interviews $40K Annual Profit from Part-time Brandable Domain Name Investing – With Doron Vermaat

[DomainSherpa]

How does @Doron Vermaat earn $40,000 profit per year while only investing 10 to 15 hours per week? Find out in this interview.

Vermaat shares:

• How he learned to value brandable domain names
• What he does as soon as he purchases a new domain name
• How (and how fast) he responds to inquiries from potential buyers
• Why he ends each email with a question
• How he softly pushes just a little further to increase the sales price

http://www.domainsherpa.com/doron-vermaat-namerockstar/

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Thank you everyone for the kind words and thank you Michael for giving me the opportunity to do to the interview and share my experience.

 

[DomainSherpa]

@Buypolar: Are you saying that I'm the blind, or were you just making a joke?

I'm happy to have you on the show so you can share some of your expertise. That's the sign of a true leader -- someone who gives back to the community.

Feel free to PM me if you have something to share with the community. I'd welcome that.

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Buypolar]

 

[Eric Lyon]

Great interview, guys!

The discussion about Estibot has been moved: Read here.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Thank you for sharing your vision and niches you are busy with.
It's interesting the percentage of inquires for your domains you bought recently and one or two years ago.
How many domains do you stil own from your very first year in domaining?
Thank you.

Great question. I decided to look this up and from the 120 domains I bought during my first year I currently still own 49 of them. 35 domains I let drop and I sold 36 of them (10 to end-users and the rest on NameJet or here on NP to other investors).

 

[richface]

Great Interview Just listened to it now. What an honest and very open guy Doron is.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Doron,

You say you net approximately $40,000 per year in sales. Is this something that you’re likely to keep up, or has the partnership between you and Michael Cyger going to keep you even busier to where you will drop your domain name investing activities in the future to earn revenues solely from Efty?

In other words, is it likely that Efty subscriptions will make you two more – or less – money than part time domain investing in the future?

I ask this because I believe it to be a very valid question here. Domain name investing is hard work and there are many activities we face each day as you mention in this interview with Michael Cyger: reading blogs, keeping up with forums, etc.

However, offering a service to domain name investors such as Efty does may be an avenue that some investors with a hidden talent should look into. Don’t you think?

If someone can fill a void in this industry much like you and Michael Cyger have with Efty, @Michael with domain entertainment via the Domain Game and @Eric Lyon through his comics, then isn’t it possible that they can make more money following in your footsteps and thinking outside of the box as well?

Thanks

Great question David. To answer your first question, no I do not think I will ever drop my domain name investing activities (unless domain names will loose their value). First of all, it's a hobby of mine, and one I am very passionate about. I do re-invest the fast majority of my profits into higher quality names which has allowed me to spend less time on domaining but still grow my overall sales. In our industry, it's those that flip or broker domains who always need to work to have cash flow. Once they stop working their income stops as well. I'm not a flipper. So If I want/need to spend more time on family, projects, traveling or my business I can easily do so without seeing my sales decline because I have a portfolio that constantly works for me..

I won't be sharing Efty's financials but what I can share is that Lionel Petitiaux and I (that's the founding team btw- not Michael and me) worked (and continue to work) countless hours on building the early version of Efty and the platform was free of charge for many months in beta until we deemed the service good enough to start charging for it. And even then we decided to charge a very modest fee (some say we're crazy to charge that low of a subscription fee when most other software tools in the industry cost $49/month or more) because our focus now is on growing the user base and the platform.

Running a startup is not easy and many people that try fail. Running a business that serves the domain name investing community is even harder. Efty manages hundred thousands of domains from hundreds of investors and this comes with great responsibility. Users (rightfully) expect 100% uptime and a fast, secure and reliable platform to manage their portfolio. You have to be standby 24/7 for support, client services and to scale the technology when needed. The stress and anxiety this sometimes comes with are a nice bonus but so are the many great emails and messages from users that have been so successful using the platform

Honestly, the idea for a service such as Efty isn't the hard work. It's the execution.

There are many domain name investors in our industry that have also developed services or products. Does Frank Shilling make more from Uniregistry than from his domain investments? Does Aaron Strong makes more from his domain investments than from NameBio.com, Domain Agents or Whoisology? You tell me. All I now is that they are happily and successfully doing both

 

[Addison]

For me its not easy to take serious guys that come together every week, start a skype session and talk about domain prices. Then record it and but it to internet.

That's a baseless generalization. That's like me saying I discredit anyone who speaks on a radio show every day... or, you know, works for a living. Absurd.

You can see that some of them have just got up and they have massive hangover from last nights "domaining".

I can tell you don't actually work hard for a living. If you did, you'd understand that people who put in 18 hours a day, working their tails off, look a lot like hungover people. It's called sleep deprivation and exhaustion. Look them up. It might be the only form of hard work you ever witness.

Once I watched half of this "show" - but its not for me.

You formed an opinion from watching 30 minutes of a show that has published hundreds of hours of content? Is this a joke? This must be a joke.

