Podcast With Alex Drew

Unlocking the Power of Aged Domains with Alex Drew

Show Notes

In this episode of the Agency Insider Podcast, I sit down with Alex Drew, the founder of ODYS, to discuss the transformative potential of aged domains in SEO and digital marketing. Alex shares his journey from bootstrapping his business with just $200 to building a thriving domain marketplace. We delve into the impact of Google updates on aged domains, the benefits of using aged domains for SEO, and how affiliate marketers can leverage them to rebuild credibility and improve rankings.

In this deep dive, Alex shares his journey from borrowing $200 to building an empire, emphasizing why aged domains are a game-changer for SEO.

We'll explore:

• SEO Strategies for 2024: How aged domains can drive more organic traffic and boost your search engine rankings.
• Real-World Success Stories: Hear how businesses transformed their online presence using aged domains.
• Practical Tips: Learn how to evaluate and leverage aged domains to improve visibility and rank higher on search engines.

Whether you're a seasoned SEO pro or a beginner, this podcast is packed with actionable insights to help you stay ahead of the curve.

Alex also provides insights into managing remote teams, the evolving landscape of SEO with AI, and exciting new features and services from ODYS. Tune in to hear success stories, best practices for AI-driven content, and learn about the ODYS mentorship program aimed at nurturing the next generation of SEO experts.

Chapters:

00:00 – Intro

0:50 – Who is Alex Drew

4:29 – Alexs other ventures

5:49 – Google March update

10:03 – Expired domains

12:12 – Benefits of Aged Domains

17:32 – Success Stories

23:34 – Role of Aged Domains

26:08 – Can Affiliates Leverage Aged Domains

31:27 – The Future of SEO

34:36 – AI in Domains

37:38 – AI generated content

40:46 – Managing and motivating remote employees

45:13 – How to hire remote employees

47:21 – Whats next for Odis

51:07 – Odis Mentor Program

53:07 – Expanding the Mentor Program

Transcript

Intro

0:00 welcome back to my podcast session agency Insider where we talk about

0:05 agency owners and the pain which agency goes especially in the digital marketing uh field today I got a special guest

0:12 Alex Ru from

0:18 [Applause]

0:23 [Music] ODS today I got a special guest Alex Ru

0:29 from Aus I hope I pronounce it right there are couple of way to

0:35 pronounce it one of it is the original Craig Campbell Way which is

0:41 oys that's the British way and then the I call it the more International form is

0:46 like Odis all right all right so guys I have

Who is Alex Drew

0:51 Alex who is here with me and uh Alex can you start by introducing yourself and

0:57 telling about your journey in the SEO and how ois came in life so I'm o I'm Alex I'm

1:06 the founder of Odus I don't really have a lot to say about me except the fact

1:12 that I work a lot and the company was bootstrapped literally with $200 that I

1:17 borrowed from my sister like I think 15 years ago because that's where the journey actually started so I literally

1:23 borrowed $200 from my sister to buy some domains buy some age domains and start some sites and that's how it started

1:30 because obviously I had something going on but that was the the I sort of like the the Tipping Point the break point

1:37 where I actually shifted in the direction not pure SEO but more like domaining and generally speaking I'm I'm

1:43 bad at SEO like I don't want to say that I'm really good like I'm bad at SEO I suck at SEO but I just try to make SEO

1:49 work for ourselves and for our clients so when we get the chance to tackle

1:55 strategy I look at objectives and I see which ones of the current methodologies approaches to seos strategies will help

2:03 them achieve their goals regardless of how different you know SEO communities

2:08 or groups May interpret that or it can be like paid traffic it can be anything

2:14 it can be a mix it can be like a general marketing goal so more or less for me it's more like a domaining side of me

2:21 than an SEO side of me even though recently we've worked on some very ambitious SEO projects so well I can

2:27 make SEO work if if that that's how you tackle it so my journey started around 17 15 years ago I

2:35 think way longer than most wellknown people in the industry today is just that for me everything I do is a

2:42 long-term Journey so I've met and lost

2:47 and met them again and networking with a lot of people throughout this journey and those some of them I still have in

2:54 my contact some of them completely gave up on it but you know folks like James

3:00 douly for instance folks like Craig Campbell Folks like Matt digity yourself who've been for a very long time in the

3:07 industry they just view this as a longterm Journey career so who whoever

3:12 stays in the game will end up staying in the game because at some point if you win or lose it's your decision and the

3:18 decision is I give up I go out and one by example I have is 2012 when Google

3:26 launched their penguin update and up until 2012 everyone was very heavy on exact match imp partial match anchor Tex

3:34 this is how everyone ranked right so and when the update come came everyone lost their sights and some people thought

3:40 like well that's the end of the world I'm going to give up on it and even me I went to P pay traffic for like three

3:46 months but then again it's not not the end of the world like you take what's left you take what you learned and you

3:52 move forward and every single person I know who managed to recover and even

3:58 more had the tools the strategy and the mindset to stand up

4:05 every single time they fall have succeeded literally no one failed right that that's that's more or less what it

4:12 is in in the journey so I somehow consider myself a veteran if I start

4:18 remembering the old days but there are so many young awesome talented people

4:23 who just pop up out of nowhere and they're much better than us at everything they do so I have to respect that yes yes absolutely absolutely so do

Alexs other ventures

4:33 you have any other business or just Odes I have some other Ventures actually

4:38 when I started Odis as a brand in 2018 I decided to give up on everything

4:43 because there's so much you can focus on I'm not GV I cannot start 15 things at I'm not Alon musk I'm just a simple guy

4:50 who who tries his best to to start a business right so I had websites I had some uh joint ventures with other guys I

4:58 sold everything I could and I puted all the money into Odis these days we may we

5:03 have some you know smaller projects here here and there um even through the let's

5:10 say the pris of domain selling sometimes on the agency side which we do have by the way Odis has an agency side someone

