poll As a buyer on a scale of 0 to 10 how important is the value assigned by an automated appraisal

[equity78]

Estibot and GoDaddy are the two dominant forces in the automated appraisal space, there are some other players in the game as well. No matter which service is providing the value, how much weight do you give to these services when making a purchase?

 

[BrandAptly.com]

Thanks for the info. The pitch is a great one, and the reasoning is incredibly sound.

I've done a decent amount of outbound as well, but my emails are usually only a couple lines long: "We're selling XXX domain name. Let's Talk." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but you get the idea.

If my contact understands the value of a relevant domain name, they ask for the price. Otherwise I get a "No thanks" or no reply.

I find your method interesting because, from a personal standpoint, I auto-delete any email that starts with an obvious sales pitch. I don't like being sold something I wasn't already looking for. It turns me right off. So that's why I was hoping you'd be willing to share details of one of these conversations that has led to a sale.

Is it possible you're selling names despite the pitch? Like, perhaps you're just selecting good names and finding relevant buyers, which is great! And if that's the case, perhaps you could be saving a lot of time spent testing traffic, crunching numbers, and drafting informative emails.

My names are good only because of the buyers' specific needs and circumstances but not by domain industry standards. Cars.com is great domain name by all standards of measurement. All the owner has to do is list it for sale with NO sales pitch or explanation whatsoever. On my end of the spectrum, the domains I sell are completely useless without my pitch and numbers.

If you get 2 pieces of mail, one delivered in an ordinary envelope and the other delivered by FedFex Priority mail marked urgent and confidential, which one will you open first? The way you respond to email has everything to do with the authority of the delivery service and your confidence in it. You open the newsletters from Namepros, yes? So if I want to inform you about a domaining service I am offering, I will do it through Namepros.

I have been experimenting with marketing in startup business forums and industry specific forums and getting good responses. Of course, the current state of affairs make it a bit tricky to determine effectiveness in dollars and cents.

With this particular domain, I will send the pitch out through a law forum newsletter. I will include an email address that generates an auto-response with my entire sales pitch. At the end of the sales pitch, there will be a link to the offer page. This way, all my emails will reach their inbox and all of them will hopefully be opened. I will accept offers for both purchasing and leasing. If I get to lease it our for $1k a month for 4,500 targeted leads, that is still a very good deal for them. I won't complain about $12k a year. The only thing I am a bit nervous about is the current economic climate.

 

[Atone]

Indeed most of my sales have been for amounts that are above automated appraisal values. Experience has taught me to put little stock into them.

Statistical analysis can only be truly understood when put into context. I discovered this week that 4L domain names were being sold for $5k back in 2013 and many of them are lucky to break through figures today. Obviously there will always be those that are more expensive than others as they actually make sense.

So your experience in the industry has taught you that six-letter brand names of this variety do not typically sell for $3,000?

I hope they do, 'cos sure as heck I'm a millionaire then 'cos of what I have up my sleeve. No, is the answer but it is based on feedback that I have received over the past year from several experienced respectable domainers who have shared their opinions when I have registered similar names.

Of course you're intelligent and have life experience. And I accept that your opinion has validity.

You have to listen to both sides of the story before making your own decisions and my take is that this business needs to clean house now whilst we can or it will be cleaned for us and we may not like the results. You may not agree with my opinion but at least be open to listening to it is all I ask from everyone.

Can you accept that, with only a year of experience and no sales, your opinion on how to value domain names is not as informed as it could be?

I'd have to disagree with you here. The decision to not try to actively sell my domains is part of my structured plan. In the mean time I've engaged with the community and I've read many of the original forum discussions and I believe that they can be a great source of information that is still relevant in today's market. I like everything to have a place and for everything to be in it's place. I'm someone who has actually read the 27 pages of small print attached to my holiday insurance. I'm from a Compliance and Regulatory background so this is my leaning towards domain investing. I always tell people that I am a Domain Investor as I a proud of our industry although it can and should be improved.

Would you consider me a successful car salesman if I haven't sold any cars? Would you value my advice on how to appraise and sell them?

I've never been James Bond, 007 nor have I ever driven a Jaguar or an Aston Martin. However, I do know that the the Jaguar used in one of the films was sold for $1million and that the Aston Martin from an earlier film was sold for $3million. Conversely, although I have sold maybe 30 cars during my 35 years of driving I have never sold a Jaguar or an Aston Martin. Selling a car is clearly very different from knowing how much cars are worth so that doesn't mean that someone who is not old enough to sell cars doesn't know their values.

