Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 151 with Monte Cahn of Right of the Dot

Speaker 1 (0s): This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk, where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry, and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we'll be speaking with Monte Cahn of Right of the Dot. At Adult Site Broker, we've doubled our affiliate payouts on ASB Cash.

Now, when you refer sellers or buyers to us, you'll receive 20% of our broker commission on any and all sales that result from that referral for life. You can either place a link to us on your site or refer buyers and sellers through an email introduction, ASB Cash, as the first affiliate program for an adult website brokerage. Check out ASB cash.com for more details and to sign up. We've also added an event section to our website@adultsitebroker.com.

Now you can get information on B2B events on our website, as well as special discounts reserved for our clients. Go to adult site broker.com for more details. Now let's feature our property the week that's for sale at Adult Site Broker. We're proud to offer for sale an innovative marketing agency that specializes in managing the top 0.01% only fans profiles in the world. It's just under a year old, but it's growing very quickly.

They fully manage the workflow from promotion to monetization. They've developed an internal C R M that empowers the sales management, marketing automation, and analytics on the platform. This enables them to consistently drive in target trafficked profiles and efficiently monetize them. The company is already doing over 2 million euros in annual revenue from just over 20 only fans accounts. They have a database of over a million contacts and 600,000 users.

This is an outstanding opportunity for someone who wants to enter the world of only fans management and immediately become one of the top agencies in the world, or established agencies can acquire the company and expand their business. Only 2.59 million euros. Now time for this week's interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker talk is Mari Cahn of Right of the Dot. Monte, thanks for being back with us today on Adult Site Broker talk.

Speaker 2 (2m 42s): Thanks Bruce. I'm glad to be here. I think it's been a few years since we spoke last and did a podcast. I, I think I was in San Diego visiting back then.

Speaker 1 (2m 51s): It's been a good while. Yeah, you're always somewhere besides home. Do you have a home anymore?

Speaker 2 (2m 57s): I sure do. I live in Lauderdale by the Sea Florida, which is outside Fort Lauderdale, but I'm currently in Vail, Colorado. Yeah. On a family ski trip.

Speaker 1 (3m 5s): That's, that's so awesome. Oh, when I, when I, when I die and come back, I want to be you. Okay. Oh, so Monty is a pioneer and innovator in the domain space. He's brokered an auctioned. Are you ready? A staggering 570 million in premium domain names. You heard that right. He's also a board advisor, real estate investor and developer. Monty's, the founder and president of Wright of the dot, a licensed business and premium domain auction and brokerage firm providing internet consulting and advisement, specializing in new and existing TLD strategy resolution services, premium domain market positioning, sales and services.

I'm outta breath. He is the managing member of.hiphop, L L c, the new I A N accredited Domain registry for hiphop domain names. He was the founder and c e O of moniker.com. You might remember those guys a leading I, a accredited registrar and he was the president of snap names.com. He is also an active investor in many developments in Costa Rica and Las Vegas, where would talk on offline about one in Las Vegas.

We need to talk about it. Sounds pretty cool. He also has numerous other business interests. Monty has been pioneering domain and aftermarket services since 1994. During this time, he's helped many new and existing TLDs have successful launches through registrar promotions, sales and auctions of premium domains through marketing, brokerage and sales. Monty has more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare high tech and internet fields. He was one of the early pioneers of the industry and started investing in domain names in 1994 and started the first online domain brokerage business.

His resume includes brokering the industry's first domain sale for over 1 million with the sale of Wall street.com and the industry's first 2 million domain sale with a sale of autos.com. Later. He sold the highest dollar domain in history with a sale of porn.com for 9.5 million and slots.com for 5.5 million. He's also the visionary behind live and online domain auctions. He was also the creator of Domain appraisals, domain escrow and who is privacy services.

Monty was voted into the 2010 domain Hall of fame by industry peers. He's spoken and presented at more than 160 conferences. Monty graduated from the University of Kentucky with degrees in marketing, biology and business administration. Let's talk about that project in Vegas. You were just telling me about it sounds just wild.

Speaker 2 (5m 52s): Yeah, very excited about it. So, as you know, I'm invested in a traction in Costa Rica called Diamante Echo Adventure Park. And it's a, it's a, it's a zip line park with an animal sanctuary at the end. And part of the same group of those of my partners, we all started a project in Vegas. It's gonna be called Crash and Burn. It's gonna be a bar and a restaurant and barcade kind of theme with a live music venue inside, right on Fremont Street.

And on the rooftop of this four story building will be an outside skydiving, air floating attraction. Similar to, have you ever seen an eye fly or you know, a tube where you see people skydiving inside or floating in the air? Sure. This will be open air, so out in the open and you're gonna rise above Fremont Street and people on Fremont Street will be able to see you flying high in the air, you know, above the bar and restaurant and above the, above the building. It'll be really cool.

Speaker 1 (6m 50s): So cool. So cool.

Speaker 2 (6m 52s): Yeah. We're gonna open up in September, October of this year just in time for the Formula one in Las Vegas and for the Super Bowl, which is happening in 2024.

Speaker 1 (7m 1s): That is neat. Yeah, it is gonna be in Vegas, isn't it? Oh, I so hope my niners are in that one. My goodness. So money. It's been a while since we've talked. Now I hear differing opinions about the overall domain market, specifically in the adult space. What's the current market for domains? Well,

Speaker 2 (7m 21s): Their overall market for domains is okay, we're in a challenging economic period of time with cryptocurrencies and, and worldwide markets, you know, depleted a little bit. Domain names are a alternative investment strategy for many, but it happens to be one of the few assets that retain its value or has some value that's above expectations over time. So whether it's an adult name, which is actually kind of a slower market as you know in this time period. Yes. Or a premium domain name, you know, keyword, one word, dictionary, terms, search terms, those types of things.

