Domain King Aishwin Vikhona: Making Millions out of Domains

As a part of our BloggersIdeas interview series, today we have big time domain king  Aishwin Vikhona from Aurangabad. He is budding entrepreneur  who  is making millions out of his domain selling and buying business. Aishwin  will tell how he decided to be entrepreneur and not to do regular job from 9 to 5. 

I met Aishwin in Delhi in an event and we became friends as we understand each other business and now we decided to be business partner to launch our 2 products in market  in coming months. I learned a lot from his product skills. I am sure you will learn something new from him.

Please introduce yourself to the audience Aishwin ?

Hi, I am Aishwin Vikhona, an entrepreneur, running an IT startup. I love using technology to create a difference. I am keen  and innovative on my approach to bring in the market products / services that are unique and brings value. I am also an active domain investor, owner to thousands of domain names, including over a dozen premium LLL.com domains.
I am an author to a book called “Sell Domain Fast – A guide to help you sell domain names with real case studies” that’s on its way to launch the coming month.
I would love to connect with anyone with questions, my Skype is “aishwinv”. Furthermore you can add me to twitter, linked in or Facebook, my username is “aishwin”.

How & when did you started your entrepreneurship journey , how did the idea came for this hardcore domain market buying & selling ?

This was back in 2011-12 when I first had to buy a few domains and I happened to do some research before buying, I found lot of good domains available and I could not resist myself to buy few more for my future development.

Being into a marketing job helped me see the benefits that a right domain name can bring to an organisation, which eventually got me to believe in this idea of domain trading.

How is your journey going till now, are you enjoying by being free bird ?

The fact that I enjoy what I am doing makes me feel happy inside and being a self made person really feels at the top even after knowing that there’s so much more achieve.  The journey so far is just getting interesting with every single day with new network, contacts and opportunities coming in.

An office with a team size of 15 with lot of responsibilities makes it hard to actually be a *Free Bird*, but yes time and financial independence gives you the control to enjoy life the way you want it.

For how much long time you did your job ? Did you really enjoyed your work ?

I started my job journey way back when I was in my first year of Bachelors, I worked for over 5 years in job, 3 years part time job while graduation and 2.5 years full time after graduation. I started my job career as a counsellor at NIIT where I was awarded as the best counsellor for Maharashtra and Gujarat region within the 3rd month of joining.

I did enjoyed working and picking every job responsibility that came my way, I saw them as a challenge, I was above average at most of my jobs.

How your family reacted to your entrepreneurship decision ?

Since I come from a business family, it wasn’t that hard to convince my parents for entrepreneurship, but what eventually got hard to convince was my job which had a good pay package with 5 days working v/s a business with no plans of how its going to be.

The vagueness stretched me to work an year more in the job and it wasn’t a very good situation to be in, where my old friends / office colleagues weren’t supporting me at all and trying to explain the brilliant future my job would give me, I agree at what they had to say but I knew deep inside I cannot let this go for long. While my parents were skeptical, my younger brother did support me and actively pushed me to come out of the job cycle.

How you buy domain & sell them , how you find right buyer ?

While buying a domain, I see at lot of indications which gives me an idea if the domain can be sold in the future. Its a skill that gets developed over time and with experience.
Finding a right buyer requires research, lot of friends and other fellows within the industry had this question too. I have a team of sales expert who has years of experience now and works within our office, over time we developed a system to understand and point out the right buyers by using different lead generation tools, and search engines.

I introduced a service called DomainSaleLeads.com which offers name and email address in a list of 100+ end right buyers for the domain name. This is a professional service which I realized that would be very helpful and lot of domain brokers use our service to find the right buyers.

Don’t you think domain buying & selling is risky business, sometime you might feel that you invested a lot but didn’t get enough in return ?

Buying and selling domains is indeed a risky business, often this business is called a digital real estate, but there’s a difference if you buy a traditional flat in your neighbourhood you can be sure that the value of the property will remain constant if it did not go up, this is not true with domain names, the value of a domain name is in the eye of beholder. If you bought a trendy or a brandable domain, the value will greatly determine to whom you’re selling it to.
While buying a 4, 5 or a 6 figure domain there comes a time when you feel insecure about the purchase, if you do not do your research well or if you’re not confident inside its not a good idea to invest. Its important to know that its okay to take calculated risks, because that’s the defining factor in the industry.

How you negotiate with buyer, how you read buyer mindset ?

Good Negotiation with the buyer comes with experience and is a learning process, every negotiation still teaches me something new about the business. Lot of times looking at how the buyer sends the first mail or replies to your emails, you get an idea of what’s going on, this comes with experience and I prefer experimenting. 😉

From where did you learn this skill of buying & selling premium domain, do you have any mentors ?

I learned along the way and did paid a huge for my old mistakes, Every domain that I bought got me a step ahead at understanding what does and what does not works, but its still an everlearning process. Internet surfing, skype contacts, forums, and attending events helped me connect lot of right people which did helped me get more insight and to learn the skill.

What advice you would like to give to newbies who are into this domain business ?

I would advice newbies to do a good research before buying a domain, at times we just get excited and buy it later to realize we really did not required it. Also buying a domain is half a battle, the remaining half is selling it, so focus on selling as well. Keep a track of all the domains you buy and make sure you do not miss the renewal deadlines.

Note: Please do not buy Trademark Domains, it will never sell and you can be in trouble later. If you have any trademark domain its advisable to get rid of it or login to your account and delete it.

Are you planning to launch your own products ? What other businessplans you have for 5 yrs down the line ?

Since my inclination and interest towards domain names I’ve introduced a few products and services that is helping lot of domain name investors as well as brokers in either buying /selling domains. Few of them are as follow.
www.dnSaleScript.com : A script that will show a “Domain for Sale” page to all your domains in a few clicks. Manage 100’s of domains, see analytics and get enquiries.
www.BulkWhoisFinder.com : A dot net software to find whois emails of list of domains in excel format.
www.domainsaleleads.com : A lead generation service to find right buyer for your domains.

For the business plans, I am always open for opportunities that challenges me and takes me to a new level. Currently I am focusing majority of my time to my startup “Global Websoft” where we innovate new ideas and develop them and also take projects for development.

Wanna live Aishwin’s lifestyle 

Email id: [email protected]

Connect with him online here :
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/aishwin
Linkedin : http://linkedin.com/in/aishwin
Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/aishwin

I hope you enjoy this interview with Domain expert Aishwin. If you have any questions about this interview, please do ask in the comments below !

Don’t forget to share this awesome interview on social media. I will be pleased if you share this now! Join BloggersIdeas on Facebook, Google+ & Twitter .