Love this!!!
~ Be open to seeing trends.
~ Recognize that something 'free' (the domain!) does not necessarily mean 'worthless.'
~ Jump in.
~ Figure it out.
~ Develop your assets.
~ Be a friend to others without trying to gain anything.
This deal evolved from a social meetup.
The seller's quote reminds me of the incredible, The Boss @million$$$smile - "I still didn’t exactly know how to get a website online but I knew I needed to. I had so much to learn about this Information Super-Highway."
In the words of Michael Castello, the domain owner who sold:
...It was 1994. I still didn’t exactly know how to get a website online but I knew I needed to. I had so much to learn about this Information Super-Highway. The name of my production company at the time was Powwow Productions. I wanted my musical website to be called Powwow.com so I went about trying to figure out how to get that name. I eventually registered Powwow.com after many months of trial and error. Most domain names were available like Hollywood.com or 777.com. Why would I need those, I thought? After a few months I again checked the whois for Hollywood.com and realized it and many others had been registered in the previous weeks. It hit me like a freight train that there were others grabbing these domain names.
I decided to register more, one being Whisky.com. I had the original registration in March of 1995, and I registered it for free...
Over the next several years I created a website for Whisky.com...
I was doing business in Toronto in 2013 and while on the jet I remembered a domain blog named Toronto Domainer. I wrote a post on this blog telling the author, Toofun, that I would be in his neck of the woods and asked if he would like to join me for a few drinks to talk domain names...
Toofun immediately started contacting companies, and within a day he had two offers for the “domain name only”: one offer for $200,000, and another for £1,000,000. I was very impressed, but I told him that he needed to get more for the name. At the time, I had another inside contact at a major whisky distillery that was pushing his company to make me a $3 million offer and I told Toofun about it...
Toofun told the buyer that we needed more than $3 million, and that there was another potential buyer at the same price. The buyer than came back with an offer at $3.1 million! That was a perfectly fair deal for me, and it was $100,000 more than the Vodka.com deal of 2006...
The buyer eventually agreed to a two month NDA [instead of indefinite]. Our lawyers drew up contracts, and the money was wired on January 2nd, 2014.
Full article at DN Journal:
The Amazing Ascent of Whisky.com: How Michael Castello Turned a Free Domain Into a $3.1 Million Sale
~ Be open to seeing trends.
~ Recognize that something 'free' (the domain!) does not necessarily mean 'worthless.'
~ Jump in.
~ Figure it out.
~ Develop your assets.
~ Be a friend to others without trying to gain anything.
This deal evolved from a social meetup.
The seller's quote reminds me of the incredible, The Boss @million$$$smile - "I still didn’t exactly know how to get a website online but I knew I needed to. I had so much to learn about this Information Super-Highway."
In the words of Michael Castello, the domain owner who sold:
...It was 1994. I still didn’t exactly know how to get a website online but I knew I needed to. I had so much to learn about this Information Super-Highway. The name of my production company at the time was Powwow Productions. I wanted my musical website to be called Powwow.com so I went about trying to figure out how to get that name. I eventually registered Powwow.com after many months of trial and error. Most domain names were available like Hollywood.com or 777.com. Why would I need those, I thought? After a few months I again checked the whois for Hollywood.com and realized it and many others had been registered in the previous weeks. It hit me like a freight train that there were others grabbing these domain names.
I decided to register more, one being Whisky.com. I had the original registration in March of 1995, and I registered it for free...
Over the next several years I created a website for Whisky.com...
I was doing business in Toronto in 2013 and while on the jet I remembered a domain blog named Toronto Domainer. I wrote a post on this blog telling the author, Toofun, that I would be in his neck of the woods and asked if he would like to join me for a few drinks to talk domain names...
Toofun immediately started contacting companies, and within a day he had two offers for the “domain name only”: one offer for $200,000, and another for £1,000,000. I was very impressed, but I told him that he needed to get more for the name. At the time, I had another inside contact at a major whisky distillery that was pushing his company to make me a $3 million offer and I told Toofun about it...
Toofun told the buyer that we needed more than $3 million, and that there was another potential buyer at the same price. The buyer than came back with an offer at $3.1 million! That was a perfectly fair deal for me, and it was $100,000 more than the Vodka.com deal of 2006...
The buyer eventually agreed to a two month NDA [instead of indefinite]. Our lawyers drew up contracts, and the money was wired on January 2nd, 2014.
Full article at DN Journal:
The Amazing Ascent of Whisky.com: How Michael Castello Turned a Free Domain Into a $3.1 Million Sale
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Last edited:
Access Restricted: Unlock 1,000,000+ Posts
Stop Peeking Through the Keyhole.
Open the Door.
You hit a wall because the best advice isn't free—it's earned. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has been active here daily (99.9% active rate), building a war room for entrepreneurs who refuse to settle for mediocrity.
- Active Daily: Life-changing content posted dozens of times every day. No dead threads.
- MJ's Inner Circle: Direct access to the author of The Millionaire Fastlane.
- Vetted Network: Connect with founders scaling to 7 and 8 figures.
- Proven Roadmaps: Strategy over motivation. Execution over "hustle porn."
"SCALED TO 6-FIGURE MONTHS"
"Tips and advice here saved me from huge mistakes, others allowed me to scale my business to 6-figure months."— User MitchC
"INSANE QUALITY OF PEOPLE"
"The number of high quality people I've met from this forum has been insane. All of it predicated on building real value."— User Richard Peck
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with."
Are you surrounding yourself with success?