5:17 may be Keen to invest in our domains or acquire them but they don't necessarily know what to

5:23 do with them so the question is like Alex can you guys as an agency as a team help us achieve these goals these

5:30 objectives with your domain and then obviously if you have capacity we can help and that's a means to sort of like

5:36 help with the add more value when when it comes to using these domains successfully so um right now not much

5:43 except Odis but I kind of sleep at night if you know what I mean right I do know uh so so now let's

Google March update

5:53 of course this is an agency podcast we going to talk about Google how can we not when it's they that so so when it

6:01 comes to the I mean you know there's a recent Google March Google update which happened recently lot of websites were

6:08 impacted in fact there was a lot of human and cry in the affiliate World a

6:13 lot of people said affiliate marketing doesn't work especially after the uh uh

6:19 the hcu and now this in September so all these so have has this update affected

6:25 the market of age domains it did but towards a certain extent earlier today I

6:31 was on a podcast with Steve Conor from White press and he launched a new podcast on link building and um he C he

6:39 comes from the restaurant business and in the restaurant business he used to we're talking link building in general and how people perceive it as gray hat

6:46 white hat black hat blue hat green cat whatever hat and then he said in the restaurant business everyone every

6:53 single guy who has a place like a local business abuses trust pilot through

6:59 their friends family cousins sisters grandfathers grandmothers they abuse trust pilot like trust pilot is the

7:05 Monopoly for reviews you get ranked higher because of trust pilot reviews everyone games trust pilot now Google

7:12 came as a wrath with all their wrath as a monopoly over and took over the search

7:17 market right and people expect people business owner not to figure out how to tackle and to deal with Google so at

7:25 some point the reason I'm saying this because if trust pilot were to push a cleansing algo like an algo update to

7:31 get rid of the potential fake reviews would that be an end of the world for restaurant owners because now they can't

7:38 use their sister nephews and grandfathers to to push more fake reviews maybe they have a great place but they cannot wait five years for the

7:45 place to get legitimate organic reviews right right so when it comes to Google

7:50 we are playing in their on their Turf like we have to accept whatever comes to

7:56 us now as business owners we have to prepare some people lost their SEO business because they basically didn't

8:03 have enough financially big enough buffer to start all over so let's say you make 10 grand a month and let's say

8:09 you need five grand to operate your business and then the simplest question is do I have a financial buffer of at

8:15 least three to six months where I can use the funds to pay my team and keep operations going even

8:22 though I all of a sudden receive no income most people don't have that they have five 10 grand making and they're

8:28 you know getting a new Lee on a car they they're doing all this crazy stuff thinking that this is going on forever so basic lack of business skills ends up

8:36 killing businesses not Google and now everyone who's been parasiting Google

8:42 with affiliate marketing and content Rich sites which adds very little value with the exception of few the goal is to

8:47 basically you know be the middleman between traffic and advertisers right and make money who complains that Google

8:54 kind of kill businesses well Google is runs their own business you either adapt to it just like trust pilot or you do

9:00 not adapt to it so for me it has affected because very less affiliate

9:06 Market is mainstream affiliate Market as I'd call them who just want to launch a Content sites and make a $100 a day with

9:12 ads or just pushing you know a couple of sales to Amazon those we get Less sales

9:17 from but there are growing markets in certain regions of the world

9:23 which consume a tremendous amount of domains and where domains work extremely well and they're accept age domains

9:30 nothing works there and where this works to such an extent that it makes very little sense to actually use anything

9:38 else and uh while sometimes when you operate in a market and you have different segments so I view this as a

9:44 segment but a good business will operate in different segments imagine like you have the MacBook you have the iPhone you

9:49 have the iPad you have the iatch so the iPhone sales has plummeted a little bit but this doesn't mean that we have don't

9:56 have any other markets or segments market seg so in a way this is how I put it okay so

Expired domains

10:03 so now you know in March also Google emphasized about the low quality content and of course uh new spam updates they

10:10 said it's going to hit expired domains but although I have yet to see an Evidence so is there a way you guys have

10:19 adopted to ensure that the domains you provide meets the new standards or some parameters you

10:26 introduced I think Google has somehow copied what we have been preaching for

10:31 years but the problem is we're very small company so if you were to kind of compare the share of voice of Odis

10:40 versus Google Odis would be like a blinking star somewhere and Google will

10:45 be the sun right when they say something everyone hears it when we say something we basically have a few friends and

10:52 maybe a couple of authority figures within the industry that might amplify our message and we have been preaching

10:58 for years guys we are number one at due diligence the the percentage of accepted domains in

11:05 the marketplace we have a sell your domains program Syd well you can list your domains for sale is

11:11 0.4 so basically you need from 100 domains well barely a domain would pass

11:17 the the and we check for everything like trademarks due diligence previous abuse repurposing everything like if you want

11:23 to start a website you'd rather check all those things so basically what Google says is do as Odis has been

11:30 preaching all these years like because at the end of the day if you check none of our domains have been abused

11:36 repurposed we're against that right so like and that's the claim because they

11:42 say don't abuse aftermarket domains well obviously you also say don't abuse them but I cannot control how people use them

11:48 just like they have Edwards account and everyone is buying a fake Edwards account and fake virual credit cards and

11:56 running gambling in countries where it's illegal through fake Google ad WS account and Google is saying don't do

12:01 that yet they take the money yes which is again not a problem everyone has to

12:06 run their business but just saying that it is what it is right everyone has to

12:11 make money just like how Google used to say AMD doesn't work and EMD does work

Benefits of Aged Domains

12:17 it's it's kind of same thing right right right right so so when SEO and AG domain

12:23 had a unique relationship because Google I mean of course that when the bank

12:29 update came and everything then it became very tough for new websites to rank and that's where you started your

12:36 journey as well so so I mean for a user who is listening it for the first time

