out the same day that, hey, the auction is tonight wasn’t what this was Las Vegas talking. So the auction started at 2 a.m., as in the middle of the night Icelandic time. And I was gonna go up at 6:00 going away on this adventure, things like, what the fuck is this? So I need to figure out a way to get Internet working on a fairly stable line at work. Okay. Ich.

[00:15:20] I I sat up there in the middle of the night and, yeah, I called you because you are the only one who knew I was gonna make it.

[00:15:28] Hey, Emily.

[00:15:30] It’s an auction site. What was your reaction to that?

[00:15:35] It’s tonight. What? I thought you were going to Vegas.

[00:15:40] Yeah. So we had no idea what we were doing. The auction started, I think one or two. And there were all of these domain names going on one after the other. And there were hundreds of domain names and some of them were amazing. It was like lucky dot com were going out for auction periods. Dot com, I think went up for auction, but always had a low price dot com like no sex dot com wasn’t there. That wasn’t even insanely more expensive. That’s probably 10 plus million dollar domain. But and a lot of like cheaper ones, which was maybe buy health insurance dot com, which is still a good name, but not in the same range. So they started out maybe a thousand bucks each or something and went up to I think the most expensive one was lucky. Dot com sold for one point one million. But regardless, this auction starts and. I knew that I had already offered five hundred thousand dollars and I didn’t think that anyone else would buy more pay more than five hundred thousand dollars for domain them in this auction. So I didn’t think that the deal would go through. So I was more or less just sitting awake, really, really tired of trying to have adventures and hoping that the auction wouldn’t be done. Hoping no one would pay more than I already offered. So you could buy it afterwards? Exactly. So I could pick up those conversations. So I’m sitting there in front of the computer and it looked like the website was built in 2002. It was blue. Very little information. He looked really shitty like you who played poker back in the days, knew of poker. Clients used to look like in 2005. Yeah. It looked like that really shitty. And it was supposed to be a webcam filming because apparently the auction was going on in Vegas at the same time. There was another auction in Vegas on the 8th of February. I just missed which auction. Yeah.

[00:17:39] Just to clarify, and maybe you haven’t played poker, but me and Eric played when we were 16. And back then there were some pretty shady clients. And were you ever in Thailand play? No. No. Okay. A lot of poker players were in Thailand. And then you had bad Internet. You played on some clients where it looked like a four year old had built. I mean, what is going on here? I haven’t. Boy, this money is going everywhere. Did you get disconnected? All the time. But back then, you played for fifty dollars. But now you’re on this shitty client making. What did it feel like? Making business deals for hundreds of thousands of dollars on a client that looked like a four year old had built?

[00:18:23] Well, have you ever been in an auction?

[00:18:28] Bought and more funds sold an apartment. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:33] So, you know, the feeling when you’re you’re bidding on something and you’re just hoping no one else would bid. Yeah. Took talk. Please don’t do anything. Or the other way around if you’re selling something is published by beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

[00:18:50] It’s actually good for us. Yeah.

[00:18:52] So there are some other figures. Boop boop boop boop boop. So imagine that. But you do not trust the the real estate agent because it’s a weird looking thing. You’re gonna buy something which is more or less air.

[00:19:09] It’s a name. It’s not an apartment. It’s not a car. You gotta buy a name. And you have no next to no information whatsoever about anything. So it was a real auction going on in Vegas at the time, and I was just connecting to it online. So did you know that at this point, though?

[00:19:29] Yeah, I knew that it was going on. I just enlisted it the same day so I couldn’t go to Vegas because I was in Iceland. And I didn’t think anyone would pay for the domain names. I didn’t think that would really happen. But you could. You couldn’t see anyone else. I was better right now. There was supposed to be a webcam, so there was a screen off on my screen like live streaming from the room. But it was pitch black and it was supposed to be audio. So you could hear what was going on in the room.

[00:19:54] Didn’t work. So when when people were bidding, the only thing I saw was a number changing on my screen. I didn’t know who bid. I didn’t know what happened. I didn’t know if they were gonna bid more or what was going on in the room. It was all waiting to bid. Yeah, either way. Let’s go back into this. Some sitting there in my hotel room, in my bed. I’m talking to you over Skype. And I can feel that. OK, I just want to go to bed.

