Adam Dicker: Stop Parking Domains and Build a Real Business

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Interview with Adam Dicker, DNForum.com and DCG.com

Watch the full video at:
http://www.domainsherpa.com/adam-dicker

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Here's your program.

Michael Cyger: Hey everyone, my name is Michael Cyger. I'm the publisher
of DomainSherpa.com, the Domain Name Authority, and the place where
you can learn how to become a successful domain name entrepreneur directly
from the expert themselves.

You know what we do here. We bring on a successful domain name investor.
We ask them to share how they became successful and then we motivate you
to do the same in your own area of expertise. And then you can come on the
show, give back to others about what you learned and how you became
successful.

The big question for this show is with Pay Per Click advertising revenue,
dying or dead? How can a domain name investor take their best asset and
turn it into a lead generation business? Joining me to answer this question is
Adam Dicker. Adam is the CEO of DNForum.com - The largest online
domain name discussion forum. He is also the founder and CEO of Domain
Consulting Group where he manages his portfolio of domain names and
develops businesses. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam: Thank you very much for having me.

Michael: Adam first of all congratulations on being inducted into the
Domain Hall of Fame by the Domain Name Industry Traffic Show last month
in Florida.

Adam: Thank you. It was quite an honor to be inducted into the Hall of Fame
by my peers and in front of my peers.

Michael: It was great to meet you there in person by the way. Before I bring
anybody on the show I usually go to Ron Jackson’s DN Journal cite and I
look for their cover story, I look for news than Ron has covered on them in
the past and of course you have a cover story from 2003. So I read that cover


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story and I found one of your quotes very interesting. I’m going to read the
quote to you and then ask you a question. You were quoted as saying on my
ppc landing pages I only use Google for domains. I have been with Google
for years and have been offered double the revenue if I switched to other
companies but I have no plans on leaving the company, the company that has
been great to me. Do you still feel that way Adam?

Adam: Yes I do. Time is the most proven test and Google has outlasted
everybody else that has tried to come on with the ad feed and tried to
compete with Google and nobody has been able to compare in revenue at
least now to Google. And I am currently still using Google today to park my
domains and I am using Frank Shilling’s internet traffic to park them. And I
am quite happy with the results.

Michael: Great, so in the show we are going to talk about how to turn a
domain name into a lead generation business. What lead generation website
of yours do you want to use as the primary example throughout this show?

Adam: I think for today’s purposes we can use USAcordbank.com

Michael: And for those in the audience who have never heard of the phrase
cord bank. What is a cord bank and why would somebody want to use it?

Adam: Basically it’s when a woman has a baby there is obviously an
umbilical cord and there are benefits to storing that cord blood from the
umbilical cord for future use. I believe there are about 50 to 100 different
diseases that it can help cure, or play a part in curing if it is ever needed or
called upon.

Michael: And so somebody will take that umbilical cord blood and they
will put it in a bank and I guess they preserve it somehow in case you need it
sometime in the future.

Adam: Yes.

Michael: So with it being a medical procedure I would assume that it has a
little bit higher Cost Per Click if one of those cord banks was trying to do


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advertising on Google. What is a typical Cost Per Click cost on Google for a
cord bank that may want to advertise their services?

Adam: From what I’ve seen it starts at about $16 per click. And cord
banking itself requires a doctor to oversee the whole process. So it is a costly
procedure but it is definitely worthwhile if you ever need that cord blood.

Michael: I ran a query yesterday I think on Google and I think I saw an
average Cost Per Click in the US where I am primarily searching of $25. So
it is definitely something that has a high Cost Per Click on Google and the
Cost Per Leads is probably higher. How did you discover this area of cord
blood and decide that you wanted to build a lead generation business in it?

Adam: Just from research. Typically I research a lot of niches and I tend to
look for where since parking has gone taint a little bit, quite a bit over the last
five years. I think my revenue is about a fifth about three to four years ago.
I’ve been looking at different avenues for exploring lead generation and
realizing that there are different ways to monetize domains and hooking up
with a good partner is probably the best way to do it because you actually
remove Google or any third party out of the equation.

Michael: And I can attest to that as well. When I had my previous
publishing company I would maybe make $500 off of Google if I put Ad
Sense across the site per month which seems like a decent amount but I could
receive multiples of that by selling advertising directly to the companies that
were buying advertising on Google. So I completely agree with you. What
was the actual business that you launched, what was the main domain name
that you launched to try and get into the cord blood bank space?

Adam: It was usacordbank.com and then I also decided that there was a
profit to be made in Canada so I grabbed canadacordbank.com. And when
you want to own a vertical and this was a vertical that luckily for me was not
at all dominated or invested in by the domainers or by the domain market. So
what I did was I went and also checked out all the fifty states in the US and I
was able to register 42 of the 50 cord bank names. So I registered
Alabamacordbank.com and Alaskacordbank.com and so on. I don’t know if
those were the ones I got but basically you get the idea. I registered the 50


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states but then I also registered variations of it. I registered
Alabamacordbanks.com, I registered Alabamacordbloodbank.com,
Alabamacordbloodstorage.com. So basically I registered about 600 domains
and cornered the market on cord blood and cord bank domains and that even
includes stem cell and stem cell storage.

Michael: And this is why I love this story so much. You mentioned it to me
briefly when we were at Traffic a few weeks ago Adam. And I loved this
story because domain investors, a lot of domain investors, a lot of newbie’s
like myself think it’s too late to get into the domain game. I might be able to
grab a couple of drops here and there but the early visionaries like yourself
and Frank Shilling and other people that were just grabbing the pennies from
heaven and registering as many domain names as they could between 1995
and 2000. I can’t get into that so I can’t get the good domain names. The
reason why I love this story is because here is a great industry that has really
high cost per click, cost per lead that was almost wide open in your own
words. And we are going to go into specifically how you registered the
domain names, how you thought about them, how you thought about the
business model and all the details. But let me ask you this: You have been
live for just a few weeks now with usacordbank.com and the other websites
that you have developed (and I am going to ask you how many you have
actually developed of the 600 domain names) how many leads have you been
able to produce in the past few weeks?

Adam: Based on being fairly good and somewhat of an expert on SEO I’ve
been able to generate about seven to ten per day.

Michael: Seven to ten per day. That is fantastic. So those are people
actually going to one of your websites, seeing information on cord blood
banks and seeing a contact us form on the right hand side for people looking
for more information and filling out that form.

Adam: Correct.

Michael: That is fantastic. And what about the sales to date? Clearly you
are generating these leads and you are selling these leads to somebody else.


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Are you selling them on a per lead basis or are you selling them when that
lead actually converts into a customer?

Adam: I have the option to go either way. For me it was far more beneficial
to go with it when the customer actually converts into a customer. The
revenue that it generates for me is quite high because the cost to store cord
blood storage to be honest with you is less than $300. And companies are
charging between $1,000 to $3,000 to do it plus they charge an annual fee of
$100 to $200 a year to maintain that storage. And the cost to maintain the
storage is zero.