As someone who has been in this business for a decade and watched most of the videos on DomainSherpa, I can unequivocally say that there are valuable insights and information to be learned from watching them. I may not have learned something from every video, but there is great advice in most of them and hearing the viewpoint of other successful investors is enlightening. There are so many ways to be successful in this business, and it's (at a minimum) enjoyable to learn about those other ways.

I know that I'm a better investor for having a wider range of perspective from watching DS videos. The same applies to reading posts on NamePros and domain blogs.

 

[Bros]

Another really good episode. Also DNGeek is an awesome and very useful site. Thanks.

 

[daica85]

Great Interview Just listened to it now. What an honest and very open guy Doron is.

Me too, nice interview and just watched on it. Thanks.

 

[Candace]

Nice Interview Mike. I really appreciated you doing the interview and @Doron Vermaat for sharing.

 

[DomainSherpa]

Thank you everyone for the kind words and thank you Michael for giving me the opportunity to do to the interview and share my experience.

Thank you, Doron. I've already used your negotiation tactics with a buyer who made an inquiry on one of my domains. He went from a $100 offer to $3,000 (and "looking at some other options") after I asked him if he wanted to make an offer for my consideration. Fingers crossed it works out for both sides.

Best,
Michael

 

[Kate]

@Buypolar: Are you saying that I'm the blind, or were you just making a joke?

I think it's humor, so I will give him a like just for that.

I am not here to defend member @Buypolar, nor am I authorized to speak for him but I think he has had a reaction of healthy skepticism. As domainers we always focus on the good news, the sales and the achievements. Losses and bad investments are conveniently forgotten or swept under the rug.

Domaining is a funny industry with lots of posers, and we have seen our share of emperors with no clothes come and go. It's easy to pretend success and build a legend online. After the AD fiasco I guess domainers are less inclined to take everything at face value.
And the blind leading the blind is something that we see frequently along domain fads, new extensions in particular. I can certainly relate to his cartoon

Please don't be offended, I enjoy your shows. They are pleasant to watch and inspirational.
Again, forgive me for playing the devil's advocate, I just can't help it

 

[Kate]

I think you most take those shows as entertaiment. Like some comedy series. Then yes its good to watch. Sad is that newbies may take this as real life. Thats a litte sad

It's not real life. You have to be extremely dedicated and work hard. The easy and lazy lifestyle is not representative at all, unfortunately newbies are almost always lured in by the prospects of easy money. On the other hand it's important to show that it's never too late, even latecomers can do well.

For someone starting 3 years ago Doron has clearly done well - he's built a solid reputation, a probably decent portfolio and taken away $40K in cash (minus taxes) in 3.5 years. Efty as a platform shows potential and a good resume padder but I don't see a profitable model in it, personally. Domainers are cheap and the market is small.

My thoughts as well. I think Efty can only be a side business and he is looking to scale up operations and attain critical mass. When the product is mature enough and you have enough users on board it can run on auto-pilot - more or less - and you start making revenue passively. That's the thing we all dream about.

On the other hand the naysayers and the critics would say this is more proof that domainers have found there is more money to be made by selling services to other domainers: the equivalent of selling picks and shovels to the gold diggers. But Doron has other activities and invests in domain names too.
At least he is charging very reasonable prices, while others are charging hundreds of dollars a month for poor domain advice and guidance.

Personally I think a solution like Efty has a clear niche but the concept is not new at all (plenty of similar experiences in the past) and easily replicated. In my view it is hard to sustain a project like this very long without permanent innovation. The business model is fragile. As long as it remains a domainer solution it will never become big. The domainer niche is too small imo.

Good luck Doron and the team.

Disclosure: I am presently not an Efty user.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

@Doron Vermaat - Thanks for sharing the email correspondence behind your recent sale at minute mark 62. Really helped gain visibility into the effectiveness of your sales and success play books

Quote from their why us page:

 

[Branded Domains]

Great Interview guys....Brandable part was best..I have learned something about brandables..

 

[Doron Vermaat]

It sounds like you two, the interviewer and the interviewee, have more in common than is being put across.

Michael clearly states in the beginning of the interview that he is an investor in Efty and part of our leadership team so I do not see how he could have been more transparent about that.

But, let's not get into that. My question that was beat around the bush was: Is it possible for others in the domain name industry to think outside of the box, much like yourself, and be able to profit by introducing a new product or service to domain name investors?

I encourage everyone to do so. The more innovation in our industry the better. Even if you fail it's a great learning experience to try and do a startup. But as I wrote in my earlier response it usually seems a lot easier from the outside than it is.

 

[Michael]

Does Aaron Strong makes more from his domain investments than from NameBio.com, Domain Agents or Whoisology? You tell me. All I now is that they are happily and successfully doing both

It's Adam Strong. Aaron is a guy who comments on blog posts and frequently gets confused with Adam, much to Adam's delight

Nice interview, love what you guys are doing.

