J4wd
PeerIdeas.comEstablished Member
- Impact
- 432
This question is asked hundreds of times a day across dozens of domainer forums, here and elsewhere.
We battle with this question every time we place a BIN figure on a listing. We’re constantly questioning whether we are leaving money on the table.
Could I ask for more? Should I ask for less? How long should I wait?
And yet there is no single right answer. If there were, we wouldn’t be here, we’d be off making sales.
When buying a house, you can value a property based on the sales price of its closest neighbours, with a small adjustment based on number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
You can’t do that with domains at all. Almi.com is worth far more than Anmi.com even though they’re only one letter apart. The same applies to .com vs .net, .cc vs io, CCTLD vs GTLD.
The other challenge is that the value of names changes continuously. NameBio lists NFT.com under the category of Gardening (with 100% confidence).
GoDaddy GoValue estimates it as being worth “More than $25,000” while Estibot pegs it at $58,000.
My point is that we all get things wrong. Nobody has the answer to the question, “How much is my domain name worth?” and likely nobody ever will.
So let’s perhaps reframe the question instead. Perhaps instead of trying to draw a line in the sand once and never again, we should think of our investments in more fluid terms:
“How much is my domain name worth *today*?”
While it’s a simple change, it carries with it the spirit of a market that is in constant motion. We accept that there is no single fixed price, along with the reality that we need to test our assumptions regularly.
What sold last year may not sell this year. What didn’t sell last year may be this year’s hottest new trend.
Unfortunately this realisation disproportionately impacts those with larger domain portfolios. The more domains you own, the more difficult and time consuming it is to revalue them from time to time.
Perhaps there is a simple solution though. One area, currently unexplored, is peer reviews. I’ve seen it happen a few times on the forums here, where one member will pick out the names they like from a peer’s list. Not to buy, but just to offer helpful feedback.
And let’s face it, domainers enjoy looking through obscure lists of names to find a few gems. It’s what we do most days when we scour the drops.
I’d like to see more of this - domainers helping each other out.
So let me start: send me a link to your portfolio and I’ll pick out the 10 domains I think will sell best. I’ll also pick out the 10 I think will not sell. Then you do the same for me.
In my opinion this can only be a win-win.
We battle with this question every time we place a BIN figure on a listing. We’re constantly questioning whether we are leaving money on the table.
Could I ask for more? Should I ask for less? How long should I wait?
And yet there is no single right answer. If there were, we wouldn’t be here, we’d be off making sales.
When buying a house, you can value a property based on the sales price of its closest neighbours, with a small adjustment based on number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
You can’t do that with domains at all. Almi.com is worth far more than Anmi.com even though they’re only one letter apart. The same applies to .com vs .net, .cc vs io, CCTLD vs GTLD.
The other challenge is that the value of names changes continuously. NameBio lists NFT.com under the category of Gardening (with 100% confidence).
GoDaddy GoValue estimates it as being worth “More than $25,000” while Estibot pegs it at $58,000.
My point is that we all get things wrong. Nobody has the answer to the question, “How much is my domain name worth?” and likely nobody ever will.
So let’s perhaps reframe the question instead. Perhaps instead of trying to draw a line in the sand once and never again, we should think of our investments in more fluid terms:
“How much is my domain name worth *today*?”
While it’s a simple change, it carries with it the spirit of a market that is in constant motion. We accept that there is no single fixed price, along with the reality that we need to test our assumptions regularly.
What sold last year may not sell this year. What didn’t sell last year may be this year’s hottest new trend.
Unfortunately this realisation disproportionately impacts those with larger domain portfolios. The more domains you own, the more difficult and time consuming it is to revalue them from time to time.
Perhaps there is a simple solution though. One area, currently unexplored, is peer reviews. I’ve seen it happen a few times on the forums here, where one member will pick out the names they like from a peer’s list. Not to buy, but just to offer helpful feedback.
And let’s face it, domainers enjoy looking through obscure lists of names to find a few gems. It’s what we do most days when we scour the drops.
I’d like to see more of this - domainers helping each other out.
So let me start: send me a link to your portfolio and I’ll pick out the 10 domains I think will sell best. I’ll also pick out the 10 I think will not sell. Then you do the same for me.
In my opinion this can only be a win-win.
