Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 38 with Monte Cahn of Right of the Dot

0 (13s):
This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk, where every week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry, and we discuss what's going on in our business. Plus we give you a tip on buying and selling websites this week. This week we'll be talking with Monte Cahn of Right of the Dot.

1 (34s):
Adult Site Broker's proud to announce ASB Cash. The first affiliate program for an adult website brokerage with ASB Cash you'll have the chance to earn as much as 20% of our broker commission, referring sellers and buyers to us at Adult Site Broker. Check our website at asbcash.com for more details. First of all, today let's cover some of the news going on in our industry. The U S department of justice has announced that the agency has voluntarily withdrawn a Trump era legal challenge against the state of California's net neutrality law intended to protect the open internet.

1 (1m 15s):
Former president Trump directed his DOJ to Sue California and governor Gavin Newsome in a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn a 2018 law that bars multi-billion dollar internet service providers from throttling internet speed on certain websites. The California law also blocks ISP gatekeepers from blocking user access to certain websites and charging for large website access. According to the Trump administration, California acted in an unlawful and anti-consumer fashion that goes against the federal government's. Then deregulatory agenda regarding the internet, Jessica Rosenworcel, the federal communications acting chairwoman heralded DOJ is dismissal of the lawsuit.

1 (2m 3s):
I am pleased that the DOJ has withdrawn this lawsuit. Rosenworcel said when the FCC over my objection rolled back its net neutrality policies States like California sought to fill the void with their own laws, DOJ legal filing petitions. The federal judge, in this case with the department, indicating that it hereby gives notice of its voluntary voluntary dismissal of the case. A filing was certified and submitted on behalf of the Biden department of justice by Brian M Boyington, the acting assistant attorney general for the department, civil division and directors of the divisions, federal programs branch by taking this step, Washington is listening to the American people who overwhelmingly support an open internet and is charting a course to once again, make net neutrality.

1 (2m 58s):
The law of the land work said

2 (3m 1s):
Despite the

1 (3m 1s):
voluntary motion to dismiss the lawsuit, many legal fights dealing with California net neutrality law are still set to take place while the department dropped this specific lawsuit, it's expected to weigh in against a challenge brought by cable and phone providers. The editorial board for the LA times said that net neutrality proponents currently sitting on the FCC should begin the process to reverse course again, and seek rules to protect all us

2 (3m 32s):
Internet users, a group of lawyers

1 (3m 36s):
There's including members of the legal team of the religiously motivated anti-porn crusading organization, and C O S E have filed a civil class action lawsuit in Birmingham, Alabama against pornhub's parent company, mind geek on behalf of the women who alleged illegal videos of themselves were uploaded to the platform by third-party users. According to the lawsuit, which was shared with mainstream media publications over the weekend, by NC OSC, accompanied by a press release, celebrating their role in the ongoing campaign to shut down the adult to site. The two plaintiffs are only identified as Jane DOE.

1 (4m 17s):
Number one and Jade, no number two, the lawsuit alleges that mind geek conspired, facilitated and financially benefited from sex trafficking ventures between themselves and others

2 (4m 30s):
In these ventures, Jason

1 (4m 32s):
Don't number one, and Jane DOE number two and other minors were trafficked and commercially exploited in a sexual nature in violation of law, including but not limited to the trafficking victims protection reauthorization act. The NCOC orchestrated lawsuit also claims that sex traffickers and mind geek worked together to earn a profit from commercial sex acts and child pornography involving the plaintiffs and class members. The complaint makes reference to a January, 2020 executive order by then president Trump titled combating human trafficking and online child exploitation in the United States.

1 (5m 14s):
And also to foster Acessa signed into law by Trump in 2018.

2 (5m 18s):
Can I stop saying his name now?

1 (5m 21s):
There's also questioned mind geeks, moderation practices and alleged it search function suggested search terms and tags, make it easier for pedophiles to find the exact content they want, namely child sexual abuse material, including that of the plaintiffs. According to the lawsuit in 2018, when Jane and Jane don't number one was just 16 years old, she was drugged and raped by a man in Tuscaloosa, Alabama lawyers alleged the man opened a model hub account and uploaded a video of Jane DOE number one's victimization. The lawsuit does not go into any detail about how mind geek was informed that the video was illegal or the process for removing it, or whether mine geek cooperated with law enforcement to help identify the rapist instead of claims than mine geeks, inadequate moderation practices made it impossible for them to know whether any video was legal or illegal.

1 (6m 19s):
This supports long-held argument that all depictions of sex should be outlawed because there is no possible way to determine that they were made by consenting adults and COSC, formerly known as morality and media aims for the complete eradication of all pornography, which they consider obscene and prurient as well as human trafficking and the cause of a public health crisis. The Iowa house of representatives commerce subcommittee has declined to advance a bill that proposed blocking adult content on electronic devices by default, as well as creating a special $5 tax on adult entertainment to fund initiatives against human trafficking.

1 (7m 5s):
HF two 88 had been introduced by representative Sandy salmon, a Republican from Janesville. She is a religious conservative who has been the most vocal Crusader against adult entertainment in the Iowa legislature. The bill is a version of the one recently reintroduced in Utah, part of a project blitz campaign by evangelicals to pass copycat legislation, restricting adult content on a state by state basis. According to local, the local paper, the courier representatives of at and T T-Mobile and century link pointed out that several content blocking apps are already available. And the use of those apps is that the discretion of parents, for example, rather than the internet provider, Mike St.