12:41 for the uh can you explain the unique benefits of using age domain for SEO

12:48 especially in the current landscape because is it because on an average a age domain would cost me something

12:53 around a couple of good domain anything less not less than a couple of thousand dollars so what do I get what is the

12:59 benefit of using an age domain when I'm trying to start my business looking keeping Google in

13:05 mind back in the days like three five years ago I think most people who have objected buying from a reseller as some

13:12 I interpret Odis even though we're sort of like a Marketplace so if you're listing your domains we're Mar your

13:18 domain we're a Marketplace it's we're not reselling your domains we're just facilitating the sale right and they would object that buying from GoDaddy

13:25 would give you better margins would save you money nowadays as you said like a good domain will cost a couple thousand

13:30 dollars and prices have skyrocketed for the domains s of similar

13:37 criteria God Daddy is actually higher price these days because the auction system facilitates them inflating the

13:43 price whereas the average price of a similar domain in Otis is around $2.5

13:49 $3,000 in in go at it can go even higher just because of it's It's a bidding

13:54 system it makes people want to bid more to win so and you also don't get the stress of being a bid and staying up

14:00 late bidding for domains that's one thing in terms of the benefits look it really depends on the objectives there

14:07 are there are at least three different scenarios where you can successfully use

14:12 age domains and it really depends on the business model but let's tackle it from I want to launch a new site do I start

14:18 it on an age domain or do I start it on a new domain so if we see the domaining world from

14:25 General perspective if you want to Launch

14:30 a marketing agency and you want to call it traffic.com well you cannot hand register traffic.com if you had the

14:38 chance to register it in 1993 or 1994 maybe you have registered so in other

14:44 words there are no good domains available for registration all the good domains available for registration are

14:50 either new ctld new gtlds like do page dot whatever do Investments which are

14:56 in. com right or they you have to use like grow like um sort of like uh naming

15:04 hacks um sort of like Odis globe. for Odis Global or you have to go

15:11 like my degrees online best.com which is not really a great name right so the

15:17 reason to choose to look in the aftermarket for the ma is like when you look for a unique Car like those 70s

15:24 Ferraris aren't made anymore you cannot just buy a new one you have to look in the aftermarket have to find just like a

15:29 so so same goes with a domain you the only reason you choose a domain from the aftermarket is name

15:35 uniqueness so I could give you the example of transferwise.com rebranding from wise.com they couldn't had register

15:42 wise.com they had to buy it from the aftermark which happen to have an enormous amount of backlinks which they

15:49 took advantage of so if you looked at why at transferwise or wise.com in h you will see like a spike in grank Kings

15:54 after the rebranding which was a 301 redirect basically so that's one the reason second of all if you are SEO sevy

16:01 and you understand the benefit not only you will use the name to your advantage you will also use whatever it comes from

16:07 and it comes with trust it comes with almost impossible to replicate links it may come with traffic it may comes with

16:14 type in traffic wise.com had a lot of type in traffic because it's a great name short name

16:19 pronounceable and I think even for SEO the biggest Advantage is that you can

16:25 temporarily at least temporarily shift your mindset away from link building so focus on building a great site a great

16:31 business which has a foundation of links focus on a Content strategy focus on user experience focus on as Google say

16:39 great content to begin with because the main problem is well SEO is sort of like

16:44 off page on page and user Behavior so when most people start if they let's say you have a $10,000 budget to start a new

16:50 online business you will use five for links basically or paying people to get

16:55 links or whatever the means to acquire links and the other five for cont whereas with an age domain you kind of

17:01 shift away from the link building mindset at least for 3 to six months if you're playing a long-term gay and now

17:07 you can really focus on your users on building a newsletter on content on scaling which I think is a distinctive

17:13 advantage and that mind shift shift alone okay the mindset alone is is of

17:19 Great Value and very few people understand that they think that it just a means to rank higher it just means to rank high in a way but it also save you

17:26 time and money and resources and help you focus more on the actual business

17:31 right now so that's a great point you said of course and I'll especially the

Success Stories

17:37 idea you don't have to go mad buying links you could focus on content good web design because at the end of the day

17:44 what user do on your website when it lands is far more important than how you rank I I still exactly yeah exactly yeah

17:51 so so uh you've been in this business could you share some success stories I mean if you are allowed to do so about

17:58 some some uh client who had a great uh Improvement in their business or

18:05 substantial Improvement in the SEO performance using age domains brought from you guys yeah there are a couple of

18:11 case studies being shared around I could probably reference some of those but usually you know due to

18:18 how generally speaking success stories are perceived in the SEO World everyone wants to copy that so usually even

18:24 clients that were able to help a lot they kind of insist we don't share their websites there are lots of website that

18:31 are doing well but I would rather talk about business models I could probably mention a few here in there but the the

18:38 way to basically you either buy an age domain with a great name that you like and our current CMO Andre from Croatia

18:46 he used to he was the founder of investors Club it was a Marketplace of buying and selling online businesses

18:53 just like in P flippers and he was also the founder of alpha investors.com which was the agency site

18:59 and he also launched an online business and site management Agency on Buzz

19:06 logic.com now buz lodging.com he ended up buying from Odis without me knowing

19:11 so he's currently team Odis but like four years or five years ago when he bought he basically logged into his Odis

19:17 account he added Buzz logic to card which is apparently was a domain name that was selling and he bought an entire

19:24 Agency on it now the reason I mentioned buz logic.com is because I'm really proud of what he did unlike other

19:29 affiliate marketing story which is slap a shitload of content and hope it Ry to make money this one is a legitimate

19:35 business he actually started on a great domain name now I think um like I think two or three years ago he sold his

19:41 entire portfolio so investors Club ire flippers and basically he exited right

19:48 and at some point he got bored so he wanted to join our team just because he's a great marketer and he helps us

19:53 out just out of boredom not because he needs a job he's just a great person and we're really lucky to have him but that

19:59 was a great success story because he ended up building a legitimate business and as far as the content strategy I

