Morning Folks!!
Who am I to predict something outrageous like saying 'I believe it's not only possible but actually #likely# that a small exclusive group of domain name owners will eventually end up on the Forbes 400 list of richest global billionaires by 2035'?
What are the past historical asset parallels to domain names that give me confidence in stating that my prediction that one or more 'pure' domain name investors (i.e. pure NOT referring to those owners of domain names that developed a business on it themselves) must and will come true?
When exactly in the maturation of premium dot com category domain name values are we currently experiencing in 2013 along the scale paralleled by premier baseball player salaries, Babe Ruth's earning less than $1,000,000 over his entire 1914-1935 career or the $30,000,000 in salary paid for Alex Rodriguez in 2012 alone?
Where in America will you find the incredible story of the family that pretty much owns an entire city where 200,000+ people live and work and play, and how did they accomplish this amazing feat over multiple generations? What does the story have to do with domain names in 2013?
How much difference is there between selling the oil for distribution, and retaining the land with the mineral assets versus selling the land itself and letting someone else have the produce of the wells drilled for oil? What are the parallels of the richest oil fields with the very best internet properties owned by domain name owners?
Why should you care about who I am or any of this stuff if you're among what I call 'the 500'? The '500' being a group of already for the most part affluent people that like Rick Schwartz bought domains as early as 1994-- the 500 or so people on the planet who are likeliest to be among those small number of future billionaires...if they keep playing their cards right.
Lastly...
Why is 'Rick Schwartz' speaking of 'Rick Schwartz' on the Rick Schwartz blog in the 3rd person? That's one question I can answer now, in brief. This is NOT Rick Schwartz, Domain King (TM) posting today. It's actually Danny Welsh.
Who IS Danny Welsh?
If you allow me the time, I'll tell you more of my background, who I am to make such claims and exactly why Rick has invited me into his living room and given me his blessing to talk to those of you among his closest colleagues today.
I'll even tell you in all transparency what's in it for me to work my ass off for the next 10-15 years to maybe even help make that prediction a reality for a handful of you that will be the innovators pursuing many possible paths to extract as much value as possible from the Golden Eggs produced by your assets-- without selling the Golden Gooses themselves-- and with favor, what we're doing with JointVentures.com just might be a part of that transformation.
Who, what, when, where, how much, why = not only the recipe for a journalist's story.
It's the facts and the story together that create a combination to unlock any sale of any product or asset.
And, ladies and gentlemen of the 500, I'm here to congratulate you all on having some of what might be the most valuable (albeit intangible) assets in history. Products and properties that have value that the facts and story to unlock the highest and best use of is still being gathered, still being told.
Who, what, when, where, how much, why.
I'll lay out a vision for you in exquisite detail for telling that story to Corporate America, to Madison Ave, to the CEO or marketing executive that covets your very best domain names for their own. We'll follow the path from start to finish over a series of a few blog posts the real Rick Schwartz has graciously allowed me to make as his junior partner with JointVentures.com.
My vision enfolded within his vision. Our vision and journey for the next 3 years that will be pivotal, and one on which we'd be happy to have some of you go along with us.
Please know that I'm thrilled to have a chance to serve many of you as clients starting in 2013. I will return soon with the first in a series of guest blog posts we think just might touch a nerve if you're among the 500. Just might make you feel like it was the mid-1990s all over.
Until then, I welcome your comments and feedback.
Danny Welsh
JointVentures.com
Rick Schwartz
Thanks Danny!
In 2013 Danny and I are going to shake things up in a very big way.
We are going to unlock the true value of great domains and demonstrate over and over and over again how we can take a domain making 35 cents a day and transform that domain into making $35/day. A 100x increase. So we are not talking 10%, 20% or even 50%. We are talking 1000%, 10,000%. and as we announce these leases it will change how we all do business without you changing anything in how you use the domain until we get that lease.
I reached terms on a domain just yesterday after several months of negotiating. The domain is InvestmentDiamonds.com and I will release the details of this 8 YEAR lease in a post in the coming days. Danny and I will demonstrate with DEALS why the solution for ME is also the solution for YOU!
AHEAD OF TIME
Danny I like your vision and I can see why Rick has partnered with you.
It’s perfect timing to partner on this project.
Questions
What’s the best way to contact you. Email? Phone?
Once you have found the clients for the leasing deals
who’s going to do the final deal. Rick? Danny?
When domainers do Jointventures with you do they get
protected from Reverse Domain Hijacking?
Will you give special offers to T.R.A.F.F.I.C when you get
accepted to JointVenture?
AftermarketList.com
Leasing domains is something I’ve been considering lately since I’ve heard about it more and more through domainer channels. Thanks for”bringing it to light”. I’ve always flipped names short term for immediate capital, but I’m starting to think more long term now. So thanks for that Rick.