1 (7m 51s):
Claire representing the Iowa communications Alliance of about 130 small broadband providers told the subcommittee that HB two 88 would make us the police persons for content and turn us into criminals. If we don't enforce it enough, we don't monitor content and don't, and don't wish to be in that business. St. Claire added religiously inspired groups that spoken support of the bill alleged that it would help address a supposedly crisis of

3 (8m 21s):
Porn addiction. Although

1 (8m 23s):
The courier reported that another Republican representative John Jacobson said that just as the state regulates gambling because of the societal cost of addictive behavior, he would like the legislature to address the problems that arise from pornography. And none of the three commerce subcommittee members signed off on salmon's bill on February 25th, Monte cons, right of the dot and best-selling author and world champion auctioneer Wayne wheat. We'll the gavel to auction off 75 to a hundred super premium domain names. The live auction will happen beginning@nooncentraltimeatrotddothibid.com proceeded by a time to online auction with hundreds, more domain names available, the live auction will be webcast in real time from a live video production studio in college station, Texas, we'll be talking with money on today's podcast.

1 (9m 26s):
Now let's feature our property of the week. That's for sale@adultsitebrokerinternet.com. The ultimate internet domain is now available and we're proud to list it. The domain gets 6 million unique visitors a month. This domain can be used for any of a number of uses. The opening bid is only $35 million for more information on how to bid contact us@adultsitebroker.com. Now time for this week's interview, I guess today on adult side, broker talk is Marty con of right of the dot Monty. Thanks for being with us today on adult site brokers. Thanks so much, Bruce. Glad to be here. Good to have you.

1 (10m 7s):
Moni is the founder of, right of the dot a licensed business and premium domain auction and brokerage firm. He was the founder of moniker.com and he's the former president of snap names.com. Nomani has been pioneering domain and aftermarket services since 1994. During his time he helped many new and existing top level domains have successful launches to registrar promotion sales and auctions or premium domains through marketing, brokerage, and sales. He started the first online domain brokerage business in the industry. Success has included more than $550 million in domain sales, including the industry's first domain names sale for over $1 million.

1 (10m 55s):
The industry's first $2 million domain sale. As well later, we sold the highest dollar domain in history with the sale of you ready for this folks, pore.com. Remember that selling that that was money for $9.5 million for the commission on that was a nice, 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 for the industry as well. And Amani was voted into the 2010 domain hall of fame by industry peers on February 25th. His company right at the dot will take the gavel to auction off 50 to 75 super premium domain names.

1 (11m 41s):
You can check that off R O T d.com. So Mani what's the current state of the domain market. Whatever's it's obviously during the pandemic and the

4 (11m 55s):
COVID situation. It, it, it, it definitely changed things a little bit. The beginning of the year was really rocking and lots of things were happening. We came off of a live domain auction at name's con in January, the end of January, and had just over a million dollars worth of sales at that auction. And, and then, you know, there was talks of COVID going on and, and, and people starting not to travel and all that. And then sure enough, March and the brakes hit the skids and everything came to a big, slow down. However, we had some really big sales in March and April, but then the industry kind of took a, took a pause, at least from what I can see, just due to everybody kind of locking on and holding onto their funds, not knowing what is going to hold.

4 (12m 48s):
And the Covid was spreading. Like crazy things were locking down. People were losing their jobs and becoming unemployed. And in hindsight of all that, however, towards the end of the year, what we saw was a lot of mom and pops and a lot of individuals who lost their jobs or decided that they were done sitting at home doing what they were doing normally. And they started being an entrepreneur, putting their entrepreneurship hats on and starting to register and buy domain names in the aftermarket to create new business ideas and work from home. And it created a little bit of an insurgence. So I wouldn't say that the domain market was affected between 30 and 50% in the downside in terms of number of transactions and cost per domain sale.

4 (13m 37s):
But then at the end of the year, things picked up quite a bit. As you know, people started thinking outside the box and deciding that they were going to do something that they've always wanted to do. And since they were working from home, it gave them the mill, the ability to do that. So I see a bright future and, you know, domain names have always been a foundation of, of what I'd call a, a sustainable asset. Even in hard times, I I've been through a couple of the recessions and with, and including 1999, 2000, then again in 2007, 2008. And then of course, most recently, and the domain names have kept a lot of people in business by selling and a lot of opportunity for buying for those that wanted to buy domain names.

4 (14m 22s):
At that time, instead of companies going out of business in the space, they'd been up and able to hold their own on like other industries

1 (14m 30s):
Now e-commerce has done better than anything during the pandemic. Why do you think domain sales would have been affected?

4 (14m 40s):
Well, again, that domain sales side, so e-commerce sites that's for sure, because people didn't go out and go to physical shops to shop. They were shopping online. So of course, places, Amazon and, and Nike and Lulu lemon and the clothing stores, and even, even some of the restaurant chains that had really good delivery service and, and Uber eats and, you know, door dash companies did very well because they were used more than ever. But in terms of the domain name side there, you know, registration slowed down a little bit for the short term because it was just uncertain. And then you saw a resurgence, obviously in domain registrations in certain themes around code about, around work at home, around telemedicine, around, you know, things that were related to what was going on at the time.