Michael: So may I ask you how much you make when a lead converts into
a customer?

Adam: Usually about $700.

Michael: So this is just amazing because now people can get an idea if they
put a Google Ad Sense on their cord bank site and Google is charging that
end customer, the cord bank, $16 to $25 per click through, or $25 per click
through you are going to make some portion of that. You are not sure how
much. Let’s call it $15. That is the Cost Per Click. Then if you take the leads
you can actually sell those to one or more companies that you are partnering
with and make some amount of money but then if you partner with a single
company you can actually make hundreds of dollars when that lead turns into
a customer.

Adam: That is correct.

Michael: That is phenomenal.

Adam: Just for the record Ad Sense only pays you 32% of the Cost Per Click
for that keyword.

Michael: 32% that is a great number to know. And how do you know that
number off hand?


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Adam: I’ve done multiple contracts with Google in the past so I know that is
what the number is. If you do a specific contract for Ad Sense for content you
can actually get a higher rate but without a contract it is 32% just if you sign
up as a regular publisher.

Michael: So out of a $25 Cost Per Click for a core bank that is advertising
on Google let’s say, if you have a website and you are putting that Ad Sense
ad up there you might make $7.50 of that.

Adam: Which is still good money.

Michael: Which is still good money, right but going up the pipeline and
selling the leads or actually partnering with something that we are going to
talk about today will produce the most amount of money. It requires more
work but you can generate more revenue. And so we are going to dig into
how you built that lead generation business but before we do that I want to
ask you a few more questions – go into a little bit of background because it is
the first time I’ve had you on the DomainSherpa show Adam. How many
domains in total do you own and generally how do they shake out by TLD?

Adam: The number fluctuates like with anybody. Week to week I end up
buying 600 domains. Like with cord (Inaudible 0:12:42.0) some weeks I buy
5,000 or 2,000 and some weeks I just buy 5 or 10 or nothing. So generally I
tend to, as far as owning names, and a lot of them are .coms. The only things
that I really invest in are .coms or .cas. And I recommend that people do
invest in their own country - the ccTLDs except in the United States where
unfortunately the .us was never really backed by the United States.

Michael: Adam we are having a little bit of an audio/visual issue - are you
actually plugged into your network on your side?

Adam: Yes I am.

Michael: It could be on my side I apologize. We are just going to move
through it and if there is anything that I can’t hear I’ll just ask you to repeat
it. I’m sorry. How many domains do you think you own right now?


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Adam: About 40,000.

Michael: And you own a great list of premium domain name properties like
planets.com, download.net, acronyms.com as well as what I read 20,000
generic .ca domains including limo.ca, md.ca, and girls.ca. What are your
favorite domain names right now from your portfolio?

Adam: It is a question that I am asked a lot. And to be quite honest with you
I posted a thread recently on DN Forum about what domain you are most
proud of. And most for me most people would think it would be DN Forum
because it generates the most income but the one that I am the most proud of
is downsyndrome.com and it is because I bought it for the right reasons. A
buddy of mine that works at Go Daddy his son has down syndrome. I bought
the domain, he didn’t put any money into it and I said to him you and I are
partners on this domain, build it out in your son’s honor and we are partners
from here on in. And since then we have had health magazines want to do
articles on it and we have had thousands of parents with kids with down
syndrome come to the site and share their experiences and help each other.
And I don’t make one cent from advertising on it. I don’t make one cent on
the site. We don’t monetize the traffic but I am proud of the fact that it is a
way that we can make a difference in somebody else’s life and help them
cope with an awkward or a horrible situation that they have been forced to
deal with.

Michael: That is a fantastic philanthropic endeavor of yours and I hope
other domainers who have the expertise to acquire these fantastic domain
names and have some sort of connection to something will also reach out and
do that as well. That is a great thing that you are doing there.

Adam: One more little bit to add to this story. The gentleman who I
partnered with this site sent me an email last week and he said you know this
site is worth a lot more than you paid for it four or five years ago. Are we still
partners? And my email back to him was one line and it said ‘My word is my
word. We are partners. If this thing sells for $1,000,000 you get half’. And
his response to me I think was something like you are a really good friend.
And that is all it was. I’ve said it many times I’m not measured in life for
what I do or how much money I make or how well I take care of my family


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but we are measured by how we can make a difference in other people’s lives
and that is part of the reason why I did down syndrome and it has turned out
better than I expected because we are making a difference in thousands of
people’s lives. And it is also why I started DNF College because if we can
help people learn more and buy the right domains and sell at a better price it
makes our own domains worth more and it helps the industry as a whole. It is
just another way to give back.

Michael: Definitely. So prior to your current businesses of DN Forum and
Domain Consulting Group you joined iReit (Real Estate Investment Trust I
believe is what the acronym stands for) as an executive vice-president. What
was your role back in iReit?

Adam: I was responsible for quite a few different things. Monetization,
content development… that’s going back about six years. I’d almost have to
look it up on LinkedIn myself to see what some of the other responsibilities
were but there was quite a bit and I was lucky to work with a good group of
people. I eventually left and then I ran into some problems after I left with the
Verizon lawsuits and things like that. It was a good group of people and I
can’t really remember all the other responsibilities that I had.

Michael: I read at the time that Marc Ostrofsky and a gentleman named
Martin, they actually sold their domains to iReit but when you actually joined
the company I read at the time you had reported 200,000 domain names and
you kept all of your domain names.

Adam: I actually sold a few of them. I think I sold maybe a handful or two -
A handful to iReit. They wanted them and I was at a point where the cash
flow was very helpful so I did sell some to them. But the biggest mistake
iReit had made probably with me was they had an option to buy DN Forum at
a very reduced rate. And they didn’t exercise that option and I have been
offered ten times that since then for it.

Michael: Yes that is fantastic. I like to do research on everybody that comes
on the show and I found DN Forum to be very interesting. And it was started
by a gentleman who grew it and then it was sold for a few thousand dollars to
another gentleman who you bought it from who actually added the


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memberships to the site and was generating more revenue. And I believe he
bought it for somewhere around $3,000 or $3,500. And then I believe in the
domain game (which I haven’t verified the data by another source) you paid
$75,000 for it at the time and re-jiggered the membership system where
people only pay once. They don’t have to pay a recurring fee every single
year. So once you buy into the community you are in for life at whatever
level that you buy in for. And can upgrade of course. How are those
numbers? Are they accurate Adam?

Adam: I think that they are fairly accurate. I mean I don’t remember exactly
how much I paid Greg because now we are going back nine years but it was
probably around $75,000 mark.

Michael: And since then you have been offered over $1,000,000 for the
website. Is that correct?

Adam: Well over. Closer to $3,000,000.

