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interviews Inside Interview with the Buyer of $300,000 in Domain Acquisitions

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Building a brand on a memorable, one-word domain name is something that many of us strive to do. Our guest this week has managed to create a network of at least twelve websites, all hosted on some of the best .COM and .NET domain names around.

Yigal Ben Efraim is the founder and CEO of STANDS4 and a seasoned entrepreneur who understands the value of one-word domain names more than most. During the fifteen years that STANDS4 has been operating, he has acquired over $300,000 worth of domain names including Symbols.com for $85,000, Acronyms.com for $60,000 and Lyrics.net for $65,000. Each domain name is home to an impressive website with thousands of pages of content.

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Yigal Ben Efraim

Recently, Yigal completed the acquisition of his latest one-word domain name: Scripts.com. According to DNJournal, the name was sold by @Zandibot on behalf of the Perception.com fund. In this interview, we find out why Yigal decided to add Scripts.com to his already impressive portfolio of domain names, and why he loves one-word domain names.


NP: Can you give us a brief description of the company behind Scripts.com?

Yigal: Scripts.com is joining our STANDS4 globally collaborative network of reference websites. We've been online since 2001 providing free educational resources in many disciplines to millions of unique visitors worldwide. During the years, STANDS4 awarded several prestigious prizes, including Writer's Digest's "Best websites for 2005," the American Library Association "Best Free Reference Web Sites 2010" and Red Herring's "Top 100 Europe Award 2015."


NP: Why did you acquire the domain name Scripts.com?

Yigal: STANDS4 covers almost every reference material you can imagine including dictionaries, thesaurus, quotations, biographies, symbols, and poetry -- adding a resource for movie and play scripts came natural to us, and since all of our assets are using premium domains names, Scripts.com was obviously one of the candidates to host it.


NP: You bought Scripts.com for $87,000. Can you tell us whether you actively sought out the name, or was it a domain name that was offered to you?

Yigal: We were actively looking to purchase a domain name for the scripts initiative. There were couple of alternatives that we considered but none matched the one-word generic .COM that we eventually managed to acquire.


NP: How did you determine the domain was worth $87,000 to you?

Yigal: We've acquired more than 15 premium domains over the years for our network, so we had a sense of how much such a jewel would probably cost, but we also used a couple of automated tools to make sure we're not completely off.


NP: Can you give us details of the negotiations that lead to you agreeing upon a price?

Yigal: The sellers were initially willing to consider a six-figure offer, but they were nice enough to try working out a more relaxed deal.


NP: Do you think the domain is worth more than you were willing to pay for it?

Yigal: I think we've paid a very fair price for it -- and in general, we're always trying to be fair when we conduct business.


NP: I noticed that you own a few other one-word .COM domains, such as Acronyms.com and Abbreviations.com. What is the attraction of a memorable one-word .COM domain to you?

Yigal: Maybe I'm an old-fashioned guy, now with all the new TLDs and domain hacks brands, but one-word .COMs still have the most appeal to me. I also believe that they will retain their SEO advantage at some stage, as Google seemed to be too aggressive with their exact match domains (EMD) update and chances are they will ease it a bit in the future. For example, Bing is still giving credit to exact match domains, and Scripts.com is already the #2 result for the 'scripts' keyword there.


NP: Considering your portfolio of premium domains, would you consider yourself a domain investor? Do you have plans to sell these names eventually?

Yigal: I can't say I am since I never managed to sell a domain before! The ultimate use of our portfolio of domains is for our content, education, and community business.


NP: What does the future hold for Scripts.com? I notice that you currently have a website there. Do you plan on developing the domain further?

Yigal: We aim to become the primary destination for information, tutorials, and discussions of movies, shows, and play scripts. We are also building a community of amateur script writers where they can share their work with others, get feedback and recommendations, and maybe even manage to sell their work to the movie industry on our marketplace.


About STANDS4

STANDS4 LLC is a leading provider of free online reference and educational resources, serving millions of unique visitors worldwide with genuine content through its globally collaborative network of reference websites and content partners.

STANDS4 provides a swiss army knife of reference material including abbreviations, definitions, synonyms, biographies, phrases, quotes, rhymes, symbols, poetry, lyrics, scripts, grammar, and many more!

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Thanks to Yigal for taking part in our Inside Interviews series. If you have acquired a high-value domain name that you're using as a part of your business (or to create a new business), please contact me to be featured in the series.



Inside Interviews is a blog series profiling the buyers of high-value domain names. Find out their motives, negotiation tactics, and their opinions on popular domaining topics only on the NamePros Blog.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Congratulations again Yigal, that domain couldn't have gone to a better place. Nice interview James ;)
 
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Good interview. Thank you.

Not only domainers, it is end users who need to read these interviews and try to understand the importance of domain names.
 
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I'm excited to hear of the usage plans for Scripts.com
1. the networking potential for writers
2. the potential to sell scripts for development
~Patricia Kaehler -- Ohio USA
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What i like here are the plans for this domain, putting it really to best use for all.. (even though it may not have fetched top dollars this way).. congrats to both seller and buyer
 
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Congrats to Zandi and Yigal.
 
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Yigal: Maybe I'm an old fashion guy, now with all the new TLDs and domain hacks brands, but one-word .COMs still have the most appeal to me.
That's a coming from the enduser and very powerful statement for people who are investing in other extension
 
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Stands4 looks like a true entrepreneurial success!!
Mr. Yigal sure knows the business and well deserves all awards

I will defiantly keep track on these guys' future work
 
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Great article once again. Thank you.
 
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I'm excited to hear of the usage plans for Scripts.com
1. the networking potential for writers
2. the potential to sell scripts for development
~Patricia Kaehler -- Ohio USA
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permission to quote granted
 
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Just a heads up:
Acronyms.com redirects to abbreviations.com
Lyrics.net redirects to Lyrics.com
Both those websites get at least 3M visitors/month each (his whole network easily generates 10M visitors/month). Definetly motivating, much respect for this guy.
 
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