First of all to reterate:
- I'm in no hurry to sell the domain. Only hurry would be if the $10K USD offer is a good one and if it would be hard to improve on in the next year or two then I'd sell it.
- The 10K is in USD and is AFTER negotiating up. This is as high as the buyer will go and I have to tell him by Friday as he wants to buy a different domain if he can't get mine (i.e. can't get kubu.com)
- I had SEDO do an appraisal for $99 which is probably a rip off but I just wanted to see what they would come up with. They came up with a lot of explanation and a 7K valuation. Largely based on these domain sales they referenced I imagine:
kubo.com $9500 Sold in 2013
hebu.com $5318 Sold in 2016
kuso.com $3700 Sold in 2010
kuza.com $6300 Sold in 2011
jaku.com $4900 Sold in 2013
ebbu.com $5000 Sold in 2013
- I also tried EstiBot.com which valued it at: $5500
- Also Valuate.com which valued it at $5500
I asked Andrew Rosener at MediaOptions.com. He is a broker that was recommended to me in this thread. He thinks he could sell it for 10K - 25K and he takes a 15% commission. When I asked him what he thought the chances were that I would not get 10K out of it after his commission was subtracted he said negligible chance that would happen and that he would probably get quite a bit more than that for it.
Since I had received a number of Asian people interested in it over the years, I inquired with guta.com which was recommended as an Asian broker in this thread. Rachel Guta replied and said they don't really estimate what they can sell sites for so could give me no guess. She said they charge a 12% fee and require an exclusive listing for 6 months.
So, based on several people here saying they trust Andrew (although I wish his commission was a bit lower) I'm prone to pass up this offer and think about it a while and then list it with him when I"m ready or maybe post on my own somewhere for 25k and see if I get it or close to it on my own before using a broker.
The valuation from Sedo and past sales are a bit scary as far as passing up the 10K but then again if I go looking right now for something brandable that sounds good, everything looks very expensive. So the sales don't line up with what is out there for sale now from what I can tell, which is very strange. Yes, it could be that people sell things for 1/2 or 1/3 of what they list them for but I think that if I had to buy a domain as good as kubu.com right now I could not sniff one for anything close to 10K.
Thoughts? Make sense to pass up the 10k even given the sedo and automated appraisals?