You'd be surprised what I know about but have never done. Doesn't mean that I cannot learn about them or appraise them successfully.

It always used to bug me when I was younger when buying or selling a car as the dealers had a black book which gave the car trade a guide price for buying or selling a car. The values were always higher when I was buying a car and lower when I was selling a car. They held all the cards, until someone invented Autotrader and the cat was out of the bag.

That's it for now so I hope we can now put this to bed and move on.

Regards,

Reddstagg

As part of this post I thought I would use a variation of your reddstagg name as a experiment.
RedStagg .com was avail so I regged it.
GD app $1159.
Nameworth app $4450.
Estibot $100 210 exact searches cpc 2.74.
Namebio Red as 1st keyword 827 sales $150 k high price.
last word Stagg 0 sales.
last word Stag 19 sales $10.4 k high price.
RedStagg.com trademark free as far as I could see.
So I swung it over to BrandPa,s appraisal set up they reckon $3995
8 bucks for a Logo design and away we go 12 month experiment.
No hyphen but what the hell.
Cheers.

 

[Joe N]

It really is a shame that domains like boats sit there unused for years on end. Seems like such a waste

They sit unused because no one needs them. There are almost an endless number of possible domain names that can exist. Why would you expect most of them to be used?

 

[equity78]

Available right now as a GD Closeout:

Bet-viper.com

GD value: $3,793

The non hyphen went for $449 today https://namebio.com/betviper.com

 

[NameBuyer.com]

Definitely 0.

And I echo the sentiments by peak.domains

Mentioning software appraisals as a buyer or seller is not a good idea IMHO.

Sharing comparable sales to support yourself as a buyer or a seller!?

Now that is more professional and more accurate for all parties involved.

Comps are great, but how do you propose I sell PlanToGrow.com off of comps? I sold PlanToGrow.com for $24,500 in March. RoomToGrow.com is in the comps and undersold at $2,500. That domain was basically stolen in that deal and the domain should have sold at $50k plus. So how do you legitimately compare something like that with comps? You can't. Especially if you are extracting the most value from your domains and many of the comps are not.

Domain valuations should foremost be a tool for the buyer and in the future, they will be. The poll is about buyers, but 99% of us are not REAL buyers for an actual business. We are domain investors and a very select few of us purchase names for over $10,000. But did you know there are designers, that make a living off of charging $20,000+ for logos. Artwork.

As professionals in the industry, wouldn't it create a better experience for the buyer to have an appraisal on the "For Sale" page that actually worked? If we are selling a domain and it is listed at $45,000, and next to it there is an appraisal that accurately showed an estimated price of around $50,000, wouldn't that be beneficial to both us and the buyer?

The buyer's of Big Ticket items have Psychological Barriers that we need to overcome. These are overcome by reducing risk, increasing trust, and providing them unbiased information that helps to validate their purchase decision.

If you look at the page below from your buyer's perspective, I think it would be hard to deny that your customer's experience and buying process would not be improved with the appraisal included in the page.

Honestly ask yourself a few questions:

• Would the appraisal below help your customer feel less risk?
• Would the appraisal below improve your customer's trust in your price?
• Does the appraisal provide information that helps validate their purchase decision?

If you answered yes to any one of the questions above, this helps to remove the Psychological Barriers that exists for every buyer in high-ticket purchases. Removing Psychological Barriers equals higher sales for you and I.

You can see this in articles regarding the Psychology of High Ticket purchases:

Source:
https://sitetuners.com/blog/leveraging-psychology-to-remove-barriers-to-high-ticket-conversions/
https://marketingland.com/increase-conversions-big-ticket-items-121551

 

[Mytz.com]

Dont let the machine do the thinking for you.

 

[Victor Reyes]

I would say 0, no machine is better than us.. I think that the best appraisal tool is experience, there's no other, BUT, for some reason people always care about what a machine says, so, if you use automated appraisal tools with intelligence, they can also give you good results.

 

[DomainRecap]

Another example of how domain valuations can some in handy.

I had a set of domains I was bidding on, and just to be sure, I ran them through the GD tool. One was a longer foreign word I was familiar with, but it got a "less than $100" result, and turned out to be a slight misspell.

That probably saved me some cash, and while everyone should logically ignore the *exact* dollar value, I have found these to be incredibly useful on other ways.

In another example both GD and Estibot screwed up on a domain I'm going after, rating it around $200, and it's obvious they were unable to separate the 2 words properly. Ooops.