Michael: Fantastic. So I think that every experience in an entrepreneur’s life
leads them along their path. What was it that you took away from iReit that it
may not have been the job that you felt the most fulfillment or that you
walked away with a ton of lessons learned but what is it that you took away
from that experience knowing that has made you the entrepreneur that you
are today?

Adam: To be quite honest I’m not sure I learned a whole lot from my
experience with iReit. I mean I learned a lot about what not to do. And I got
to work with a lot of really good people. But as far as a learning experience I
think it was more of the networking and peer integration and becoming
friends with some of the people at the company that I still cherish those
friendships today. I don’t believe I learned anything about domaining at iReit.

Michael: After iReit you spent a few years as the vice president of Domain
Name Aftermarket at Go Daddy. This was when Go Daddy was really setting
up their aftermarket to become the powerhouse that we know of today. Was
your main responsibility in charge of growing that domain name aftermarket


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or defining it? How would you characterize what you worked on at Go
Daddy?

Adam: That is a little fresher in my mind so it is a little easier to remember. I
was in charge of about seven or eight different departments one of which was
the auction site, another was the cash parking. I was also responsible for the
executive account customers, for the resellers that we have for the domain
buy service which is their brokerage host. I was responsible for all of the
developers on all of my products and there were a couple others…Domain
discount club was another thing that I was involved in. I helped reduce click
fraud on our cash parking system. I redid all the templates for all our parking
system and I worked with a really good group of people. I mean I have to say
that the executive team at Go Daddy is probably the best executive team that
I have had the good fortune to work with. They are all good people. I am still
in contact with most of them and it was a very good experience for me.

Michael: Do you feel like you had a courtside seat to the inner workings of
how the domain name works since you ran and were responsible for so many
of those different areas at Go Daddy?

Adam: I think that I should probably write a book called Behind the Green
Wall and it would get quite a bit of attention because there are quite a lot of
things that go on behind the scenes that people really cannot appreciate and
can’t understand. And I know domainers a lot of times complain about some
of the Go Daddy policies and procedures but they are there to protect their
customers and protect them and to really protect the customers.

Michael: Maybe we will have you on another show. I’ve got four shows
planned for you. Maybe that can be another show. We can go behind the
green wall. So let’s get back to lead generation. You and I chatted. You have
done multiple lead generation businesses, usacordbank.com which we are
going to discuss today is your most recent one but you also have limos.ca,
you have others. How do you decide which of your domain names you are
going to develop into lead generation business and which ones you are going
to leave parked with ppc income?


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Adam: To be honest with you parking is just a platform that you leave
domains at until you decide to develop them out. Most domainers, we buy
thousands of domain names with all good intentions that we are going to
build them out. But for a business to be successful it has to be developed with
a business plan, with a budget, with a marketing plan and with everything
else. And to do that it can’t be done with 800 domains to do it.

Michael: I’m sorry you broke up there for a moment. You were saying you
need a business plan, you need a budget and you need a marketing plan. So
while you have the best intentions for every domain that you buy you are not
developing them all, you are actually parking them until you decide what you
are going to develop.

Adam: Exactly.

Michael: And how do you make that decision: I’m going to develop
limos.ca now.

Adam: First of all as a developer you make nine mistakes for every one site
that actually turns out and turns out to be a profitable site. There are many
sites that I have tried to develop up over the years that I have not been able to
be successful with and they end up back as a parking page because I get
frustrated with them. But then you get lucky and you get that tenth site and it
turns out to be a highly profitable business and it just keeps driving it. You
have to have a passion for the industry. You have to love what you do. I’ve
said this before you have to get up every morning and know that you are
doing something that you love and when you do something that you love you
never actually really work a day in your life. So how to pick out sites: you
target industries that there are potentials to earn between $1,000 and $3,000
per referral. I don’t like the flower industry because even if you sell a
bouquet of flowers for $50 you may make $5 or $10 and that takes a lot of
work for $5 or $10.

I recently had a piece of land that I bought and I had a pool on it. We sold the
lot and I had to fill in the pool. And it cost me $8,000 to fill in the pool. So I
talked to the pool guy, the guy who filled it in, and he had no internet
knowledge and I said what would you give me if I started sending you leads


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of customers where you do pool fill ins and pool removals? And he said he
would give me 20% to 30%. Well 20% to 30% on $8,000 or $4,000 even at
30% at $4,000 you are looking at $1,200. So right away I thought that that
would be a good industry to get into and I started to build a lead generating
revenue sites for that as well and I have been forwarding him some leads. But
there are other good industries like event planners where they get paid $2,000
a pop. There are orthodontists which get paid good money. I mean my son’s
teeth cost me about $6,000 for each of them. I am half way done. I have done
two out of four. Real Estate is always good for lead generation. You go after
a name like Seattlerealestate.com if you can get it or anything close. You
hook up with a good real estate agent you trust and you forward him the leads
and then if you are getting a percentage of his commission you are getting
quite a few thousand dollars. Lawyers is another good one. There are real
estate lawyers, intellectual property lawyers, family lawyers, criminal
lawyers, they all make good money and they are always looking for new
clients. Time shares. People that want to buy and sell time shares there is
good money in that. There is good money in private investigators. There are
so many industries where if you sit down, some of them you will find by
accident others you will find if you just flip through the yellow pages and
look at what cost a lot of money as opposed to what cost a little bit of money
you can always find a good industry to set up lead generation in.

Michael: So flip through the yellow pages and look for the biggest ads.
Those are costing the most. Those probably have the biggest payback.

Adam: Well a lot of times you can also look through the internet and you can
type in orthodontists Toronto, because that is where I am based, and you can
see if somebody is buying Ad Words they believe in advertising and they
believe in paying for leads because that is what they are doing by buying Ad
Words. So they are a good person or a good company to approach in such a
situation. And it works for any industry but obviously you want to stick to
industries that have a higher price tag because like even plastic surgeons are
good because they charge quite a bit.

Michael: So we are going to look at the example usacordbank.com. You
bought just recently, a month or two ago?


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Adam: I don’t even know if it has been a month. Maybe five to six weeks.
But it is fairly new.

Michael: And the business model is pretty simple. You saw that cord bank
had gained in popularity, that the Cost Per Click was high - $25. That the cost
per lead or a lead turning into a customer if you are getting a commission was
thousands of dollars (a couple thousand dollars I think you said). And so you
thought this could be a good business and then you went to start to look for
domain names. What was your strategy when you went to go look for your
first domain name related to cord banks?