20:05 think he ended up having a great blog with content and things had gone up now if you look recently those who bought

20:11 the entire portfolio I think they killed the site because they don't know what because getting ranked and staying

20:17 ranked is one thing but constantly growing is much more difficult yes so I could probably share that at the case

20:22 study and there are a couple of others um that that was that was a case study

20:27 when they actually bought the domain and built on the domain for two reasons first of all great sounding main Buzz

20:34 logic.com I could you don't I don't even have to spell it like buzz logic doublez logic.com to dictionary words great name

20:41 and second of all it had a great back bling profile and it made things much easier for them they shouldn't wouldn't have to invest thousands in buying links

20:49 or getting of getting kickstarting from the very beginning we have another case study a pharmacy from from UK wo.com so

20:58 well.com is run by a good friend of mine Adonis well we ended up talking quite a

21:03 lot of times before he actually started this business and he wanted an AG domain but he couldn't find one just as great

21:10 as Bas Logic for a pharmacy so he went to brandbucket tocom and bought wo.com and then he came to us and sought help

21:19 because wo.com had zero backlinks pointing to it so he was SEO Savvy and

21:25 we found a great domain name and we used it as a means to three one redirect and if you check the back bling profiles you

21:30 see what I'm talking about so that has shifted let's say him in the right

21:36 direction and there are a couple of similar success stories and a third one like as a case study I think age domain

21:43 is link building because if you really look at an age domain with let's say at least 100 referring domain unique ones

21:50 and you would compare that to and you'd have to spend two and a half $3,000 on it and it has let's say not many

21:59 10 15 20 High Authority backlinks that would be impossible to replicate like New York Times Huffington Post like

22:06 Forbes stuff like these are references on the web that you would have to pay a

22:11 lot of money to get right and if you divide the total amount of these links and the cost of the domain or the

22:17 investment in the domain and you divide them by the the links that you got you get like a really good deal so you can

22:24 use relevant age domain as a means to link build and to build more link links to your site but not as most people

22:31 perceive it more like media buying right right for instance and I'll

22:37 end up with this if you have a domaining related domain I would buy that right away if it has traffic link because in a

22:44 in the domaining business you want to own as many domaining assets as you have because those are sources of traffic just like adrew Ros Rosner sorry from

22:52 media options one of the top brokers in the world he bought domain sha.com domain sha.com was founded by Michael

22:59 cus I think and he's now with GoDaddy he's also the founder of DN Academy and domain sha was a domaining related blog

23:07 with a podcast with traffic with assets and Andrew Rosner simply bought that because he needs more domaining related

23:14 assets so when it comes to age domains you just have to view it from a business perspective I need more of what I'm

23:21 selling so if you're in a specific business you just buy more assets that would help you get more business through

23:29 and that's how you perceive age domains as well it's really no different okay now so after all this

Role of Aged Domains

23:37 updates so how do you foresee the role of age domains evolving uh I mean in the

23:42 coming years with this scoy over the user experience content and of course with Google do you see the role of how

23:50 do you see it evolving it's growing much faster than I

23:55 thought it would ever be ah and the price that you see the skyrocketing in pricing at auctions is uh is the best

24:02 example or the best proof of that domains that would sell for $500 like three five years ago are now selling for

24:09 at least three to 5,000 so what else drives the price up

24:15 except demand and if there is a demand there is a use for them yes absolutely

24:21 and that's basic economics I don't even have to prove anything most people understand that's common sense now I

24:26 don't have the data for United States or but I've been talking with a good Mentor of mine and he said in Germany

24:32 alone around 500,000 businesses start a year and around 500,000 businesses fail

24:39 every year and that's Germany alone and maybe there is a percentage that kind of stays in the business now

24:45 all those and these days we're talking about the digital era we're talking about AI all those businesses with a

24:52 very few exceptions they register domains and they try to amplify them marketing

24:58 efforts and all good marketing efforts result in links and links is what forms an age domain now obviously you have a

25:05 lot of age domains coming to the aftermarket and that's just Germany alone and that's one of the top

25:10 economies G7 right but you also have United States and you have other other Jews and there's a lot of domains in the

25:16 aftermarket coming from failed companies failed startup failed organizations nonprofits agencies etc etc etc which

25:24 are great use to someone else now someone agency might fail but mine or yours didn't so we may find their domain

25:32 very valuable or let's say you're a lawyer and some guy decided to change careers but he had a great domain we

25:40 sold NY lawyer.com New York lawyer.com we sold it to dolman Law Group so NY

25:45 lawyer was Ran by A team talking about you know like the the um like everything

25:53 lawyer New York right the entire New York scene and he offers his services in New

25:59 York now those gave up on the project but he he found a great use for it right

26:04 so why wouldn't he buy that media right for himself so I know a lot of affiliate

Can Affiliates Leverage Aged Domains

26:10 marketers are listening this show so and of course affiliate marketing and trust

26:15 issues after this recent update has caused a lot of trust issues in

26:20 affiliate sites I mean not just because of age domain people have given up a affiliate site because of the Google

26:26 helpful content update which nobody till date has been able to recover and now then the March update where AI hit so so

26:34 just for those affiliate marketers how do you think can the Affiliates leverage age domains to rebuild credibility and

26:41 improve their rankings and first of all can they still do it so look I I think

26:47 Google doesn't have a problem with age domains or any type of domains they have a problem with their reputation or

26:55 certain business models being abused to an extent where their reputation suffers for instance they don't care about age

27:02 domains or new domains in fact if you were to compare the total amount of affiliate sites ran overall in existence

27:10 I think AG domains would be a very small percentage of that more just on on brand new domains which have buil grown been

27:16 growing in time so does this mean that Google hates new domains or whatever doain no they have a problem with the

27:23 business model because it makes them look bad so let's say even basic like

27:28 keywords which are very famous B best let's say best sneakers or best sneakers