[00:20:26] But I still want to stay up and see this happen and the domain name auction, it gets closer and closer to my name. So you’ve written you really didn’t think anyone else would bid at this point?

[00:20:35] No, I didn’t think anyone else would bid because most of the expensive domain names weren’t sold. So on the really expensive ones, it didn’t hit the reserve price. So the seller or more or less always said, yeah, I’m not going to sell it since I knew that this domain hadn’t been sold for 22 years. I didn’t think it would pay for it. What are the chances? Yeah. So the domain name comes up and it’s my turn. And I have put in a hundred thousand dollars and I know that they’re not going to accept that because they didn’t accept my five hundred thousand dollar bid before. And the screen is still dark. I hear no out, you know, whatsoever. There’s no shot. I don’t know anything going on. And I’m just waiting for it to be over so I can go to sleep to almost falling asleep in front of the screen. And I think I’m telling you, like, yeah, no one’s gonna buy this film. Just go to bed.

[00:21:26] I didn’t feel like that at all. I felt something was going go. You kept going for me and I’m not sure. I was so excited.

[00:21:39] I was I was just hoping nothing would happen because I hadn’t really thought this through. I didn’t know how much I wanted to pay for it. I didn’t know what I was gonna do really with it. I just really, really wanted it.

[00:21:50] Have you ever been hunting for big game? I haven’t either. But I imagine you sitting there with your rifle like you haven’t seen everything all day. But, you know, you know, something’s going to happen soon. That’s how much. Yeah, I felt I felt like that.

[00:22:07] But I felt it did. There is no movies go your own way in the forest today. I’m just I just want to go home and crawl up under my big bear cover and just feel the fire burning next to me and have a sip of my warm chocolate.

[00:22:24] And then Bob moves, comes up out of nowhere.

[00:22:32] Someone bids five hundred thousand dollars. So it’s not like they’re increasing with 500 dollars or something from my hundred, Kate. They increase with four hundred thousand dollars on top of my bed. And I was like.

[00:22:46] And I have no information.

[00:22:49] I still have no video. No audio. And the only thing that’s showing on my screen right now is a bottom that says bid six hundred thousand dollars.

[00:22:58] And how much time do you have to make a decision? I haven’t. But I think it’s like I don’t know.

[00:23:06] Do you have five seconds to bid? Five hours? There is no information whatsoever. If you’re buying an apartment, give me a call the real estate guy and say, hey, is there give or take an hour and think about this?

[00:23:17] No, no, not so much. So I’m sitting here. The only thing I see blinking on my screen is six hundred thousand dollar six hundred thousand dollars. And I’m just saying, I want this name.

[00:23:28] So before we really thought this through. I’m a betting six hundred thousand dollars. And if the pub was like the book, the book, the book before from one second to another is like I could feel the hair back of my head.

[00:23:45] It’s just raising up my. I feel that I start sue where they, you know, like, oh, man, what’s going on?

[00:23:54] Still no information whatsoever.

[00:23:57] It’s quiet for, I don’t know, 30 seconds, minutes. It felt like two hours. And I was like, OK, do a window into it, please. No one do anything. There was anything in the back and just tap twice in a row. Seven hundred thousand eight hundred thousand dollars. And I still have no idea if the person is bidding is even real. I don’t know if it’s the same person I don’t or someone else.

[00:24:21] I don’t know anything because this is all happening in the room in Vegas and I’m sitting there. It’s like, OK, now I have a blinking number saying nine hundred thousand or on my screen.

[00:24:33] That’s three hundred thousand dollars that when I clicked it a couple of minutes ago.

[00:24:37] And you don’t know me at this point. I was thinking it’s just a domain seller trying to just raise up the price of their domain and then nick your sanity afterwards anyway. So I was really worried at this point. Like, are you getting scanned now? Yes.