Adam: Well the first thing was to get a domain name that sounded
professional, sounded legitimate and people would readily trust it and would
want to store their cord blood with us and trust us with it. And I thought using
USA cord blood signified people could take it to mean the American standard
for cord blood storage. Or they could not. It is people’s perception. I have a
quick story for you that is a funny one. Once I had a receptionist who I was
sending a basket of goodies to Google in appreciation for how well they have
treated me and I asked her to go look and find me a company in Santa Clara
to send the basket. She found a company, she came to me, she put the order
through and she had me sign the check. And I asked how you found out that
these guys were the best company in Santa Clara and were the most
trustworthy. And she said because it said so on their website. So based on
that if you build a good professional looking website customers will come to
you especially if it is optimized with SEO and it is properly done. And that is
what we have tried to do with usacordblood.com.

So I registered usecordblood.com and then I went to look at the 50 states of
the United States and I went to register Alabamacordbank.com,
Alaskacordbank.com and I found about 42 of them were available. So I
registered all of those and snapped them up. And then built that with
keywords and then if you click on Alabamacordbank.com or any one of those
cord banks you will see that they are the top ten most populous cities in
Alabama are also listed there with the term cord bank beside it and they have
their own pages and they have their own shots of the cityscapes for each one.
I just flipped to it now and I am looking at Birmingham cord bank,
Montgomery cord bank and each one of these have their own pages. So the


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domains get indexed for many terms that they need to be indexed for. I know
we have a couple examples in Bing where they are on the front page of
Google and they were on the front page of Google in a week and a half.

Michael: So the main domain that you are using is usacordbank.com but
then actually you just said usacordblood.com. Do you own both of them and
how do you decide whether the phrase is going to be cord bank, cord blood?

Adam: Basically what I did was I took a look at the search term and which
was the most popular search term based on searches and I decided to go with
usacordbank.com. But I did register all the variations that were available of
cord bank, cord blood, cord blood storage and all the other ones that we
talked about.

Michael: And when you were looking in the Google Ad Words Keyword
Tool do you use the global or do you use USA or do you use Canada? What
is your thought process around which search phrase volume to use?

Adam: For me I use the exact search and I use the USA one because I am
launching a USA cord bank site. If I was using the Canadian one (which we
did do a Canadian site as well) I would use the Canadian search tool.

Michael: Do you use any other search tools when you are looking at sites
for volume to determine how the phrases are going to be?

Adam: Yes to be honest with you I use a $29 program called Traffic Travis.
And it allows you to pull the most related searches and it gives you a lot of
information on those keywords including the Cost Per Click and the exact
search and the broad search of those keywords. So yes I do use other tools as
well.

Michael: Great tool. I haven’t heard of that. I’ll have to go look at it. So you
bought 600 domain names just a month or two ago, something like that, the
business has been up for a few weeks. What was your strategy behind
usacordbank.com and then having these hundreds of other websites? Are they
going to be separate websites unto themselves? Will they redirect to a page of


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the main website? How are you going to work the main site versus all these
other domain names?

Adam: They will actually redirect to a page within the website. So if I do
own Alabamacordbank.com it will redirect to the Alabama page and so on.
And I also registered the major cities across the US like New York cord bank,
Boston cord bank, Chicago cord bank and Seattle cord bank and things like
that. I was surprised that there were so many available. And it is not often
that you find an industry that hasn’t already been dominated by domainers.
But there still are quite a few out there and going back to one of your original
points anybody that says it is too late to get into this game, there are no good
.coms available hasn’t done enough research.

Michael: That’s right. So you are just going to do a 301 redirect from
Alabama cord bank to usacordbank.com/Alabama-cord-bank.

Adam: Yes.

Michael: Even though the power of the domain name
Alabamacordbank.com might get that website higher in Google or Bing for
that phrase than a web page on usacordbank.com?

Adam: Yes because I’m happy with the number of leads that have started to
flow in. I haven’t redirected any of those pages yet so any leads that we are
getting right now are all off usacordbank.com and canadacordbank.com.
Once I start to redirect those pages I think you are going to see those leads go
from seven to ten a day to much higher.

Michael: Just from the type in traffic.

Adam: Well from search traffic and type in traffic. There is some type in
traffic because some of those are parked pages and I am noticing that there is
some type in traffic. And you get people from all over the states. I mean the
last lead we had came in from Michigan. All over the states people are
getting more educated. But the other part of this is to partner up and educate
ob/gyns and hospitals and get them to pass out pamphlets and things for you
to get the miracle of cord blood storage. It is actually a viable service. It is


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something that is good for the parent - it’s good for the baby. If they have the
money to do it and it is something that I know is a service. It’s not like I am
selling them something that they won’t be able to use or will never use and it
is just useless and I am just trying to sell something. I feel good about it.

Michael: It is not like you are trying to pull one over on a customer. You are
marketing exactly what these doctors are selling and it is a viable medical
procedure.

Adam: And there are people who need that cord blood and it saves lives. So I
feel good about being in this industry.

Michael: So one more question regarding the domain names. If you put
Alabamacordbank.com and you 301redirect that to the web page at
usacordbank.com will Google list that website higher in the index or because
it is a redirect they will just not list it in their organic search results?

Adam: To be honest with you I’m not sure whether they will or they won’t. I
do know they are indexing all of the pages that we currently have now and
we have got over 500 pages so far just for the states. I’m banking on type in
traffic as well, not so much the searches for Alabama cord bank and
Louisiana cord bank because they are going there now. So that is not going to
change.

Michael: So right from the beginning you decided the business model was
going to be that you were going to take Google out of the equation. You were
not going to build up a website for Ad Sense. That you were actually going to
collect the lead, partner with another company and distribute those leads to
them for a price.

Adam: Yes.

Michael: Now if I go to the sites I actually do see some Google Ad Sense
listed there so you are actually getting benefit from two different perspectives
there. You are putting up the website, you are putting some Google Ad Sense
there so you are getting some 32% of the Cost Per Clicks form those Google
ads like you had mentioned. But the main emphasis of the business is you


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want to drive people to the contact form so they fill it out so you can give that
to your partner.

Adam: Yes because $750 is far better than $15. So ideally I’d rather have a
customer come and fill out my contact form than I would just have them click
on another company’s Ad Sense ads.

Michael: So you had this ideal cord blood, you’ve got your spreadsheet of
all the states, you have got your spreadsheet of all the major cities and you
tacked on cord bank to all of those so you have Seattlecordbank.com or
Alabamacordbank.com. You registered 600 domain names let’s say, how did
you find a partner that would pay you the money? How did you connect the
rest of this business plan? How did you go about finding a partner? How did
you go about making sure that partner was a viable partner and that you could
trust them?

Adam: You do a lot of due diligence when you find a legend partner in a
business that you are in and invest $5,000 up front on domain names. And I
had many different choices. There are certainly leaders in this field that I
could have used that would have paid me $200 referral fee which seems to be
a standard for customers like this or I could go direct and find one of the
smaller banks and turn them into a large bank. And it is very easy to find
somebody who is small who wants to be big and wants to be the king of the
industry and become the kingfish and with the promise of leads and the actual
leads. What I tend to do is, and I did this similarly with cord blood, is I send
them a lead first and I don’t ask for anything in return. So that they know that
I am legitimate and I am not a chain puller and I am not there to waste their
time and I am there to give them qualified leads. And I find when you give
people business it gets them more interested and you have their attention and
they realize that they will get more leads from you. I am asking for nothing
up front for the first three to five leads that I send them. And they make
money. And if they make money then they are going to want to continue to
make money and they are going to continue to want to work with me.