So no system can ever be perfect, even for basic ratings, but I'd rather have them available to me than not.

 

[Reddstagg]

I said 10 cos I'm thinking as an end user buyer rather than as as a domain investor.

Most of the planet has heard of Godaddy so we can use that as a validation tool and an end user who is seriously looking for a domain name has already checked what they may have to pay on GD before they even contact us as the seller.

Knowledge is power and it works for both sides of the equation.

Funny thing with domainers is that if they're buying they write off auto appraisals but if they're selling they always quote the values. Gofigurethatoutnow. com

 

[Robin Hablani]

If you can only find a religious bot believer that will buy all bot names for bot worth.

Very true

 

[lock]

Very true

I will form a cult be the long bearded one then adjust my bot pricing lol.
Use a bot to gather information the points used to determine value. Final number is a number not real money.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

0, and when people approach me with names for sale and they cite some inflated bot value, it detracts from the amount I'm willing to pay, it's a strike against them because I just assume they're trying to bamboozle me. It hurts the credibility of the seller, in my eyes, to cite ridiculous automated valuations.

Also, it signals to me that they have very unrealistic expectations, so there are times I won't even bother making an offer on a name I otherwise may have been interested in. Now that I think of it, this happens fairly often. There was an okay 4L listed here the other day, but the seller made a huge deal out of pretending it was a real word, talking about how they think it's worth 5 figures etc, so they kind of shot themselves in the foot in terms of getting an offer from me. Which is fine, if they genuinely only wanted xx,xxx for it then it saves us all some time - but if they were just trying to pump the name up, it had the opposite effect.

There have been plenty of names I've been interested in but if someone's telling me they think their 3 week old handreg is worth $2000 according to this or that, it's hard to even get to the table.

So, I guess I actually assign negative value, less than 0.

Just my 0.02, tho.

Edit: I hope the results here are eye-opening from a seller's point of view, nobody cares about these tools except the registrars who sell a bunch of janky domains to newbies who think they can turn $8 into $2000 because some robot told them so.

"nobody cares about these tools"??? Sure they do....area code 480? that leads to GD right, and they have the best overall appraisal tool except when it comes to domains worth over 25K. That's where Nameworth kicks in Sounds to me like you're a wholesaler buying from other domainers so it's really hard to relate

 

[koolishman]

Thankfully - there seems to be a better understanding of these bots than I thought here at NPs
52 votes for ZERO Value, (at this timestamp)
My confidence in the membership is restored - shame though that all the advocates of the Appraisal services are the most vocal in the threads

Checking the appraisal values? Yes I do it.

Basing the sales value solely on that? No

 

[Reddstagg]

You're not comparing the same thing.

Brandable name third party sites set prices on the names they sell, and people agree to pay them.

The GD appraisal bot does not sell the names it prices.

I think you need to clarify what you mean by GD's "transactions" in this comparison.

I think that what I was referring to was the GD which shows you 'More comparable domains sold'. This is using actual and factual data I presume.

In the original question it states...'As a buyer etc....' and I was thinking as an end user buyer rather than as a domain investor. There is the real world and then there is domain investing.

I saw yesterday that on one of the 3rd party sites there was a domain for sale for $3,000 and the GD appraised value was for less than $100. At least it was a .com.

I don't think I would ever buy a domain from this forum again as the prices seem to keep going up irrespective of a worldwide crisis. Everyone needs to knock some zeros off their prices in my opinion.

Still, what do I know huh?

Agree to disagree again.

Moving on......

 

[Joe N]

I think that what I was referring to was the GD which shows you 'More comparable domains sold'. This is using actual and factual data I presume.

In the original question it states...'As a buyer etc....' and I was thinking as an end user buyer rather than as a domain investor. There is the real world and then there is domain investing.

I saw yesterday that on one of the 3rd party sites there was a domain for sale for $3,000 and the GD appraised value was for less than $100. At least it was a .com.

I don't think I would ever buy a domain from this forum again as the prices seem to keep going up irrespective of a worldwide crisis. Everyone needs to knock some zeros off their prices in my opinion.

Still, what do I know huh?

Agree to disagree again.

Moving on......

I believe we're now getting away from discussing the value of a number assigned by an appraisal bot.

Anyway, even as a buyer I would tend to value the opinion of real people in an industry over any automated tool. I can't even think of a situation where that wouldn't be true. Actually... as a self-proclaimed long time business person, I'm surprised that you would favour the automated route.

But yes, agree to disagree.

 

[lock]

Absolutely agree. This poll only addresses the value assigned by the tool.