Acro
Danny is quite the gentleman. Not sure if you got my voicemail, but the summary is here. Happy New Year! http://domaingang.com/domain-news/danny-welsh-jointventures-com-the-longest-homepage-in-the-world/
Jen
You write the most wonderful love letters to yourself.
At first I thought your posts of late were a bit redundant but then I was reminded of how important it is to give voice to and speak our truths out loud into the universe in order to give our desires a place to actually take root and grow.
Thank you for sharing the types of thoughts and actions required to manifest one genuine prosperity.
UFO
Admittedly, the more I think about all this the more I get interested.
Perhaps you’ll also have to offer an escrow broker service when a buyer brings a seller to the table to use your legal framework and set up (No negotiation input etc from your side). Say a 10% commission. On deals over 200k.
Simply because it would be inefficient to use the attorney (buyer) to attorney (seller) basis. Transaction costs would get too high.
Max
Exactly. The thing that really need now, more than anything else, is a platform not for sale agreements but for leasing agreements.
A lean and cheap platform, to serve as a trusted service.
This for pieces of average value, not for the super domains. Someone can take a private jet, but are the low costs flies those that change the world.
I hope some smart guy with technical knowledge will lunch this platform, ONLY FOR DOMAIN LEASING, very very soon (although, anyway, late for 15 years).
UFO
I was sort of thinking that all as you’d need is a database (or even an additional field on a database) that could be filtered for leasing opportunities & JV opportunities.
Beyond that you’d have your leasing legal model that would have some constituent parts. (Basic framework of key variables) and they could just be decided on and put into a pro forma legal document. (The same almost as a DYI legal pack on house sales – albeit there needs to be a type of escrow element as title doesn’t pass etc).
Max
Exactly, for the most part of the agreements everything can be made by providing a bit of standard variables. It is entirely feasible (after all the software that lawyers use everyday is not different from a series of clauses to select or less…).
Does anyone have information on the site leasethis.com?
It has worked in the past? Maybe it’s just one of the many business started too early when the mass was still behind. Now the herd :) is coming …
Joao
I think you want this: http://www.goforthe.com/domain-leasing/
Max
Almost…but it seems like zenscrow or others
I’d like to see an inventory, a database online with good searching options with:
1) name of domain offered for lease
2) monthly payment request
3) example of final price to buy definitevely the domain after having payed 24 installments
4) standard agreement IMMEDIATELY VISIBLE for all. Total transparency for all (icon in the last column with the .pdf file that the interested lessee can open and print)
5) a good internal system to permit constructive exchange of messages between lessor and lessse
Something simple at the starting point. It will work.
What matter is to start! Now! YESTERDAY! 15 YEARS AGO…
Max
I forgot: Goforthedot.com is a good name, but it would be better something more flexible, or another site… (something good at least for the ccTLD too: trust me, they work good…)
Joao
They don´t have a classifieds feature, and i think that’s more of a sedo kinda thing, rather than a goforthe.com thing. But who knows! Send them an email. You’ll see that Adam is quite a nice guy.
For the rest, the model is already there. They help you out with the agreement, monitor the domain and all that. The negotiation of the lease can be made by you. No censorship like sedo. They enter on the deal when you decide.
The name…i told that to Adam as well, but he and his team decided to go for…erm…goforthe.com. I hope it sticks.
AlanR
Danny, I think you are way off on your prediction of 10 billionaires by 2035. I predict that there will be at least 10 dotcom billionaires by 2018 or about 5 years from now. By 2035, I think there will be 20 to 30 or more by then. We are about half way there already because there are at least 5 guys who would qualify as billionaires is they cashed in today. There are many more heading in that direction in the next few years. In a lot of ways, we can thank Rick because he has had a lot of influence on most of those so called, pure domainers and the domain industry in general!
UFO
goforthe.com. sounds very lame, its hardly one that would give most FDs etc much confidence.
Like I say, I tend to see this as a bespoke type industry rather than a database driven stack em high sell em cheap mentality.
Me, I’d just have the best listed just like Great Domains used to, and then when it all ramps up then think about all the back end functionality to become more efficient.
The biggest issue is getting sales and the whole approach to that. What are target segments, how will they be approached, whats the offer that they haven’t thought of, how are you solving their problems… etc etc
Altaf
Rick,
Thanks for sharing your all ideas. May we know a few features why did you choose investmentdiamonds.com ? What factors did you consider while made your choice? It will help folks and me to understand what type of domains do you prefer. I am worried to send my list, some 100% CTR but having very tiny search, while others got good page views but 15% CTR max. Your choice is over 50%. Where is the equilibrium point?
Gratefully,
Max
Let those who could be interested in leasing a domain have an agency, pardon, a website, where to see the various offers available in the area, pardon, in their economic sector.