 

[DU]

I think it's humor, so I will give him a like just for that.

I am not here to defend member @Buypolar, nor am I authorized to speak for him but I think he has had a reaction of healthy skepticism. As domainers we always focus on the good news, the sales and the achievements. Losses and bad investments are conveniently forgotten or swept under the rug.

The numbers game is always interesting. The net income numbers quoted as profit of $40K a year is based, from what I can tell, solely on domains that actually sold. This is the Mike Mann approach to advertising revenue streams.

The 40 K year seems to be actual a net profit plus portfolio cost. It's hard to know what the unrealized gain/loss in that portfolio is as there's no domain exchange but Doron has admitted to a number of LLNN.net that will come off that number (not a huge impact) and when trying to go from 900 to 500 names its safe to assume that the attrition won't all be due to portfolio sales turnover.

There is always the fluke factor. In that list is a $200 -> $25,000 sale. That's not a repeatable pattern and while it nets bottom line you can't treat it as .. that's like $8K a year in revenue. That's why small time domainers can come up and disappear overnight while the big guys stick around - big profits on luck can be sucked up with bad acquisitions very easily.

For someone starting 3 years ago Doron has clearly done well - he's built a solid reputation, a probably decent portfolio and taken away $40K in cash (minus taxes) in 3.5 years. Efty as a platform shows potential and a good resume padder but I don't see a profitable model in it, personally. Domainers are cheap and the market is small.

I would be surprised if domaining and efty would sustain a living in Hong Kong and he says as much. He seems happy with his lot and that's what matters - but people shouldn't be taken in by the idea that all this is easy. Doron came to the table with skills that not everyone has - it takes time and effort and not part-time flipping.

I think there's something to learn from everyone and especially from someone who's started recently to do well but at the same time domainers tend to deify and raise people to superstar status well before their time and it's encouraged with loose numbers $40K a year on 10-15 hrs*.

*That's now - the first 3 years were much more than 10-15 hrs.

Continued luck to Doron - best wishes for continued success.

 

[bazabizo]

I liked the interview. I also like the domainsherpa show in general. I don't agree with some of the sarcasm made here about the show. I still give a lot of credit to DS that it made me know a lot of things including estibot, which maybe as a tool I don't use anymore, but it lead to use dropping.com which helps filtering out a lot of crap daily and shortens my search time.
On the negative side, maybe the show was hosting an elite domaines at some point that had me fall for a big cash loss working with. However Michael stopped sponsoring that person and removed his sponsorship and a lot of his videos from the site. A brave act that basically means Michael sacrificed a lot of hours of his own work to support the community by cutting off support for that misleading person.

As for the 230K sale done by cygar, as we move on in this business you will find that at larger scales, you will always need that big sale every year to boost your entire year. If you removed the top 10 YTD sales from dnjournal, maybe the size of the total sales won't be appealing for new domaines? Maybe. But that doesn't mean we must remove them, we just over rely on big sales as move on and get bigger. It's hard to make 230K selling 230 domains at 1K each.

Keep it DV and MC great interview. I will still watch the show whenever I could

 

[GoKaizen]

http://www.domainsherpa.com/why-we-selected-domainsherpa-as-our-site-name/

@Michael Cyger

@DomainSherpa Hello Michael Cyger, I am talking a bit off topic. Can you please tell me the reason for choosing "Sherpa" after "domain" on your domain name. I was checking over Doron Vermaat website and found a name coffeesherpa dot com. And some unusual question popped up in my mind.

 

[DomainSherpa]

What @Adam27 said. Thanks, Adam.

Doron Vermaat website and found a name coffeesherpa dot com

Sherpa related domains are great brands. MarketingSherpa had a really big following, and it influenced my decision to go with DomainSherpa.

Doron also likes Ninja domains and many others. We can learn a great deal from what @Doron Vermaat is buying.

 

[GoKaizen]

Kaizen!

One of my favorite quotes of all time is by W. Edwards Deming: “In God we trust; all others bring data.”

 

[N-A]

@Doron Vermaat thanks for your detailed reply.

I singled out your activity with Michael Cyger and didn't bring anyone else in, because well, this was your interview and it was focused on Efty and your domain investing activites, not Frank Shilling.

In the beginning of the interview, you state that it's your anniversary with Michael Cyger becoming a business partner. After viewing Efty.com's about section, I read more detail about this:

In 2015, Michael Cyger, publisher of the award-winning educational website DomainSherpa.com, invested in Efty and joined the leadership team.

Together, they're building Efty into the one tool that every domainer loves to use and can't live without.

It sounds like you two, the interviewer and the interviewee, have more in common than is being put across. Almost as if this were conveniently set up to be an advertisement; at any rate, there's definitely bias involved as so put by @Buypolar.

But, let's not get into that. My question that was beat around the bush was: Is it possible for others in the domain name industry to think outside of the box, much like yourself, and be able to profit by introducing a new product or service to domain name investors?