4 (15m 29s):
So the one thing about the domain industry is that it trends really fast. Matter of fact, you see trends in the domain name industry, and then you can faster than you can in, in most, any other industry, because people start thinking about ideas and what they're going to do, and start watching things in the news and they start registering domains because of it. So the domain registration side actually stayed pretty strong. It was the aftermarket sales side that slowed down a bit because of the fear factor of what, you know, what you need to do with your money. And if you lost your job, you know, how are you going to pay for insurance and rent and food on your plate? So that's the only side of it that kind of slowed down, although that's an important side, but as I mentioned before, people started thinking about how they're going to do work at home and create new business ideas.

4 (16m 16s):
And, you know, you get to see how much stuff goes on while you're sitting at home and locked up. And the, the, the effect of that is, is domaining transactions and sales and online businesses launching.

5 (16m 31s):
Yeah, I w I w I would think that people have more time on their hands, especially if they're out of work, they're gonna, they're gonna look at starting things now, since the show deals mostly with the adult industry, I'm curious as to your take on adult domains. Now you've been involved with adult for ever at one time. Adult domain seemed really easy to sell these days, my experience, anyway, not so much. What are your thoughts on that?

4 (16m 60s):
Well, as you know, that the adult industry has gone through a, you know, a major transition, you know, back in the day when I was actively supporting many that at all, companies from a domain standpoint and keeping domain names safe, and then, you know, doing a lot of transactions and bringing the options to the adult industry, the industry was thriving. The affiliate networks were making, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're doing great for the main players. Then there was a consolidation, and of course, free porn just kind of changed how payments were being made for content. And, you know, what used to be hundreds of, of, or even thousands of small and medium-size adult companies and shops and, and content builders, insights, and affiliates.

4 (17m 50s):
Now we're probably looking at what five or six conglomerate companies that own everything else and the affiliate networks aren't as strong as they were before. So like with every business there, it's gone through a consolidation, has gone through a transformation and change. And because it's, it's gone from pay to free in some parts of it, except for the niche markets, it's a lot harder to sell a seven, you know, six, seven figure name and the rate, you know, the return on that investment takes a lot longer and isn't always guaranteed. So, you know, that's kind of what I'm seeing in any case. And you also see some of the major adult players going mainstream, you know, perfectly the examples, mind geek and, and others.

4 (18m 37s):
And a lot of my old clients and customers are well into the, into the mainstream space, along with having adult holdings. So they diversify it a lot. And some of my bigger clients, you know, in the adult industry have bought some of the bigger names in the, in the mainstream site.

1 (18m 54s):
Have you seen the domain market overall, the domain market landscape change in year years in the business?

4 (19m 1s):
When I started in the business in 1994 and 1995, you know, there was basically.com.net.org. You know, there was.edu and.mil, but there wasn't, you know, there wasn't any other extensions and.edu was restricted to, you know, official universities and schools and then.mil was for the military. You know, since then, you know, back in the, in the early two thousands, you saw new extensions being added. Of course there was, you know, dot info and.biz. And there was the rebranding of a lot of country codes, like.ws for website and.cc for carbon copy, and that, you know, TV for television.

4 (19m 43s):
And they took a country code extensions and started to rebrand those during that period of time, as well. And as you know, in the last five to seven years, there has been a resurgence or a, a new play on the domain names for new extensions and all kinds of different extensions. So now there's thousands or extensions out in the marketplace, let's call it 300 of which are commercial generic use 300, our brand associated domain names for, you know, brands and, and corporations. And the other 300 are for information or non-profits, or, you know, restricted TLDs that are for banking, insurance and other, and other uses.

4 (20m 26s):
It reminds me back in the old days, and a lot of domain people will relate to this because a lot of the most famous domainers like Rick Schwartz and Michael Berkins and, and so on. And a lot of the old guys used to have their business and the vanity 800 and 900 space. So of course, you know, 800 by cars or 800 doctors, and you got that spelling so that people didn't have to remember what the numbers were. And when those numbers ran out, when those combinations ran out, they went to one from 800 to eight, eight, eight, and then eight 77 and eight, six, six eight five five eight, four four. You know, now there's 20 some odd toll-free numbers. That's a very similar simulation to what happens or what's happening in the domain world.

4 (21m 8s):
When the street, you know, the most valuable domain combinations letters and numbers and words started running out, I can, you know, felt it was time to add new extensions, to give more people fair, right, and availability to get a domain name in the, you know, in the keyword that they wanted. So they opened up the strings to other registries that could provide that. And so now we see kind of an influx of supply with demand, you know, still on the same situation. So there's a lot more supply than there is than there is demand. And so that has a direct fat effect on values, but there's the old school folks that feel that.com is King and always will be like the 800 number.

4 (21m 52s):
But to be honest, you know, I was against it in the beginning. And now, you know, having helped some of these new TLDs launch, like.club and.global, and working with some of the big conglomerates in the space, you know, it's a natural transition. It makes sense. And if you have to ask your kids, they don't know what.com really is, what it means. It doesn't matter to them just like 800 numbers don't cause they have cell phones with free calling. So if, if a name with a, with a proper match extension that's to the right of the dot and the left of the dot word is a good keyword and they can't get it in a.com. They go to the next extension that makes more linguistic sense to them, like instead of by cox.com, which of course has been taken since the mid nineties and how they can get by.cars or by not autos.

