Hear why Blake Janover paid $500k for home.loans.
Blake Janover just paid $500,000 to buy home.loans, a record price paid for a domain under new top level domain names. Is he crazy? Hear his story and listen to Blake explain his rationale for buying the domain name. Also: Crazy .club price, profitable domain company, UDRP fight, and GoDaddy goes to Austin.
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I think PT Barnum was right when he said a sucker is born every minute.
Nice interview, Andrew.
Well put together podcast, now I know why this guy paid $500K for this domain, because he has no idea what he is doing, or talking about.
Donuts schooled him in business 101, we don’t even know what we are doing with this domain? We don’t even know if we want to sell it? LOL if you knew anything about domains you know donuts has tens of thousands of these domains warehoused doing nothing, and they are going to turn down $500K to -1 from their inventory, which they reclaim on a weekly basis when they take back the drops for their own inventory.
When you are questioning 3 letter .com valuations, because there are all these new extensions, you know absolutely nothing about what you are doing.
I am sorry Blake, any domainer listening would know by the end of the interview donuts hustled you out of $500K, you could have saved yourself $250K, and bought some more domains with it.
My thoughts are it was some inside trade deal, to boost the other extensions to get sales for domains at the convention. As it is IMPOSSIBLE to believe someone that is not on something would pay that.
Wow, just wow. saying he paid $500K just for the hope a business partner may come and figure out how to make money from it. Wow.
I enjoyed the interview and whilst it’ll no doubt attract the crowd of “Blake overpaid”, this is clearly Blake’s expertise and right in determining that a domain name is worth what you’re prepared to pay for it and it’s benefit to them. I wish I was that sucker and didn’t know what I was doing in the position of having $500k to invest. Money talks, b/s walks. Good luck with the venture and I hope it returns several times your investment.
Lazy answer Derrick, everyone knows that GTLD is not worth $500K, the full question of the money was never defined.
There wasn’t even a negotiation by the talks of it, who pays the highest recorded public price without proof of course, then says oh great guys, what an experience.
DONUTS FLAT OUT SAID THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO WITH THE DOMAIN, Hook line, and sinker.
I read some stuff in the previous thread about a debt consolidation company that had a lot of nasty stuff going on, not sure how he is related, but if you are broke, and living in a hammock in the DR< and come pay $500K for a domain that would be lucky to fetch $50K, something doesn't add up.
BS walks, after it passes the smell test.
Was a very interesting interview, but I have to say at the end, when he kept saying over and over how awesome the people at donuts were , I busted out laughing out loud. Dude they just got you to pay 500K, they in there doing the happy dance, of course they were nice to you, they just got your 500K .
Great interview!…Google was mentioned many times. It should be noted that Google (Alphabet) loves the New G’s. Just last week they launched their new cyber security company on another New G (Chronicle.Security)… Google is taking a clear path with these New G’s, that should be not dismissed…
Best of luck to Blake!
Google likes new G’s better? Proof please. Not true from what I have seen.
Google does not like anyone or any domain that is not paying for ads. That’s the new game lately in case you have not noticed.
Wow, best comment so far, and straight to the point.
Great podcast! There are two sides to every story. The first thing I did when I started domaining is clearly define what I was doing. Here is a what I wrote:
“The purpose of a domain name is manifested by the vision of the owner and tested by its users. The money is not in the domain name but in its use.”
Blake is an investor. Investors look at the big picture and see the potential. He may have overpaid in the domainers eyes where but it may be a small price to pay in a very large pond.
At the end (as with all of us) we are happy with the choice.
great sale!
He went down the sand spider trap thinking, “What does .com really mean? My domain is two words”, like thousands of other investors who have failed before him and turned to dust.
HomeLoans.com, which is WellsFargo.com, is loving this sh*t.
They are laughing their ass off because they are probably getting over 50% of all return traffic to Home.Loans. I get this investor never thought about that or did not know it would be that bad.
This phenomenon is knows by EVERYONE in this business with deep experience of how traffic works. I bet Donuts did not mention this to him because he might have walked if he knew about this.
Also, he’s going to be sending traffic to other domains like Home.Loan and HomeLoan.com and others.
