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The Secret Is Out! After Making Millions for Others Veteran Domain Broker Arif Sengoren Has Opened His Own Shop 

With very few exceptions, domain people are entrepreneurs at heart. Over the years I've lost count of how many started out working for someone else in this field, then went on to open their own shop. The latest to do that is veteran domain broker Arif Sengoren, whom I've known ever since he entered the domain world as a Domain Sales & Acquisitions Specialist with NoktaDomains in 2010. Arif piled up millions of dollars worth of sales in his five years there, then millions more after he moved on to Uniregistry's DomainNameSales unit. Now, he has decided it is time to fly solo, so he just launched his new firm at SecretBrokerage.com (I guess it's not a secret anymore)! 

Arif embodies something about domain people that has always fascinated me - the  incredibly diverse backgrounds they came from before stumbling upon this business. As a still relatively new field, there aren't many who started their business careers in our world. Many were doing something dramatically different, with no connection to domains or even the Internet itself.

In Arif's case, he went almost directly into domains after college but his degree was in...drum roll please....agricultural engineering! At first blush, that might look as far away from domains as you could get, but there is a common thread - technology. Agricultural engineering

Arif Sengoren
Founder 
SecretBrokerage.com

involves the design, construction and improvement of farming equipment and machinery. Agricultural engineers integrate technology with farming.

After joining Nokta, Sengoren kept a foot in both camps for quite awhile. In addition to dealing in domains at Nokta he started taking classes aimed at getting an advanced degree in agricultural engineering. Arif explained how this tug of war came about and eventually got resolved. "I was into "selling" when I was a kid," Arif noted. " I started selling some pastry summertimes, then game and music CDs when I was at high school. I was organizing events and selling tickets when I was studying at the University. While doing my Masters in "wind-erosion", I was also looking for a job in sales and heard that Nokta was looking for a Domain Sales Representative. I applied for the position and got accepted. The domain part was actually quite random. However, after I got into the domaining, I loved it and dropped out of my master's degree program to fully focus on it. 

Looking back at his highlights over the past decade, Sengoren said, "I sold and/or acquired thousands of domains for over $5 million on behalf of Nokta. We broke the highest domain sale record for the Turkish Domain market by selling UcakBilet.com for $250,000. Then, when I moved over to Uniregistry (formerly DomainNameSales.com) for the next four years, I brokered around 700-750 domains for roughly $4 million USD. My highest sale was Kiwi.com for $800,000. Plus, I set another record  for sale made in Turkish currency (Turkish lira) by selling MNG.com for the USD equivalent of $141,960

In this shot from the 2013 T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West Conference in Las Vegas, we caught up with 
Arif Sengoren (left) and his then fellow Domain Specialist at NoktaDomains, Merve Engin.

Now that Arif has decided to realize every entrepreneur's dream and work for himself, Sengoren feels he has a good grasp on what will make his company different in a very competitive space. "There are definitely a lot of great marketplaces and brokerages that are mainly focused on selling domains," Arif said. "That's why I decided to focus on domain acquisitions, appraisals, portfolio management, creating and maximization (with subscription), and online brand protection. My motivation is to help domain/brand owners understand their assets and manage them to maximize their profit and protect them from online threats with very competitive prices."

Of course, we had to ask - what's behind the name, Secret Brokerage? "There are two reasons," Arif said. "I believe every broker has their own secret and I thought using this within the name would be a good idea . Second, lots of buyers prefer staying anonymous on the acquisition side so I thought the "secret" keyword would cover that as well!"

So, now you know the reason for the name but this may be the last time you see Arif "spill the beans!"

*****

(Posted May 16, 2020)


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