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?

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Estibot and Go Daddyare 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?

Raymond...i already responded once saying that a combination of 3-5 services help me to determine whether or not to buy a domain. Generally I use the following;

1. Go Daddy
2. Estibot/Epik - they are obviously one and the same
3. Free Valuator
4. Nameworth

As others have mentioned, if I were to have to use one it would be Go Daddy because of all the add on's. Even if they didn't provide an appraisal/valuation their "Comparable Domains Sold" feature is worth the price of admission In addition they provide "keyword" analysis and values for keywords.

With regards to Estibot/Epik - to show how pathetic they are, look no further than your list of Sedo sales for this week; Gigafi.com sold for $5,000 and Estibot appraised it at $120, onlyfns.com sold for $2,999 and Estibot appraised it at "0" and bediet.com sold for $2,500 and Estibot appraised it for $260.

What the heck is bediet.com anyway? i own H2ODiet.com and Estibot appraises it for $10
Bottomline, Go Daddy is pretty good and everyone should at least check it out before buying or selling domains.

 

[DaveTw]

I totally agree with domainers that don't follow appraisal tools.

However - I'd give the appraisal tools a bonus about the EMDs (not the GD one).

I've seen several videos of Andre Rosener and Chris Zuiker explaining how the right keyword increases the volume of customers and at the same time the value of domain itself. And the rule along which they calculate the value of such domain (keyword search amount times commercial cost times ninety % and so on). It was a simple mathematical appraisal. I've tried playing myself with an EMD website, it's working the way those folks said.

That's actually some advantage of Estibot and similar tools. Even if customers don't know, neither understand it - it could be a fantastic selling argument to show them such and explain how it works.

No use of appraisal tools for brandables I'd say.

Important to mention - I don't sell domains, so it's just a rookie's opinion.

 

[Joe N]

Most of my sales have come from traffic generating domains. Before this entire crisis peaked, I was moving an average of 5 of them a month at prices ranging from $1k - $2k. They had much less traffic coming from the better variations of their original domain names. Their traffic was being leaked from their own domain names. If they refused to buy it, I sold it to their competitors. Mind you, I have only been domaining since September of last year...part time.

Business owners know how much advertising costs and the type of leads that result from them. If you present the numbers in a fashion that makes sense, you will get the sale. It requires outbound marketing but the sales can be fast. I've sold domains in as fast as 4 days with the right pitch. A lot of these domains will be dismissed by most veteran domainers.

A Chrysler 300 is an ordinary car until you put it next to a beat-up Geo Prism...then it begins to look like a Bentley.

Let's look at these numbers for instance: a good targeted opt-in email list will cost you about $600 per 1k emails. Don't take my word for it. Just shop around. So you will be paying $33k for 55k COLD emails. Then you will have to pay a professional to create your marketing materials and send it out. About 80% of that will reach their inbox if they know what they are doing and maybe 20% might save your info to use in the future.

What I am offering you is 55k unique leads per year who are actively shopping for an attorney. They are being referred to your business by a reputable law firm with a stellar track record. Psychologically, your prospects will project the reputation of the former law firm on you.

Which of the two scenarios is more attractive? The choice is a no-brainer. I will be shooting myself in the foot if I attempt to price this domain. I will just write a sales copy comparing costs of all the alternatives and start a bidding war to let the market dictate the price. Cost of email marketing, cost of advertising on Facebook, cost of advertising on Twitter, etc.

The opening pitch I am playing around with:
Would you like premium referrals from a very reputable law firm that has a solid track record and a cult following?

I have a bot that crawls the yellow pages to find these gems. Right now, a LOT of businesses are letting their domains 'slip' for obvious reasons. I test the domains for 4 days. If it's good, I keep it. If it's not, I get my money back. I know exactly how and where to find my prospects. The key is automation.

The reason most domainers have such low sell-through rates is because the average business owner doesn't understand domains. What they all really understand are leads, clients and customers. You sell them a domain wrapped up in what they understand.

But please, please be careful. You have been cautioned not to be like me. I am 'stupid' and 'unprofessional'.

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.