You know, some of those key.com names are still selling. And for some, for record values, I noticed in an adult industry that, you know, with the coming together in the consolidation of the industry, you know, back when I started in the mid nineties to late nineties, the adult industry had a completely different footprint. You know, it was, you know, 20 main companies, hundreds of affiliates. Yeah. And then a bunch of sub and second tier companies. Now there's five, you know, main companies. They're also in the mainstream industry as well.

Yes. The affiliate business has kind of changed so much and of course it went from paid to, you know, to free companies make their money in different ways. So yes, a lot of those adult names aren't as valuable as they may or should have been. You know, in the last couple years a lot of people are making big plays in second tier domain names and driving traffic and using other techniques to build value on those websites versus interesting, you know, things like porn.com or sex.com or you know, pussy.com and you know, things like that.

You know, names I've been involved in sales in from the past.

Speaker 1 (9m 2s): If you look into your crystal ball, what do you think if, if I buy an adult domain name today, what are the prospects a good one?

Speaker 2 (9m 13s): You mean prospects to sell or develop

Speaker 1 (9m 16s): The prospects to for it to grow over the years?

Speaker 2 (9m 20s): Well, I'm still a big believer in natural type in traffic. You know, obviously keyword domain names, whether it be adult or regular domain names. Those that get natural type in traffic because people are still typing them into the U R L line. Yeah. To me that's a huge benefit in terms of value because you're not paying for search, you're not paying for PPC or CPC to position that name artificially or naturally into a position. So it's true still the keyword dictionary terms, the keyword traffic drivers are the most valuable domain names.

And I think those will always be valuable over time. Yeah. Dot com, you know, continues to be the king of the roost. Yes. You know, just because it was the first established commercial domain name in, you know, in our environment. Sure. However, you know, the new generations of users are children, for example, they don't know what com stands for. They don't know what it means. They don't know the importance of it. So they're using alternative extensions already. And because there's a lot of.com names already gone, they're using the alternative domain names. Yes. And as you know, a lot of alternative extensions like AI for artificial intelligence, which is, you know, a country code and so is io and.cc, if you remember the old days.cc used to stand for carbon copy tv, which is Tuvalu had a meaning for television.

And now there's a thousand new top level domain names like.hiphop and like.auto and like.adult and like.sex and triple triplex and all these other extensions

Speaker 1 (10m 48s): And.porn. Right, right.

Speaker 2 (10m 49s): And.porn. So they're all, they all have their niches. You know, obviously the, the secondary extensions or the top level extensions that were just added in 2013, they're not gonna get the natural typing traffic that.com gets. So once it website is built onto that, you know, onto that D domain name and then search engine placement is positioned properly, then that will drive the interest and the traffic that will raise the value of those.

Speaker 1 (11m 13s): Interesting. So you're okay with the domain name, adult site broker?

Speaker 2 (11m 18s): Oh yeah. Love it.

Speaker 1 (11m 20s): I do too. That's why I bought it. And so many more. So how are domain names good investments in 2023?

Speaker 2 (11m 32s): Well, because there was a little bit of a recessionary hit to the domain ministry, obviously people are divesting in some of their portfolios, so it's a good time to invest in domain names at a discount like it always has been in these recessionary periods. There you

Speaker 1 (11m 47s): Go.

Speaker 2 (11m 48s): Since, since I was in the business in 1994, I've faced three recessionary periods and the first recessionary period, which was in the, you know, early 1999, 2000 period, selling domain names back then kept us in business, you know, interesting. And that was helping people liquidate domain names that they needed to divert that money to, you know, pay tuition for school and you know, basically pay bills. We as a, you know, as the main middleman or the main brokerage slash auctioneer at the time, we made our living helping buyers and sellers, you know, transact those, those transactions obviously.

So we're in that kind of same situation right now because we're facing economic hardship. Some people just aren't, as, you know, there's liquid domainers, which have a lot of cash, a lot of money just like in any, just like cryptocurrency and other fields that are alternative investment fields. And then there's others that are dabbling in it as a hobby. Right. And they've put a, you know, some substantial amount of money into that, but their main part of business is another job, you know, another industry opportunity. And so they're more willing to say, you know what, something I would sell for $10,000 in 2019, 2020.

I would sell for three or 4,000 now. Yeah. And you know, so we're looking at, in some cases, you know, in some cases 50 to 70% discounts on, you know, some premium and some sub premium properties. Right. But on the other hand, some of the largest transactions have happened because of some of those opportunities. At the same time, I just got done with a, a 4.2 million transaction. I can't say what the name is, but it was a company that majorly shifted their brand from a two word domain name to a one word premium domain name.

And it was very strategic time for their business. And so it made sense for them to spend that money, you know, to do so.

Speaker 1 (13m 39s): Okay. Are you in a buying mode right now when it comes to domains? Personally,

Speaker 2 (13m 44s): No. I'm more in, you know, I own a few thousand domain names now. I, I started off registering. That's all up. Well, you know, I, but I'm not, I'm not actively like buying names in the aftermarket. I'll register some, you know, new registrations that I see. Keywords or trending opportunities from the news or from technology, you know, internet documents and posts and stuff. You know, that's how some of this stuff started in the very beginning anyway. And there's still some great opportunities to buy domain names in various extensions with certain keywords that are, you know, something into the future.

