SLDs don’t sell themselves, so marketing and branding can be the difference between a successful TLD and one that blends into the millions of other TLDs out there. In this panel, speakers talk about the strategies they’ve used to successfully market their TLD and helped them turn their TLDs into a full on business generating passive income.
Transcript
(00:01) [Music] [Applause] [Music] god [Music] um but hold on partner there’s a new top-level domain in town dot tx dot tx is kinda like dot com but for texans as texas is freedom in the physical world dot tx is freedom online these are censorship resistant names whereas in the past a domain was only needed by entrepreneurs all internet users will need to own their name in the future this will allow you to maintain
(01:05) sovereignty retain your data and increase your security and privacy now for the first time you can finally identify as texan online you can use tx for a website and in the future as a username and login across your online accounts and a wallet name to send and receive funds ktx is the custodian of the dot tx blockchain domain which is made possible through the decentralized naming protocol called handshake our mission is to bring the decentralized web to the masses specifically texans and texas businesses we partner with domain registrars and
(01:42) make it as easy as possible to own your name on the decentralized web dot tx is the domain for texas check out atx.io to learn more and join the dot tx movement [Music] awesome so i think everybody’s already registered dot tx in the whole conference right so but uh yeah noel that’s knoll people are asking but i think it while as an ad i think it’s also educational for us and good examples to to explain even this uh this this epic panel we have um sld panel you know we have a lot of very amazing people here representing and
(02:21) here to share their experiences um and i will just transition to our amazing moderator steve webb to take it from here thank you steve thank you mike uh so everybody’s already heard plenty from me so i am going to keep my comments as brief as possible since noel’s ad ran first we’ll go ahead and let him introduce himself first what are you talking about steve my work here is done i’m just going to sit back and enjoy the show now but just just looking at the chats like everybody’s saying i should have done
(02:56) the voiceover and that’s how it was going to be initially one reason because you know the texan accent but then the second thing is i’m just cheap but then uh i just decided against it so i guess we still have kind of like an american accent so it’s still okay but uh hey everybody or should i say howdy y’all uh my name is noel ackermann i’m the uh kind of like founder of atx which is the custodian of tx as well as a few other premium domains that i will not list here but maybe i will in the years
(03:27) to come my background consists of being kind of like all over the place i’ve worked out a few real estate tech startups over the years where i’ve had all kinds of roles ranging you know from management operations building out teams you know for customer success and sales customer experience is something that’s really important to me and yeah i’ve been kind of more kind of like in the business real estate side of things but then also i really love kind of like ideas as well and that has to do with like freedom
(04:01) which that’s really what drew me to handshake is because i saw that is a great way to ensure freedom online and decentralizing the web is something that i’ve been focused on for the past half decade and i saw handshake as the best um you know best uh project that i saw that has the best chances for adoption awesome john i think i’m going to go to you second because you’re most likely to fall asleep so i’m going to make sure we’re still in gateway it’s like midnight for him so i want to make sure he’s still engaged
(04:31) i’ve been drinking coffee and drinking coffee um yeah so in real life um i’m a copywriter so i work on a product team in actually uh property type startup no i didn’t realize that was your background actually um so that’s what i do in real life before that for ten years i try to run a menswear business which is just don’t do that that’s an awful idea um and i’m here because um i own dot sats and dot d gen um and i sell slds on those two names um i kind of got interested in domain around
(05:10) i had stumbled across domain sherpa and mike saga and all that early crew and i went to some of the names cons in vegas and i was very bad at the meaning terrible i mean i could i know what a good name is i don’t know what a terrible name is but the middle 98 i can’t do that i’m rubbish so i spent a lot of money uh lost a lot of money um and then sort of discovered crypto in 2017 uh and i was very bad at that as well uh spent a lot of money lost a lot of money um but in that journey i i came across uh the flipping
(05:50) clay’s podcast oh cool i didn’t know i was part of the story oh dude you’re integral you’re the main you’re a main character in my life um and he was talking to um eric meltzer who i actually don’t know how to describe eric he’s sort of on twitter i don’t know what he did he’s obviously loaded investor claire you’re probably better at explaining what he did but um they were talking about h s and um that was years ago must be like 2018 or something like that um name base was just starting up and i was just like
(06:22) super interested in this venn diagram of crypto domains and words um so it’s kind of like that’s perfect for me um but i just started um talking with um teishen or tyson and um yeah back in like august 2018 and messing around with the test net and chucking ideas around and um and then i actually you know embarrassingly i thought i owned some hns at some point but it was all test net stuff and i thought i am john i’m like oh no i don’t own that i’ve got to try and bid for that now um and actually like most of us i think the