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I purchased a domain name about 5 days ago which formerly belonged to a law firm that folded after 15 years of business (according to info on archive.org). It's a rather obscure lastname+firm.com...10 letters total. I did a 301 redirect to test the traffic. Here are the specifics:

• Godaddy appraisal $1,238
• Listed in the legal section of 400 plus reputable business directories with several good reviews
• Has 4.5 plus star reviews on Yelp, TrustPilot and Google
• Gets an average of 150 visitors a day (estimate 55k/year) from click through and type-in
• Comparable sales on Namebio for domains ending in 'firm' range from $233k to $100
• Total number of attorneys in their home state that I can pitch it to: 32k

In this particular scenario, I'm not just selling a domain name. I am selling the promise of premium targeted traffic resulting from the marketing of a very reputable law firm with a stellar track record. The buyer of the domain simply has to do a 301 redirect to their website and they get 55k prospects a year.

Based on the information above, how do I rely on data from any bots you've mentioned to price this domain name? You really want to tell me that 55k/year premium target prospects generated from the solid marketing of a reputable law firm over a period of 15 years is only worth $1,238?

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

 

[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.

Just to let you know that I reported your post as I am of the opinion that you have acted in an unprofessional manner. The report was declined.

I would like to understand your reasons for registering this domain name. Why would you spend time and money to do this. Just to prove a point? What is you point? What are you trying to achieve?

Am I not allowed to have a differing opinion without being targeted by you when you don't have the courage or balls to have an adult discussion about the issue. Man up and tell me what your problem is so that we can deal with it and move on.

I am the owner of Reddstagg.com and I shall not be very happy if you have ulterior motives for basically acting like an anonymous child just because you can.

Have the decency and professional courtesy to explain your actions.

 

[Joe N]

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

You didn't actually answer my question.

How can you expect that most domains in existence should be in use?

 

[Reddstagg]

You didn't actually answer my question.

How can you expect that most domains in existence should be in use?

Good morning,

That is a good point.

I would say that there will always be the floating plastic debris of domain names just floating around the world never to be used or re-used.

I have 350 names now so just for an example that means I could have 10% of my names i.e. 35 never being used or developed into functioning websites.

It is probably higher for my names as they are crap, but if we use 10% as a guide that number soon mounts up. There are over 1 million members on NP so that soon becomes 35 million.

Good names may be traded a few times and never be used and before long 10 years go buy and the domain name may have only been owned by 2-3 people in that time.

I wonder if there is anyway to tell if a domain name has never been developed into a blog or a website. The numbers could actually be higher than we imagined.

Something to think about.

 

[Jv1999]

I put 10 lol. Because most end users are buyers, and they usually don't know jack about domaining. They see that very very very, very large GD estimated value and just assume it's correct. I mean, when are estimated values wrong from a mainstream market platform? They just assume it's correct because it would be so legally bad if they're misled -- you wouldn't even consider that it was wrong.

That said, I think the values are also fairly accurate in terms of whether or not a domain is good. For example, you're not going to see bad domains when the estimated GD value is over 2.5k and we're in .com.

 

[Jv1999]

Available right now as a GD Closeout:

Bet-viper.com

GD value: $3,793

LOL okay you proved me wrong. That domain is bad. There's always exceptions to any rule tho ^_^

 

[Joe N]

LOL okay you proved me wrong. That domain is bad. There's always exceptions to any rule tho ^_^

Indeed. Only I find that there are lots and lots and lots of exceptions in this case!

 

[manpreet]

I rated 4 out of 10 as the bot valuation just gives you an idea, ofcourse not even close to the real picture. I like Godaddy's appraisal tool as I think that is the only one available with some genuine stats, as of now. I have also been a paying member of Estibot in the past, although the reasoning of their valuation was unreasonable at times. But overall, I believe its the need of the buyer that decides the value of your domain, no bot can evenly justify that.

* Also, would like to mention the Estibot Support, it was awesome whenever needed. P.S. I am no where associated or affiliated with them, but just sharing my customer experience.

 

[PNW]

Zero for me. Domain alone...Value depends on the market / topic and extensions imo. Existing or prior presence is another issue. GD clearly fails with zoom (us) and even though estibot is low $xxx,xxx there is no way that would be it's worth.

 

[namealbum.com]

0 , I hope they will think like human in future.

 

[equity78]

0 Wins by a wide margin, thanks for voting.