27:34 for running if you Google best sneakers for running I'm not sure what pops up but if you have Forbes popping up even

27:41 though Forbes is like a financial site Google doesn't look as bad as if number

27:46 one would be mine or yours your blog with i' say less than average web design

27:53 and with no real credentials and with no real skin in the game or business and

27:58 this doesn't make them look good so at the end of the day if affiliate marketers running websites would make

28:05 them look good and still make them more money they wouldn't push for that update but it neither makes them money nor

28:10 makes them look good in which case this is a problem they have to solve now why do people choose affiliate marketing

28:17 that is the first question that we have to answer well because of very few responsibilities all you have to do is

28:22 drive traffic and if you're good at driving traffic and understanding which keywords converted you can make money no operation

28:28 no supplying nothing it's a it's very easy right no logistic it's a very no

28:35 agency you can do it from your bedroom right yes it's a very lazy business

28:40 model there is no skin in the game you don't have to issue any refunds right you don't have to handle anything you

28:46 don't have to handle customer support it's not a real business so to speak it's sort of like parti parasite

28:53 parasites writing parasites because there is the difference between a LinkedIn parasite and your affiliate blog is still a par

28:58 s so people Google doesn't like when there are sites not representing real

29:04 businesses where people can write reviews complaints interact with a Bo real business pick up the phone call

29:11 somebody um and so so I think the the main problem that affiliate marketers

29:17 have to understand is how Google perceives them as a business we have a good client in us he's in the long care

29:23 business and he's very successful with using 301 redirect to power up his site

29:28 but if you check his website I may share it with you privately just out of curiosity you will see that he's a la

29:36 care business he actually provides a service he also has a lawn care Academy

29:41 where he teaches other people how to start their own business where you have to pay a fee and he's very successful he

29:46 has a 60,000 last time I I checked YouTube channel where he actually shows

29:51 them how to do it besides that he has an e-commerce site same site all these on the same site three business models an

29:58 e-commerce side of the business where he sells pesticides insecticides weed

30:03 killers and for the products that he cannot Source or fulfill himself he

30:09 actually recommends them from for Amazon and has a Content side of the the business where he actually links to

30:14 Amazon and makes mine as an affiliate if you check past two years you will see nothing has affected him all these

30:22 updates and the difference between his content and affiliate content is that no difference like there are a lot of

30:28 affiliate sites with very good content so the problem is in the business model but he puts himself out there he has

30:34 legitimate social media accounts he's that I think he drives more traffic and by the

30:39 way the multiple traffic sources is a very important signal to Google if Google sees that you only drive traffic

30:45 to Subs most likely you're trying to gain them if they see that 30 50% of your traffic comes from YouTube most

30:51 likely you're a real business there are more signals so overall he hasn't been affected at all but he has a real

30:57 business real LSC real address puts his face out there he answers his phone call

31:03 so Google kind of feels you know I wouldn't say it's empowered but they don't feel shy from

31:10 ranking such a site because this is a real good business run by a legitimate business owner with affiliate Market

31:17 it's the total opposite that's why they will always get Hammer because I'm not saying their content is bad but there is

31:23 very little value and there is no one picking the phone that's why Google doesn't like it so it's so it's more

The Future of SEO

31:28 like if you still want to be in affiliate marketing it's it's not going to be a lazy marketing it's not it's

31:35 definitely it's not for the lazy guys you really need to treat it like a business not just like another website

31:41 those times are over yeah definely def now now we heard about lot of about the

31:47 sge and the self generative experience which Google been trying of course in trying different way do you do you

31:54 foresee the landscape of SEO and affiliate marketing of course these things changing and I mean of course

32:01 with every new thing there are challenges as well as opportunities so what do you see with these compared to

32:07 AG domain how is going to the turn out I think every single Niche where

32:13 website is required will be able to use an age domain that's not an issue but with sge at and with anything that

32:20 implies instant answers and AI I kind of think that makes sense because my

32:25 daughter she's 5 years old and she is not typing in the cies she's voice searching I taught her how to voice

32:32 search so she's voice voice searching me myself I think couple months back she said Daddy can you cook me some rice and

32:39 I know how to cook rice but I want to double check if it's like 16 minutes or 18 minutes I have to boil it or so I

32:45 really needed that time and how long do I have to cook rice and if I stumbled upon an affiliate s where I have to go

32:50 through the answer like for for for 30 seconds to find out that it's 18 minutes

32:56 that would been a bad experience and I kind of Googled how do I have to B the r and 18 minutes problem solved you

33:02 set done now we're going to eat in 18 minutes so what I'm trying to say from a user perspective and just everything is

33:08 so fastpaced that's a necessary thing and we have to all adapt to it however

33:13 if I want to look for a very specific product or service or expertise or

33:19 review I cannot rely on Google because well I might need someone else's opinion

33:25 or if I want to read specifically your site or your blog because you're an expert or you may be a physician or a

33:31 doctor or an engineer or an AI uh expert I want to go directly to your blog in

33:37 which case you're going to need an age domain you're going to need a web presence you cannot just rely on Google

33:43 or other AI Bots scraping and interpreting your content so a web presence is still necessary especially

33:49 when talking about Brands because that's an informational keyword how to cook rice or how long to cook rice but when

33:56 we're talking about buying Cur or or even brands well Google is trying certain things but I think at the end of

34:02 the day if they will if I want to if I want to go to page traffic and I'm going

34:08 to do a query like AG domains Paget traffic.com because I know you have a good article on AG to me well Google

34:15 cannot you know hide that from me else that is a bad user experience and overall their market share will shrink

34:22 because they're not satisfying the search cury right so I think there is still a good place for domains in

34:28 general an age domain it's still too early because a lot of people were scared that websites are gone well websites cannot be gone for as long as

34:34 Brands exist right right so you know with SG comes the AI and of course with

AI in Domains

34:41 their AI coming rapidly into SEO has AI influenced the way you guys evaluate and