Michael: Definitely. So you bought 600 domain names, you build out the
main site, you put up the contact form, no partners in the equation at all. You
put it up, it’s getting indexed by Google, you are starting to see some traffic


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by Google and Bing, you are starting to get some traffic and then bam you
get your first lead, you get your second lead, you get your third lead. Then
you go to a potential partner and you say here is what I can do for you. If you
want to be a larger company I can deliver you leads if you pay me for the
leads. Is that what you did?

Adam: Yes that is basically what I said. I created the relationship. I told them
what I wanted for these leads. But you have much more bargaining power
once you have given them five leads and it made three or four sales. I don’t
have to call them back. They call you ringing your phones. And then I let
them stew a little bit and I say I’ll think about it and we will see. And I will
talk to other companies. But at the end of the day you want to hook up with
somebody who is small who has dreams of being big and you feel you can
trust. I mean in any new relationship like marriage or anything else it takes
time to build up trust. And you have to build up a trust relationship with the
cord bank that you select or with whatever other company and any other lead
in business that you do. Bu the minute they screw you, you have full control.
I have full control and I just cut off the pipe and I send the lead somewhere
else. So there is no benefit to them to screw around. All the books are public.
We formed a company together. We are both on the books for it and it is
good.

Michael: How did you first figure out a company that was small enough to
listen to you but big enough to be able to handle the leads that you were
taking?

Adam: You find one of the big companies. And then you find out who their
little distributors are and then you take one or all of those little distributors
and you offer them the option to become big. And that is really what it is. If
you have got companies who have, maybe they have six different cord banks
or eight different cord banks, you just need one to grab on and say yes I’m
interested in not being a small fish anymore. And I am interested in not being
given $200 per lead I am interested in getting the $750 like you are.

Michael: But each of these businesses is actually a geographic business
right? So a cord bank in Seattle may not be affiliated with a cord bank in
Palm Beach, Florida. Do you need to find somebody that has a network?


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Adam: No ideally you need to find generally people, because it is in the
United States, it doesn’t matter where the cord bank is. People prefer it not to
be in California because of earthquakes. They prefer it not to be on fault
lines. They prefer it not to be in areas of risk. So northern states tend to be
very good. It is already cold up there anyway so it is good for storage. But in
general you want to find – people in Michigan have no problem sending their
cord blood across the country because they know if they need it, it is just one
Fed Ex away and if they are next day delivery anyway no matter where it is.

Michael: So a doctor does the procedure, they pack it up in a cold pack and
they Fed Ex it over to this cord bank which is in a specific location.

Adam: Correct.

Michael: Okay I understand. So I understand the business model. You found
a smaller player in the market by maybe looking at one of the larger players
and seeing who they are affiliated with and contacting them. Did you reach
out to them by telephone, by email? How did you originally reach out to them
to make that contact?

Adam: I tend to do everything by telephone. I think that email is too
impersonal. I think the first inclination by them is to say who the hell are
you? And so I have to provide some background on me. They spend probably
a day or two Googling me. They find a lot of decent articles on me. And
based on that they are interested. They know I’m not blowing smoke. The
fact that I have given them four or five leads that turned into sales usually it
takes away a lot of their possible concerns. I mean if anybody gave me four
or five leads on a business that I was running for free I would tend to be more
trustworthy to them because obviously yes they are out for the long term and
they realize I was looking for something long term and not short term.

Michael: And when you reached out to them did you reach out to the CEO
of the company? Did you reach out to the person in charge of business
development?


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Adam: It’s a really small company. They start out with I think two or four
people in the company. One is a doctor and it was a perfect size for me. Like
a Mom and Pop shop. And now they are getting bigger and now they are
looking forward to the future. There are many different companies out there
like that that can be approached. Cord banking is just one of them.

Michael: And so clearly they are hesitant working with someone they have
never worked before and the leads are coming in and they did their due
diligence on you by searching. They wanted to figure out how you were able
to get such hot leads and give them to them but clearly you were doing due
diligence as well. You want to make sure the business is big enough to
support them. That they have clear financial so that they can keep track of the
leads that are coming through that are actually turning into customers so you
can count on your regular commission check. What other due diligence items
did you think were important when you were considering which business to
partner with?

Adam: A lot of times you want to look for people you can trust. You check
on their business. You check out their website. And then you start to build a
relationship like you would with any partnership whether they were local or
whether they were long distance. You start to get your checks come in.
Everything is regular. Everything says it is as it is supposed to be and then it
grows from there. I mean you can do your due diligence on strangers and
there is not much else you can do and at some point you have to put some
trust in the relationship. The whole point of this is I am in control because I
have the leads. At any point I can say okay if you guys are screwing me
around I’m going to find somebody else to work with. But as long as they
keep up their end of the bargain and the cord blood is stored properly, the
customers are happy, and the customer service is excellent, there is really no
reason for me to look elsewhere for partners.

Michael: So earlier you mentioned that you actually formed a legal entity
like in a corporation or an LLC with this company on the new venture. Why
go to the trouble of forming an LLC when it might be easier to just have a
legal agreement that says you get access to their books for every lead you
generate that turns into a customer you get $750 and you get to audit all the


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customer names against all the leads that you send them to verify that they
are paying you the proper amount?

Adam: There is more legal content. Just like with any partnership…

Michael: I’m sorry Adam we are breaking up here.

Adam: Anything else. I wasn’t so concerned with forming a corporation with
them as long as I was getting the revenue with the leads.

Michael: I heard you saying you weren’t as concerned about forming a legal
entity or corporation or what have you as long as you were getting the money
from the leads. Was it their idea to form a legal entity or why did you choose
that route other than just an agreement?

Adam: They felt better about forming a legal entity and they wanted all the
books to be up and up. They wanted an accountant to go over it. They wanted
to basically to have an open book so that I would know that they weren’t
cheating me at any point. They also wanted me to know their expenses
because obviously their expenses needed to be deducted before any profit
was distributed.

Michael: Okay I understand. So you actually doing profit sharing on the
leads not necessarily a fixed fee per customer that they received as a result of
the leads.

Adam: Correct. And some customers do it for children so they get discounts
and things like that and it’s a good business. I do a lot of lead generation for
the folks for DNF call postings in there for them where they can make money
off of the cord blood storage. I warned them, not warned them, but I exposed
them to the cord blood banking industry before I even started building the
site. And I said get some cord blood names now because this is a big industry
and it is going to get bigger. Just like now is a good time to be buying cloud
domains.