4 (22m 39s):
And they shortened the string and it makes more linguistic and intuitive sense in some cases. So I do believe there's a space for it and, and a place for them. And, you know, some, some will be very successful and some won't, but that's quite a bit

5 (22m 56s):
Okay. Let's, let's dig a little deeper into that though. And it's something I get asked about a lot. Yeah. Dot com is King. I don't think anybody is going to disagree with that. Certainly you won't because that's where you've made your money, but a lot there's so many extensions now dot X, Y, Z in our industry.xxx and.sex, which both makes sense. But what are, I mean, are, are, are things like a.xyz for instance, are they worth much?

4 (23m 35s):
So Donna XYZ, it, it was meant to be an alternative to.com. Something very generic that anything to the left of the doc could go with. So that's what.is. It doesn't have to make sense to the right of the dot because it's a generic extension. That doesn't mean anything at the end, what gave.xyz, you know, a big plus and big benefit was that the biggest company search company in the space decided to rebrand themselves as a docs.xyz website, which was alphabet, which is Google. And when you see something like that happens, obviously it becomes prominent and people catch the wave a little bit. So I know the founder of.xyz and it's Daniel, Daniel Nagare, and he's been a long time client and friend of mine.

4 (24m 19s):
And he owns a couple of, you know, several of the other new strings, like.org. I believe he owns.beauty and.autos, and he's, he's acquired some other strings in the space and, you know, the belief of the new extensions and I, and I'm, I'm, I'm on board on this for the most part is that it gives people choice and options. That make sense. So there's going to be probably a dot web coming out soon, which is going to be a direct competitor to the.com. And so if anything, that's going to compete with the.com. It's probably going to be adopt web there's, other versions of stuff, stuff like that. Like online.website. Yeah. our.site, I'm sorry.

4 (24m 59s):
Cause that Ws kind of met website in the beginning, but you know, dot w.site is a, is another extension that's, you know, being used for that. So I, I do you believe that.com has Kane just like an 800 numbers came forward, you know, toll free numbers, but I mean that other domains can't be a barrier successful in the space for their particular extensions. The big differences, obviously back in the day where the traffic was driven by calm because it was the only commercial domain extension. And so it was typed into the URL line constantly. And so you don't get the benefit of the content type in traffic on some of the new extension, but website building has changed, you know, that and can, yeah.

4 (25m 47s):
And you can definitely have very successful sites with the new extension. And if you're building a website and you're making it presence out of it and you do enough branding to let people know you're not a.com, but you're a yeah. Club, for example, you can be very successful at it. And I mentioned.club because club is one of those domain names and extensions that the founders who are also friends of mine and I helped launch, helped pick their premium name list and everything in Orlando, Florida, they stay very focused on that extension. They did a lot of research before launching it. There's literally tens of millions of clubs all over the world, such as chess clubs and golf clubs and, you know, bait clubs and, and, you know, you know, swimming in clubs and, you know, you name every school, they have tons of clubs and then there's VIP clubs and dance clubs and you know, all these things.

4 (26m 40s):
So, so the one unique thing about.club is that the word club in.club is spelled in English, almost in every country in the world, no matter what the languages, including China. So they don't have a word for club and they use the English word club and they put Chinese characters in front of it. So if you go to Shanghai or you go to Beijing or even Hong Kong, you'll see the Chinese character string and then the word club at the end in English. So that's a pretty good litmus test on how strong the word club is. And lots of things make sense, linguistic sense to the left and to the right of the dot on that. Okay. And so, you know, as long as something makes a linguistic sense, I think it, I think, and, and of course that the registry is a supportive registry and there, you know, they, they they're, they're going to be supportive to the string and advertise and make sure they're going to be around for a while.

4 (27m 27s):
It's going to have a good chance of surviving,

5 (27m 29s):
But two domains other than dot coms have a lot of value on the market for foreign investor, for instance. Yeah.

4 (27m 40s):
Yeah, sure. So, so.club is actually doing a lot of transactions in the aftermarket, and I'm sure some people have heard on the show about the new craze that's going on at clubhouse, which is, you know, the new social app. And, and just by, just by mistake and default and, and kudos to.club that everybody in clubhouse has their own club on clubhouse and they're buying domain names to represent their club. So now they're doing now, they're doing resales inside clubhouse for.club domain names and reselling them in like, kind of like virtual auction, not virtual, but you know, clubhouse options and selling domain names inside the clubhouse. So it's pretty cool that they're doing that, but I saw a couple of six-figure dot club named, including coffee.club and also a wine.club at auction.

4 (28m 29s):
And, and besides.club there's then several transactions and other extensions that have, that have sold now as it is prevalent as.com. No, but it's also, you know, they're not 25 years old, like.com is either. So I don't think we're in the first inning of a ball game when it comes to the domain name industry, there's a big, there's a long game to play. And there's a lot of, you know, if you look at the whole entire world population, less than half of the world is online. When you look at areas like Africa and Asia, like Africa is only 17% online. There's parts of Asia that are about the same, not even China's, you know, fully online.

4 (29m 13s):
The United States is 75% online, not even 90 or a hundred percent. So there's still tons of room for growth. And as the population expands, there's going to be more need for domain name and online, you know, online presence. So pantry question, there's a lot of extensions that carry some value and there's been transactions that have happened that have been pretty significant and a lot of the other extensions, you know, in, in several of the big extensions. So that's, that's good news that there's there's, there are some, some good domain names and those extensions, and you can have an aftermarket for those over time.

5 (29m 49s):
Now, since again, we're talking about adult, what do you think about domains like.xxx and.sex?