Exactly but wanted to let people know what there is probability in the math even if the end result isn't accurate.

 

[Joe N]

The irony of this thread is that although overwhelmingly obvious that many experienced and badged domain investors have shot down automated appraisals not many, if any of them has come up with a tangible alternative and continue to over price their domain names.

I think what you're missing is that, in general, successful domain investors do not benefit from appraisal tools.

If it was so easy to know exactly what a name is worth, and as a result to have all buyers agree to pay that amount without question, then anyone could do this. What's more, there would be no aftermarket.

 

[BrandAptly.com]

Good evening,

It is a nice idea as something is definitely needed and quick.

However, it will never work as for example if I have domain name that I want to be more highly rated I will get my family and friends to over inflate the scores. Obviously, the bigger the family the higher the scores.

Down the line it will then be possible to just buy random scores from unscrupulous dealers similar to likes on social media.

The irony of this thread is that although overwhelmingly obvious that many experienced and badged domain investors have shot down automated appraisals not many, if any of them has come up with a tangible alternative and continue to over price their domain names.

The world has changed and will keep turning so I guess I will have to just flip a coin to decide on values.

Regards,

Reddstagg

I see the challenges you've outlined and I appreciate the wisdom in it. With that said, I will also argue that the amount of work a domain owner puts into promoting and branding a domain name adds to its value, however 'unscrupulous' the tactics employed may be. It will get more endusers involved in the process of appraising domain names. After all, they ultimately determine the commercial viability of a domain name.

 

[xynames]

Depends on the domain, and also depends on what sort of comparables the automated appraisal comes up with.

 

[Joe N]

My names are good only because of the buyers' specific needs and circumstances but not by domain industry standards. Cars.com is great domain name by all standards of measurement. All the owner has to do is list it for sale with NO sales pitch or explanation whatsoever. On my end of the spectrum, the domains I sell are completely useless without my pitch and numbers.

If you get 2 pieces of mail, one delivered in an ordinary envelope and the other delivered by FedFex Priority mail marked urgent and confidential, which one will you open first? The way you respond to email has everything to do with the authority of the delivery service and your confidence in it. You open the newsletters from Namepros, yes? So if I want to inform you about a domaining service I am offering, I will do it through Namepros.

I have been experimenting with marketing in startup business forums and industry specific forums and getting good responses. Of course, the current state of affairs make it a bit tricky to determine effectiveness in dollars and cents.

With this particular domain, I will send the pitch out through a law forum newsletter. I will include an email address that generates an auto-response with my entire sales pitch. At the end of the sales pitch, there will be a link to the offer page. This way, all my emails will reach their inbox and all of them will hopefully be opened. I will accept offers for both purchasing and leasing. If I get to lease it our for $1k a month for 4,500 targeted leads, that is still a very good deal for them. I won't complain about $12k a year. The only thing I am a bit nervous about is the current economic climate.

I like the strategy! Hope you'll let us know how it goes.

 

[BrandAptly.com]

Would that be EmoryLegal.com? How would I know that BrandAptly, i think you and I could work well together, especially your thinking on how and who to market the domain to. What's interesting about this is many law firms have names whose partners are all deceased, but they keep the name anyway for obvious reasons. I'm guessing too you're talking about Georgia and I know that Emory University has a law school their. Good Luck, and I really like your style Send me a PM if you're interested

EmoryLegal.com is mine, but was purchased for another experiment that I haven't yet gotten to.

Take a look at this business I scraped up today:
https://www.yellowpages.com/nationw...ice-in-court-attorneys-2701?lid=1001784173629

Their company domain has a whopping 23 characters! tvctruckersvoiceincourt / com
Meanwhile, tvctruckers.com is available for reg fee. They have 17k attorneys in their network handing out business cards with that ridiculous domain name. Assuming it's only 10 visitors a day they are leaking to tvctruckers.com, that is 3,650 leads a year a competitor can be scooping up. Godaddy appraisal is about $600. How do you justify selling 3,650 solid leads a year for $600? Packaged well with the right verbiage, that is a fairly quick $1,500 begging to be taken. It shouldn't take more that 3 hours of actual work to make that money (not counting waiting time between communications). I won't touch this one because they don't have a strong enough social media presence and reviews for me to leverage. I have bigger fish to fry.

This morning, I woke up to about 300 businesses only in the legal section from one state with 20 plus characters in their domains. There are going to be a LOT of bankruptcy filings and lawsuits when this pandemic dies down. This is money just begging to be made. I also got about 50 expired domains of businesses with solid company profiles.