Michael: And yet nobody snatched up all of 50 states, or the 40 states that
were remaining and nobody snatched up all the cities that you had grabbed.


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Adam: Nope I guess not.

Michael: So now that we know how the business was set up let’s talk about
the technology. You have one major site up, or a couple major sites that are
up right now. You have got usacordbank.com and canadacordbank.com.
What is the technology that you are using to run that website and the
hundreds of pages that are on that website?

Adam: Sure those are simply Word Press based sites with a theme that I got
from a company called StudioPress.com and that was about it. I am lucky
enough to have a team of developers, designers and content writers (45 to be
exact) that work for me under the DCG.com label and they are generating
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages, thousands of pages for each
one these verticals that I am entering.

Michael: Wow so they are manually developing each page. So if I go to that
Alabama cord bank page of usacordbank.com that is a hand generated, hand
built webpage.

Adam: Yes and what it is - is it is keyword rich for the top five or six
keywords that I have given them and it has also got hand placed meta tags
and page titles as well.

Michael: I am looking at the website right now and it is nicely crafted. I
think a lot of people lose track of the basics that are required like an H1 tag,
and H2 tags where appropriate, using alt tags on the pictures. So if I am on
the Alabama cord bank page clearly I see it in the title, I see it as an H1 tag, if
I mouse over the picture I see a little yellow tool tip that pops up saying
Alabama cord blood bank. So you are doing all the right SEO things which
aren’t rocket science but you just need to do consistently across the hundreds
of web pages that you have hand developed.

Adam: Yes it is a lot of work. There is no question about it but if you find a
vertical that makes money it’s worth putting in the time and the effort to do it
properly.


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Michael: Are you concerned with where you host the website, this Word
Press driven website so that it is not being affected by other websites on the
IP address at all?

Adam: Sometimes. I usually keep a close eye on the traffic and as the traffic
starts to get too high for a basic coasting account I move it to much more
secure servers where I keep DN Forum. And DN Forum is on a very fast -
DN Forum is on three servers and I have an extra server on that network that
I put sites on that cannot have any lag time or things like that. But right now
the site is on a typical Go Daddy hosting account at the moment. But it won’t
stay there.

Michael: So as the traffic builds you migrate it to its own server or a shared
server that just has more power. For example where do you host DN Forum’s
servers? Are they your own servers that you have like a service like
Rackspace or in your own center?

Adam: No actually I hooked up with a gentleman who happened to be an
expert about six to seven years ago and I have been hosting with him and his
company for quite a few years. He does a Veblen maintenance package for
me. He does all my Veblen upgrades and he maintains those servers and he
has got firewalls and I moved to his servers. So anything serious I put there.

Michael: So how do you typically make that transition point? How many
unique visitors or how many page views do you need to display on
usacordbank.com before you decide that you want them migrated to
something that has more power?

Adam: to be honest with you it doesn’t really go by that. If a site is profitable
and it is making money obviously it deserves its own hosting account. If a
site is slow and it is not making money it could be because of the host and
then I need to move it as well. I have about 10 or 12 servers with Go Daddy
some of which run quick, some run slow. They are all only about $14 or I
think they are running a special at $9.95 a month. So you get what you pay
for. If you want to get a really good high end server for a high end site it does
need to be moved to its own server eventually.


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Michael: Okay let’s talk about budget for this project. You said that when
you got the idea for this project you registered a bunch of domain names, 600
domain names, at let’s say $8 a piece so that is going to be about $5,000, plus
you turned your team on to develop the websites. So they developed
hundreds of pages for cities, for states, for basically writing the content,
finding the pictures, assembling it all together. Clearly you spent a good
chunk of change on this. Do you have any idea what you have spent to date
on getting this usacordbank.com website up and running as well as the
domain names?

Adam: To be honest with you it really hasn’t been all that much. I’ve been
running a development team out of India, Nepal and quite a few other
countries for the last 15 years. The cost of labor is quite reasonable. We did
have to add six web designers for some of these lead generation projects, but
the cost is low and anything else is profit here on in.

Michael: So if you had to put a number, just a rough guess on total spent to
date - $10,000, $50,000?

Adam: No I would definitely say under $10,000.

Michael: Under $10,000 for getting the website up and running.

Adam: Up and running and like was mentioned at the Traffic Conference last
week I think it was, I am trying to remember the numbers, 5% is getting the
domain, 15% is building a website but 80% is building (Inaudible 0:55:14.0.)
That doesn’t mean that it is going to be profitable or that it is going to be a
successful business. The key is to put the effort into making it a successful
business, finding the right partners and not ever letting it go making sure that
there is somebody on this full time all the time. Monitoring it and looking for
new partners or new clients. And it means doing other things. It means going
above and beyond. It means going to the pregnancy forums and using
usacordbank.com as your signature and posting some relevant posts and
adding to the maternity your pregnancy forms that will attract those
customers and bring them over to usacordbank.com.


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Michael: That is a great transition because that is what I was going to ask
you about next is the marketing plan. We’ve discussed the business plan, the
budget and how you built it from a technology standpoint, let’s talk about
marketing. Clearly we just talked about search engine optimization. You are
building the site from the ground up with search engines in mind so you can
get the relevant content to the top of their organic search results. But your
marketing plan has gone beyond that. How else do you get the word out
about the site and get customers to your website?

Adam: Well the first thing you do is you do a search for forums or social
networking sites like Facebook or Twitter that mention cord blood storage or
cord banks or things like that. And you contribute and you use a signature
link back to your site or you do what we did and we did I think five or six
articles on the site. You get custom written articles or custom written content.
You get those submitted to Ezine Articles which sends them out to about
12,000 different article sites so you get back links to your site immediately.
You get credibility. You go out there and you just post relevant information.
And you don’t have to spend any money on Ad Words to get a client base.
You can if you want to but I don’t suggest spending $25 - $26 a click to do
that. There are many other ways through social networking to do that. And
you build a page. You build a page for USA cord bank on Facebook and you
answer questions and you go to other cord bank or cord blood storage pages
on Facebook and you post and things go back and forth.

Michael: I don’t necessarily think of you as a cord bank expert or a cord
bank something that you are passionate about and I could be completely
misstating it. Clearly there is an opportunity here you feel good about
connecting people who are looking for that information but is it actually you
that is doing this marketing Adam or do you have somebody on your staff
that does it for you whose job it is to become an expert on this topic?

Adam: I am definitely not a cord bank expert. I couldn’t possibly become an
expert in every area or field that I invest in domains in. so I rely on other
people. I rely on my team. Definitely one or two or three or four of them are.
I make sure that they are expert in that area and that they can answer any
related questions just as you would for any other business and they go out
and they look for terms. And they answer questions and they answer them


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correctly. But if there is stuff that I don’t know I refer back to the cord bank
itself and I get answers because some of this stuff my team may not know
and they will forward the question off, get the right results and then we will
post the follow up and we will have a link back to USA cord bank. And the
more credible answers that you can put on either Yahoo Answers or
anywhere else the more people are going to understand that you know what
you are talking about and that you are probably a good company to deal with.