People are going to look at his domain and not know it’s a domain without .com at the end. Again, he’ll need more ad spend to reconcile this problem.
Let’s recap:
1. He’s going to be pissing away the majority of his ad spend because people will not be able to remember how to get back, which means he needs to spend even more than normal just to stand still or grow a little.
2. He’s going to be sending a large chunk of his return traffic to his competitors for FREE.
3. People when looking at Home.Loans will not know it’s a domain.
That’s only touching the surface. Too bad.
If I’m jealous, I will say negative things.
When I think as a domainer, you have paid a high price. You should have considered some alternative domain.
When I think as a entrepreneur, any price that you are willing to pay is worth enough as long as you believe that your business will leverage from the domain name.
It takes financial ability, guts to break the norm, a long term business vision to invest like this. Undoubtedly, you are a courageous entrepreneur.
If you believe this domain will contribute to the success of your business, then it is good buy.
Congratulations, Wish You Good Luck.
Look at all these salty .com domains owners who can’t accept the fact the new era is slowly coming. But hey, I don’t blame you. If I was a .com investor, I’d also say new TLDs are not worth it.
All these salty .com owners who know the industry for years and expect an end user to not only know the industry that well as well, but also to follow their rules instead of creating “something new”. Damn, I bet if someone “overpaid” for a .com domain, not a single one of you would say a word. But again, I don’t blame you.
New domains are coming. New websites are coming. New people are coming. It’s a slow process, but it’s happening. Deal with it.
Look as this salty “no longer new gTLD” owner that can’t accept the fact the these “no longer new gTLDs” were a money grab and were never meant to me a long term investment. But hey, I don’t blame you. If I was a “no longer new gTLD” investor, I’d also say “no longer new gTLD” are the new era.
All these “no longer new gTLD” know they wasted their money and pray they would break even. So they talk down to everyone warning newbies about the reality. But again, I don’t blame you.
The only people that will make money off the “no longer new gTLDs” are the registrars and a few lucky lottery winners. Deal with it.
@ Nick
I apologize but I couldn’t help but notice your comment, warning newbies about the reality ?
If you’re a .com lover and you’re a business man and you know the Growing GTLDs are increasing the value of the TLDs, why would you try to come into this forum and deter someone from increasing the value of your .com ? That just doesn’t make sense to me.
PS ~ I am the owner of Mortgage.Loans and I built out Easy.Credit and I own E.Credit … I don’t consider myself a speculator !
Without equivocation the world is changing and Internet world will change as well, it’s been 20 years and you want to talk about experience. What GTLDs did you own that you decided to drop in a 5 year time span …
Nick, snappy and a few more are actively involved in lot of domain forum educating investors why new gtld are bad investment and how their money is going to drown.
Nick, are you heavily invested in .com? Or are you being paid for negative marketing of new gtld.
Huh? Where do I post about “no longer new gTLD” on forums? I only buy and sell domains on forums.
I invest in anything that will go up. CC tlds are a good investment like com, net , org, but the money grab “no longer new gTLD” only make the money grab registrars rich, pretending otherwise is nonsense .
Nick, I found you here.
https://domainnamewire.com/2018/01/23/entrepreneur-pays-500000-acquire-home-loans-domain-name/
https://onlinedomain.com/2016/09/19/domain-name-news/frank-schilling-dropping-230000-new-gtld-domains/
https://domainnamewire.com/2017/08/24/yes-people-using-new-top-level-domain-names/
Please accept my apologies if the nick in these link is not you.
Nice Interview. Best of luck Blake.
Wow! For $500K, he could’ve bought several premium .com names. Whoever sold it is a great salesperson.
Google disagrees with his assertion of the difference between “home.loans” and “home.loan” – the singular gets more searches by about 3:1
https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=%22home%20loans%22,%22home%20loan%22
@Imran those are all blogs. None of those are forums. I obviously post on blogs, this is a blog and I’m writing on here.
@Nick. I realise that my comment was too straightforward. I apologise for inconvenience.
Multifamily.loans is now #1 in Google for “Multifamily loans”.