[00:24:53] Is this real or imagined? You don’t know if you’re being scammed. You have zero information whatsoever. And you’ve been thinking about this for like a year. I mean, I was so in love with this name. Imagine this was imagine you’re 16 years old and you’ve been crazy in love with this girl for like a year trying to get her. And you know that. And then suddenly an opportunity opens. Your heart is pumping like crazy and you know that this might be. Only chance of ever getting her.

[00:25:24] Now it’s almost, you know, it’s not that important. I come to your party.

[00:25:28] Exactly. That’s how that’s felt. I was madly in love and this could slip my fingers.

[00:25:35] I admire you. You do crazy things when you’re madly in love. You do? Yes. I’m sitting here is like for kids.

[00:25:43] I’m going for it. KILIC Nine hundred thousand dollars. And then it goes quiet. I still have a button on my screen and this is one million dollars, but I know I’m the highest bidder. I’m not going to bid to myself. I’m just sitting there and this is looking at it. I have goose bumps all over my body. I can feel it. My breath was probably on his nose and. Do you know? Have you ever done the exercise, the plank? Yeah, when you’re lying down. And one minute feels like an hour. It’s probably the longest minutes that you can experience.

[00:26:24] Now, imagine that you’ve done plank for a year and you still have to do it. That’s the length of these minutes.

[00:26:33] It was I was panicking. I had no idea what’s going on. Didn’t know anything about the room. It took forever. When the other domains there were closing after a couple of minutes and this was just going on and on and on, I just saw that button and was staring at me with his evil grin.

[00:26:49] Kind of like, I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna get you. And I know that if someone bids a million dollars, my next bid is probably one point. While there are no other options. It’s another two hundred thousand dollars for what? And then it says something like Reserve not met. Which means that the buyer haven’t accepted the price, but nothing else happens. So it doesn’t really start. And then suddenly come ups like five minutes later, like, congratulations, you have won the auction was like, yeah.

[00:27:22] Oh, what I do. Sure.

[00:27:26] But I because I hadn’t really fought it, thought it through I what I was willing to pay five up front and now suddenly I picked nine and I was still madly in love.

[00:27:41] She us to make, you know, you’re going up in three hours, could you sleep that night? Did you tell your friends the day after? What was it like having a man? What was it like having breakfast the morning after?

[00:27:55] Well, I had told other people there was gonna be a wake for this this auction. So they knew this. And so obviously, the first question that came in when I came into the breakfast, we were 12 people on this trip. How did it go? How did go?

[00:28:09] And then they see my eyes. They’re like this. My energy is like today. Okay. You. Well, then you.

[00:28:21] I was I was high on life. I was still a bit panicky. Not really sure what I’d done. Not really knowing that it was a good idea or not. But.

[00:28:30] Happy I had got the woman of my dreams.

[00:28:33] He met.

[00:28:36] That’s a story filled with a lot of adrenaline. I would like to switch gears a little bit here and address and ask you. OK, so the positive side of 900 K is people remember the name. You get this, you get this incredible rush from buying expensive things, but still nine hundred thousand. You are buying this for a project that is going to be a charity. If you didn’t buy nine nine hundred thousand dollar domain name, you could potentially have used that for charity. You could have donated it. I know for some we have done some research and we’ve figured out nine hundred thousand dollars could save the lives of three hundred people. So you can if you want to do good. Can it really be worth it paying? It’s not really paying, but choosing a domain name, which is nothing, like you said, over 300 lives.

[00:29:36] You know, that’s some big shifts in energy. Give me two seconds.

[00:29:47] Ok, so I’ll get that question, I really understand that question. It’s a very valid question.

[00:29:53] Can a domain name be worth the life of 300 people? Can you even. Can you look at it that way? Philosophically. Could I have bought the name? Great. Great. One, two, three, four dot com for twelve dollars and given all the money away instead and save those Fiona lives. And to be honest, I don’t know what the right answer is to this. I might have fucked this up completely and to the expense of 300 lives. I’ll take you through my my train of thought and. It goes back to where we started with this. So what’s the most important thing for a clothing store? What’s the most important thing for a brand? And how much is that worth? And what does that mean over time? So.

