The Domain King's® thoughts on domain names, web traffic, increasing web sales, success, life, and plain-old Business & Marketing 101. Nothing happens until a sale is made!
I am often reminded by domainers that there is a world out the USA. That's fine and you may even be surprised to know that I recognize that and have visited my share of countries around the world. But what folks don't seem to recognize is how to fish! You go where the fish are! DUH! Where they are biting. Where they are hungry. Were they are big and diversified.
So here is a tidbit of PROOF of what I see and how I see it and why I focus on the USA and other ENGLISH speaking countries as it pertains to sales and domain names and the value of a domain name.
Lets look at the .Me registry. Please explain how one country in the world of 350 or so can be responsible for 53% of all their registrations when EVERYONE had the same opportunity? 53%!! That is a REAL number. Why do more than half of ALL their registrations come from the USA? Why so disproportionate? Why?
53% of .Me domains are registered in the US;
46% of .Me domains are registered by businesses;
That .Me is the most popular domain choice for startups after .com;
There are still 35% of three-character .me domain names available!
Interpret that into Dollars. Or Euros or Yens or whatevers.
See the problem is I see an answer where others don't. I choose to compete in the arena with the largest fish. Why the USA??? It comes down to one word.
CONSUMPTION!!
Read it again.
CONSUMPTION!!
The USA consumes MORE than the rest of the world combined on MANY things. Many! Many!!!! So that is why I don't dabble in IDN or country codes and only lightly in non-dotcoms. It's fine for those that do but it is not in my DNA for reasons I am about to explain. The numbers guide me.
So if you don't understand or even can't accept that one tidbit in life, then we will never see things eye to eye. We will always disagree because. We will never be on the same page. You will always tell me why your small pond is better and I will always point to the SEA with no limits! The sea of consumption! Sales!
And that is fine. I don't want to talk you out of the pond. It may be very nice. Very comfortable. Very good to you. But at least acknowledge the difference in size and VALUE of the audience. maybe not 100% of the time, but most of the time.
Yes, they consume more rice in China than the USA. So what?? They consume that rice to build things that we will consume mostly in the USA.
Maybe what is important is figuring out since nobody here is in the rice business and many here are in the domain business that facts do count. Numbers do count. This is just one tiny tidbit of an example. So why does .Me have 53% in the USA if it is not about how we consume things and that has enriched many folks around the world? Do you think .co's numbers are much different? They may support my argument even more! .com's numbers are widely known.
Sure you can come here and tell me the USA is slipping by percentage, other contries are gaining or this or that. But it does not mean much when it translates into business.
Domain Names by Country of Purchase. USA has more domain registrations than all other countries combined! 12X the second closest. All other countries combined equal 48 million to the USA at just under 80 Million. Then add the English speaking countries to that. That would bring that number up to over 92 million and the other down to 36 million. The numbers paint a picture. Then add buying power to that equation and it further tilts.
If you fish, you go where the most and the biggest fish are. It is not about what you know folks. It's about how you interpret what you know. Whether you play for an audience of 600 or an audience of 600 million. Just numbers. Then add BUYING POWER and Kaboom!
And btw, how many of the .whatevers are not English words or abbreviations? Why is that? These are questions worthy of some thought. Numbers don't lie. They paint pictures. Some see different realities in their pictures. By starting off with 50% of anything you are bound to do quite well.
So .Me is 53% just in the USA. Then add the other English speaking countries. Maybe you are over 75%. The rest is fragmented. Fragmentation is costly to market to. Fragmented markets are limited markets.
Do you market to the folks with buying power? How does that factor in? Do folks in Guatemala have the same buying power as in the USA?
When I was growing up 'French' was the universal language. It then shifted to Spanish. But English dominates things from English speaking Airport Traffic controllers all over the world to New domain extensions. There is a reason. Why English? Because flight was invented in the USA and as it blossomed it blossomed in English because all the terminology was/is in English. That holds true on so many other things.
From Cars to computers to medical to DOMAIN NAMES!
Are things shifting? Sure. So what? 6000 member audience will grow to 12,000 while 600 million will grow to 1.2 billion. And even if the 600 million only grows to 610 million, it may be a lifetime or more before the 6000 grows into the first million. If ever. That has to factor in. It can't be dismissed. It has to be understood.
Some people are going to come here and beat their chest for this or that. But they all have A.D.D. because they won't focus on the point of the post. They will joust with themselves as they invent straw-men to defend their point of view and maybe their turf.
Numbers are in my DNA. Focus on numbers and money happens. Why is that? Because money is based on numbers and numbers don't lie!
My partner with JointVentures.com is busy working on the
scaling up priorities of the business, but provided me this pre-written post
describing a bit more of his background in business, how he came to see
eRealEstate as potentially more lucrative in growth potential than physical
real estate during the course of his lifetime…and what that means for the
hungry guy or gal looking for an opportunity TODAY to quit flipping domains and
create wealth leveraging joint ventures and doing long-term-oriented deals to
reposition assets for highest and best use, and get paid for it VERY WELL. If
you haven’t read any of my posts over the years about “Sweat Equity”, here’s
one from just 30 days ago. If you’re looking for a solid six figure opportunity
for proven sales performers, read that now and then come back and read this
below: LINK.