But I primarily help others divest or invest in domain names through our right of the dot brokerage and our auctions. Okay. And so I'm, I'm still probably the only market maker in the industry because of the auction environment that we produce. Yeah. Yeah. So I still do the, all the auctions in the industry for NamesCon. We're gonna be doing an auction for the first time at Miami NFT week. And we're gonna be auctioning off web three domain names and NFTs and also web two domains.

And so we're getting into all kinds of, of other kinds of digital real estate. So we're evolving with the industry and what's hot and what's not.

Speaker 1 (14m 56s): I haven't seen you do one at an adult show for a while.

Speaker 2 (14m 59s): I have not, but I'm not opposed to it. We used to hold the biggest auctions ever at, I know, at, at the adult shows. And I traveled to Amsterdam and, and we talked about Lisbon and I did an auction there and Macau, China did an auction there for the adult industry. And, and of course in Vegas and, and of course in South Florida where I live for the largest conferences in the world. So we Hmm. We helped sell some of the biggest adult domain names in, in, you know, in the entire industry, so, right. But I'm, I'm open to it. And I just got tapped on the shoulder by Affiliate Summit, cuz they wanna see another auction again.

Great. Cause it was really exciting, you know, back 10, 15 years ago and they're looking for ways to build excitement for that.

Speaker 1 (15m 41s): Well, just let me know, you know, that I know all the promoters very well, so if you wanna do something, say with t e s in Prague or, you know, the Yeah, I can't think of it right now, but, well,

Speaker 2 (15m 60s): AVN

Speaker 1 (16m 1s): No, no, that's not who I'm thinking. That's not who I'm thinking of. But anyway. Yeah. But I know all the promoters, so I can certainly help you.

Speaker 2 (16m 9s): I really appreciate

Speaker 1 (16m 10s): It. Oh, of course, of course. How long have we known each other, Monique? Geez, you were, you were at moniker when we met and how many years ago was that?

Speaker 2 (16m 18s): Well, I started in the domain industry in 1994, but I started moniker as a actual company in 2001, I believe is when I acquired the registrar.

Speaker 1 (16m 27s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16m 28s): So it's been, it's about when

Speaker 1 (16m 29s): I, and that's about when I got into adult. I think I've known you since then, so Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16m 34s): I was a, I was a reseller for several registrars before that, and then decided to buy a registrar from a Canadian company in Mississauga and, and rename it moniker. So that's how MONIKER became moniker.

Speaker 1 (16m 47s): And it did very well. Did very well. Yes. I I used them. I used them until you left. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16m 55s): Yeah. And I, and I, I was the only registrar that really focused on the adult industry Really. Because I

Speaker 1 (16m 60s): Remember, I remember, yeah. That's why I used you, this supported

Speaker 2 (17m 4s): Us in the nineties. In the nineties I had high, very high degree of respect for the adult industry that the adult company CEOs and, and leaders, because it was one of the most regulated types of businesses back then. They, you know, they, they basically created credit card transactions on the web. Yep. They helped with secure socket layers. They were very loyal companies once you got their business. And so I started showing up at ABN conferences back in the late nineties, early two thousands.

And I was only registrar, you know, there.

Speaker 1 (17m 38s): Yeah. Inter Next went along with it. Yeah, right. Which they used to co-own. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. So you have a lot of auctions with right of the dot, what's the schedule for this year?

Speaker 2 (17m 52s): So we're doing two auctions in the, in the next several months actually. There'll be, there'll probably be a couple more added before between now and the end of the year. Okay. So we're, for the first time we're gonna be going to N F T Miami N f t Week, which is a three to 5,000 attendee show in Miami, which is the start of Miami Tech Week. And then the Bitcoin conference comes to Miami also. And so the organizers there are really excited to have something new and, you know, exciting. So we're gonna do an auction on April 1st, I believe.

I don't know the exact time yet. We're still working at the schedule, but I think

Speaker 1 (18m 26s): This will, I think this will run after that, unfortunately. But how about after that?

Speaker 2 (18m 31s): After that we'll be names Con in Austin, Texas, which is the 28th, I think it's the 28th or 30th of May through June 3rd, something like that. Okay. I think it's, I think it's May 30th through June 3rd. Okay. And so I've always done that auction. And also if, if you remember prior to that, all the traffic auctions before that as well.

Speaker 1 (18m 54s): I did.

Speaker 2 (18m 54s): So that'll be a pretty big show. They're combining names con with, with their cloud computing company. I'm trying to remember the name of it, but I'll remember in a minute. Cloudfest, sorry. So there'll be a cloudfest and NamesCon combined in Austin, Texas during those dates. And we'll do a live on the second day of that conference.

Speaker 1 (19m 16s): Cloudfest sounds like it, it should be a cannabis event. But that's just, you know, that's just my opinion.

Speaker 2 (19m 23s): It's the largest cloud computing hosting conference in the, in the world actually. It's like, so the same, the same group that owns names Con or has the right to it. They, they run cloudfest well,

Speaker 1 (19m 33s): It's like, wow, man, we we're gonna go to cloudfest, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19m 38s): In Austin, Texas, man. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (19m 40s): Exactly. So I've used your company many times for domain appraisals. How important is it to get a domain appraised prior to putting it on the market?

Speaker 2 (19m 51s): You know, I started the, I invented the appraisal model back in 1998. I think, you know, once we started selling some domain names, people always wanna know, well, what's my domain name worth? So, you know, if you think of domain names as virtual property, or again, compare it to physical property, some of the same attributes apply. So, right. If you have a piece of property in downtown Manhattan, you know what, why is that piece of property important, for example? So it has tons of street traffic, right? Tons of car traffic,

Speaker 1 (20m 21s): Location, location,

Speaker 2 (20m 22s): Location, more, more likely. Yeah. Location. So you're more likely to walk into a vendor or into a store, into an apartment building that's on Madison Avenue or Fifth Avenue or you know, some premium place or beachfront property, like kind of close to where I live. You know, premium beachfront condos. They tend to be more valuable because of its desirability, how close it is to something that's, you know, desirable. In the case of a downtown location, how much traffic goes through that particular street corner or, or avenue and type in domain traffic is very similar to that traffic.

