Why do people still use / trust Estibot?

[Hootsifer]

Mike Mann has sold domains listed on estibot with $25 valuation and no google search results for 10k. That proves it means nothing. Then some with $1400 valuations never sell. The only thing I notice is once the domain is sold estibot picks that up and gives the domain some level of legitimacy. I'm really sick of seeing estibot.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

I use only estibot's Extract tool...

 

[Hypersot]

To answer your title's question,

people want to hear a good thing regarding their business decision, even when it comes from an automated algorithm.

Like Jurgen above mentioned; estibot can be useful for other things... anything except valuation though

 

[hawkeye]

Why do people still use / trust estibot?
a) To satisfy their ego.
b) To justify their domain buying decision.
c) To inflate their domains price.
d) They actually believe it to be true.
e) They're desperate!

 

[Kate]

f) they didn't do their homework

 

[Kuffy]

There are two questions there -

Why use it? Because it's fun to post about it, and it stimulates discussions about values.

Why trust it? You must be joking, is that is a serious question?

 

[gromovnik]

g) They like when they get an instant answer.
h) They believe in shortcuts.

 

[Hootsifer]

But the instant answer is not accurate and literally means nothing if it was never previously sold.

 

[pinkdragon]

Mike Mann has sold domains listed on estibot with $25 valuation and no google search results for 10k. That proves it means nothing. Then some with $1400 valuations never sell. The only thing I notice is once the domain is sold estibot picks that up and gives the domain some level of legitimacy. I'm really sick of seeing estibot.

Can you suggest a better alternative?

 

[hawkeye]

Can you suggest a better alternative?

If you 'need something' to give you a price estimate, comparable sales on NameBio, dnJournal are a couple sources. But there is no appraisal service that can give accurate or close to accurate appraisals. But there are plenty of sites where you can pay for as many appraisals as you want, if that is what you need to see.

 

[Hootsifer]

Can you suggest a better alternative?

Hands on, domain experience, research

 

[mad409]

Can you suggest a better alternative?

Try a random number generator, works better than estibot.

http://www.mathgoodies.com/calculators/random_no_custom

 

[pinkdragon]

hawkeye, I know what you mean, but ...

1. NameBio and dnJournal - very often, the domain you wanna look for appraisal have no corespondent.
2. Yea, I know that plenty of "sites" can give you appraisals (Scams).

Please do not forget that not all of us are pros, and for most of us appraisals are a difficult thing.

 

[pinkdragon]

Hands on, domain experience, research

Well, not everyone have this experience you are talking about.

As an experienced domainer, you know that sometimes domains Estibot say they are worth XX,XXX are sold for X,XXX, right?

 

[souren]

To me it's only good if you are appraising a large domain list
And see witch ones gets a hint from estibot
It's can be just a tool to get the 1st hint
Then you should do the rest 99% of your homework
(Yes It ain't gonna be that easy ! )

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

Why do people still use / trust estibot?

Probably they don't know their own potential.

 

[johname]

Best to work on comparable theory(whats a good comparable and what isn't and why). Then look at prior sales. Then factor if the sale was a strong hands sale or not. Probably reseller or enduser sale. And finally, imagine who would be the most likely person to buy this particular domain.

 

[1Darko]

This is very easy to answer:

Don't trust a bot!

 

[gilescoley]

Well, not everyone have this experience you are talking about.

This is how you get the experience when it comes to appraising a domain. We all had to start by doing this

Read this forum for months, there is a ton of useful info right here on NP
Namebio and DNJournal have plenty of sales and seeing what names sell will give you that experience
Never feel bad to ask questions on here, post the question and you will find a lot of experienced domainers on here will be willing to help and offer advice
Googling the questions you want answered will help you as well

There is no alternative to automated appraisals, just stay away from the,m, rather just post it here on namepros in the appraisal section

 

[Ategy]

Estibot is a great tool for getting data on a bunch of domains at once. Admittedly the actual estimated domain value is fairly useless with brandables. Most brandables are completely subjective and are beyond the scope of any automated appraisal system, not just Estibot.

That being said .. if it pumps out a bigger number it'll get me to look into the domain a little more to see if I didn't overlook something. The reverse is true as well, if it gives a really low number when I thought it would be high, then it'll get me to double check if I didn't read too much into the domain .. or sometimes a surprisingly low number is quite simply an indication that there's a typo in the domain .. lol.

I track about 200 domains going to auction per day (but only buy a very very small amount of those). It's a quick way to pull out CPC, search volume and number of searched pages. These certainly are not the only factors involved when I evaluate up to what price to pay for a domain, but they certainly do help.

When it comes to pure brandables your gut feeling based on general knowledge of the industry in question still ends up being the biggest factor.

At the end of the day it's a good tool that helps you get some data to help you decide your own personal evaluation of a domain.