[00:30:49] My vision with this is to donate billions of dollars over the next 50 years. Hopefully lots of billions of dollars. And it’s a crazy big vision. And I completely understand that a lot of people say that’s never going to happen. But to me, it’s the truth. I feel certain that that will happen. I feel very, very confident in this. And I will dedicate my life to making that happen. And then this is the brand. This is the address. This is the most important asset to the entire project. And if the party is going to donate billions, then I believe that the name is going to be able to make or break that dream. And hopefully then if a million dollars is 300 lives, then a billion dollars is hundred thousand lives.

[00:31:48] So what I’m saying is more or less that I’m betting 300 lives on the opportunity to save three hundred thousand lives. And with that, I’m putting that pressure on my shoulder. With that, I’m saying that. Yeah.

[00:32:06] I better fucking deliver on this because otherwise I didn’t save those lives. And there was no reason for it. Then I wasted those lives.

[00:32:18] And he feels tough to to put those pressure on this project and put that pressure on myself, and I’m hoping I’m making the right call because I’m aiming to save those 300000 people, hopefully even more than that. But that means that I need to invest. That means that I need to start with us and we’ll see if it works out. Mm hmm.

[00:32:46] Cool. So.

[00:32:49] Yeah, it’s not it’s not money that you could have donated, it’s an investment that you make for the future. It makes a lot of sense. Like if you want to build a company, you need to buy certain things to get started.

[00:33:00] Yeah. I mean, I’m donating a lot of money right now as well so that I could donate more right now. If I wasn’t investing in this. So it’s it’s a choice that I make on a more or less daily basis. And I am hoping and I’m believing that it’s the right call.

[00:33:22] There are many things I would like to bring to more here. For example, the long wish and I would like to explore the responsibility that you feel and I heard some sound in the background, but it’s fine, finite.

[00:33:36] There are some things that aren’t clear. Hold on one second.

[00:33:39] Yes.

[00:33:51] I think that very, very disturbing.

[00:34:01] We had a vacuum cleaning situation going on out there, so I figured they could please hold that for a minute.

[00:34:07] Was your girlfriend cleaning? How dare she. He always happens. Yeah. This happens. Jesus. Like I said, there are many things I would like to go into on that topic. But for now and for this podcast, I would like to stay on the topic of domain names. And as we all know, I’m quite the expert on domain names. I know pretty much everything. So no, now I’m not complete. Nope. Nope. I don’t know anything about the meanings. And I would like to ask you some questions so that me and listeners may be not sure where to begin. If they were to get their own domain name, how they can think, what they should start, what is important. So the next segment would be more educational and I would be the guinea pig on this.

[00:35:02] All right, cool.

[00:35:12] Let’s say I was to buy a domain name. What are the most the most important thing I need to think about?

[00:35:21] Well, first and foremost, it depends on what you want to do. Do you want to build a small little side project or do you want to build a grand scale vision?

[00:35:36] Ok, let me make up a project in my mind and then we can use that as an example.

[00:35:43] All right. Let’s say I want to create a company. You can ask me to use an example if this is not a good fit. But let’s say I want to create a company that wants to educate people to eat more vegetables. And the business idea here is then I will sell some green nutrients on on the site. And it’s my passion project. But maybe if it rose to something big, that would be really cool as well. So there’s some big dream, but I’ll start small. Well, how would you think about that situation?

[00:36:12] Well, there are two different kinds of approaches to take. One is having a domain name that clearly explains what it is that you’re doing. And one is having something that can build a brand.

[00:36:27] So if you have something that clearly explains what you’re doing, you can get the benefit of search engines, for example. So you could choose to have the buy green, the nutrients dot com, for example, and that would help you to be found in Google on a search word like buy green nutrients, which might be really good for you.

[00:36:51] So why do I ask? Ask him on a little bit more question. How does it go? Will take the name of the domain into account. Is that like a really big factor for Google?

[00:37:01] It used to be.