So if you type in domain name a keyword, like autos.com or like wall street.com or like porn.com, which I sold all those. Yeah. They got tons, you know, literally thousands of unique visitors every single day. So automatically that comes with value because you don't have pay type traffic. Sure. It's natural traffic. So Right. When you, when you ask for an appraisal, there's a couple reasons, and I've done appraisals for all kinds of reasons. I, I had to do appraisal recently, and I've done it many times for a divorce case. So you have a, a party in the divorce that has a portfolio of domain names.

The lawyers have no idea how to assess that value. There's no Right, there's no expert except somebody like me Right. Who can say, okay, this is what this portfolio's worth or this one domain name, and how do you split that asset between, you know, husband and wife or husband, husband, wife and wife, whatever. It's

Speaker 1 (21m 45s): The reason three. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21m 47s): The other, the other reason for appraisal, which I did tons of, were for IRS donation purposes. So if somebody wrote off a domain name and donated it to charity, they wanted to use that appraisal obviously to take down their, you know, capital gains. Sure. That's something I don't do as much anymore because, you know, the IRS treats domain names a little bit differently than physical property. So you have to be very careful when you do something like that.

Speaker 1 (22m 10s): Interesting.

Speaker 2 (22m 11s): Bankruptcies is another wing, similar to the divorce reasons, corporations, I do a lot of appraisal work for corporations when they're either ready to buy another company and take, you know, like as a merger and acquisition, and they're trying to assess the value of what that portfolio on the other side looks like if it is a domain portfolio. Interesting. So I did, I did one for Bosch. You, you remember the company Bosch? Go ahead. They make kitchen appliances. They're also the number one manufacturers of, of windshield wipers, and they also make breaks for BMWs and, and Mercedes.

Right. And a number of other things. Well, they ended up buying a healthcare company about 15 years ago. Hmm. And they didn't buy the healthcare company because of the healthcare portfolio. They bought it because of a, of a software technology that they wanted to use in another part of their business. Interesting. So they had this portfolio of medical names, which they didn't have any idea what the value was. And, and I'm talking about direct disease related to medical names, like aids.com, cancer cure.com, cancer treatment.com, leprosy.com, you know, all these keyword domains.

They hired me to assess the value of those domain names, and then I helped sell off the portfolio.

Speaker 1 (23m 21s): Nice.

Speaker 2 (23m 22s): So those are just a handful of reasons. And then of course, if somebody just wants to know, you know, what's a name worth before they either buy it or they sell it to get an idea.

Speaker 1 (23m 29s): Yeah. There you go.

Speaker 2 (23m 30s): What to expect.

Speaker 1 (23m 31s): Yeah, there you go. But I mean, in terms of, look, I hear from people all the time. I've got a, and I've got a rule. Well, the first thing I do is I, when somebody sends me domains, which frankly I am kind of moving away from domains because of what we talked about at the top of the program from more than anything else, they tend to be difficult to sell in the adult space unless you got a got a porn.com. The whole thing is, if somebody wants to look at selling a domain name, let's say it passes my eye test, which my eye test is getting more stringent every day.

I go, okay, is

Speaker 2 (24m 11s): That cause you need glasses?

Speaker 1 (24m 13s): No. Have those,

Speaker 2 (24m 15s): I'm just

Speaker 1 (24m 15s): Kidding. That was good money. That was, that was, that was really good. He'll be here all week. So the thing is that I tell them I have a requirement, you need to get an appraisal because don't ask me what it's worth because that's not my area. Okay. I've got a guy who is an expert and that guy would be you. Okay. Well, thank you. So, you know, it's pretty obvious, you know, I mean, and you're welcome.

So if they don't want to pay for an appraisal, okay, thank you. That's kind of the deal. Most people, frankly, who come to me with the domain, the domain isn't really worth the price of registration. Or they'll give me a loan that,

Speaker 2 (25m 2s): That happens a lot.

Speaker 1 (25m 3s): They give me a, a list of like 200 domains. I'm, I tell 'em I'll always look okay. And I, I go, quite frankly, I'm not thrilled about any of these. That's usually my answer. And I have to be honest, Bruce,

Speaker 2 (25m 17s): That's self

Speaker 1 (25m 19s): Platform.

Speaker 2 (25m 20s): Yeah. And that's usually the case with most people's portfolio. It's a, I'm sure you heard of the 80 20 rule. Well, with domain names, it's like the 95 5 rule. So, you know, usually 5%. So 5% of the domain names drive 90% of the value, whether it's either value or traffic, they want to take over a particular market in terms of a domain strategy, which is smart in some ways. Right? Like if, if you hit a market segment. I had a client many years ago, his name was Bill Gormley, love the guy. And before anyone knew what nanotechnology was, he started reading about nanotechnology.

This is back in, this is literally back in the late nineties, early two thousands. Hmm. He registered, you know, a hundred different nano names. So, okay. You know, at the time no one knew what nanotechnology was. And you know, he registered all his name as moniker. So, you know, we were glad to have the registrations. Sure. And sure enough, 15 years later, he ended up selling a bunch of those names through us and through others, and it turned out to be a goodbye. Sure. Cause all you

Speaker 1 (26m 18s): Have, all you have to do in the end, if you, if you register a hundred names and it costs you what, you know, oh, it's gonna cost you a thousand dollars. Okay. Or, or is it thousand

Speaker 2 (26m 31s): Dollars per year? Yeah. If you're registering from scratch, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26m 34s): It's gonna cost you a thousand dollars and then you sell a couple later for $5,000 each. You've obviously made 10 times your money.