4 (29m 56s):
I mean, they definitely have a place in the adult industry for sure. You know, th th the adult industry is in, you know, again, the adult industry itself, in my opinion, isn't growing at the rate and the speed, or at all, compared to what it was 10, 15 years ago. So if you throw one of those extensions on back, then it probably would have taken off a lot faster, but things go in waves and, and, and things become popular in different waves. And, you know, I think it's a, I think it's a safe bet to have, have yourself at least covered in your brand in some of these adult extensions. And you could launch new websites and, and build new assets on some of those extensions and, and drive a lot of traffic to it.

4 (30m 43s):
You're not going to get the natural type in traffic yet, but you can drive a lot of traffic to it, through, you know, keyword buying and, and create a brand. And then people start to recognize that it's, it's not a.com. It's a dot triple X and rightfully so because it's in the adult industry. And it, it has meaning in that industry. So, you know, handful of those extensions in that industry are gonna, are going to be fine. And it's perfectly suited for that.

5 (31m 7s):
Now you do domain appraisals. I know, cause we worked together on them w without, without giving away your secret sauce, what exactly makes a domain valuable and what doesn't.

4 (31m 22s):
So I get this question a lot. Like how can you evaluate piece of digital real estate and virtual real estate, you know, and say that it has some kind of accuracy. So back in 1998, 1999, when we sold the first million dollar domain name, which was wall street.com, of course, everybody flocked to us, like, what's my name worth? What's my name worth, what's my name worth? So what we did is we, we looked at how is physical real estate evaluated? What are some of the characteristics that can cross over to the virtual real estate world? So, for example, if you have a piece of premium real estate downtown in New York city, you know, your most valuable real estate is what Madison Avenue, fifth Avenue park Avenue.

4 (32m 5s):
Now, why is that so valuable? It's valuable because it gets lots of traffic, a lot of foot traffic, a lot of car traffic, a lot of taxi traffic, and the most valuable and most highest rent in our, in those areas because people are more likely to go into those stores and shop because there's so much traffic where there's hardly any traffic, like out in the middle of the boondocks. You know, you don't get a lot of traffic, you have to evaluate your property based off of something else. Like maybe how much property you have. So traffic directly ties into type in traffic. So car traffic and foot traffic in a city, or in a location to pipes in to go correlates almost directly to how many times that domain name is typed into the URL line.

4 (32m 50s):
So that's one factor. Another factor obviously is comparable. Yeah. Sales. So if I sold autos.com, which I did in 1999 for $2 million, other keywords with the same word, obviously you can use that as a reference point to say, okay, well, autos dot Tom sold for $2.2 million. So what is auto worth? Well, it's probably something similar except it's singular and probably not as valuable, but you can use some percentage of that value. Then you have car and cars and you have automobile and vehicles and, you know, and trucking and trucks. And so you can play off of those to be, to get to some kind of accuracy based off the number of names that sold in those keywords, similar to having the same house that you have in your neighborhood.

4 (33m 32s):
And your neighbor has the same, build it with the same structure. And it just sold for $900,000. And it's a three, two or four, two. And you know, yours is probably going to be in the same price range because of that. So that's the comparable sales, you know, reference, and then you have a location, but which, which we, you know, we kind of discussed based off of traffic, but beachfront property. That's undeveloped as desirable because, you know, you're looking at the water every day and the sun coming up, or the sun going down and you're looking at, you know, a place. So people like to go and relax, and it's more expensive because you're on the beach and it's limited supply because, you know, unlike the inside of the United States, there's only so much beach property.

4 (34m 12s):
So then there's scarcity value and how rare it it is and how desirable it is. And same with downtown property, the same thing beach versus downtown versus rural, rural with live relate to multiple words, for example, you know, so two words together, you're getting outside, right? Your, your city a little bit, and that's why you started expanding outward. So instead of cars, you're going to have buy cars or sell cars, or, you know, cheap cars or whatever memorable, how memorable it is. Is it a dictionary term? Is it a keyword? Does it get natural type in traffic? How much is there, you know, is there, is there other comparable sales? Is it, is it something that is easy to recognize?

4 (34m 52s):
Is it easy to spell the shorter, the better, you know, if it's a long word like entrepreneur, you know, a lot of people don't know how to spell that word, even though it's a very, very valuable word. So how many times is going to be mistyped? So without going into all 21 factors that we look at when we do an evaluation, those are some of the most important things. And now that comparable database, unlike in 1999, you know, when I, when, when I tents, probably some of the only sales in the industry, now we have, you know, tons of sales under our belt and under the industry's belt. So not right now, my database is, you know, 1 million domain sales, you know, in terms of what I can look up.

4 (35m 32s):
And then there's Publix. Those are, those are like private transactions. Then there's public sales, which is another million sales. And so now you can match up keywords and values and sale prices based off of time. And then look at, you know, getting down to that appraisal because of that. That's,

5 (35m 47s):
That's awesome. And

4 (35m 49s):
Then of course you have industry too, which I didn't mention, but, you know, there's the tech industry and there's, you know, there's different types of industries that are either hot or cold at this certain time too. And what those domain names fall. So, you know, right now we're in a, we're in an online learning, you know, school, you know, online schooling, online education, meaning at home work from home telemedicine, you know, things that are remote and accessible from anywhere virtual. Those are the hot things right now versus, you know, physical doctor visits and, you know, going into an office, those types of things. So,

5 (36m 29s):
Okay. Now time for your, your shameless self promotion, let's, let's talk about right at the dot. Tell me more about what you do there.