[00:37:03] More or less the biggest factor for Google. And it’s still a big factor. It’s not the biggest one. It’s not as important as it used to be. But it’s it’s it makes a lot of sense because if people are just looking for buy green nutrients, for example, then Google will not really be sure if they’re looking for your brand. Five green nutrients or if they’re just looking to migrate nutrients. So you will benefit from that because Google will want to make sure that whoever is looking for that brand, which happens to be your brand, is actually finding it OK. So in that way, you will benefit from becoming the brand that people look for. Or you can have a completely different name, which is just Amy’s veggies, dot com, which no one is gonna Google for unless it is your brand.

[00:37:56] But people might remember it easier. People might see it on Instagram and these kind of things. So they might be easier to brand it in these ways. And if you’re building a project that’s gonna be a large scale project and you want to do this. You want to do these things, then the brand is probably going to matter the most because in the long term, that makes a lot of sense. It’s like great dot com. No one is going to Google, just great and find something to do business with us. But it’s very Brandel instead of being called next generation charity or whatever that people know. But so if you’re going for the name that really explains this and there’s something that people can search for, you will have a shortcut into getting people looking for it. But you will not have the brand ability. So if you’re just building a small side project, I would go with a shortcut. This is something I can make some money from. This could be a fun thing. You could get started a bit quicker because you have taken that shortcut. But in the long run, it might be worse.

[00:39:05] Could actually get named later on. Would that be almost impossible? From Google’s perspective. So do you guess the name I pick in the beginning? Do I have to stick with that?

[00:39:16] You can change the name.

[00:39:18] There are ups and downs, and that’s a whole podcast of talking as well. Yes, you can. And if you do Google 3 0 1 redirect before you do it. And I’ll just let someone else explain how that works. But that’s very important. So 3 0 1 redirect. You need to make sure to get that part 1. So yeah, this is the whole the first basic that you want to build something you brandel bold. You want to be able to it to make easier results of the search engines. So I would start for it for you. I would start with a shortcut. To start selling these kind of things up there, and I’m guessing that you would do it in Sweden, so I would get the top S E domain or the top end you to me, which is common to users, but I want to dot com domain. It’s much cooler. Yeah, it’s cooler. It’s it’s trickier depending on if it’s almost all dot com domains are taken. So what you can do them is basically doing what I did with this auction. But on a much smaller scale. So let’s say the name is taken because almost all domain names are taken.

[00:40:26] So either you find one which is not taken and means veggies is probably not taken. Or maybe it is Emma’s super veggies. I don’t know. You can find a version of it that’s not taken. Then you can buy it for like twelve bucks. And if it is taken, but no one is using it. Depending on those domains start and maybe a hundred bucks and then they go up to infinity. But a domain name for a small business can be bought for like 500 bucks or something like that. So then you can usually find the owner by who is dot com. As I mentioned before or on for example, see CDO dot com as EDL where you can buy these kind of domains on auctions. There’s a lot cheaper. So you want the dot com domain, it’s taken. You can contact the owner. You negotiate a little bit and hopefully you can buy domain like that for five hundred dollars each. And maybe it’s worth Dell’s money because you really want to to do that. And it gives you short cuts for the future.

[00:41:29] Cool. So.

[00:41:32] The recent budget, they’re more expensive than because somewhere when the Internet started back and dot com became cooler and all those named just got bought some now.

[00:41:42] Yeah. Dot com is being used everywhere in the world. Yeah. So that’s like the ultimate domain name.

[00:41:48] And so you can.

[00:41:53] You could say that dot com is Manhattan. It’s like a lot of money. There are a lot of people there are a lot of people coming there from everywhere. And then Dot SC. That’s Stockholm. It’s still a pretty big city. It’s still a lot of people, but not compared to do New York. So it will be a lot cheaper to buy something in Stockholm than it is to buy buy it in New York. If we take that analogy with a shop before. If you want your shoe or is your store on Fifth Avenue, it’s going to cost you a lot more to buy them. If you’re buying it on dropping golf, on stock, all sits the same kind of thing here. That dot com will be the most expensive one.

[00:42:35] And do Google care? Do they prioritize the dot.com names over the dot and see names, for example, for English?