Speaker 2 (26m 44s): Yeah. And, and, but it doesn't always work out that way for everybody. Everybody seems to get on that same kind of wave. Right? Yeah, sure. And to be honest, it's harder to sell a portfolio than it is to sell individual names. So if you get a portfolio of those nano names, you know, selling one or two or three for, you know, 10 to $50,000, which is what he did. So he paid himself back Sure. And made some money. But not all of them are sold. And some people end up with thousands of names and they'll go to, they'll die with thousands of names in their portfolio and it'll be handed off to their kids and estates. That's another reason why I do appraisals, by the way, for estate.

Right.

Speaker 1 (27m 16s): Right.

Speaker 2 (27m 17s): So some people think by cornering a market in a certain technology field that you're gonna get more for a portfolio, but that's not necessarily true. You get a fraction of the upsell part by having the whole portfolio, because most companies aren't, you know, in all those different segments. But the, the most successful domainers are those that own several different kinds of keywords or dictionary terms or, or traffic domains in various fields. Yeah. So that they're, they're diversified a little bit.

Speaker 1 (27m 42s): Yeah. Well, I'll get an idea by a domain and then if I don't develop the idea, which is most of the time I let it go, but it doesn't end up being like a huge loser for me. I've bought a lot of things having to do with my field as defensive domains. Yeah. And yeah. And I am letting some go because they're just too far off. You know, they're just like, okay, somebody wants to buy that, that's fine. That's not gonna hurt me.

So Yeah. I've, I'm getting things, you know, like daily from name silo, this is gonna expire. I'm thinking, good, let it, so

Speaker 2 (28m 20s): Yeah. So, so, you know, defensive registrations are hardly worth anything. It's only for your own use so that other people Oh yeah, of course. Infringe, infringe on your, you know, IP or your, your what, your ideas. But if you were to let those go, nobody's gonna, you know, nobody's gonna pick up the misspells anymore. Right.

Speaker 1 (28m 37s): It

Speaker 2 (28m 37s): Keeps

Speaker 1 (28m 37s): Competitors out, is what it does.

Speaker 2 (28m 39s): And if you try to register someone's favorite famous mark, you're gonna end up in a U D R P and, you know, or a lawsuit or something. It's not worth it. So. No,

Speaker 1 (28m 46s): Exactly.

Speaker 2 (28m 47s): All my advice to everybody is stay away from Misspells and Tys and, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28m 52s): If you're gonna buy a misspell or a typo, make it of your own domain. Yes. I, I get things all the time with PornHub in the name and Xn xx in the name and only fans in the name. And I go, I'm gonna tell you something right now, let that domain go because, and don't even sell it because you are gonna end up in a lawsuit. Yep. They will sue you and they will win, and you're gonna have to defend it.

Speaker 2 (29m 21s): Right. And then you have the other side, which is called reverse hijacking, which means that you actually own the common law trademark rights before Famous Mark came and registered theirs.

Speaker 1 (29m 32s): Oh geez.

Speaker 2 (29m 33s): And they try to bully you into letting your name go, and then they end up losing and they can lose up to a hundred thousand dollars from that. So. Hmm. As you know, or, or you might remember, I own the domain name you porn with the letter you instead of Y O U. Yes,

Speaker 1 (29m 46s): Sir. And

Speaker 2 (29m 46s): I, I own that name. And the common law trademark way before you porn y o u porn came into existence. Yeah. So in that case, you know, you have a right and a legitimate right. To own that name and, you know, youn and, you know, mind geeks or whatever might be interesting buying that someday, which I'd be willing to sell. But I, I own that game and, you know. Right. I, I had that well before anybody else had the trade. How's that

Speaker 1 (30m 10s): Site? How's that site going?

Speaker 2 (30m 12s): It's going, you know, it's, it's going, it's making some money. There you go. It's, it's a little side.

Speaker 1 (30m 17s): That's nice. That's nice to hear as as opposed to the last time we discussed it. So it's a beautiful Exactly.

Speaker 2 (30m 22s): Wasn't doing anything.

Speaker 1 (30m 24s): Oh, I remember a lot about that. I do remember a lot about that. We, we won't get into the

Speaker 2 (30m 30s): Disaster introduction to somebody who,

Speaker 1 (30m 33s): Oh God, did I introduce you to him? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Anyway, without giving away your secret sauce, how are domains appraised?

Speaker 2 (30m 45s): I started off very similar to how real properties appraised. So remember we talked about the busy street corner? Yes. The city or the beachfront property. Right. So those types of things are used for virtual real estate the same way there's marketability search term value, PPC value, CPC value. And I happen to own and operate the largest comparable database of sales in the domain industry. So unlike the real estate industry, now, if you think back in the early days where cavemen existed, you know, there were land grabs and real estate, right?

Yeah. And then, then real estate was traded off for coins or for cows, or for sheep and for, you know, various other types of assets. Sure. And, and then it became traded off for daughters.

Speaker 1 (31m 32s): And in some, right. I was just was about to say, and, and, and in some Muslim countries that still happens. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31m 39s): It still happens. Right? Right. So if it's a dictionary term, if it's a keyword term, if it's a trending term, if it's a, if it's a term or a word that has natural typing traffic, if it's something that's in a particular industry that's strong. Right. Those all carry weight and value, of course the comparable database is probably the most important thing now because unlike when I first started this and there was only a handful of sales, now there's, you know, now there's a couple million sales to compare to. Now that doesn't compare to hundreds of millions of sales like there is in real estate, but it is comparable.