(06:57) uh the my first auctions completely lost them sort i’ve thought okay i can’t win those i’ll just buy hns and then i started buying stuff on the secondary market so that’s how i’ve got my names um but i will i will leave it there and pass over to probably clay yeah my brother from another mother let’s go clay but are you going to introduce yourself at some point can i introduce you i mean you can do that last but i think people want to hear about you before they want to hear all right especially
(07:22) since you were already part of a story i mean like they’re on the edge of their seats all right let’s do it so um hi my name is clay collins uh i’m the ceo of nomix.com the reason why i’m here is because i own uh dot c n one and dot zen um dot c and dot one are the number one and number two selling uh tlds in the h space and um i think that c is competitive like somewhere in the top 500 slds steve is great at providing me with the vanity metrics that i can retweet it’s been a really great ride um
(07:59) prior to uh owning.cn.1 i once purchased a domain name for a million dollars um and uh and and have been just actually slinging domains on park.io for a long time uh and so steve like you have made me a bunch of money on dot io domain names and then um you probably deserve credit uh more than anyone else for helping sld owners um monetize their domains uh and you’ve uh you’ve also i think innovated the most in the space like with uh dot forever and uh impervious domains so um i owe just a great deal of uh you know my my
(08:41) income and the the value of the assets that i have uh especially in the domain space to you so thanks for all that you’ve done uh to make me money well hopefully we’re at the uh the beginning of that journey as opposed to hopefully there’s there’s much more success in front of us in this panel and hopefully obviously in the audience uh all right so uh let’s get down to business i guess so i we informally have some questions that we’re gonna answer obviously if anybody in the chat has questions put them in
(09:10) the q a and we’ll get to them either as we go or at the end but the first question we kind of decided to discuss is what’s your overall strategy for marketing your tlds up to this point and i think we’ll go around robin so we’ll go back to clay and then to john and then noel and then we’ll do a snake draft for any degenerate gamblers like myself that know what that is and if you don’t it just means we go one direction and then come back together so clay you’re all europe yeah so um you
(09:39) know i think at the beginning um i started promoting um dot c domains pretty hard i ran ads on nomics um started tweeting from our um twitter domain name uh started um you know making lists of all the domains that were purchased and publishing those so people could get a sense of i think it provided social proof uh and i think it also gave people a sense of the types of domains that that they could buy so i think it would jog their memory if someone saw someone if someone saw that bitcoin.
(10:10) c was purchased they might think all right maybe i should buy ethereum.c or ethe.c or avalanche.c uh and then i’d again the next day published a list of of uh the dot c domains that were um that that were published um i after i think at some point in time uh things had started you know uh i think we got some momentum and i i kind of stopped marketing um i think that um you know whatever sales we’ve done we could probably 10x it if i put more time into marketing and i should probably hire uh a full-time marketer for dotsy honestly
(10:46) i’ve i’ve contemplated doing it um so i think that um you know i think that cn.1 are pretty compelling domain names in and of themselves i think that c is sort of set up to be the competitor uh the direct competitor on the decentralized web 2.1 um so um you know whatever sales i think we’ve done i think i think we could probably do a lot more with marketing but it was uh much more us i think we were just much more active with that in in the beginning and honestly i think this space is uh is perfect for a pure marketer so
(11:22) uh you know steve’s company handles you know registrations reselling distribution uh customer support takedowns all that stuff so uh it’s i think uh if someone is is uh sort of really excited about the prospect of pure you know 24 7 direct sales marketing i think this is this is the perfect opportunity for someone who’s not you know maybe you don’t have a technical co-founder uh but you could be a a tld entrepreneur and do quite well if you are great at branding it’s a huge opportunity that was awesome john
(12:01) over to you give us uh some of that sweet sweet alpha for g-gen and sets well i mean i i agree with clay it’s it’s like a market as a community builder’s dream because you really don’t have that’s all you have to do you’d have to sell things um and when i staked my names back in april 21 i i thought it would be a bit more like staking and a little bit more passive um it really isn’t um so for the first seven months i made 10 sales which is dismal but as soon as i started doing something
(12:40) surprise surprise uh things start happening i tried also to um advertise on nomics poorly and i would never class myself as a marketer or brand builder so this is a bit of like an exp if if handshake is an experiment this is an experiment within an experiment for me personally um and i’m trying to keep it like a business because i know that’s what it should be i think that’s how you need to treat it but i’m also trying to keep it super light and easy for me and it’s like the third thing on my list of things to do
