How much is your domain worth?

[Arpit131]

There a lot of free and paid domain appraisal services and they may be right in their own outlook and the way they evaluate the price of the domains.
However, from my experiences in the past, I have seen that the actual value of a domain is not what it is appraised for. Sometimes it may not be even close to that.
Always remember, the value of any domain is the amount that a buyer is ready to pay, at any given point of time.
There are times when you park a domain for months without having a single buyer for it. But then suddenly a buyer turns up, and you see the domain has sold for multiple thousands of dollars.

There may also be some domains with an appraisal of over a $1,000. But there may be no buyer for it, even for as little as $50.
There are times when you may have the dilemma whether to sell a domain at an offered price, or wait until someone with a better offer turns up. Those times are hard.
I have rejected some of the good offers for some of my domains, expecting a buyer with a better price to turn up. I have ended up getting the domains expired with no sale at all.
The reverse has also happened. But those are rare cases.
So, please be very careful when you are letting a buyer leave.

 

[dubzstgz]

I say if your confident on what your domains are worth stick to your gut but if it's just a nickel and dime difference then sell it. No point in fussing over a few dollars.. when trying to close the sale.

 

[Name Trader]

If the ROI is good, sell and move on. For me, I never accept the first offer. I always counter offer.

 

[SearchEngineZ]

Spot on.

Unlike most things in this world, the value of a domain name is hard to assess. It certainly helps if it is keyword or keywordkeyword, because there are search metrics you can use.

The right buyer could stumble upon your domain tomorrow or 20 years from now, you just can't tell. They might pay $1000 or $10000, depends on who they are, what they want it for, how much they know about domain values.

The best investors limit uncertainties by:

• only buying domains that are easy to value - keyword .coms
• spending most of their time cold-calling and pro-actively finding buyers

I don't do that, and I have found that how I price my domains doesn't make much difference. Lower prices means higher turnover, less that I let expire.

Higher prices means lower turnover, higher profit.

Either yields me the same net return.

 

[qubez]

Appraiser services are domainers, they want to give jacked-up values; that's what their domain-selling customers want. When their customer is the buyer, they still have the interests of the domain industry at heart. They tend to be overvalued. Automated services are useless - many "services" don't disclose that their appraisal is a computer script.

The problem I see with getting a fair assessment of domain name values is that auction houses don't show sold listings after they have completed. The few that do might show only $500+ domain sales just to increase the perception of their own service.

Hiding sold prices is for the benefit of resellers, a potential buyer can't just look up your domain and see you got it for $20. However, domainers need to know that the majority of unsearchable and hard-to-brand names just don't sell when offered, even for a pittance. Buy-it-now $5 examples ending in <10 minutes on GoDaddy auctions (that already got 0 bidders on the first auction round): "birthdaycardservice.com" "adoptiongay.com" "birdgrow.com" "thehotmusic.com" "readymuffler.com" - decent sounding, but nobody wants them for $5.
A real third-party appraiser would look at real factors:

-is it a good meaningless dotcom startup name - uber, thinkup - can't cold call, but might interest many
-is it brandable generic, like godaddy or amazon
-is it industry specific brandable: arcfinancial, datasavers, boatboss, greentechs
-is it generic, but many businesses might want it: potatowagon, freshchinese, pcrepairs, ski-resort
-or a negative, is it just too specific or stupid, like someone's failed business name: jamestowntravel, accuratedetailing, carpetking, marylandhifi, jacobsauctions, peachpitrestaurant, alaskahifi
-or a negative, useless domains for the market: groceryland, fastfoodnow, coolbank, bestairport
-real value of non-com gTLD

Then comes an evaluation of the number of interested customers and what they can offer. Emerging fields, new businesses looking for a name, etc. Big companies can pay more, dumplinghouse or tacocart is not going to pay as much as autoheadquarters or officestop, and online businesses are going to pay more than hometown businesses wanting an online brochure.

A non-automated appraiser is offering their opinion - could you call the related business and get $500 if asked, how many businesses can you call, could you auction it. They should be able to give you a scorecard in the areas above. Because certain names may have only one company with that name, but that company might be very motivated, an appraisal should have a "if you're lucky, possible sale value", but the much more realistic "open market resale value", or even "trademark-holder domain seize risk".