I see domainers with awesome portfolios. I look at some of their domain names and I think "these are very hot domains". Unfortunately, the domains just sit around for a long time just looking pretty because very few prospects understand them.

Walk up to most small business owners and tell them you want to sell them a domain name and the response you will get is "I already have a website", while they hand you a business card with a ridiculous domain. On the other hand, tell them you will give them 1k new customers every month who are ready to buy their service/product and it becomes a completely different conversation. You can't measure this value with any bot.

Let me take my 'stupid' and 'unprofessional' behind back to work. I will touch base with you. I have a 2 year goal to acquire an inventory 10k domains with a sell-through rate of 10% at an average price of $2k a domain. I know it's a 'stupid' expectation...but getting stupidly rich doing the things I love doesn't offend my sensibilities.

I am exploring a technique where I take any hashtag and make it trend on social media using 5k accounts across all the platforms. This way, I won't have to compete with anyone for premium domains in auctions. I will literally be able to manufacture my own premium high traffic domains round the clock and lease them out.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -Thomas A. Edison

 

[ThatNameGuy]

EmoryLegal.com is mine, but was purchased for another experiment that I haven't yet gotten to.

Take a look at this business I scraped up today:

Their company domain has a whopping 23 characters! tvctruckersvoiceincourt / com
Meanwhile, tvctruckers.com is available for reg fee. They have 17k attorneys in their network handing out business cards with that ridiculous domain name. Assuming it's only 10 visitors a day they are leaking to tvctruckers.com, that is 3,650 leads a year a competitor can be scooping up. Godaddy appraisal is about $600. How do you justify selling 3,650 solid leads a year for $600? Packaged well with the right verbiage, that is a fairly quick $1,500 begging to be taken. It shouldn't take more that 3 hours of actual work to make that money (not counting waiting time between communications). I won't touch this one because they don't have a strong enough social media presence and reviews for me to leverage. I have bigger fish to fry.

This morning, I woke up to about 300 businesses only in the legal section from one state with 20 plus characters in their domains. There are going to be a LOT of bankruptcy filings and lawsuits when this pandemic dies down. This is money just begging to be made. I also got about 50 expired domains of businesses with solid company profiles.

I see domainers with awesome portfolios. I look at some of their domain names and I think "these are very hot domains". Unfortunately, the domains just sit around for a long time just looking pretty because very few prospects understand them.

Walk up to most small business owners and tell them you want to sell them a domain name and the response you will get is "I already have a website", while they hand you a business card with a ridiculous domain. On the other hand, tell them you will give them 1k new customers every month who are ready to buy their service/product and it becomes a completely different conversation. You can't measure this value with any bot.

Let me take my 'stupid' and 'unprofessional' behind back to work. I will touch base with you. I have a 2 year goal to acquire an inventory 10k domains with a sell-through rate of 10% at an average price of $2k a domain. I know it's a 'stupid' expectation...but getting stupidly rich doing the things I love doesn't offend my sensibilities.

I am exploring a technique where I take any hashtag and make it trend on social media using 5k accounts across all the platforms. This way, I won't have to compete with anyone for premium domains in auctions. I will literally be able to manufacture my own premium high traffic domains round the clock and lease them out.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -Thomas A. Edison

BrandAptly said,
"I see domainers with awesome portfolios. I look at some of their domain names and I think "these are very hot domains". Unfortunately, the domains just sit around for a long time just looking pretty because very few prospects understand them."

Reminds me a lot of the marina down the creek from where I live. There are over 300 yachts in the Marina, and 90% just sit there day in and day out without being used. I've always owned a boat, but even my boats left the dock less than 10% of the time. What's up with that, and I use my boat more than any of my neighbors use theirs.

It really is a shame that domains like boats sit there unused for years on end. Seems like such a waste

 

[ThatNameGuy]

They sit unused because no one needs them. There are almost an endless number of possible domain names that can exist. Why would you expect most of them to be used?

Case in point....they're being hoarded, but I'm finding ways to catch, register and sell the citations

 

[Joe N]

For example, you're not going to see bad domains when the estimated GD value is over 2.5k and we're in .com.

Available right now as a GD Closeout:

Bet-viper.com

GD value: $3,793

 

[Compassion]

Definitely 0.

And I echo the sentiments by peak.domains

Mentioning software appraisals as a buyer or seller is not a good idea IMHO.

Sharing comparable sales to support yourself as a buyer or a seller!?

Now that is more professional and more accurate for all parties involved.