(13:11) in the day so it’s like my real job my freelancing work being copywriter and then and then this so i don’t want this to like stress me out uh yeah i don’t want this to kind of like be too much of a thing that i then don’t do it so i just got to keep it light so what i’m doing really is just tweeting i mean silly put in the chat before it’s like i just talk on twitter and that actually works it really works um so like when i started um really like upping my game on twitter it was around so in october i’d done 10 sales
(13:46) right from april before in november night so actually let me let me just go back in october i tweeted 81 times in november i tweeted 722 times and i had um 132 sales in that month and i can’t put that all down to um my powerful tweets because actually that’s when uh pogba started selling my names too so there is the portland effect there um but as we come into december i’m tweeting like 406 times in january i go crazy i probably am not working very hard at my real job i’ve tweeted 100 1466 times um i’ve got
(14:33) 20 000 profile visits um and i’ve got in that month 47 uh registrations across dot satsang.tgen i think i’m probably looking at that as like a a typical month because there’s no poor fun effect i’m putting work in um then i start to like get really busy at work don’t tweet as much and guess what sales go down so as basic as it sounds that is that is what i’m doing and um it seems to be working i just need to keep it up basically oh that’s super inspiring man if anyone is listening to this and wants to do
(15:12) marketing for dot c uh and you think you can do it uh uh hit me up because i want to do what john’s doing uh that’s really inspiring and no i want a freaking video that sounds amazing so there you go bill that that’s uh that’s your cue so we saw your video and i’ve been watching the chat it seems that everybody agrees that posting is definitely the way to go so let’s get your take on the the tweeting and the video and what else you’re doing to make that tx the official tld of texans
(15:41) yeah yeah first off yeah i mean really you can tell with like the sweat equity what that brought to you know john with dot sats and dot d gen just on how it just really took off once he started with that posting for myself i never really consider myself a marketer in fact with kind of like the whole business spectrum i would always say that was what i was least good at but i’ve been trying to pick it up over the past year you know with due to handshake really that’s the reason why i joined twitter and social media
(16:12) was just to be able to spread the good gospel of handshake but uh for me i’m gonna try to go about it a little bit different way so like what am i doing for marketing what is my strategy you know i think there’s kind of like three components with that the first part is like your brand because your brand is everything and then the second one is like you know who are you marketing to what who’s your target market and then the third one would be kind of like the type of marketing so we’ve been talking about you know
(16:41) posts on twitter and doing things digitally which i you know some of it’s not scalable but if you do ads that could be scalable but we haven’t really seen the results yet so hopefully this will help everybody here that has tlds and deciding what to do with them so for like the brands i don’t know if you have heard yet but tx is the domain for texas if you haven’t heard i mean stands for a lot of things right transactions being first and foremost um but i’m really focused on pushing for texas because there are millions that
(17:13) have an emotional appeal to be in texas you know here’s a quick story um you know last january when i was bidding on the dot tx auction you know i was you know probably six months in advance um you know i was i had tx these asterisks but i had like three asterisks which meant that it was like the most important name to me and the reason was because i had an emotional connection to dot tx okay and other people that participate in that auction um probably would have taken in another direction right with dot you know be in
(17:46) transactions but to me as an emotional connection and i knew if i had an emotional connection to tx if other people once they found out about you know what these names can do for them and their life and how they live online and once they found about a dot tx i know they would feel the same way and you know be able to identify us you know with dot tx online so to me you know being texan isn’t it doesn’t have to do with a place it’s a way of life it’s a way of being and i take the best of everything that it means to be a
(18:22) texan and i incorporate that into tx and that’s what i want it to be so the way that i’ve looked at it from the beginning is dot tx is an extension of myself okay and you really need that strong conviction in order for others to believe if i didn’t believe in dot tx why is that anybody else going to want to be a part of it or anybody else going to believe in it right and the way that i looked at it over the past year before i even launched was you know here i am i’m going to digitize myself into millions of dot tx names and
(18:57) that has been my mindset from the beginning so it’s really just who i am digitized and so another in other words i really view dot tx as texas digital real estate saying that you know domains were the first digital real estate so dot tx is a texas version of that and just to be clear you know like i’m focused you know atx is focused on texas we’re here in texas that’s kind of what we’re focused on but that doesn’t mean that i wanted really the community that’s kind of take it from there and like have it mean