4 (36m 40s):
So most people recognize me and remember he has as moniker.com. Cause I, I, I, I got a crazy idea and said, you know what? I really love the adult industry because they're loyal and they've faced the most adversity and the most scrutiny and have the biggest regulation of all. And if you can get those people on your side and earn their business, you're doing a pretty good job. And so very early in my career, I, I made it a point to go after the adult industry and serve that community for domain protection. Cause we were the only registrar that never lost a name from domain theft. And I invented who has privacy, so I could protect people's privacy and keep their domain names and their assets confidential and secret.

4 (37m 24s):
And that was very important at the time for many of the adult players. And, you know, I credit the adult industry for, you know, probably the first online SSL certificates and merchant transactions using credit cards and having membership services. And, you know, those things are really important and there probably wouldn't be a lot of businesses alive today without the adult industry paving the way for those people. So I felt that was important. So I showed up at Phoenix forums and AVN shows and all the adult industry shows and it took me a while to break in. And then once I did and, and got people to trust us with their assets and move people over from random registrars, it didn't, people didn't really know really what they did on the back end.

4 (38m 9s):
You know, it was a very important thing for me. So I felt that, you know, that was important. So I just wanted to give some background on why I focused on the adult industry. And then, you know, when I went, when I started moniker, moniker was not just a registrar, it was a domain asset protection and monetization company. So, you know, our sole purpose was to help people acquire and register names that were important for their business. And then if they wanted to park them and monetize that traffic, we did that. If they wanted to sell their domain names, we did that. And if they wanted to buy domain names and stuff, we did that too. And so we created the first brokerage room with salespeople to go out and do all those things.

4 (38m 49s):
And we were probably one of the first feeds for, you know, traffic monetization. You know, this is right around when Google wasn't even in existence and worked with several players and doing that. And, and I built moniker to a nice business and sold it off to a company called oversee.net. And then I ran snap snap names, which was the company that kinda invented the drop catching service for domain names. And we had the largest parking platform at the time called domain sponsor. And so I ran both of those divisions and also moniker all at the same time. And then when my contract was up, I decided it was not time to be corporate anymore and go back into the entrepreneurial space spirit. So I started right at the dot and at that time, the new TLDs were starting to be talked about.

4 (39m 33s):
And I felt that I could take that knowledge that I learned in all my years and cop some of the new extensions launch and be, you know, vibrant. And so I, if you, if you look at the, the domain right of the dot, it means, you know, what's important is to the right of the Dodgers as much as the left of the.in this case. So the extension is important as well. And so I kept on doing the premium domain auctions for all the big conferences and still did brokerage and, and stealth acquisitions for corporate clients. And that's what I've been doing ever since. And, you know, we hold the industry's biggest and largest domain auction in the, in the industry. And we feel, I feel that it's important to do that because it keeps the market fluid, liquid, vibrant, alive.

4 (40m 20s):
It helps with everybody who sell value, regardless of whether you have a calm net or health sex, triple X or whatever. If, if any name sells in any extension, it's good for the entire industry. And it raises the Tidewater for everybody.

1 (40m 34s):
Now, what is the biggest challenge you see facing the overall internet space today?

4 (40m 40s):
Every couple of years, people have questioned whether domain names are going to be relevant because of, you know, back in the day, you know, years ago there was a company called real names and they, they thought that it was a, okay, not to even have a domain name and you can get navigate through the web and that didn't work. And then, you know, we moved up to apps and what, you know, why do you need a domain name if you have an app or if you're using app? Well, ultimately the app has its own domain name and website in order to download the app, or you go to the app store, which resides on a domain name. So that didn't work either. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's anything that's gonna disrupt that domain name itself, the importance of remaining.

4 (41m 21s):
I think I can, you know, it's, it's a very bureaucratic and political organization and there's a lot of policy, you know, around what you can and do with the domain name. And, you know, just to make it clear, no one really truly owns their domain name. You have the right to register it and renew it, but you don't hold true title. Like you do. You're a piece of property when you pay it off and you own it from the mortgage company, right? The, the domain name is a subscription. And if you paid $10 million for it and you forget to renew it, you lose it. So that's the important thing to remember that, that you have the right, you're buying the rights to hold that domain name and pay your $10 renewal fee every year.

4 (42m 3s):
But if you forget it and you're fucked up, you're, you're gonna lose your domain name no matter how much money you paid. So, you know, there's, there's, there's still people that think that every domain name that's not developed, that someone owns is a squatter and they don't have a right to have it unless it's a website. And I've been a proponent of people's rights to use their domain names anywhere they want, as long as they're not breaking the law or violating somebody else's know trademark, and it's no different than you buying a piece of land in the middle of downtown and deciding you don't want to build on it. There's no law that says you have to, you can keep it a blank piece of land. You can offer it for resale at anytime you want. You can throw a billboard on top of it. That's what the parking is.

4 (42m 43s):
And, and that's how you can earn money from paying for, you know, getting advertising paid for, or throwing billboards and, and, you know, banners across your building. And, you know, that's, I, I'm a big believer that you can do whatever you want with your domain name. And now there's all this new, these new domain names being registered, and they're big, they're vacant pieces of land until somebody develops them. And you know, that part of the business has grown. So I don't see pressures on the internet that way as more and more extensions come into existence, it can get into a situation where things get confusing a little bit, and there will be more extensions coming soon.

