“Half A Million And A Guaranteed Movie”
Posted on | October 6, 2008 | 4 Comments
I’m not exactly sure how many of my readers watch the HBO series “Entourage“, but last nights episode just glued itself into my thoughts because of a quote that was said in the show: “Half a million and a guaranteed movie”.
Let me give you the scenario behind the quote: Two writers write a movie script that they make and they pitch it to one agent. They find someone that wants the script, but they only offer $100,000 and $200,000 after in the event the movie actually gets made. “E”, their agent, calls them up and tells them the “good news”. They say no: half a million and a guaranteed movie or they won’t sell the script.
Now for someone starting out, it seems like a damn awful good deal. Had I taken the deal if I were the writer? Assuming that the effort behind it was minimal (I think it took them 3 years to write the script), hell yeah! 6-figures? For a 21 year old? Yes’um. I would. Why would a quote like this sit and just freakin’ attach itself to be since watching the episode? I made some important “business” decisions last month and I stand by my decision even though I got some crap for it. I received countless e-mails from people aware of what exactly occured–but they don’t even know 10% of the story to judge me on my decisions. Apparently I “threw out a lot of money for no damned reason–play the game smarter or bail out”. Yes–that’s a direct quote from an e-mail I received on September 14, 2008.
Who is someone to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do? Advice is great, but what a way to tell someone you “f’d up”. Along with this quote stuck in my head, i was wondering: What did you do? Was it a bad decision? Could it have been prevented? Was a boatload of money lost? No. Why? Because “Half a million and a guaranteed movie”–OR NO DEAL.
Without knowing the full story, what the hell does this all mean? I was sitting and thinking about how some domains like Fund.com could sell for $10,000,000. Thinking, thinking, thinking… “Fund” is an awesome keyword–but $10 mill awesome? Yes. Hell, it could be $30,000,000 awesome. Why? Cause half a million and a guaranteed movie. The reasoning is the seller wants a specific tag and you won’t let go of it for that damned price. That’s why names like Sex.com, Sports.com, Poker.com all get big price tags–it’s the sellers who have appreciated the name in value. Does it sort of make sense? It never really did 100% until last night to me. Afterwards, the agency that originally offered the $100,000/$200,000 deal found out there were other interested parties and upped their price to $2,000,000. There’s a lot behind the story, but when you own something people want, YOU command the price. That’s why owning prime-real estate with many interested parties is the way to go. Right? That’s what I believe in now. You grab the stuff you know a COUPLE people would love to own–hell, even die to own. This means what you have is GRADE A+ and you can pretty much price it whereever you want and if someone wants it bad enough, they will sit and think think think and manage to end up owning it–while you get your half a million and a guaranteed movie.
I wasn’t really going to post this up, but isn’t it damn interesting if you really think about it? Looking at this from that certain perspective really changed things for me for some reason. I mean c’mon, it’s so obvious… but seeing it last night played out on screen and relating it to things like domains which I have really been thinking a lot about for the last 3 week just gave me a reality check: Good job on what you did, and now move on. Why would this post be valuable to some of my readers? Well… what are you looking to get out of domaining? I’ve been thinking long and hard about it… and I’m not exactly sure. Do I have my “half a million and a guaranteed movie” in my portfolio? Possibly. Do you?
For some domaining is just a hobby… for others, it’s a business. I’m trying to figure out exactly where I stand, but I’m way too into the game at this point to even consider tossing everything away. That’s exactly what this is all about: a business. For money. To live.
Ahhh, well… I felt like this was actually an interesting post after I wrote it. I just re-read it and I’m not exactly sure the way it was written made it clear exactly was being said, but clearing out some of my e-mails and just seeing what I receive makes me laugh at times. A lot of eyeballs in this “domaining” world–depending on who you are. Oh well 
.
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4 Responses to ““Half A Million And A Guaranteed Movie””
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October 8th, 2008 @ 4:27 am
nice story..
thanx
October 13th, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
I would’ve taken the deal, you betcha!
Randys last blog post..Fall cleanups
October 13th, 2008 @ 5:41 pm
I’m with you! “Show me the money!”
Marilyns last blog post..Great karma ride
February 2nd, 2009 @ 5:37 am
thx man