(19:27) other things like transactions so to me i’m kind of surprised that the transaction component hasn’t taken off but maybe it’s just because i’m getting in people’s heads like hey tx only stands for texas but i really want the community to kind of run with it too just how like dot io ended up standing for input output right they didn’t start out that way the community this item so i kind of want it to be similar to that and i think it will at some point but for the target market you have to
(19:51) know who you’re going to be marketing to and for me um you know there’s i am narrowly focused but there are a few different you know groups i’m focused on so obviously crypto right all of us here and and the broader crypto community blockchain you know web3 um the second would be domainers right and then then i have texans and then hopefully you know with not tx there’s a little bit of overlap there between you know those three i just mentioned if i can i if i can have one person you know be able to have two of
(20:24) those check boxes then that’s good if i can have all three of them there the chances are they’re going to be you know like really into dot tx and everything so that’s just something you need to think about and then for the the type of marketing that the type of marketing um this is where i kind of differ uh so i i really prefer like in-person engagement so like uh for me even though i’m on twitter and everything twitter is really secondary uh but it’s still important that’s where you know the handshake community is but
(20:56) i’m really you know geo focused right and i think with that it’s important to be immersed within the community and from there you can build a community and that’s that’s what i’m in the process of doing so i’ve done flyers around austin you know that’s really low cost and i’ve had a little bit of success putting in businesses or walkable areas really i would say the biggest you know kind of like the biggest momentum momentum that i’ve had was from sponsoring or attending conferences
(21:28) so in september of last year tx was two months live i had a total of 17 registrations and i was like doing the twitter stuff i was i made a half a dozen videos uh maybe 10 people watched and then i ended up sponsoring namescon you know to help with the handshake track because i wanted you know the word of handshake to get spread and so with that i was able to kind of get atx you know out there a little bit and so i did that and a few weeks later i attended the texas blockchain council summit um so that was here in austin we
(21:59) had over 700 in-person attendees gotta love texas with that and most of them were like bitcoin miners which was really surprising um but then also there’s just people into crypto from all over texas that came and we had three u.s senators there too so just really uh from after that um i you know went on twitter and used their hashtag and say like hey whoever attended you know this uh you know this conference you know i’ll give you a tx domain i had like a little plug and i had like maybe five or six people that responded to
(22:31) that that i didn’t speak with there and from from that and then also the names gone i i had at least a few investors that that ended up you know going in you know pretty decently with tx and they own they have a portfolio of like 80 to over 100.tx domains each but really i guess the mess what i want to get across is it’s really important just to put yourself out there make things happen and then last thing i would say is that the you know gifting culture is alive and well with tx and that may go against you know if if
(23:08) you’re into marketing that may go against like what great brands do and like that book that’s really good but you know that’s really what i saw in the early days of bitcoin was the gifting culture and i think it’s necessary for a truly decentralized protocol so we have that in handshake obviously and i’m trying to establish that within a smaller.
(23:29) tx ecosystem awesome so we have an obscene number of questions coming in and so i think i’m going to maybe ask some of those first to make sure that we get some audience questions and then and i have one can i put in the cute like steve do you have data on like renewal rates because i feel like we could infer a lifetime value of a customer if we know the renewal rates like what does churn look like i can definitely get i don’t know if i can get that before the end of this panel though but yes i can absolutely awesome to know
(23:57) i will uh follow all of us on twitter if you’re not already and i will gladly come up with something somewhat helpful in that regard and we will all retweet it but yeah i could try to put something together but it’ll be terrible in these like five or ten minutes we have left but yes i will absolutely and everybody hold me to that too because i’m sure i’m going to forget in five minutes because i’m old and my brain doesn’t work anymore um all right so let’s see with the marketing of i’m just
(24:25) going to go based on highest like most up votes with the marketing of our tlds do you see them in the future as stand-alone look at that it’s on the screen now too do you see them as stand-alones where they will have their own brands i don’t know why i’m reading this you guys are literate but yeah i basically already read half of it uh clay do you want to jump in or john who whoever wasn’t just talking just to make sure we’re round robin whoever talks first gets to answer it yeah so i i think it’s i think it’s both um i think
(24:52) that um to a large extent um registrars are gonna promote the tlds that make the money and so part of that is economics you know what what does the uh revenue share look like uh and then uh another piece of that is you know where is their demand and it behooves uh registrars to put high demand tlds at the top of the list so if you go to um you know if you go to gateway.
