What did u do to evaluate domain names?

In the starting, i made many mistakes.
I ask my brain and it gives me the answer.
Sometime i also use online domain appraisal tool like estibot.

For generic names, the Adwords Keyword tool is your friend:

- Look at exact match for the word(s) - this tells you how many people search for just that phrase.
- Look at phrase match - this tells you the search volume on related terms and how many related terms there are. More is good.
- Look at advertiser volume - advertisers compete for lucrative keywords.
- Look at the avg bid price - how much is it worth to them?

Use your head too - is the phrase commercial? Who would want it and why? Would it produce qualified leads or sales? What would these leads/sales be worth to them? What does that industry typically spend on technology? What does the industry spend on advertising?

Is it gramatically correct in whatever language it is? Is the word order natural? If not, don't expect an end user to build a business on it!

Also, have similar names sold and for how much? How is your name different from the ones that have sold well? Longer? Extra words? Numbers/hyphens? Different extension? For certain domains, just adding one letter like an "s" can totally kill it.

For "brandables", it's a crapshoot. Maybe someone who specializes in them has more scientific advice, but best I can say is go with your gut, if it sounds good to you hopefully it sounds good to someone else too!

For me "gut feeling" wins over "stats".

biznews said:

For me "gut feeling" wins over "stats".

Click to expand...

This is kind of the way i do it too . . .

In another post, I wrote that the value of a domain is not necessarily determined by you so much as it is the buyer.

You could have a domain that is treedog.com -- makes no sense to me, and maybe you, but to someone else, they'll pay thousands to have that as a brand name.

you never know

There is a lot of speculation that goes into this game . . . just like any other investments.

Your gut feeling can determine whether something works

Just remember, ANY domain name can be sold -- you just need to wave it in front of the right buyer.

and yes, even if you break even.

I would say that I have broken even on 10-15% of the domains I have sold. I try not to settle for under $50, depending on what development I did to it first.

valuate

You could also try out valuate.com. In addition to appraisal it also gives you several other valuable date like estimated traffic and ppc value and others.

I seldom use automated tool for appraisal and what I did is something similar to enlytend. The higher the demand for the domain keyword, the more the profitability in general =)

Can you please suggest a place where you may check past sales related to a particular keyword combination?

Namebio.com & DNsaleprice.com for keyword sales history

look at the domain and if it describes a commercial product or service that multiple end users deal in combined with decent "exact" search queries it's probably decent https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=1 if the term is not highly searched for and there are not multiple end users then it will be a tougher sell, I run with my gut and past sales experience and don't use any automated tools.

no_url_shorteners/keywordtool - it's more memorable than full address, isn't it?

I built my own tool . . . DropCatchSell.com

I know that's a sales pitch, but I'm also serious about building my own tool. I was using my own tool hosted on a local server long before I put it up online. The big things I programmed it to look for are likelihood of PageRank retention, Alexa rank, inbound links, dictionary words and name length.

I think of the domain process as a bit like a job interview from the perspective of the employer. When you're hiring people, your earliest goal is to rule people out.

Same goes for domains. Staring at that list of drops every day from Pool.com will make your brain bleed. Too much confusion. So, my solution was to put a quad core processor to good use, and let one of my computers throw out a solid 98% of them.

Once you've thrown the garbage domains out, you can look at the back links and the Alexa rank and the decisions get a lot easier.