4 (43m 23s):
So even though everybody thought that these thousand wouldn't survive, there's gonna be another 500 to a thousand coming for years. And those, those will be a new way, you know, a new wave of them coming. So the most, the biggest threat is how you brand your business going forward and making sure people know what your extension is, and that you have online presence and have the right training that matches your, your products and services. And globalistic flow of your domain name is very important, you know, especially in the new extension. So the left, the word to the left of the dot has to make sense to the right of the dot, or it doesn't make sense. Right. So that's really important.

5 (44m 1s):
So let's say I want to be a domain investor in 2021. What advice would you have

4 (44m 7s):
If you thought that you can't get good domain names in 2021, and that's just not true. You can enter into the aftermarket and, you know, go to places like my auction and you'd get the most premium domain names that you want. You might have to be well-funded in some cases to get domain names like restaurants.com and sorority.com and cats.com, which is what we're selling and in a bunch of others, because they're, you know, big names, but there's plenty of names that are at a fraction of those costs or at no reserve that are selling. And not only in my site, but or in my auction, but I had after Nick and GoDaddy auctions and GoDaddy drop catching and snap names. And, you know, they're still domain names that are registered and dropping every day that you can get, you know, at decent costs.

4 (44m 52s):
And then of course, there's a whole slew of new registrations for new TLDs that hadn't been registered yet. So again, we're talking about waves of the future and, you know, buying domain names today that come in 10 to 15, 20 years could be extremely valuable. Even if you gotta re at registration fees or, or, or if you paid a premium for a.com name today, it's surely to go up in value over time because that's considered, you know, the beachfront and the downtown city real estate. Okay. It's available, you know, it's available.

5 (45m 27s):
Okay. So next week, and then I've got my, getting my dates straight here next week. You're going to be doing an auction tomorrow on podcast. No, actually this is going to run on the, this is going to drop on the 17th. So actually it is next week. I'm getting my dates. I'm getting my dates straight. Now you're gonna be doing an auction. Tell me a bit about the event.

4 (45m 56s):
Yeah. So we're going to be doing something. I mean, everybody knows and recognizes. I brought in live options into various industries, including the adult industry. So I usually bring a live auctioneer in, and we do a live auction of, you know, about a hundred to 150 premium domain names. And people gather in the room and they raise their paddles and they get these names. And of course I target the type of names that I'm selling based around the, the, the theme of the show or the conference. And so for the adult industry, obviously I've sold many big adult names, you know, for example, and you know, when I was at the affiliate summit, I sold affiliate type domain names and, and search engine strategies, same thing. And the domain industry shows the same thing.

4 (46m 39s):
So this auction is going to be a live virtual auction. I'm actually going to fly to college station, Texas, where it is where my championship auctioneer is. He's a world champion auctioneer, his name's Wayne wheat. We've been working together now for nine years. We've literally sold hundreds of million dollars of domains together. And, and we're going to go to a production studio alive, you know, like TV studio. And we're going to broadcast this out to thousands of people, various networks through a webcast. And so I'm taking submissions right, right now, and going through tens of thousand submissions. And I'm whittling that down to what will probably be about 500 domain names that will be in the auction and of the 500, there'll be 100 selected for the live portion, which will happen one day, which will be February 25th at 12 noon central standard time.

4 (47m 33s):
And we're going to webcast those sales right there on the spot as if you're sitting in the room with your paddle, except you're going to be betting online and bidding online with your computer. And because we're going to be in this production studio, we're able to do some really cool things like special effects and, you know, throw fireworks out in the background when the name sales and, you know, be more interactive and fun. So that's what I'm really excited about. And then the other 400 names will remain in the online auction part, which will end March the fourth. So the live portion is going to go live and be, I'm going to be selling names live just like I'm in a auction room, just like Sotheby's or Christie's or B make them car auctions.

4 (48m 16s):
I'm going to be selling those with Wayne on a tilt, you know, in a television studio, broadcast it out to the web on our stream and, and selling a hundred names there. And then, and then the other 400 names will remain on the online option piece until til March 4th. So it's going to be really exciting and we're going to be able to send the snippet of the HTML code or the video code out to everybody, including yourself. You can broadcast the option on your site and you can bring your audience in and watch the auction live if they don't want to, if you don't want to send people off to the actual auction site, we'll allow you to have the auction running on your site. And when somebody wants to come and bid, they'll just pop over and hit the bidding link and get signed up and register, and then be ready to all get on the domain name.

4 (49m 2s):
But you can draw people into your own on your own blog or studio website. We're going to do that too. When send that out to everybody in the domain industry and anybody that's interested in having the feed and that way you can keep your crowd and have discussions going on your own site and not have to go off, you know, send your customer somewhere else. So it's going to be really cool and fun. And that's how I think I'm going to draw a lot of attention worldwide. So we're getting, we're getting ready to do a big international press release. That'll be translated into multiple languages, highlighting some of the big names we have for sale. And I think it's going to be a new way to disrupt the way things are being done now in an online, you know, type of a scenario where knowing nobody can gather in a room together really, and, you know, raise the paddles.

4 (49m 46s):
We're going to have him raising the paddles online. And in a way they've never done before.

5 (49m 50s):
Keep in mind, this is the adult space. So they may be raising the paddles another way as well.