So you can say, okay, is auto.com like car.com? Yes, it is. Is autos and autos comparable? Yes, they are. Vehicles and autos or trucks, you know, so now you have segments and market segments of comparable domain names. Those are obviously carry value. You can use a comparable database from sales that were made public and use that as a comparable database. Just like if you had an appraisal of your house, the number one key thing and an appra house appraisal value is what did the house across the street from ECE for. Yeah. Is it also a 42 or 43?

Yeah. Does it have a renovation? Does it have new appliances, new air conditioners, all that shit. Exactly. So same kinds of metrics without going into the detail, but we do 21 of those metrics Yeah. In order to, to come, come to value. Wow. Wow. So that, that's a little bit of a taste of that.

Speaker 1 (33m 1s): Interesting.

Speaker 2 (33m 2s): And I've done over 540,000 domain appraisals myself, you know, physically, Jesus, Jesus,

Speaker 1 (33m 7s): Jesus Christ. That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (33m 8s): So it's been, it's been a lot of appraisals. It's not something I like to do anymore, but I'll do it in special cases.

Speaker 1 (33m 15s): There you go. For me. Thank you, Monica. That's

Speaker 2 (33m 18s): For you and your clients and you. And when I get hired by the, you know, the big corporate things and the divorce cases and the, and the Those are

Speaker 1 (33m 24s): Profitable. Yeah. Those are profitable, minor

Speaker 2 (33m 26s): And the estate sales and, you know, somebody dies. What's this worth? I did appraisal recently, well it was last year for a court ordered takeover by, you know, the court ordered a, a lawyer, a legal group to take over a portfolio of domains because the CEO committed a crime. So this was called income store. Probably some of the people on the show would h would've heard about, it was like one of the big scams. They owned thousands of domain names. They were building websites on the domain names and then they were using the funds from new investors to pay the old investors off.

And they got caught in a Ponzi scheme. Oh lovely. And so we ended up, we ended up having to praise the portfolio and then put the whole portfolio up for sale in several auctions and to help with the divestiture and to pay back all the original people that got ripped off. Well that's good. They didn't get, they didn't get most of their money back, but they got some fraction of it. And it's better than getting nothing.

Speaker 1 (34m 16s): Yeah, absolutely. You know what bugs me the most? Some brokers and how they use comparables. I had, I had one situation and oh God, I was myself in this mainstream broker. We were starting to get at each other's throats. At a certain point, I'm sure you know, this person, I contacted them to buy a domain on the part of, for the group of domains, on behalf of my client. And it was, it was laughable because the domain wasn't even close to anything like this.

But she was giving me things like autos.com and it was just like, oh my god, no, no, no. And it just got, it just got crazy. But I can't say she wasn't good at what she did. She finally ended up getting the price up fairly high. And my client really needed to buy this because he didn't have the.com of his, his company. And he made the mistake of not spending a little money and buying the.com of his company before his company got well known. So he had, he had pay the price for, that's, oh it's a huge mistake.

And he, he said it himself, so that's okay. You know, we got, we got it for him and he's happy and the seller's happy. So that's what it comes down to. You have the exclusive for the extension hiphop. Hiphop is also a web three domain extension on the Ethereum naming system. I always have problems with pronouncing that. It's also the fifth anniversary of hiphop. Now how do I buy a.hiphop domain?

Speaker 2 (35m 54s): Yeah, it's good. It's good that you ask. So if you go to our website, which is get.hiphop, you will be pointed to see whether your search term or your domain name is available. And then it'll point you to several registrar partners where you can register them. The really cool thing about.hiphop is that it's the first community and cultural open domain extension besides dot gay. That is for an entire community and culture that's open without restriction. the.hiphop, I mean the hiphop community and culture is worldwide. It involves about a million, a billion people, billion with a B.

It's the 50th anniversary. Hiphop was first created in 1973 on August 11th by a DJ called Cool Herk. And he brought out a DJ set up and held a party for his cousin's birthday and started mixing records together and hip hop was born Interesting. And it became a huge phenomena after that. And now it's the most popular music genre, the most popular Jan dance genre and fashion genre. But it also is a, people identify themselves as a hiphop culture and community.

So it's really cool to be able to have a new top level domain name that represents that, that group of people. And now they can have their own extension, register a.hiphop domain name, use it for their email, use it for their website. Yeah. And the cool thing is on top of that is it's on the web three smart contract blockchain through the Ethereum names naming system. Imagine an an artist now, unlike the old days, they can drop a new album or a new song into an N F T that has a.hiphop domain name and they're able to share that music.

And inside the token is how much the money they get paid every time it changes wallets. Wow. Back in the old days, everyone sold their rights for a particular song or a particular hit. And many of the original hip hop stars are broke. They're in poverty because they sold their rights away back in the early days. Right. It's a big music catalog company. So if you ever watched NWA Straight Outta Compton in the movie

Speaker 1 (37m 52s): No, no. Heard about, he says

Speaker 2 (37m 53s): A lot about how the old style contracts worked and how Yeah. The music companies took the majority of the rights, kinda like Don King and Mike Tyson, you know, and you know how he

Speaker 1 (38m 5s): Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. Oh my God. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38m 8s): It's like you get a, you would get a $50,000 check or a hundred thousand dollars check, but you had to pay for your own studio time and your, your own agents and producers. And then you end up basically in, you know, underwater.