34:47 utilize H domains have you used some aspects of it definitely we we even like

34:52 in our corporate strategy we would have like we have like the general strategy the financial strategy operation

34:58 strategy marketing strategy like you have all kind of strategies and we even have an AI strategy and our a strategy

35:05 is our clear commitment to embracing AI because we are moving through to the AI era like you will have everything AI

35:12 soon except human creativity which I think would be tough for a to compete

35:17 but we'll we'll see about that but we're trying to embrace we're not trying to fight it we're trying to embrace it because AI is the perfect assistant in

35:24 so many tasks and for instance with the use of technology in AI we've managed to improve so many processes where

35:32 elsewhere we'd have to overhire just for handling spikes because you cannot

35:37 predict when a spike in something will happen let's say a spike in extra domains to check per day so let's say

35:44 today we could have had 300 more domains submitted by sellers than yesterday and

35:49 the current team is not handling the capacity so they have to delay the response time the publishing to the

35:54 marketplace so how do you cope with these spikes do you hire more and just assume these spikes will continue what

36:00 what if it's a one-time Spike only so we solve that with technology and AI so as a corporate policy we have Embrace AI

36:07 implemented everywhere we can and at the same time try to kind of push the narit

36:12 within the company to use AI as much as possible if it's helpful like a recent

36:17 example from from Finance we had to kind of sum together an x amount of invoices

36:24 from GoDaddy and I suggested our CFO well that's something you can work out cat GPT just ask it to make a template

36:31 and then to add all the entries and bum jump jump done in like a minute so we we're trying to embrace it and when it

36:36 comes to age domain I think a lot of time consuming tasks like due diligence

36:42 let me give you a brief example with due diligence and how AI can solve that we haven't implemented that yet but I think

36:47 that will help a lot you export the backlink profile of a domain and you upload it to chat GPT or any other Ai

36:54 and you ask it based on it's you know awareness of what a

36:59 good back and a good and bad backlink is try to assess how toxic and what percentage of links are toxic and not

37:05 and they're doing a pretty good job and doing that they will actually tell you or you could take a screenshot from

37:11 archive because they're able to OCR basically read and it will tell you what the website was about and if there is a

37:17 risk like if there is a Viagra link somewhere in the fooa and the human eye won't notice they will scan the page and

37:23 they will tell you we found that so I'm not seeing doing a perfect job but we're not very far away from that so we're

37:30 definitely using AI in our operations and I encourage everyone to embrace Ai and just use it

37:36 interesting Advantage right so now given the recent uh Google updates targeting

AI generated content

37:42 low quality and AI generated content how do you what best practices would you

37:47 recommend for creating a AI driven content that uh Google quality standards

37:53 or I I'm sure there are people who are buying domain they are they are asking for help or something because they come

37:59 back and say as you said I bought a domain what next so I mean gone out the day you could generate content with AI

38:06 so how do you see that look AI content is neither good bad it's useful

38:11 depending on the use case so let's put it this way if you want to create a directory of best lawyers in New York

38:17 obviously there you cannot like what would really be required to write a

38:23 unique piece of content on New York or let's say new York Brooklyn

38:29 lawyer like or New York New Jersey lawyer or whatever Manhattan lawyer like you cannot really write unique content

38:35 so you need programmatic SEO because if you have if you're selling space for and

38:40 you're trying to really classify the best lawyers based on legitimate reviews just like trust pilot does and you want

38:46 to build this is your startup you gain funding so why not use AI to actually Mass create those

38:52 pages for New York or for na Nationwide like that wouldn't be a problem so is it

38:58 bad of course not is it good of course it's good it's helpful it will take like

39:03 how would you otherwise would you do it manual would hire 100 people and then fire them because you no longer use that no you're going to use AI to masqurade

39:09 those pages because the intented good and someone's searching for good reviews for a lawyer in in Manhattan they will

39:16 find a page which classifies good lawyers but that page was AI programmatically created which I think

39:23 is of great use on the other hand if you plan to mass create content just to spam Google well why would you waste your

39:29 time and their C budget for something that sooner or later will get the indexed unless your strategy is like

39:35 shortterm right it makes very little sense for long-term projects to just put in the quality because at the end of the

39:40 day we have so many cases where people buy age domain they rank fast but staying getting ranked fast is easy

39:46 staying ranked is hard back in the days you could stay rank longer High longer because they didn't have all these alos

39:53 for um interpreting user behavior these days if I have page traffic rank number

39:59 one page traffic. for ages and all of a sudden I pop up at number one or number two with

40:07 let's say OD is global but your experience is better the your site is getting a lower bounce rate your content

40:13 is better people click around they actually fulfill whatever intent they have on your site while my site has a

40:19 high bound rate people go back to the servs well I will get demoted and not because of the age domain but because of

40:25 the user Behavior so Google can do that really fast these days especially if you don't understand intent so getting

40:31 ranked is easy staying ranked is hard and not necessarily because domains do not perform or there is some kind of

40:37 magical thing which ranks and then tanks you no it's it's you're not fulfilling the intent and that is the main thing

40:43 you're not delivering a good enough user experience so so we call it now in our

Managing and motivating remote employees

40:49 when we do I do tell them same thing which we do it's more about the search

40:54 experience optimization rather than the s it is sxo so it's not you rank and

41:00 there it has to be something related as sxo which we've been pushing to our clients we been telling it's not that we

41:07 are trying to upsell you get a new domain get a new uh website design it's

41:12 just that the bounce rate has to be really low and with the Google recent uh those uh uh those uh leaks we know that

41:21 it matters right it does matter it does matter yes yes so those are yes wise words now moving out to affiliate

41:28 marketing of course we talked about let's talk a little bit about as I know you manage quite a lot of remote remote

41:35 teams in quite a lot of locations and you have quite a good experience in what advice can you offer to effectively