It is simple: a site like sedo or other, but with the leasing offer
Sedo has screw all, in the last years in particular (I”can’t understand” why no antitrust agency stopped sedo and google partnership: I think sedo started with their circuit for advertising – someone can correct me if I’m wrong – and some years ago they made a partnership with google. Uaho?!? The biggest parking platform, almost monopolist for parking domains, at that time, allied with the even more more monopolist in online adv.), but they give classifieds feature, clear prices, internal messaging system. This is all that is needed and an escrow service for the leasing period (but maybe, maybe, it could work even leaving the domain to the current registar and he set the DNS properly – see http://leasethis.com/?cmd=Page_Faq_Domain#q1
point 22)
Max
…maybe, maybe, it could work even leaving the domain to the current registar and he set the DNS properly….
Sorry, I wanted to write”registrant”, not”registrar”
Max
I’d like to underline one very important thing. Especially for generic domains, leasing is much important, indeed, IT IS CRITICAL, because it helps the entrepreneur to see if his business on that domain works, without taking huge risks.
Every entrepreneur knows this a huge problem. A domain is not a car of a known brand. The car of the well-known brand will work, the businessman can be sure, but the domain needs to be tested, ESPECIALLY with all the tricks that serch engines and probably registrars etc.are making against good domain names…(and any recommendations of the SEO experts echoing in the ears of entrepreneurs…)
Joao
The key is Trust.
Aggro
Any entrepreneur worth his salt would test on a $8 domain
Tons have done this throughout the brief history of the internet
No need to cite examples, there are far more successful siteson less-than-ideal names than on ‘category killers’
Having the ideal domain has NEVER been an obstacle for the true entrepreneur
Only for clueless like you with typical domainer thinking
And writing novels for each post trying to dominate the thread doesn’t make you smart, it makes you look like a loser with too much time on their hands
LOL
Max
You are only a poor arrogant person. A scary SEO soldier probably
Clearly I know some things better than you because I am an entrepreneur, not a domainer. I registered good domains only for my projects.
Grow up poor scary seo soldier…
For you these following companies are all stupid?
http://domainguardians.com/reports/company-domains.htm
I am not a domainer: this time you are really wrong.
I am sorry my poor presumptuous”young” (business inexperienced) little scary seo soldier
You revealed exactly what your are: a poor little scary seo soldier
But I understand you, you’re just scared because you saw the indications for a site that works, when it will born.
A leasing site that would have been present for 15 years, along with many others, and you realized that the little soldiers as you may have a little more complicated life by the return of free and fair competition.
I understand you, you’re just a poor little soldier who eats the crumbs of the great sole master of the world. You’ve never been an entrepreneur and you have not the free enterprise, the fair trade, the fair and open competition in your bones.
As your ideals, you have only a future where someone decide live and death of anyone. A future already present which I have seen clearly already in July 2000. An extremely dangerous situation that we all are already living, defended by soldiers like this child that takes advantage of the opportunity to binge on the crumbs that his master does fall.
Danny Welsh
Hey Acro, I got the voicemail. Now I have a real name and a blog avatar to put to the DomainGang.com chief.
Thank you for thanking me for thanking you…for publicly making fun of me.
I think that about satisfies the gentlemanly requirement, does it not? ;)
Thanks again,
Danny Welsh
JointVentures.com
Danny Welsh
RE: Altaf
“Danny, I think you are way off on your prediction of 10 billionaires by 2035.”
Maybe so! Frankly, it all starts with one. One Frank Shorter running a four minute mile and showing the rest of the top runners on the planet that it’s possible.
Will it be another Frank S____ as the first here? Possibly ;).
“I predict that there will be at least 10 dotcom billionaires by 2018 or about 5 years from now.”
There are plenty of”dot com billionaires” who built businesses. I’m talking about the guy who inputs nothing to a business but the domain name.
If you mean”there will be at least 10 domainer billionaires by 2018″ my only question is…How?
If it’s from domain SALES alone, that accomplishment will actually HURT the rest of”the 500″ if you ask me. No different than the power brokers in the Middle East getting together and saying 100 years ago”Let’s just sell our land to America and Europe. This oil drilling and selling thing is too much work.”
Every road I see leading to a future probability of not one but MANY pure domainer billionaires converges at one place: Joint Ventures. Not straight sales, not parking, not development, not even leasing.
Joint Ventures where the domain owner contributes the domain name in exchange for a LOT of benefits up front and ongoing, and CHOOSES their partner/lessee as carefully as that company chose the domain.
So while I don’t disagree with your”by 5 years from now” I feel the same way I do about that prediction as I would about a product called”6 minute abs” when someone was already selling”7 minute abs”. We could both be right, and it wouldn’t mean either of us was a better predictor!
“By 2035, I think there will be 20 to 30 or more by then.”
