welcome to the journey today we're talking about why you should invest in domains [Music] well hey I'm Sam this is Joe from GoDaddy so Joe that looks a little bit about yourself I've been with GoDaddy for over 10 years in the after market and what we do there is we help people and 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 in investing in domain names 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 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 you 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 gonna be more valuable same thing with the main 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 they know for the person over here who sells these all the time this is gonna be really valuable if they have a car website and they see this name there's dual offer their business and help them sell more cars I'm gonna 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 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've gotta expired domain name market work you know names are more or less wholesale and 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 pick them up for and try and do that quickly other before it so yeah 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 to the right persons hands it would be worth more money and you buy it and there's a smaller margin I know often 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 mio 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 upfront what kind of business plan you want to go with you want to be you know short term you want to go long term what types of names do you want to invest in you know you should really do your research upfront and try and figure that out and then it'll give you a good know path what to take next question for you Joe you said research so where do you go to learn about this is gonna be a good domain that I should get this is one of them will be blooming in this certain industry and you think oh yeah there's I think there's a couple things you should do first thing is start with the market that you already know so if you already you're doing another job and you know you're in the construction business and you build houses all the time and you know if there's a new material that's coming out that's gonna be great for the environment and it's gonna help save people money on their home building costs maybe 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 gonna grow you also can look at other names that sell so there are sites like name bio.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's over ten years ago or are they selling now and it would 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 place like demeaning calm 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 it's a good tie and 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 handling you had cars calm and you were to sell that domain name as an added value might want to throw in those handles say you can have this business and that's gonna add that whole brand so somebody can buy a package and that's you know goes back to your 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 the handles help them how can i package that up to say hey this is gonna 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 McDonald's calm or Target calm 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 domaine 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 you know anything that's related to cannabis or CBD things like that has 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 a 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 investment some names that are gonna be in you know 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 you know currently trending so you could set certain notification it's just a you know be notified even Google so this is good info yeah their domain investors they I know one of my friends actually keeps an eye on was training politically mmm with different keywords and then he'll see that on Twitter and he'll jump in and buy that domain name and you sold it to some of the political candidates or other people that PACs 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 you know 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 to registering a lot of domain names and then next year the bill comes to renew those names so if you've got a hundred names or you picked up a thousand names and it's a ten dollar renewal that can add up quick right so it starts 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 you know what's working what's not working and next year if you're still out those five names it's $50 to renew rather than you know all of a sudden yeah you have a giant bill and that really will eat into your investing budget pretty quick right 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 gonna 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 don't forget to ring that bell you know we have fresh content coming out this is the journey we'll see you next time you