(25:20) io or other registrars if you search for things my guess is that those things or those domain names are are sorted like if you just type in uh yourname.org or just type in your name it’s going to suggest uh tlds that um you know that registrar is incentivized to to promote uh and um so you can definitely um highlight your brand by doing marketing and um often that’s going to be echoed by the registrars but it’s it’s it kind of has to start with you um so yeah i think there’s a variety of incentives in the
(25:53) space and um usually just follows the money i think there’s a window opportunity here for anyone listening in to jump on this like early because i’m not doing anything that noel’s doing and i’m managing to make some sales right i’m in thanks by the way steve for making that top 10 boring and making it a top 13.
(26:16) if anyone else saw those slides um says 12.djs 13. that’s kind of weird that that’s like that right shouldn’t really be like that but it is because i jumped in reasonably early and i still think it’s really early so if you can get a good name find a good community have a reason to buy it like there’s an obvious reason why you would buy a dot tx there’s an obvious reason why dot c you know com co c it’s the next in in line really um my marketing spin on stats is like your first name dot sats is your future
(26:46) bitcoin wallet address dot d gen just it’s for idiots right basically um i’ve sold quite a few there are quite a few idiots in the world it’s working um but yeah i think there’s a window of a window of opportunity now to jump in and and be in that top 20. and it’s kind of obvious that like those ones are going to be the ones that the registrars are going to see is like oh they’re putting work in that’s a business i’ll put up i’m going to trust those guys right we’re showing them that there’s some
(27:16) trust there and i’m just doing it in the evenings when i’m in the gym just like i’m literally selling these domains in the gym it’s stupid it’s crazy and let me just take this moment to like say how insane this business possibly could be as someone who was dealing with stock and sewing machines and crap and warehouses and you know providers of buttons and providers of thread and now there’s a possibility that this business could i could do it from anywhere in the world on my phone i just
(27:47) sell them once potentially and if i’ve got a good story that name is going to get renewed year after year after year um and if the story is powerful enough like it’s your name is your identity it’s your name plus. it’s gonna be pretty hard to like not renew right we all renew domains that we probably aren’t ever gonna use but we get attached to them so if you can get your uh customers to get attached to your to their names in some way and not you know no don’t fake it but um yeah i just think there’s this
(28:17) massive window opportunity on this crazy business model and and i’d love to see more people like jumping in and uh and trying yeah so this question i think directly ties into what noah was saying so i think noel should probably hit this just since i’m already in the in the process of reading these things how important do you all feel it is to build a culture around an extension in order for it to thrive there you go no teeth for you oh okay thank you thank you well i’ll answer this one but i also want to get back to the other question
(28:49) as well just because that’s something i have been thinking about lately but uh to me you know it really does come down to community at the end of the day and i guess just relating to that like in choosing like a name to market or to be able to have for these sld registrations um you know really has to have like a special meaning or it has to you know have there has to be a reason why right and so i i did come up with kind of like a you know a kind of like a checklist of four different areas of what i consider
(29:19) makes a good tld for sld registrations and this has to do with community but the first one has to do with its shortness right so it has to be i would say like you know one to three characters and that has like a check box right there right and so obviously clay is a you know great example with dot c and his but then the second one is really is there already like an identity you know is there like an emotional attachment that you have around the name and you know and that may be another check box as well i think it exists like
(29:49) dot tx and dot sats and everything and then the third one would have to be with like does you know does the name already have like a meaning or recognition to like an average observer so like dot dj and dot sats you know there’s a community that understands you know what that represents what that means and then that fourth component really is just you know if if you as a tld owner are you gonna be engaging you know online are you gonna be engaging with others and so if i would say if you have two of those check boxes
(30:20) um you know then there’s a pretty good chance that you can be successful at doing these sld registrations if not this is just one of the many use cases you know for like handshake names what we’re doing right now there’s so many other possibilities and that’s what i kind of consult with different you know um you know startups or platforms on like using decentralized naming with their business but as it comes to the community um like here in texas my i would say like my goal you know like here in the foreseeable future is to
(30:51) form a strong handshake community here in austin um you know there’s over the past year or so you know like texas is being established as the bitcoin mining capital of the world and they have a lot of cloud and you know heavy hitters behind them and i want to do the same for handshake i really do think it’s important whether to form a community around like dot tx or just to be able to have hubs around the world from london to san francisco that’s really important for handshakes success and because and also