41:42 managing and motivating remote employees uh particularly in a tech focused industry like SEO which more is to do

41:49 with the all the time working in front of a computer and a remote employee so what do you that's something that you

41:56 should pay attention to to I mean the the the industry itself that it's it and

42:01 you know Tech oriented and SEO and it evolves REM mode but at the end of the day it's pure human psychology good

42:08 management is understanding humans around you and if you're in a leadership

42:13 role you have to understand what makes people tick and based on what I've been told

42:20 and taught and studies well there are three things that

42:25 really matters in a company the first one you have to pay really people well this means that the corporate financial

42:32 goals and the personal financial goals have to be aligned now I'd rather put it the other way the first one is you have to give

42:38 people respect because you can pay them well very well they can ask for X you can give them 10x or double X right if

42:45 you don't respect them if you humiliate them if you push them if you stress them if you born them they will not stick

42:50 regardless of how much because they want to be happy they want to enjoy life they don't want to be like most people who

42:56 want to be employed they do not necessarily have the same Ambitions as

43:02 someone leading or founding a business has so you have to be really careful with that so respect number one number

43:08 two is obviously pay well you have to pay well so even that implies paying a

43:14 little bit more or sometimes aligning the financial goal of the companies and paying bonuses from performance for

43:19 instance if the company made more net profit this month or this year why not take a small percentage and just share

43:25 it with everyone let them feel ownership and on the other hand if the company didn't perform then you have a reason

43:31 why you won't be getting an increase why we have to think of ways to get out of the mess so it works the opposite way as

43:39 well and the last thing obviously they need direction they need to be shown

43:44 which way the company is moving so regardless if you're running a factory or an SEO remote team or a Tac business

43:51 or um or an AI business or an SEO business they need direction where where is the company moving where Odis or page

43:58 traffic or your YouTube channel be in 10 years in five years in three years they really need direction because most

44:04 people who are want to be employed like this is the lifestyle they seek well regardless how good they

44:10 are they still won't make the top decisions in the company you will so

44:16 respect good wage and direction I think these three are at the core Foundation

44:23 of a successful alignment of teams so if you can deliver that and when I say respect I don't mean showing that you

44:30 respect them it also deals with motivation with it also deals with encouraging them it also deals with

44:36 helping them stand up when they felt so all everything that a good leader must do so these are I think in my opinion

44:42 the three things which really make the difference between a successful company

44:48 who's constantly growing and someone that is struggling and has to do more HR and recruiting and hiring because good

44:54 companies rarely fire people that's that's one thing that I've noticed and I think people are the most important

45:00 Assets in a company so you can optimize costs elsewhere but don't fire people find them something to do or use them to

45:07 get you Roi somehow I mean there there are ways to do it train them give them additional skills yeah I I I in my experience I

How to hire remote employees

45:15 also seen it's also starts the way how you hire people so it's it's it's more

45:21 important you spend more time hiring a person that a bad hire can cost you a lot of money and of course a bad

45:27 reputation rather than spend more time in building expectation what do you expect is also work wonders uh we also

45:34 have uh remote employees working in Philippines Kenya as well although we have most of the employees working in

45:40 India but we do employ and yes they've been working for I'm yet to fire anyone

45:46 I reported for you yet no that's very accurate it it really comes with hiring

45:51 and also a lot of people like I I'd rather I'd rather not hire than hire and

45:57 fire easily yes so spend more time on hiring because you're committing they may have a family they may have kids

46:03 they may have you know a mortgage or something so they're relying on on working for you and delivering and

46:09 getting paid so you cannot just play around with their lives right if you don't want to hire them if you don't think they're a good fit just tell them

46:15 look I don't think you're a good fit right now or you may can reward the way

46:21 you say it but I will recommend your services or your skills if I hear someone talking rather than hiring them

46:27 because you feel the pressure of them needing a job and then having to fire them because they're a bad person because they're toxic because they can

46:34 they don't have a good attitude uh so yeah as you said like it can't be any

46:40 like that that's the perfect answer probably the one like spend more time on actually hiring and talking to them so

46:46 do you use any specific tools for collaborating or delegating to your remote teams or they are just the normal

46:52 one which we end up using or they slack Slack FL I think FL has introduced I

47:00 think that they have like a can a new can band thing which is very handy they have canvases they have to-do lists so

47:06 now basically slack like most of our communication email slack and just notes

47:11 can be like paper notes can be like any type of notes anything works really same here anything works really yes right

47:20 right right right so so uh just I've taken almost an hour just couple of more

Whats next for Odis

47:25 questions here sure what what new features or Services can we expect

47:31 expect from OD in the near future are there anything exciting new developments coming forward yeah definitely and this

47:38 is something that I've tackled with Andre our CMO and Alexander who our CEO

47:43 and in charge of Odis as a product they have to enhance their communication with

47:48 our audience because there are so many awesome features being launched especially on the back end but people

47:54 don't know about that because they're just delivering internally and they're shy whereas I don't mind them even

47:59 having a monthly newsletter where they simply announce new features so I I think a very good Improvement recently

48:05 has been our ability to actually help domain owners and sellers get liquidity in exchange for their domains and just

48:12 because as far as I know and I've done some research but GoDaddy doesn't want to list third party domains in their

48:18 auction systems back in the days you had a domain you could auction it these days they're just selling their inventory

48:24 because it's easy like we know we have couple 100 active sellers right now and

48:29 these are people who have more than one domain everyone else just have one domain and it's very difficult to handle

48:36 sellers requires a lot of operation Communication customer service so GoDaddy doesn't necessarily want to deal

48:41 with that they rather just selling expiring inventory so I think we're trying to position ourselves and solve

48:48 this problem I'm sure you have more domains that you need and all other people having running online business

48:53 they have more domains than they need and some are really precious like pag traffic. conferences while some might

48:59 never s sell and you keep paying renewal fees so we're trying to instead of competing with all other sellers in the