Rick Schwartz
“Stop: No More
Working for Tips!”
By Danny Welsh
JointVentures.com How did I come to the realization that what I was doing with
wholesaling real estate houses was small smack-dab in the middle of making more money in a single month than anyone in my working class family had ever
made in 2 years? How did I later come to eRealEstate by way of
physical real estate and come to see my experiences with selling a single deal
or investment in the latter as precursor to (and in some ways preparation for)
increasing success with leasing the former?
How can someone with
great people skills and an interest in domain names looking for a GREAT
opportunity to make money in 2013 leverage what I’ve learned about business at
30 and what Rick Schwartz has learned at 60…and work with both of us to change
the way the domain game is played at the highest levels in the next 3 years?
Let’s discuss…
First, my business experience was
wholesaling properties as early as a year out of college when I realized
working for someone else just wasn’t going to work for me. Find a motivated seller who is in over their
head with debt and wants to sell fast. Put the property under contract with
just a few dollars deposit and paperwork that gives you the right to shop it,
and use superior marketing skills to FLIP THAT HOUSE for cash to a serious
buyer. It’s a formula for fast cash,
and pretty easy in real estate doing a deal that is a WIN-WIN where no one gets
taken advantage of done correctly.
There are always cash real estate buyers who want a cheap
property to fix it up and rent it out or fix it up and sell it for a big ROI,
and as a wholesaler you can get a piece of the profit spread from either with
no property acquisition money out of your pocket except for incidental
costs...just by finding the deal and putting it under contract, and using networking,
research and marketing to develop a good “list” of potential buyers you could
market each wholesale real estate deal to at the “push of a button” to get it
sold and the owner of the property out from a tough situation they couldn’t
solve themselves because they were too immobilized with fear looking at their
mounting bills on the kitchen table.
Think WIN-WIN.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about…Real Estate Wholesaling
is the “sexy” and “no money down” physical real estate equivalent of domain flippers
today in the domain world that hand register a domain name and attempt to ‘flip
it’ to an end user company 5 minutes later for more money.
I can remember a time when my partners and I wholesaled 20+ real
estate properties in a single day...sound like I’m making it up? I couldn’t if
I tried. It blew my mind, to be honest with you. There I was, 24 years old and
partnering in a seminar with Bank of America in Cali bringing their loan
clients to buy properties from a young group of Florida real estate investors
offering turnkey rental condo’s for long-distance investors.
Talk about a joint venture! HINT: Which bank do you think underwrote the mortgage loans on all those
investment property sales we made? Who do you think referred all of the attendees?
Gosh almighty, when you structure a great joint venture…it’s really not
anything more than finding a way to WIN BIG and let the other parties involved
WIN BIG too. Not always easy…and there can be pitfalls, but when you do it
once, it’s time to DUPLICATE baby!
With that first event having gone successful and even doing
bus tours and property sales seminars with dozens and hundreds of investors at
times to sell investment deals in bulk as my partners and I racked up dozens
upon dozens of investment property sales in multiple cities all throughout
Florida— many times selling to investors across the United States in
California— I gotta tell you...when I did it actively, wholesaling properties
was a lot of fun.
And it felt...SEXY.Heck, after just one success like that I felt like I was the MAN!
I was hooked.
And yet, for the people I personally consider real estate
business mentors who had light-years more business seasoning than I did… what 6
maybe 7 years ago now… those mentors of mine then with DECADES of real estate
experience having done tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in deals (and
still owning a significant chunk of that invested in long-term real estate
holdings)...
They LAUGHED at me and made fun of my team's accomplishments wholesaling properties.
They saw me and my active business partners running around,
working 80-90 hours a week, confusing activity for accomplishment, and hustling
like madmen to wholesale investment-grade properties to anyone who'd listen...oblivious
to actually building real WEALTH.
The mentor my partner and I were bragging to about our 20
deals in a day accomplishment told us that no matter how much money we made
wholesaling houses, in his opinion we were still:
“Working For Tips”
He threw that zinger
and smiled and leaned back in his leather executive chair in the 12th
floor corner office of the 17 story building he had owned in whole or in part
for decades of having sold it and bought it back… and we both seethed inside
and secretly hated that smug bastard.
But we bit our tongue and tried to be humble before this man who had taught my
partner at the time and me both a great deal about business and how to bring
real value to the marketplace in exchange for money. And my partner asked him
what he meant by that.
I don’t have a video or audio recording of that
conversation. I wish I had. If I had had it to listen to maybe my career would
have gone differently and I’d have succeeded at a higher level even faster, I
can tell you that. It took me years and one horrible month in 2008 where I
realized despite all that I had earned…I was broke again…and it took THAT to
realize he was right years before saying no matter HOW MUCH MONEY I had made I
had been “working for tips”.