(31:23) with like atx i’m having all these meetups had one on tuesday with steve we’re going to be meeting again tomorrow and really you know that can help spread the word about handshake and then tx as well and i i would say like having those in-person engagements we need to get into that there’s oh my goodness there’s like dozens of different crypto and you know nft you know these groups here in austin where they’re just trying to rug people and you know it’s up to us to be able to spread you know spread the word because
(31:54) we know what is the future we understand technology and i would say that you know we’re a small community right but i would say one passionate community member is better than 10 passive speculators in my opinion and i think being in person you know helps passion be shared more easily in my opinion and so we’re gonna we just started last month we’re gonna continue to do it on a monthly basis having those meetups and having events during like huge gatherings like we did with south by southwest this week and we’re gonna
(32:24) keep on doing that all right so they’re uh they’re telling us we’re getting short on time so i’m gonna try to squeeze in like a really impactful question for all of us but unfortunately everybody’s gonna have to be kind of as quick as they can be to make sure that we can get it in so i think we’ll go play then john the knoll and then hopefully we can like convince them to extend time so i’m going to merge the last two questions that we kind of wanted to talk about and let’s think of this more as just
(32:48) like if you’re starting from scratch right like if if you just bought a brand new tld and you’re going to start right now and try to sell as many as you could using all the lessons you’ve learned like let’s let’s tackle that question from that angle so like what were the lessons learned and kind of your biggest successes and failures that you would avoid and then also kind of like what is your plan going forward right so basically give anything you want to give to try to help as many people as
(33:13) possible and short of the time as possible clay it’s all you go for it yeah um you know i i think for me the biggest stroke of luck that i had was that um i i had the funds at the time that dot c and one were available and they they were like both available within a couple days of each other uh and i was really focused on the space right then and um i think uh i think my two domains really you know once the once the initial marketing push happened um they they really haven’t need a lot of help to take off so i think marketing could
(33:46) absolutely accelerate them but i think uh you you absolutely have to pay attention to the fact that the tlds themselves do make a difference um so you know branding is absolutely important but i think if you have the right tlds just a lot of this just comes down to uh you know um how much uh you know just just sort of the innate appeal of the tlds uh marketing you can absolutely it’s been shown in this space that you can build uh a a tld with marketing uh almost alone so if we if we look at like xyz i think that’s a great
(34:24) example of uh very entrepreneurial uh players uh creating branding around so i think it’s important to know that that you can do both you can do it with sweat equity and with hard work and with brand equity uh and and but there’s a lot that can come uh also from just uh putting down the cash for uh really solid tlds yeah so i’ve got some thoughts on like choosing a name that’s really super important i think um so there are kind of categories of good names i think so you’ve got like extremely short tlds like dot one
(35:00) they’re so easy to remember spell pass on it’s almost impossible to mess up the domain name vc.1 for example uh so if you have like really short sld with a really short tld it’s going to be a bit of an easier sell then you’ve got kind of right of the dot tlds like dot d gen so you can put loads of words before it and it’s going to make sense so watch dot d gen dodge dot d gen sex dot d d gen um those are all sold um in reverse they don’t actually work that nicely so degen.watch it’s just not it’s
(35:33) not the way you would say it right then they’re kind of like domain hack tlds like um izm or ism so that you can say journal.ism tour ism capital.ism those are a little bit easier to sell i think um identity tlds like dot tx dot sats maybe even um and the reason they’re good is because it allows you to focus your marketing build the community sell the identity almost sell a flex right um and then there’s like crypto t of these because like it’s it’s way easier to sell this stuff to people who are
(36:04) going to just ap and buy something like for 12 that sounds cool so um i think dot sats is like that you know crypto dots huddle dots all those kind of memes um and then the best ones as as noel was saying like check more more than one box so dgn for example is good on the right of the dot it’s an identity it’s a crypto tld and it’s kind of short five letters uh dot sats is good on the right of the dot for what it addresses crypto tld and fairly short as well so the more of those boxes you can take the better then
(36:34) very quickly i would just do a one page site like make it semi professional it’s really easy there’s loads of ways you can do that and then get a twitter account and then just start conversing um with people honestly this is pretty much that simple um and and have a long time horizon and do something every day like small actions every day you’ll be surprised how they compound yeah it looks looks like we’re running out of time but um i mean basically what i already said i can share with anybody that checklist
(37:08) if anybody has questions about kind of like just evaluating tlds that you own to see if it would be a good fit for these sld registrations there’s just so many use cases i guess kind of like with the communication with what john was saying um something that i’ve learned is just like who i’m speaking to because my you know your word choice and communication is really dependent on your audience right so like i mentioned earlier like the different groups that i’m focused on so like for crypto then perhaps you can be able to
