 Welcome to The Journey. Today, we're talking about why you should invest in domains. Well, hey, I'm Sam. This is Joe from GoDaddy. So, Joe, tell us a little bit about yourself. I've been with GoDaddy for over 10 years in the aftermarket, and what we do there is we help people invest in domains every day. So, like many of you watching, I know I've heard of many domains being sold for millions of dollars, and I've always wondered, what does it take to get into it? I know there are some people that just do this full time. So, Joe, is this a possibility? Yeah. I think anybody can get started investing in domain names. So, you can start, you know, no matter where you are. If you want to start with a small investment or a large investment, there's an opportunity for anyone. Oh, so it's like buying and selling properties like a real estate agent? Yeah, kind of more like an investor. So, if you're investing in real estate, you look for stuff that might be a little bit under the market value. You know, people come in all the time, they'll buy a foreclosure, or they, you know, go and they say, this is an up-and-coming neighborhood. I really want to get a property there because they know in a few years from now it's going to be more valuable. Same thing with domain names. People look for undervalued assets in the domain world and they say, man, this is a great opportunity for me to jump in and buy this name because I know for the person over here who sells these all the time, this is going to be really valuable. If they have a car website and they say, this name does do a lot for their business and help them sell more cars, I'm going to buy this because I know for that person, it's worth X amount more than I have to pay for it for their business. All right. Now, Joe, this sounds phenomenal, but how do I get started? Well, the first thing you should do is really think about what your business plan would be. So, like any business and any opportunity, you want to think things through first. So think about if you want, you know, to invest a little bit of money or a lot of money and how you want to do that. Some people, they invest mainly in short-term opportunities. So what they'll do is they'll go to an expired domain name market where, you know, names are more or less wholesale when they expire out of people's accounts, they can pick them up and then they'll buy those and sell them for, you know, several hundred dollars or a thousand dollars more than they picked them up for and try and do that quickly. So the short-sell or short-term is like flipping homes. Yeah, yeah, more or less, you're flipping domain names. So you're buying this name, you know, it's undervalued, you know, if you got it to the right person's hands, it would be worth more money and you buy it and there's a smaller margin, you know, profit. With other people, they buy names that are more valuable and they hold those for a longer period of time. So you might buy a name like, you know, homes.com and you might have to spend, you know, a million dollars for that. But you know that to the right real estate agent or a company like Zillow that that's their focus, that a name like homes.com would be well over a million dollars for their bottom line. So if you, you know, think about it up front, what kind of business plan do you want to go with? Do you want to be, you know, short-term? Do you want to go long-term? What types of names do you want to invest in? You know, you should really do your research up front and try and figure that out and then it'll give you a good, you know, path. What's the take next? Quick question for you, Joe. You said research. So where do you go to learn about this is going to be a good domain that I should get? This is going to be booming in this certain industry? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that you should do. First thing is start with the market that you already know. So if you already are doing another job and you know you're in the construction business and you build houses all the time and you know that there's a new material that's coming out that's going to be great for the environment and it's going to help save people money on their home building costs, maybe you think about, well, you know, what kind of domain names would go around selling something like that in the future? Because I know that industry and I know it's going to grow. You also can look at other names itself. So there are sites like namebio.com. That'll tell you what keyword names are selling. So it could be homes, it could be cars, it could be flooring. You can look for that specific keyword and it'll tell you what name is sold in that area and it'll also tell you the dates. So you can see if, you know, the last ones that sold were 10 years ago or are they selling now? And it'll give you a good idea of what the market is like. And then there's blogs. There's people that do this all the time for a living and a lot of them are open to share their knowledge. So you can go to a place like domaining.com. Okay. And that's an aggregator and it'll grab a lot of the top blogs in the industry and you can learn from others. You really want to take it slow and learn as much as you can before you invest any money. Now, my day-to-day, I'm in social media marketing. So Joe, you get a domain name. How are you going to market it? Like for instance, I'm thinking about Twitter, Facebook, there's certain handles. So what do you suggest a person do when it comes to social media? Well, I think with social media that's a good tie-in. You know, there's a lot of similarities. With social media handles, you want something that's easy for people to remember so they can find you, right? And it's the same thing with a short and brandable domain. Those are typically more valuable. So if you have a brand and you have that presence, that's just going to add more value to the overall domain name that you own. So if you had, you know, at cars, as a great handle, you had cars.com and you were to sell that domain name as an added value, you might want to throw in those handles, hey, you can have this business. And that's going to add that whole brand so somebody can buy a package. And that goes back to your business plan. That's the area you know, you should focus on that. You know, what would this do to somebody who's in social marketing? How would this help them? How would this domain name help them? How would the handles help them? And how can I package that up to say, hey, this is going to be a great benefit for your bottom line? All right, Joe, I wish I knew all this ahead of the curve. Like when the internet was just becoming a thing, I would have just grabbed mcdonalds.com or target.com. I'd have been probably not doing this now and rich and retired. But Joe, is there any way that we can be ahead of the trends and know what domain names we should really grab? Yeah, that's a great question. There's always new trends. And that's one of the things that keeps the main investing exciting, right? There's always new things that are being invented or new things that people are talking about. And being in social media, it's great because you're oftentimes at the forefront of that, right? You can see when new ideas are coming out. And that's why I brought it back before your industry. If you know the industry really well, you can see what new things are coming in your industry and keep an eye on that and get ahead of the curve. So there's always trends to watch out for cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, things like that a couple years ago. This year, it's been anything that's related to cannabis or CBD. Things like that have been really popular. So there's always new trends that come out. And if you can kind of watch what people are looking at, what they're buying, what's exciting, one thing that you always see is there's always a new diet every year, right? That's true. It's paleo, Atkins, like over the years they've changed. So you keep an eye on what's popular with people and keep an eye on things like social media that are new so you can find out, oh, where's this going? Maybe I should invest in some names that are going to be in demand in another year. And on the same topic of social media, there's certain platforms like Twitter. Twitter is great for keeping up with what's currently trending. So you can set certain notifications just to be notified or even Google. So this is good info. Yeah, there are domain investors that I know one of my friends actually keeps an eye on what's trending politically with different keywords. And then he'll see that on Twitter and he'll jump in and buy that domain name. And he sold it to some of the political candidates or other people that packs, things like that. So you can keep an eye on what's trending on Twitter and then go and register the name. People do that very often. Are there any other, as the expert here, are there any other tips that we should know to make sure that we're making a smooth entry into this new opportunity? Yeah, one thing that I tell people is start slow. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see. This can get really exciting, really fast. People start going out, they're registering a lot of domain names. And then next year, the bill comes to renew those names. So if you got a hundred names or you picked up a thousand names and it's a $10 renewal, that can add up quick. So start slow and try and focus again on your business plan, the marketing niche that you know and start with a few names and try and sell those before you actually build your portfolio out. So if you have five names and you try and sell those, you'll learn what's working, what's not working. And next year, if you still have those five names, it's $50 to renew rather than, you know, all of a sudden, you have a giant bill and that really will eat into your investing budget pretty quick. So start slow, make sure you build your portfolio smart and keep in mind what the carrying costs are. And like Joe mentioned earlier, if you know you're going to do it for the quick flip, the short term or the long term, kind of think about the money that you have to put in for each of those. Right. Well, that's a wrap. Thank you, Joe, for joining us. You just learned why you should invest in domain names. Make sure that you like, comment, and subscribe to our channel. 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