49:06 AG domain after market would' rather push for a unique unique type of service

49:12 where we actually are the platform and the marketplace that unites buyers and sellers so I think we'll keep developing

49:19 we'll keep developing this moving forward because right now there are basically there's

49:26 basically just one way to sell an AG two ways to sell an age main deze you can try to go to Facebook groups like ask

49:33 your Facebook group and say hey guys I'm selling this and hopefully someone will buy or you can try just listing it in

49:39 the mainstream marketplaces like dan.com even aftering that GoDaddy owns so

49:46 sedo.com is a German company and hope someone sometimes will buy it which

49:51 doesn't mean anything but the problem is in the traditional World everyone is after good very few understand the

49:58 backlink side or the age side of a domain so we're trying to Brand us as a

50:04 marketpl brand ourselves as a marketplace where we connect connect buyers or Sellers and solve the the demand Problem by helping sellers get

50:11 liquidity so I think this is the direction that we're we're following right now because um if we were only to

50:18 push by domain side we'd end up with sales and a lot of domain owners having

50:26 more domains that they can handle we often case have cases when people say I'm going to this year like January

50:32 January 2025 I'm going to start five sites and they buy five domains they end up developing one and the other four

50:39 domains they don't know what to do with them where right now they can release them in the marketplace we'll make sure they haven't been abused they're fine

50:45 and we'll release them maybe you need them maybe someone else needs them there have been lots of cases when people

50:50 wanted it mean it got sold and then we managed to get it back from the new owner so I think this is a great

50:55 direction to pursue that's an interesting use case definitely is and a good problem to solve it kind of makes

51:01 me feel good because we're not just selling domains we're helping two distinct parties solve problems right I

Odis Mentor Program

51:07 myself would have a domain portfolio of I think around 100 domains so that's normal for anybody who's been in this

51:14 industry right agree and you keep paying renewal fees year after year yes yes so

51:23 let's talk about your mentorship program you started I think uh just a couple of years back so uh I think around last

51:31 year last year yes so how many mentors you have on board it now we we have

51:36 around 20 but we've completely rebuilt it from scratch and I think we're officially relaunching this month or

51:43 next I'm we have Andre and we have swetlana who's um the the manager of the

51:51 program so to speak and they're they're preparing they're relaunching the entire thing and uh the mentor program is just

51:58 my attempt to kind of filter through the experts of the industry

52:03 because there are so many so-called experts and there are so many awesome people who really know and they have experience and beside that it's also an

52:11 attempt to keep in touch with people to make them sort of like part of our Network and most of those people are

52:19 people that I can personally vouch for and we have a system to actually recruit you cannot just say I want te well there

52:26 should be something to your name which makes you eligible eligible to to call

52:32 yourself a mentor and um Aus mentors is it's not making us money basically it's

52:38 not a revenue our main Revenue comes from domains and website selling and brokering right but ois mentors is sort

52:44 of like an attempt to provide people access to some of the best Minds in the

52:51 industry which are batted which are confirmed to actually know what they're talking about

52:57 because with so many courses and so many you know good advice being out there

53:02 it's very hard to know whom to follow and whom to take advice for so so are

Expanding the Mentor Program

53:08 you guys going to expand it yes the short answer is yes yeah and and the

53:15 long answer I need is so especially in a reason like India where of course the market is growing rapidly as you can see

53:21 we are one of the fastest growing economy in the world do you have any mentors to have from here or do you have

53:28 any plans to push mentorship here or any other reason we don't like one of the

53:33 reasons why Odis is called Global because we don't have any Market perception well we do Focus we need to

53:39 focus sometimes on specific countries as markets but for us when it comes to

53:45 mentors it's more like do you have a distinctive advantage in what you do in

53:51 comparison with the rest of the world are you really good at something so where you when you're really good at

53:56 something I don't really care where you're from you can be from Indonesia India Japan Argentina Pakistan anywhere in the world

54:03 really like Alaska like you can work remotely like if there is something unique that you know because we don't

54:09 want to have a 100 people who are just good at link Building 100 mentors we need you to be some good at something

54:15 very specific because every single Mentor that we end up accepting into the program is a mentor that is really good

54:21 at something specific right so we really need that uniqueness we don't want just a h paperclick expert 100 link building

54:28 experts 100 whatever experts we want unique people like people who have some sort of achievements people who run a

54:35 successful business because at the end of the day actually share real knowledge and real value to the mentee I mean it

54:42 should be value for money who is actually paying that much money right exactly so think about you know walking

54:47 the talk if you're teaching someone how to start a successful agency and you're not running a successful agent yourself

54:54 right right I don't really if I can promote you or recommend you as someone who could teach how to run a million

55:01 dollars a year agency at least I mean that's common sense so this is what we're trying to do and our filters is

55:07 basically do you have some sort of audience are are you like I wouldn't call it an influencer but are know him

55:13 in the first place because if you're not knowing him we can promote you as hard as we can but if you are not interested

55:19 in building a personal brand giving you calls which is actually paid calls would be very tough but you will not convert

55:26 so to speak people will not seek your advice because they don't know you people usually Google you so they will Google you before they book you through

55:33 us for instance if you're a m absolutely so you have to you have to be some somebody right second like who what's

55:40 what's your specialty what are your focus on I focusing on agencies great I'm starting an agency I want to pick

55:45 your brain like what's your focus are you so and obviously even though it may not sound as the best criteria but are

55:53 you financially successful like do you know how to make money in the first place do you know how to run a business

55:58 like that's the main thing like I'm not seeking like like hypnotherapy advice

56:04 I'm seeking like business advice so this is what I'm interested in yes so somebody who been there done that

56:11 exactly exactly exactly all right Alex it was a very interesting discussion lot

56:17 of knowledge negates and I really like love talking all that and the age to yes

56:24 so uh thank you very much for your time and thank you thank you for having me it's been a pleasure