Interview with Monte Cahn, RightOfTheDot

Marcus Glaad and Monte Cahn, at NamesCon 2016

Monte Cahn is the president of RightOfTheDot, that together with NameJet, were responsible for the live domain name auction held at NamesCon yesterday. Marcus Glaad got the opportunity to meet up with him right after the auction.

What is your first impression after the auction here at NamesCon tonight?

-First impression is that we did really good with new TLDs (edit: new top level domains), very surprisingly very good with new TLDs. This gives me an indication that there´s a great upper market in that field.

The Chinese buyers were not online tonight, but thats OK, we have names in the extended auction, and I think that we are going to sell a couple of those.

Overall, the keyword domains did very well, too. We are looking forward to a good extended auction! The same auction goes for ten more days (you can find it here)

Any particular domain name that you thought went really well or really low?

-I was very happy about lawn.com, that went for 240 000 dollars. The domain name that should sell – but surprised me by not being sold – was genetics.com. This domain came very close, but did´t hit, the reserve price.

We also had a couple of double letter domain names – like at.com and by.com – that came very close to the reserve price.

Jet.ski sold for 12 000 dollars!

-The new TLDs really impressed me, so I am very happy with those.

In general, what is your impression about NamesCon so far?

-NamesCon is by far the best conference to come to, there´s about 1200 people here so it is the biggest. The auctions are exciting, there´s a lot of good content and a lot of people from the business are here.

If I, as a brand owner, am in the choice of picking a brand name, and the .com is taken, do you think I should go with a new TLD? Or do you think I should I go with the .com but add a word, for instance like the, get or goto?

-Adding words to a domain name aren´t going to do it… The shorter the better!

…So I should go with a new top level domain instead?

Right.

And finally, some scouting for 2016:

-I think nTLDs are gonna do really well in 2016, because the next generation of user are coming online more and more. There´s going to be a lot of new TLD advertising marketing from bigger corporations that´s going to start building awareness for some of the new TLDs.

The domains “keywords.com” are going to hold and maintain their value, and maybe increase in value because of that… The longtailkeywords.com will probably decrease in value because of more supply on the market.

So I think a good investment is some of the new TLDs, and som of the keyword .com-names.

Thank you Monte!