Tom Nardone is President of PriveCo - The World's Most Private Company. He's a huge believer in generic domains. How much so? He paid a cool $1 Million dollars for Vibrators.com and claims "I am not a rich dude. " Also, in 1999 he paid $64k for Bachelorette.com and have turned it into the world's largest store for bachelorette party supplies. He is only in the business of selling private items. Tom gives some perspective on generic names, online business and what works.
Mike: Tom, you have some awesome generic domain names. Can you tell be a little bit about yourself before we get into the details?
Tom: Sure, My name is Tom Nardone and I'm the founder of a company called PriveCo. We are in the business of selling items that are embarrassing to buy in person. We sell them online and ship them to customers in the utmost privacy. Then, we hold the customer's information in the strictest confidence. We've been in business since 1998 and have served over 600,000 customers.
Mike: In our first email contact, you told me that you paid a million bucks for Vibrators.com and that your not a rich dude. When did you buy the domain and how did you manage to raise the money?
Mike: In that first email contact, you also mentioned that in 1999 you paid $64k for Bachelorette.com and have turned it into the world's largest store for bachelorette party supplies. Is this how you got started?
Mike: How is the business of "private items?" Are you doing well? Are you looking to expand into other types of products?
Mike: Do you do any marketing of these names or do you leverage organic search and type-in traffic exclusively?
Mike: Are you willing to share your traffic volume? Do you have any idea of what percentage of the volume comes from type-in traffic?
Mike: Do you own any other domain names?
Mike: You've paid some serious money for domain names. How do you decide what a fair price for a domain name is?
Mike: Any advice for those people looking to acquire premium domains like yours and develop a business around it?