Michael: I understand that you have a team in India and you will task
somebody on that team to become an expert and they will go and post
questions and answers or look for questions and answer them on Yahoo
Answers and other groups and discussion forums and try and be helpful and
post a signature back to your website or a link to an article back to your
website. So that is generally how you are trying to find more customers to
come to the website?

Adam: It is the easiest most cost efficient way to do it. The bottom line is
women are having babies every day. They are not being educated on why
they should store their cord blood or even that it is an option. A lot of people
don’t even know it’s available. So even going down to the local hospital here
in Toronto or wherever the cord banks are and talking to the nurses, talking to
the doctors, offering the doctors a little spiff here and there. Believe me if
they are making money off of it they are going to hand out your brochure as
well. And it works, it works.

Michael: Do you spend any time yourself on a new venture like this? Do
you actually go out and try to learn as much as you can and contribute to
discussion forums as well?

Adam: Well I would have to say yes. I mean when you invest in any new
industry whether it be cord blood or swimming pool removals or event
planners or whatever it is it perks your interest and you are investing money
into it so you definitely become more educated. It’s kind of like I never
noticed diaper commercials until I had my first child. Your eyes are open
more. You notice things on TV and commercials that relate to your life. So as
you do this like cord blood banking or any other thing that is out there in the
news and keeping up with the news is essential because you want to have the


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most up to date information and the most up to date equipment. So you do
become interested, you create an interest for yourself.

Michael: Let’s say somebody has an interest in cord blood and they come to
your website but they don’t actually fill out the form because they are not
ready. They are having a child a year from now or eight months from now
and they are thinking about it. Do you create any sort of stickiness on the
website? They can become a fan, they can follow you on Twitter and see
your latest articles or is there an email that you send out on a regular basis?
Anything else besides filling out a lead generation form?

Adam: Not yet but there are a few things that we are going to be adding to
the site like live help where they can ask questions right away. That is
definitely something that is coming. Right now we are still busy designing all
the pages.

Michael: So right now you have created your social media accounts but you
haven’t necessarily integrated them yet and that is going to be one of the
future things that you are going to do?

Adam: Yes.

Michael: How many fulltime people do you say you have…Let’s say you
have developed out all the pages on usacordbank.com, how many fulltime
people do you think you will have working on it going forward?

Adam: Honestly one or two. That’s about it. It is lead generation. If I was
running the cord bank it would be different. But really all we are doing is
qualified leads and passing them through. That doesn’t require much rocket
science knowledge or any real expertise to take a lead and pass it on to the
cord bank.

Michael: And they are just maybe doing some extra design work or making
sure that the website is programmed or if you want to add like buttons and
doing something like that or doing the live customer service like you may add
in the future.


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Adam: Yes there will be a lot of that but it is not something that…The good
thing about these sites and the one thing that I love about the internet is you
can wake up in the morning and you will find three to five leads sitting there
and you know you have made money while you slept. There are not very
many industries like the internet where you can actually make money while
you are sleeping.

Michael: What about legal implication? You are taking people’s information
as leads and passing it on to (well in this case your company) but let’s other
people are taking your advice and they go generate a lead generation
company and they are going to pass it to a third party company. What are the
legal implications that they need to be aware of when collecting customer
data and sharing it with a partner?

Adam: First of all once they fill in the lead generation form they are
contacted (audio skip) did you get that?

Michael: No I didn’t, I’m sorry. Can you repeat that one more time Adam?
Once they fill out the form…

Adam: Once they fill out the form we contact them and we ask them if it is
okay if we forward their information to the cord bank so that they can
communicate with the cord bank directly and they can answer any of their
questions.

Michael: So do you physically call each person and ask them that?

Adam: No we just email them back. I mean it certainly wouldn’t hurt us in
this day and age with Skype and everything to call them back and that may be
something that we do in the future. But obviously most of them on
usacordbank.com are American anyway so there is not much toll charges.

Michael: Why go to the extra step of emailing them back and getting a
confirmation? Why not just say at the bottom this information will be shared
with our partner? Or somebody from usacordbank.com representative will
contact you soon and just pass it along in an automated fashion?


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Adam: People like to know that their interfacing with people rather than just
passing it on. It may take a couple of days. Most of the people that
surprisingly enough the demographics of the people that request cord blood
storage most of the time are women. And they leave it to the very end. They
don’t get involved or ask about it until about the seventh, eighth or ninth
month. The last trimester. And so by then they have decided that they want it
once they have contacted us. Most people that contact us want it so it is not a
hard sell. They have seen the price on the website. It’s $14.95 I think it is
listed for. And they know they want it and they fill out the contact form and
now they have to go home and convince their husband that it is worthwhile to
spend the money.

Michael: So in terms of the business, they come on, they fill out the form,
you deliver it to your partner who then contacts them and tries to get them
schedule their cord bank procedure and then mail it to them. They probably
have paperwork that they have to fill out at the cord bank. How often do you
get paid and how do you measure your effectiveness in driving the right…Let
me ask you this: How often do you get paid?

Adam: It could be every two weeks or every month. To me it doesn’t really
matter because I am not looking at it as a primary income. It is extra revenue.
But I would say every two weeks. It will depend, depending on the number of
customers. Obviously if there is a huge amount of customers in that two week
period or a week period it will go weekly. If it is a small amount then
obviously we can wait a month. It is not going to matter.

Michael: And since you have only been live for a few weeks have you had
customer leads that you have delivered to the cord bank that have actually
converted into customers?

Adam: Yes.

Michael: Excellent. Is it at a number, at a pace, at a frequency that is fast
enough for you to be positive about the continued growth of the business?

Adam: Yes. It is one of those industries that the public is not very
knowledgeable or educated on yet and it is going to take time but it is going


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to grow. It is definitely a business that is going to continue to grow and the
growth potential for cord blood storage is huge.

Michael: How much time do you estimate you are going to have to spend on
this business on a weekly basis going forward?

Adam: A couple of hours. Not that much. I mean I have a gentleman who
manages most of my lead gens. He has been working for me for 13 years and
we have meetings every morning and I give him the information that I need
done and I want changes on the sites and he gets them out and we get them
done. And that is the way it goes. And I move on to the next project.

Michael: How do you measure the effectiveness of the leads that you are
gathering? Have you noticed that on some of your other lead generation
businesses that maybe the quality of leads has decreasing so while the
quantity is still there the quality isn’t there and you somehow need to manage
that quality?

Adam: It really depends on the industry. For example there is much more
competition in limo.ca because people go to six or eight sites to get a quote.
Whereas with cord banking it is not that popular as say a limo company.
They don’t have as many choices they only have 10 or 12 or 20 choices. And
maybe most of them use the same cord bank storage facility. Who knows?
Just the pricing is different.