Speaker 1 (38m 18s): Oh, king was taking, king was taking everything from Tyson. It was ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (38m 23s): Yeah, absolutely ridiculous. So this happened in the music industry, not only to hip hop stars, but to, you know, rock and roll. And I mean everybody, you know, the people were taken advantage of. Ray Charles was one of the first ones who put his foot down with ABC Records after he left. His former record company said, you know what? I need to retain the rights to my music and, and I want 60% of the proceeds. And he won. And so music, music rights and music contracts were reborn from that, you know, a long, long time ago. But a lot of the hiphop stars unfortunately didn't catch onto that wave.

Yeah. So we're really excited about.hiphop and it just so happened, you know, it kind of fell in my lap. But after I bought the registry and got a partner who's, you know, from the Bronx and who's a successful businessman in New York, we figured out after we bought it, that's the 50th anniversary coming up. Great. So it's kinda, so obviously we're gonna ride the wave of that and we're gonna be involved in a lot of concert celebrations, promotions, the hiphop museum is being built and will open up in 2024 in the Bronx. It's a huge project.

The mayor of New York is all behind all kinds of calendar events regarding the birth of hiphop, the celebration, and the birthday. And it's gonna be worldwide. So pretty, we're really excited about it. And the, there's millions and millions and millions of available domain names cuz it's a new registry. So Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39m 41s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39m 41s): It's a good speculation opportunity for investment. And also we've reserved all the famous stars and hip hop album names and music label covers names so that they can't be cyber squatted. So we reserve those for those that will get those because they have the rights to them this time.

Speaker 1 (39m 59s): Very nice. Very nice. Yeah. So what exactly, besides what you already said is a web three domain extension and how does it relate to Ethereum?

Speaker 2 (40m 11s): Well, the e n s, which is the Ethereum naming system, is different than what people might hear that handshake names are. Or there, there's th there's a few different types of web three names. So some web three names are made up names that now they act like domain names, but you can't build a website on 'em. You can't use it for your email. But there's short name, so you don't have to send people your token address, which is a 64 to 75 digit, you know, tokenized alpha numer code. Right. Which no one can memorize.

So you can now send it to a domain name, you can send money, you know, cryptocurrency back and forth to the domain name because it's on the blockchain and on a smart contract. So that's one advantage. The other advantage is, is that Ethereum naming system complies with i a n, it's the only blockchain domain name that actually follows i a n regulations and rules. And that's why.hiphop and some other extensions can, now you can buy the domain name, have your website and use it in your email where you can't for handshake names for example. Right. And you can use it as a token address.

Hmm. So it gives a, gives an advantage. I I like e n S a little bit better. I'm not opposed to the other extensions that are web three. Right. It's just that in the future there's gonna be something called collision where the next round of ICAN accredited domain extensions might contain a dot crypto or a dot nft and there's already those that exist in the web. Three handshake type domain names or unstoppable domain names. Those are the other ones. Hmm. And once it's, once there's an ICAN accredited extension, there's gonna be something called collision because who, which extension, you know, is more important.

Right, right. Which one's gonna exist. Yeah. And my gut tells me that the ICAN extensions will still exist. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (41m 52s): Cause they have, they have the, they have the power, right.

Speaker 2 (41m 55s): Well they have the DNS power, so you know, if, if you wanna have a website or an email address, you're gonna want that.

Speaker 1 (42m 1s): Okay, got it. Got it. So besides.com and.hiphop that we just talked about, what are some of the other up and coming extensions that people should be investing in

Speaker 2 (42m 14s): In the current round of extensions? You know, some of the most successful extensions, new extensions have been something like.club, which I'm sure you heard about. I helped, I helped.club create their premium lists and helped them get started with creating, you know, what, what were the premium names left of the.to the right of the.so that, you know, the most important things with new extensions is that there has to be linguistic flow from the right of the.to the left of the dot or from the left of the.to the right of dot. So if makes sense, if you have buy cars, that makes sense.

rap.hiphop dance dot hip hop songs, hiphop tho that makes sense. Yeah. If you have curtains, cars, that doesn't make much sense. Or if you have some obscure name to the left of the dot, that doesn't make sense. So Sure. A lot of the popular extensions, you wanna make sure that there's linguistic flow to the left of the.so it makes sense to somebody when they're typing it in. The whole goal is to, you know, make it easier to search, make it easy to remember, make it easy to spell and make sure that in, if you're not using a.com, that you make sure that your clients and customers know that you use a, an extension. Now that's one of the new extensions, so you gotta make sure it's on your business cards, in your advertising and so on and so forth.

So I like things like.club, I like things like tech site. There's gonna be a new web that's gonna be coming out soon that's gonna compete with.com. Of course I love hiphop.

Speaker 1 (43m 34s): You better for,

Speaker 2 (43m 34s): You know, for its, you know, for its cultural community and it's millions of variable options to do that. So, and I don't know what's coming in, in the new round, which should be coming out in 2025 to 26 or something. Yeah. But apparently there'll be more extensions available, you know, based off of current trends and corporate, you know, there's a lot of corporations that felt that they got gypped out and didn't understand what it was all about. So, you know, there is a dot, ibm, there's a dot, there's a lot of dot, you know, 300 dot corporate names that have, you know, that now people, you know, you want your, you want your email and your website to end in your extension that you're famous war.

You don't want it to be a.com necessarily because nobody knows what com means. You know, interesting com stands for commercial, but people think it stood for communication or commerce or community or communication and, and it doesn't stands for commercial, which meant for profit at the time. Right. And it and com is not a dictionary term, but you know, hip hop is, and do, you know, autos is and do sex is, you know. Right. So that's what's really important.

Speaker 1 (44m 37s): Okay. Things are changing. I, if I have a.com or another primary domain like.net or.biz, what other extensions of my brand should I own?