(37:38) use like those buzzwords like in a t or blockchain domain or hey web3 can’t exist without handshake that’s just a fact but for demainers maybe i’ll just say like hey you know tx is the domain for texas and then for like the texans it kind of just depends as i’m like conversing with them but you know maybe they’re pro freedom or privacy or i can make like the dot-com comparison for people that are kind of like outside the space period so sometimes i just kind of just break it down to say like dot tx is
(38:07) kind of like dot com but for texas and um and then also like texans also may like the censorship resistant like features um as well so just kind of this has been like a learning curve you know whether i’m communicating online or in person because if i say the same thing over and over again so no matter who i’m talking to you it’s not going to work their eyes are going to glaze over they’re like what is going on this guy’s crazy but if you learn on who you’re you know you’re connecting with
(38:35) and like realize what is important to them then i think you can be able to gain traction uh but besides community what i’m my future goals are you know maybe i’ll do something with that animation video it seems like somebody said put up on youtube so maybe i’ll do that you know i think that can help raise awareness and increase registrations besides that something i’ve been doing for the past few months doesn’t necessarily directly relate to tx but it’s really like business development for handshake
(39:00) you know we need to make it easier to access and use handshake names so i have a few things in development that i’m working on that i i believe will be some of the largest news of the year for handshake and what i would just say to everybody is we’re all directors of handshake you know it’s really important to take initiative you know spread the word you know dot tx dot sats even dot c clay you know it won’t be successful if handshake doesn’t succeed in the end right and so if you’re a handshake name owner you must
(39:33) be an ambassador all right on that note here’s mike to uh pull the plug on us well i mean i i think we’re talking in chats uh we’re on break time starting now uh but i mean there’s the room’s even getting more people joining since we even started so i think if panelists have a few more minutes and you know i do want to answer one particular question about the q and a because i think this is yeah it’s fairly relevant the point is we’re in break time for those that are here if if you are urging for a bathroom break or
(40:06) something or coffee or to go to networking you can you can do so um but i think we’ll extend a bit more during the break for uh those that want to stick around if panelists are able to do that screen so [Music] the question well i guess it’s kind of a tie but the question i’m looking at is do you believe mass tld portfolio acquisitions by major registrars doesn’t explicitly mention one but i think we all know which one they might be referring to we’ll pose a challenge for people marketing tlds with a fixed budget and
(40:43) limited marketing experience i have some fairly strong opinions about this but i will let the panel wait wait don’t wait that but you can’t do that come on what what do you think what do you think steve do i believe so yes i believe it poses a challenge but i actually think indirectly it poses an opportunity and i’m also a lunatic that thinks that everything is an opportunity but i think realistically the the opportunity there is and this is already happening right like there is a registrar right now that only
(41:15) markets their tlds and the opportunity is there’s a lot of other registrars in the ecosystem and they’re more than happy to promote every other tld because they haven’t taken the plunge necessarily or they got in too late or they don’t have you know 4.7 million in h s to buy a dot s on their own and so like i think realistically that approach is more in lockstep with the hand up handshake eco ethos anyway right like this idea that we are all doing this in a distributed decentralized manner and so yeah like if
(41:51) if one company decides that they want to promote a set of tlds then that’s great like that that’s part of this right everybody has the ability and the choice to do whatever they want to do but that also leaves a pretty big avenue for everybody to do it in a more decentralized manner and have more people come to the table and actually try to get to a larger user base but that’s just my opinion so i feel like the panel should weigh in on this because i’m breaking my rule of having the moderator talk
(42:23) um yeah yeah no no no no go john i’ll i’ll go after you uh well i just thought that you know there’s an opportunity to um to position to position these things slightly differently if you’ve got like a big corporate trying to sell you loads of slds on their tlds if you come at it send me the way i am like i’ve got my face on this stuff i’m a person i’m talking like i do in real life i’m being genuine and human i think you can differentiate yourself that way as well so as long as there’s
(42:57) um either distribution via you know things we build as a community or places like port you know or yeah as long as there’s some distribution and i think there’s a there’s a way to market yourself differently from any other thing and these these names are unique right you’re not gonna there’s there’s there’s some competition but it’s not like they’re gonna take our lunch i don’t think i’ve just jinxed it go on clay yeah um i just i think i would just echo what steve said
(43:31) um you know if if there’s a registrar that’s only promoting um tlds where they make 100 of the profits um the you know that that kind of uh aligns everyone else who isn’t getting promotion uh from that registrar with uh the huge number of uh of other registrars that are promoting.