I thought then what I was doing was fun and I was actually
proud of what we were doing...but when
that zinger got done popping the packing bubble wrap around my fragile ego, and
the truth of the next few years bore it out with the collapse of the nationwide
housing market, it helped me see that what I thought was 'success'....was in
actuality a GRIND. A hamster wheel. Sure we had been making money. Sure
we had been moving deals and building a following among investors. But it was
just working for big paychecks because if you stop wholesaling...you stop
earning.
You don’t know what you don’t know until someone who knows
shows.
I'm not knocking wholesaling houses, just as I won’t knock
domain flipping...it's a fantastic way to get started in a business arena and
make some money with little money or risk.
Rick Schwartz calls these folks who flip internet real
estate domain names “waiters” when they could be the restaurant owner. As I’ve matured over the years I came to believe that the same
is true in physical real estate. There
are waiters and there are restaurant owners.
But the barrier to entry for wholesaling is low and so with
physical real estate many start there, just as there are many domain flippers
because you can get in the game for just a couple bucks. As a newbie real
estate investor, I was no different.
Years later after first doing it myself successfully I
trained others to do wholesaling houses too through an “apprentice program”
called the MMM Challenge (how to wholesale houses among other things these
apprentices were taught), and I had a lot of fun with it helping people get
started in real estate, learning to market themselves effectively and making
some money in exchange for working for me for free. Some succeeded in business
and/or real estate since then a little, some a lot, some not at all.
But every single one of them is a changed person for the
time I spent pouring into them, and they’ll back me up on that. I’m
proud of the difference I helped make in the lives of 60 people over 2 years.
But at some point as so many wanted to
learn “wholesaling”— something I started my own RE career with and by then had
graduated from to pursuing more lucrative deals— I worried that I was
perpetuating a small mindset even as my students succeeded to make money with
wholesaling.
TANGENT: Any idea who owns/owned Property.com and
Wholesaling.com?
Yep. That’s a big part of why he’s one of the small group of
visionaries I call “the 500”.
How many more ways
can eRealEstate be used
and developed for profit than physical real estate?
Thinking that way is
what led me to approach Rick Schwartz at first, and those are a stories we can talk about another day, including
my own experiences many of the old guys in domaining would call my own “newbie
entrepreneur” years— only I was flipping houses and not domains.
But I digress. To return to the meat of the matter…eventually
I found out no matter how much money I might make wholesaling houses I was
still a waiter and not the restaurant owner, to use one of Rick’s recent
analogies from his blog HERE…and with the help of a few older RE
mentors I graduated to doing deals that weren’t small one-time transactions
alone.
I realized something years ago (actually my mentors in real
estate hit me upside the head with it): You can take down a HUGE cash-now and
cash-flow-later commercial real estate deal like an office building, mobile
home park, or apartment complex and get paid for YEARS...with the SAME AMOUNT
of effort, resources and contacts as it took our team to wholesale a bunch of
residential deals and get paid once.
And so I am undertaking with Rick Schwartz’s blessing to
help THREE groups of people realize something Rick Schwartz and I believe in
2013:
1)
If you've sold some domains for 6
figures, and have some successes under your belt...you may want to do as Rick
Schwartz is increasingly doing and graduate to getting a real piece of the
business that buys and develops your most valuable domain names. That’s what
our JointVentures.com clients are going to do starting with a domain lease in
most cases if we’re successful to bring the end user business partner.
Mission…Accomplished in 8 weeks December 1, 2012-February 1,
2013.
2)
If you've quickly flipped some “newly
registered” domains, and have some successes under your belt...you may want to
do as our JointVentures.com Kamikaze Sales Team will be doing and graduate to
getting a real piece of a residual income stream and not just the one time
check. That’s what you now have an opportunity to do if you want to apply and
get chosen.
YOUR Mission Reading This Right NOW…should you choose to
accept it BEFORE this offer simply self-destructs.
3)
If you’ve made some money in an offline
business that is just now wanting to get online, or you have made some money in
an online business and are seeking a superior online location…you may want to
do as our domain partners and lessees are increasingly doing and graduate to
operating your “Category” business from the one and only Category.com. That’s
the opportunity MY job with marketing for JointVentures.com will be for 400
great domain names seeking a great business to align with so each profits more
than they could alone.
MY Mission for 2013-2015.
Look…if you have some
success under your belt and you see the #2 above and are intrigued…let me offer
you a bit of advice. Now is NOT the time to hesitate.
It wasn’t until I was somewhat priggishly bragging at age 24
to one of my own real estate mentors that my partner and I had made 6 figures
in a single month wholesaling houses that I realized how SMALL wholesaling
houses really was compared to the true and intrinsic value of PROPERTY itself.
Real wealth comes
from assets and income streams, not just transactions.
If it wasn’t until you read this that you realized how SMALL
“flipping” newly registered domains really is compared to the true and
intrinsic value of the best DOMAIN PROPERTIES themselves…
Then you know what to do, don’t you? If you’re interested to join up with Rick Schwartz
and Danny Welsh as our inaugural JointVentures.com ninja sales team then it’s time to step up and say so.
Send in your video application via posted link in the comments to the
“Armchair Quarterbacks Need Not Apply: JointVentures.com Sales Team Now
Recruiting Future MVPs” announcement post here: LINK
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