Speaker 2 (44m 49s): You mean to, to cover yourself in defensive registrations?

Speaker 1 (44m 52s): Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (44m 54s): Well, the most common, you know, coverage obviously is.net.com.org. You know, if you're just doing general coverage, you know, I, I'll be the first one to tell you, you don't need to do it in all thousand extensions. Of course not. So if you are in certain industries, you should cover yourself in those industries. If you are in the tech industry, you should get a.tech. If you're in the website industry, you should get a.website or.site, you know, to help cover you as well. Not only just to cover you, but you may want to use 'em as subsites or other domain site, you know, projects, you know, use link use and you know, link each other's site together.

You know, defensive registration is really important for corporations based off of what industry you're in and what you're doing. So if I'm in the adult industry, you know, I probably wanna cover myself in some of those adult extensions.sex, not adult.porn triplex. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (45m 40s): I got that one. And

Speaker 2 (45m 41s): Why not? Plus you can launch other, other websites off of each of those in your same keywords. That's true. And, and the same goes for any industry, I would say.

Speaker 1 (45m 49s): Okay. Very good. So last question, what's your best advice for people who liken themselves as domain investors?

Speaker 2 (45m 58s): Best advice is to look at the newest trends. Also look at buying opportunities in down economic environments like, like now where people are selling things at a discount because everything's cyclical and it will go back up again. Sure. So, you know, over time, this, in this, this market, this domain investment market has always grant grown in value over time. Just like the stock market has. Rarity is the key to investment value. So as the.com extensions keep running out, I mean as the.com keyword names keep running out because they've been registered or in use.

But the best simulation, you know, best, best assimilation to this whole process, which I think we've discussed before, is once upon a time there was an 800 number that was free, toll-free number in the industry, right? And so there used to be an 800 buy cars and 800 doctors and 800 flowers. And that's because no one could remember the digits of the phone number. So they remembered the word and they'd spell out the word on your phone pad, right? When all those extensions, I mean when all those keywords ran out and all those number combinations ran out, what did they do? They expanded the, the

Speaker 1 (47m 2s): 8 88 66, 8, 7, 7, 5, 8, 4, 4, 8, 3, 3 8, 2 2,

Speaker 2 (47m 8s): There's 20 tollfree numbers. Yeah. Every single tollfree number has a buy cars and they're all registered by different companies. Again, our new generation of users don't even know what an 800 number is because everything is free on the cell phone of

Speaker 1 (47m 23s): Course. So,

Speaker 2 (47m 24s): But 800 flowers didn't get rid of their 800 number, nor did they get rid of eight 800 flowers.com, which is a keyword word that they use. And the reason for that is they established loyalty and brand recognition off of it. So those were always important. Right. So my advice is you look for some of the new extensions in those same keywords because they'll be almost as popular as that 800 extension was. You know, over time as you're, as the new generations start using, you know, start getting on the web, which they all will. Yeah. They know that comms not available, so they're gonna go to an alternate extension.

That makes sense. Right? If you're a lawyer, why not get a.law or a.legal? Yeah. If you're in the adult industry, get a dot triplex or.porn or.adult or doex or

Speaker 1 (48m 5s): All of them.

Speaker 2 (48m 5s): If you're in the music industry, you're gonna get a dot music, which is restricted when it comes out, or.hiphop or you know, something that related because it makes linguistic sense and it makes sense. And, and that's where the, the, the trend is going. And you wanna look for trends, you know, new trends in what you see in the news and stuff, and then you'll pick up new keywords, the urban dictionaries, Everly expanding as well. That's a whole new type of, you know, linguistic wording to things. And so then you'll see more dot coms and more nets and orgs and, and other extensions become popular because of that.

Speaker 1 (48m 37s): Fabulous. Hey Monty, I'd like to thank you for being back with us again back and again, that's redundant on don't say broker talk and I hope we'll get a chance to do this again soon.

Speaker 2 (48m 47s): I really appreciate the time, Bruce. And if anybody needs to get ahold of me, you can get in touch with me@montyget.hiphop or monty@rightofthe.dot com.

Speaker 1 (48m 57s): Okay. You heard it everyone. Thanks Monty. Thanks

Speaker 2 (49m 0s): Bruce. I really appreciate

Speaker 1 (49m 2s): It. My broker tip today is part three, what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later. Last week we talked about making a good offer and how to structure your site. Next, keep your website designed up to date, do a redesign from time to time. People will tend to think your site is the same as ever and click out of it without even looking if something doesn't change. So keep it fresh and up to date. Times change. So should your website, look at what your competitors are doing and see what it is you really like.

If you know a site to be successful, look at what they're doing and do some of the same things. I'm not saying copy it, I'm just suggesting you improve your site by looking around a bit. You've gotta keep up with the times or you'll end up being left behind. Also, keep an eye on your competition and make sure you're offering everything on your site that they are or more. Don't just look at their design, but make sure your offers are good and competitive. The same goes for your content. Do you ever wonder why one site does well and others don't?

Check out the competition's content. What are they doing that you're not doing? Be willing to make changes. People can't understand why they're losing sales to a competitor yet the competitor is clearly doing everything better. Emulate success. Make sure everything on your website works well. Make sure all of your links work properly. Check them on a regular basis. If things don't work, you're gonna lose customers. People are not patient these days. People's attention spans are like that of a nat.

They click out immediately and go to the next result in Google. If they don't find what they're looking for or if the site is hard to navigate or things don't work, check all your internal scripts and plugins and make sure they're updated regularly as well. We'll talk about this subject more next week and next week we'll be speaking with Zach Ozbourne of Exclusv Life. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Monte Cahn of Right of the Dot.

Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.