4 (49m 56s):
I do have some names that cross over the adult space that's on here. And, and it looks like we're going to get a couple more. I'm not going to, I won't have anything as crude as I used to have in my Hawkins on the, on the adult shows, but there, you know, we're, we're probably going to have names like cox.com spelled the right way. C O C K s.com. We have online babes or babes babes, babes only.com. I have sexo.com, which is a Spanish word for sex. It's going to be really that's, that's an awesome name. No, not sex though. He has another name. Yeah, he has another name, but we, we have a name like that. And there's cockfight.com.

4 (50m 39s):
There's, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot of names that could be used for, you know, in the adult industry, in both, you know, things like, you know, like celebrity photos, which isn't really adult, but we all know that the adult industry is monetized celebrity photo videos and, and celebrity type names as well.

5 (50m 59s):
Interesting. Okay. So I see another project you're involved in. What aren't you involved in? And you've got real estate in Costa Rica. You got a weed business, but I see one other project that looks interesting and it's desktop.com T tell me about that.

4 (51m 14s):
Yeah, so I'm not really involved in it. I'm, I'm an investor, but it's really cool. My colleague and friend, and a client of mine, his name is Ralph Larson and he, he, he created the.global extension as a matter of fact, and he, he came up with this idea and how to consolidate the apps that are all on your computer and make it really easy to operate and, and make it a virtual invert versatile. So you can use them better and it's really taken off. It's really incredible. So some of the biggest domain guys are invested in the business as well. And I'm pretty excited about where that's going to go. So I'm an investor, I'm not a part of the company other than being an investor in that business, but you mentioned Costa Rica.

4 (51m 58s):
I've got, I'm a part owner in a, in an awesome adventure park. They're called DIA Monte echo adventure park. It's in Guan Acosta. And we are fortunate to have the longest fast as high as zip line in all the Americas. You basically lay down like Superman and it's a thousand feet high and year you zip line into the ocean on your belly. And you fly, you know, basically through the over, you know, from a mountain down to the ocean. It's really cool. And we have lots of exotic animals in our animal sanctuary that are all rescuing animals, and it's a really cool place. And we have a luxury rental vehicle on the property as well. There and Costa Rica is probably gonna be one of the best places to go after the, all this shit's over.

4 (52m 40s):
They've done a really good job controlling the pandemic. They've closed their, they closed their borders early on. It really affected their tourism dollars, obviously, but they they've really worked hard to make sure that they have their shit together when things open up. And they, you know, I flew in, in December and I was just blown away. How, how clean and how, how nice it is there. Even with this all going on, they really have their, their stuff together. There's washing stations outside of every restaurant and bar and, and a retail store. So, you know, you're not allowed to walk in unless you wash your hands and, you know, you have to wear your mask and all that stuff. And because of that, the, the, the area that I'm in, which is Guan ACOs day, and in, particularly in this area called cocoa appli, Coco and Monta Paulo, there's, there's no cases of COVID or hardly no cases, you know, so it's, they, they've done a really good job.

4 (53m 34s):
So pretty excited about how Costa Rica has handled things and how they're gonna bounce back.

1 (53m 39s):
It, it sounds like you're describing Thailand, my friend, we just had a very small second wave, and I, I think Thailand's rated number one in the world as far as a COVID response. So it's good to be good. It's good to be here. And I know you got a place there. So

4 (53m 56s):
I have a place in Costa Rica. And then, and I'm a main investor with Evan. Horowitz was many in the adult industry now with a week club.com. And we're real excited about that, especially given the fact that we're probably going to look at a, you know, D federalized, you know, cannabis industry at some point, and, you know, a big ease up on what the, you know, how things are being treated with cannabis. And that's also moving into Costa Rica as well. So pretty excited about how the, the week club business is going to work.

1 (54m 25s):
One can only one can only hope from your, from your mouth to God's ears. Well, I want to remind everybody that the auction is next week, the 25th, that would be next Thursday. And

4 (54m 41s):
It's open now, by the way. So when you hear the show, you can go online and bid. If you just go to R O T d.com, the link, the bid is right there on the front page and also on the submission page. And then it brings you to the live option and you can start placing bids. And the live portion will go live on February 25th at 12 noon central standard time. And the extended auction will run through March 4th.

1 (55m 4s):
I'm headed there now. Well, Mo Mani, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on adult site broker talk, and I hope we'll get a chance to do this again really soon. My broker tip today is part two of how to buy a website. Last week, we discussed first deciding the type of site you want to buy and then establishing what your budget is next. It's time to look for your new website. So where do you look? Well adults' site broker is a great place to start. We always have a nice variety of website and non website properties for sale, but if there's a particular type of site you want, we can also act as your buyer's broker to help you find just the right site. Other places to look are boards like dot net and gfr.com.

1 (55m 49s):
But to be completely honest, unless what you're looking for is a really low end property. You're probably not going to find what you're looking for there. Of course you could contact site owners yourself, but take it from someone who does it for a living. It's a major hassle, and it can be really hard to even find out who owns a site. Almost all sites use what is called as who is privacy from their domain registrar. So when you send them an email, it will be an anonymous address. And in most cases, the emails aren't returned. We have a huge database

5 (56m 24s):
Of sellers and generally know who owns what. And if it's a website of note, if we don't know who owns it, we can always find out. We'll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we'll be talking to Karl Edwards of You love Jack.

0 (56m 44s):
And that's it on this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again like to thank our guest Monte Cahn. Talk to you next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.