Realtors of the Web – Andrew Miller and Mike Zapolin
Israel’s Globes Magazine has featured domainers Andrew Miller and Mike “Zappy” Zapolin in an interesting article – “Realtors of the Web” – that focuses on the duos transformation from being suit-and-tie Wall Street brokers to becoming a couple of cool and creative guys that juggle domain names for a living.
The article discusses how Miller and Zapolin created a “Super Bowl test” to determine the top selling products and most valuable domain names, how they struck a deal to purchase Beer.com for $80,000 before reselling it for $7 million, how they survived the dot-com bubble burst by following the Kabalistic principle of “less is more”, and what their views are for the future of domaining.
“Even though it sometimes seems as if the internet has reached saturation, Miller (43) and Zapolin (41), are convinced that these are still early days and that there are big opportunities of the Web with a lot virgin territory still left to conquer. Domain names, they assert, are likely to become a huge opportunity for anyone, even if they lack a financial background and have little cash in hand.”
Their company, Internet Real Estate, currently owns a long list of high-end domains including Software.com, Phone.com, Chocolate.com, Podcast.com, Patents.com, Jeans.com, Alerts.com, and many more. Although they are currently investing their time and energy in domain development, they have sold several multi-million dollar domains in the past including Beer.com, Computer.com, CreditCard.com, and Diamond.com.