[00:42:44] Yes. And this is also something that used to be more before than it is now. So this is another thing that the dot com is more on the branded side. So it could be worth paying for the dot com. If you’re willing if you want to build a brand, if you want to do these things, but if you want your traffic from search engines, you might go with E cheaper option. And if it’s in English, you might buy dot, net or dot or Gore dot info, which is usually 10 percent of the price of a dot com. If that. So you can go go with that, and it’s that once again, it’s not as Brandel, because people are not going to think about the doctor if they’re just remembering something. There’s one more thing for them to remember. To remember great dot com is a lot easier to remember than great dot net. And so that goes with that as well. OK.

[00:43:35] So you’re saying if I want to shortcut and get results right away, I should buy a domain name that describes my business, eat vegetables. And if I’m really cool, I choose dot.com. And if I can afford it.

[00:43:47] Yeah, because that’s the Manhattan. All right. All right.

[00:43:52] I’m obviously going dot com. But let’s say someone else is already on that. What if someone already has a business on it, fashionable dot com? Or what if there were maybe there wasn’t the business there before and now it’s closed down?

[00:44:08] Ok. If there already is a business there.

[00:44:11] Unless you have a really big budget. I would just move on. It’s basically if we take that example, we are the dream woman of our life. That means that you’re meeting her. But she’s already married and she’s happily married, most likely. So it’s gonna be a lot more effort to win her over than to get the single woman.

[00:44:29] We need a plan. Yes. But also, I would love. But if I’m just going to save you the headache, it’s more likely that you will win the single woman than the married woman.

[00:44:40] So. But if, on the other hand, the woman has been married, so there hasn’t been a website and now she’s gotten divorced. So the Web site is closed down.

[00:44:49] This might actually be beneficial to you because a Web site that has been a Web site before, those already have a relationship to Google, for example. So it already has a certain value in the search engines because someone has been using it, someone has been doing something progressive and good with it. So if you buy a Web site that used to be something good, you can actually benefit from that. So there are Web sites where you can find expired domains. It’s called so domains that has been used in the past. So Google for expired domains and you can see lists of that. And that might actually be be beneficial because this woman who is now divorced, she had learned a lot in her first marriage. So now she’s ready to bring that to the table with you. She don’t she doesn’t need to relearn everything.

[00:45:39] Sticking with that analogy, even though it’s starting to fade now, we can make it even more absurd, if you like. So the great us, all she has, she has never been married. The great octomom. She’s never been married. All right, cool.

[00:45:54] Yeah. Yes. The short answer is don’t try to buy an existing business. It’s much, much more likely that you can buy something else.

[00:46:06] Do you have any more advice for my business that I might have missed or do you have something to share about domains for now?

[00:46:16] Thing that we covered the beginner lesson about this. I think we’ve gotten most of it.

[00:46:22] How can I ask, how did you learn this stuff? Did you have this knowledge prior to building your previous business? Katrina Because Katrina. That’s that’s a name that you made up and then branded. I guess you went for the. You didn’t go for the shortcut.

[00:46:40] Yes and no. So Katrina is a company that owns a lot of Web sites. So Katrina media dot com doesn’t care that much about traffic. It’s not important that it gets a lot of visitors to that site. On the other hand, we had Web sites that are about casino and gambling and stuff and some of them are called casino bonus dot com more or less where it’s very neat towards that. While others are called John Slots dot com, which is just a brand name then John and while slots as a keyword. But no one’s going to look for John slots. So there’s those two different angles on it. So with the terms of your question, I learn by doing. I had no idea what I was doing when I was getting into this.

[00:47:25] So I got into this 10 years ago, give or take 12 years ago.

[00:47:30] And I did a lot of mistakes. I’ve read a lot of blogs and forums and I used a lot of trial and error. And I really love doing that. I think that was the key thing. I was passionate about this topic. I saw that how that could work within the bigger picture.

[00:47:48] And I really I really enjoyed the negotiations part. I enjoyed the research part. I enjoyed talking to people about it. And I enjoyed creating something and building something on top of that name because the name is.