Michael: One more question about the form that is on your page. The form
says request more information, you have a field for your name, your address,
your phone number, your email address, select a state. You have a message
here: Did you find my site through Google? And there is a check box that
says yes I did. Why is that important to know?

Adam: It’s not as important as other things because I have Google Analytics
on it so I know what they came through. What search engine and what search
term. For me the Google Analytics is far more important than that. It is just a
check box we put on there because Google was the first one to index the site
and we want to measure it. I would guess that most of our leads are coming
from Bing and Yahoo.


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Michael: And you find that they are coming through Bing and Yahoo
because of what reason primarily?

Adam: Maybe the search terms are ranking higher for certain areas and they
are finding them.

Michael: So one more question regarding the form. When somebody fills
out that form and hits the send message does that show up in somebody’s
email inbox that then gets replied to? Does it go into a data base? How do
you manage that data of leads?

Adam: Okay the form goes into my email box and then I set it up in a data
base and it is tracked. So that when we do forward the lead so we go back to
the customer a month or two months down the road. Follow up, make sure
they were satisfied with the service and then maybe it was their first child and
they are going to have more and that leads to subsequent business. Plus we
can also offer them a ‘refer a friend program’ where we give them $200 for
referring a friend into us as well which they are happy to. Or we say we will
store your cord blood free for the next three years if you send us a customer.

Michael: Wow and so by having that partnership now you can be much
more creative in what you offer to that customer. It’s just not a one term
purchase. You might get multiple children out of that one customer, a lead
that you generated years ago or you could offer discounts to them if they
refer friends.

Adam: Generally from what I have seen so far if people are aware of cord
blood storage and they have more than one child they store the blood for
more than one child. Now I’ve got four kids and I didn’t know about that this
even existed or when I had my kids I would have stored it as well.

Michael: You and I have talked about your DNF College, so you have your
DomainNameForumCollege.com, DNF.com which you have launched a
couple of months ago. And I found it very interesting and I was actually part
of your initial offer and I learned a tremendous amount. We discussed this
earlier Adam that you wanted to give back to the industry. Why choose an


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online process to educate people as opposed to putting it in a book or putting
it in a video or all the different options that you have? Why did you choose to
launch DNFCollege.com online?

Adam: Because I wasn’t looking for it to be a profit center. When I started
out in the industry there were people who helped me. They took me by the
hand, they helped educate me. There were three or four of them. They did it
out of good will. They didn’t do it because they were making any money and
I wanted to do the same thing and I give what I got lucky enough to learn
over the last 12 or 13 years. It’s a good feeling. It’s nice to get those emails
from people saying they sold a domain for more than they expected to or that
a domain that they recently bought they have got an offer on. Most people go
into this business they spend a few thousand dollars at least that buy all the
wrong domains, buy trademarks, they don’t know what they are looking for
and they waste their money. I would like to be able to make sure and insure
that people are buying higher quality names because the higher the quality
the name the more that they are going to sell for and the more sell and the
higher quality names that they have the better it is for our business in general
and the more everybody’s names are worth in the industry.

Michael: Let’s leave the audience with something that they can expect to
learn by attending DNFCollege.com or when they watch a subsequent show
(hopefully when I have you back on DomainSherpa) clearly domain name
quality is important but what would you say separates individuals within the
domain name industry?

Adam: It is the simplest tip and yet the hardest thing for a domain owner to
understand and deal with and that is how to manage their portfolio. So the
best place to start is how to manage the domains that you already have. So
what I usually suggest is they make a list of all the domains in Excel. I tell
them to go through any emails that they have had or inquires on domains that
they have had but haven’t sold and I tell them that for every domain they
received an offer on make those purple in the Excel spreadsheet even if it is a
low ball offer. These are keepers even if they make no money because
somebody has a need or want for that domain so it is a potential customer.


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Then I tell them to gather all their parking revenue over the last 365 days and
highlight in green any that made more than their registry. Those are also
keepers. Then I tell them to go through the list one more time and pick out
domains that they feel have development potential, regardless of revenue, and
more those in blue. And those are also keepers. And then I tell them to go
through the list a final time and look for domains that you just have a hunch
or a good feeling about but have no development potential and earn no
money. Some of those they will keep but some of those they will drop. And
then once they have done all of that they are usually left with a list of
domains and I tell them to take a close look at what is left without a color and
ask yourself why you are keeping them. And if you don’t know why, it is
time to drop them.

And that is the hardest thing the domainers will ever face because for some
reason domainers feel that if they drop the domain somebody else is going to
pick it up and turn it into a multi-million dollar business. And that is not
always the case. I mean I drop names I’d say every day. I mean we learn
from our experiences and we learn that some of the things that we thought
were good domains five or ten years ago today just are not.

And then the last bit of advice that I will give is the most important thing that
I can tell domainers is that you don’t set the prices. I don’t set the prices on
my domain names. Buyers set the price. It’s not what I think it is worth, it’s
not what my wife thinks it is worth, it’s not what you think it is worth, it is
what the buyer is willing to pay for the domain name. (audio skip 1:15:59.8)
and I got $60,000 for it. Other times I thought it was worth a lot more and I
was offered a lot less. I had to take a loss on it because I bought it stupidly.
So it is all about what the buyer is willing to pay for the domain name. It has
nothing to do with appraisals or anything like that at all.

Michael: Right but if you own download.net (which I think you do) and I
offer you $40,000 you are either going to accept that or reject that based on
what you value the domain name to be. Or what other offers you have
received in the past.

Adam: Yes but a lot determines on whether I am a motivated seller or
whether I am a non-motivated seller. So if I don’t need your $40,000 I’m not


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going to sell it to you. If I am in a situation where I do need your $40,000 I
may consider selling it for a reduced amount other than what I would
consider selling it for normally.

Michael: If you have a follow up question please post it in the comments
below. We will ask Adam to come back and answer as many of them as you
can. And if you want to follow Adam on Twitter he is on
Twitter@adamdicker and his DN Forum has an account on Twitter
DNForum. His websites are dnforum.com, adamdicker.ca and of course
dcg.com.

Adam Dicker, thank you for taking the time, coming on the show and being a
DomainSherpa for other entrepreneurs and investors.

Adam: thank you very much and I also don’t mind giving out my Skype
which is adam.dicker. I also don’t mind giving them my cell phone because I
enjoy helping other people. So 416-884-0535. Any time I can help a fellow
domainer it is good for everybody in the business.

Michael: That is very generous of you Adam. I thank you again and thank
you all for watching.
We will see you next time.

Watch the full video at:
http://www.domainsherpa.com/adam-dicker


Adam Dicker: Stop Parking Domains and Build a Real Business

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Adam Dicker: Stop Parking Domains and Build a Real Business