Sounds good to me. I plan to continue investing my time and resources in helping that along. I first made 6 figures in real estate by helping 8 figure earners make 7 extra figures. Add two zeroes and…
I hope many will join me. I’ll certainly be needing the help after the first of the year.
“We are about half way there already because there are at least 5 guys who would qualify as billionaires is they cashed in today.”
Maybe, but I doubt it personally. That would require Forbes’ editors to believe that the domain aftermarket had enough liquidity for any single domainer to realize billions of dollars QUICKLY to”cash in” with sales. How long did it take them to count equivalent stock earnings as”cash” for the rankings? How long would it take to negotiate an aftermarket sale that wasn’t just”dumping” for enough domains in an owner’s portfolio to equal billions of dollars for the transaction. Me thinks these things don’t happen that quickly for any buyer that would have the cash.
“There are many more heading in that direction in the next few years.”
Yep. No argument there. Timing is critical. But I do NOT believe it is INEVITABLE that that direction will happen for domainer billionaires. Many more powerful interests than the domain community WILL try to stop”the 500″ from truly”cashing in” on their foresight and balls in acquiring the best domain names before the rest of the world realized they’d want them. It’s already started and IMO it is about to get much more intense. There are MANY parallels in hiostory Rick or I could point to, and human nature is covetous.
“In a lot of ways, we can thank Rick because he has had a lot of influence on most of those so called, pure domainers and the domain industry in general!”
Yep. In many ways I think of Rick as the Socrates of Domaining, the Philosopher King as it were. If you were me, and you had the vision you had for a future possibility, whom else on the planet would you have taken it to first than the Domain King? There is no better partner possible from that standpoint in my opinion.
Danny Welsh
JointVentures.com
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick,
The future for prime Virtual Business Foundations only gets brighter and brighter. We have experienced many turn key programs that make site development more affordable. You are positioning yourself to be at the forefront of massive business rollouts in the near future.
There is fast approaching a time where just a good Vitual business foundation will have virtual bisiness opportunities based solely on the sites Ad campaign suitability only. Focus your business model on this eventuality and you will be on the list you speak of. Good Luck !
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Danny Welsh
Thanks *AHEAD OF TIME*. The timing is right, Rick and I both feel. The next three years WILL see a record number of Candy.com type deals. We hope to announce a number of them for Rick and our other domain owner clients. I appreciate what you said about Rick choosing me for his partner. Whether or not I’m the BEST guy for the job so to speak remains to be seen but I will continue giving it my best.
As for your questions:
1. contact info…
email is danny AT thedannywelsh and my cell # is included in most
emails I send out. I welcome any contacts.
2.”Once you have found the clients for the leasing deals who’s going to do the final deal. Rick? Danny?”
Rick and I have established a pretty good rhythm where I push the ball down the field and he is there to punch it across the goal line. As we ramp up to take on third party clients in the New Year I expect to be recruiting others to do the work I have been doing to”filter and pre-negotiate” Rick’s own deals alongside me.
Sub-broker opportunities will be available for sure.
Rick should always be the guy in the end zone, though, so far as I’m concerned. As long as he wants to be anyway. He has the track record and the scoreboard of his negotiated deals speaks for itself. Just *look to the left on this blog* and there’s a new one there pretty often.
Throughout 2013 that will multiply because I see my role as just giving Rick more opportunities to get a touchdown. There are a number of Rick’s deals so far that really no one knows about but me and him, and I expect he’ll be adding some to the scoreboard soon that validate what JointVentures.com is all about.
3.”When domainers do Jointventures with you do they get protected from
Reverse Domain Hijacking?”
If you mean by the party that is leasing/developing a domain, whether there are clauses in the”end user agreements” used for Rick’s own deals
that we are also using for third party clients, with language that specifically protect against claims on the domain itself, the answer is Yes. If you mean some other form of protection, I don’t know. There is no”stupidity insurance” and if Rick has proven anything himself its that domain owners MUST be prepared to protect their valuable properties
against miscreants bent on stealing.
4.”Will you give special offers to T.R.A.F.F.I.C when you get accepted to JointVenture?”
I appreciate you thinking I have some kind of pull with Rick to get people discounts or special offers to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in exchange for them choosing to become a JointVentures.com client.
I don’t have that kind of power, only Rick himself and his partner with the conference. I’m optimistic he may give ME a special deal on attending T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and being a sponsor, but even that is uncertain.
Have you tried negotiating with Rick Schwartz? ;) Let’s say I’d be VERY surprised if a TRAFFIC special deal for becoming a JointVentures.com client were to happen.
Danny Welsh
JointVentures.com
elevateer
I posted on my blog recently about not seen any domain investors on Forbes 1000 world Millionaires and that led me to find this your predictions.
See the link here: http://www.cctldmarket.com/2015/12/forbes-1000-worlds-billionaires-why-are.html
Cheers and thanks.