[00:48:05] I’m trying to come up with a good analogy for the name. The name is like the first thing you like. Like you see the the house you’re going to build. It’s like the first time it kind of you can look at the blueprint. It’s kind of helps to envision how everything will look and thoughts. It’s been a big passion of mine.

[00:48:26] Cool and I think Great is a name that also works for both charity and for business.

[00:48:38] I think you talked with me about this before, was that one of the recent studies you want great over a name like play, for example?

[00:48:46] Yes. So one of the things I was looking for was I wanted to do something that could combine gambling and charity, which just to start with is a challenging way of doing things that the two most people make. Well, when I tell this story, people like who you want to do charity and gambling and are like, yeah, makes a lot of sense. And I completely understand that. So I wanted to have a name that could be work for a great casino as well as great charity. And a name like play could possibly do that name like best could possibly do that. But Casino Guy Dot.com could never do that, for example, or giving for charity dot.com could never be a casino. So I wanted a name that had a positive feeling and could work with anything. So now in the in the ground edition of this, it could be great. Insurances, it can be great travelling, great business cards, great whatever. And it can still work very much with with charity and giving things away. And so they’re actually very few words that that ticks all those boxes. And yeah, that’s why teenage me fell madly in love with a woman of great dot com.

[00:50:02] I get that. I mean, we’re touching on a lot of things now that could potentially be a whole lot of podcasts, but we’re sort of running up on time. I have one more noob question in this little tiny education.

[00:50:14] My dad loves buying things and he loves justifying buying things by saying something like if you buy a guitar, he has like four guitars. If you buy a guitar. The value of the guitar doesn’t go down. You can sell it 20 years later for pretty much the same price. So of course, you can have four guitars. Is is a domain name. A similar thing. If you were to celebrate. Do you think you would get your money back?

[00:50:39] I think I do. The challenge with that is that.

[00:50:44] Anything is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it regardless. As we said with hockey pictures earlier today when you and I were talking about it, it’s very easy to say that something is worth something.

[00:50:56] But at the end of the day, it’s only worth what someone is willing to pay. So I could probably sell a great outcome for nine hundred thousand dollars. But it might take me 22 years to find that person who’s willing to buy it. So is it worth nine hundred thousand dollars then? Maybe. Maybe not. I met I actually talked to the guy I was bidding against. I got in contact with him by accident and he was another domain owner, a guy. So he had a lot of domain names and asked him what he would have charged for the domain name if he had bought it from the auction. And I wanted to buy it from him later. And then he said probably 5 million. So he considered the domain thing to be worth 5 million, but he wasn’t willing to pay more than nine hundred thousand for it because he couldn’t risk holding on for us for 22 years to find a buyer.

[00:51:48] So it’s really tricky like that. It’s kind of like a very to be a pretty specific buyer to get something. I thought, yeah. Now imagine that you have the same piece of jewelry. You have a watch covered in diamonds as super fancy thing. And it’s 200 years old. It’s worth 10 million dollars, but it’s really hard to find the buyers for that one if you don’t know a lot of Arabian sheiks or saris of Russia. You’re not going to sell it. So is it worth it? A trinket to say? Yeah, but Johnson. Yeah, I think I could sell it. Great. I’ve come for nineteen thousand. I just don’t know how long it would take.

[00:52:27] Cool. All right. We just bought Emma and Eric for precedents. Dot com, obviously. What are we gonna do with it? Gonna become presidents. I mean, everything is so easy. Good.

[00:52:39] The man they the first elect to say I’m gonna be the first non American American presidents. Yeah. And starting now, I’m going to say I want to be the first American on American cold presidents.

[00:52:49] We’re going to be the first two presidents of this year. It’s gonna be great. That makes the world great again. Exactly. All right, guys.

[00:52:59] If you’re listening to this on YouTube, please leave us a comment about what you want to see in the future.

[00:53:04] If you have any feedback to ask for this podcast, we’d love to hear what you have to say. Eric Holder on the way to some boxing. Be gentle.

[00:53:13] Have a nice day. Have a nice day. Thank you.