(43:57) com and uh every single other uh other tld um there’s there’s no one registrar that owns this space um you know there’s there’s godaddy there’s namecheap but there’s a a very very long tail uh you know i personally buy most of my uh my tlds right now um you know i get them through google because i like the security that comes with authentication with my google account and i know uh you know you could get 10 people in the room and they probably use 10 different registrars so i think um you know i i would i would make this a distribution game and i
(44:31) think this space is a little bit uh too obsessed with um you know with with any one particular uh uh registrar and uh i think the the opportunity is really around um uh going wide and and that’s really what the space is going to need if it’s gonna take off it’s going to need as many registrars as possible uh educating the market about handshake do you want to jump in no i’m good if we if we haven’t time for another question let’s see do we have time for another question what question can we ask answer
(45:10) uh there’s a question for clay but i feel like i should answer that maybe directly to the guy something about what percentage of tlds do you all believe will end up having a limited shelf life uh i’ll just say really quickly that not every tld is suited for slds and that’s all i’ll say but you guys can yeah that’s that’s what oh sorry no no i’ll just say quickly that’s kind of what i was saying earlier like just because you know you see dot c everywhere and you may see some of our other ones out there on twitter doesn’t
(45:48) mean like what we’re doing is the only way you know for your handshake name so i mean i really think that building cool like with a handshake name and like having it be like a platform where you can be able to issue unlimited names and like people would want to join the club or whatever else that you have to offer for example earlier um you literally yesterday i kind of went to south by southwest of that um it was kind of like a you know web3 company called sonar and uh sonar i just found out about them last week and you you
(46:20) want to know what their business is digital identity and what’s at the core of it but a handshake name dot snr and so they’re not necessarily having you know listing on registrars they’re building really cool stuff and going to be integrating it with different you know platforms like you know netflix and like all these other ones you know as an example and you’ll want to go through their website to be able to get that snr things to be able to unlock kind of like your digital identity that they’re
(46:46) building out so you just need to be creative and think about all the you know different possibilities we’re still really early this is like the early 90s and us telling you like ever you know everything that’s going to exist 20 years from now when it comes to the internet it’s it’s not going to happen you have to go out there and you know bring these ideas into existence yeah and hey sorry i think we gotta we gotta cut it we’re our next uh speaker like we’re at time now uh so sorry to cut you guys short uh i i know
(47:19) this is really you’re not gonna get short i feel like we’re the longest or the longest session of the conference i’m proud of us um but we’re already getting comments this is people’s favorite panel so far um and yeah i mean i think it’s really great because we got you guys are doing it right you’re you’re you’re you’re in the in the trenches with your sl your tld staked and your uh you know sharing your insights has been very valuable so i really appreciate that and one other thing that i want to add
(47:46) one of the best things that you could do right now go get a dot c go get a dot go put some content on those websites and then submit them into the website race you can go and win up to 2.5 k h s you can find more information about it in the feed on the top right um but not only will that make those sub domains more valuable it’ll make handshake overall more valuable so definitely go put some content on some website guys cannot stress that enough to add to the website hackathon um i also like whoever builds like anything cool with dot tx as
(48:31) part of this hackathon i’m gonna give you a hundred hms too so there’s really no reason you automatically get 500 plus hns and then you’ll get another 100 hms for me just for building something without here i’ll do that two for dot c and dot one and guys yeah we got bonuses on bonuses money on top of money it’s raining it’s raining just met this message man there’s no money emoji all right everybody else they’re spamming all the other emojis so yeah hms for life this is awesome
(49:01) all right all right everybody let’s cut it and we’ll go to our next uh speaker session thank you guys for sharing thank you guys appreciate you guys thank you thanks steve thanks everyone [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] kinetic is a blockchain crypto investment firm based in hong kong and puerto rico founded in 2016 they were the first fund
(50:06) in hong kong and one of the earliest in asia with a portfolio of over 220 companies they were seed investors in such projects as ethereum parity and polka dot solana ftx and of course handshake in name base [Music] founder johan chu was an active investor and supporter of the handshake ecosystem over one hundred thousand domains co-founder of d-web foundation co-founder of handicon and sponsor of the handshake house at miami hack week 2022 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
(51:13) [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign