How do you appraise domains?
 

When buying domains, I tend to factor in Alexa ranking and value of links in and of course how much I like the domain. Not that the tools for all that are perfect, but I don't usually look at stats supplied by the seller much, as a lot of people just supply a screenshot.

I see domains at least being put on the market for some dollar amounts which seem outlandish to me. Not sure how often they sell at those prices, but I'm wondering how other people arrive at their domain valuations.

Do you have a specific dollar amount you feel each link in is worth, each point of Google page rank, Alexa number, etc.? How do you appraise domains?

learn sumfin!!!

pages indexed, directory listings, backlinks on the top 3, how many words, natural phrase, industry, etc etc etc there's about a dozen or so things I look at

and when I want a 2nd opinion, drop a few bucks at Monte's appraisal service at moniker.com ... it's worth it.

:thumbsup

traffic and brandability

a lot of factors influence price.. TheJimmy did a decent job in his post

Spoken like a man with every single link in his sig broken.

I'm willing to trade knowledge for knowledge, so here is a piece of info you could clearly benefit from.

The following is not how you format a link:

http://<b>www.studtrainer.com</b>

Try them with the bold tags outside the URL and someone might arrive at a site when clicking your sig.

Okay, now it is your turn. Tell me the incredibly obvious info I am missing about domain appraising, the info so obvious that it makes it peculiar for me to start a conversation on the topic in a forum for conversations about web business.

I was definitely wondering if any of the services for that were good. Thanks for the tip. :) I love their backlinks tool.

Thanks, TheJimmy. Quick question (I don't mean to hijack the thread from AmeliaG but my question is somewhat related): do you think it would make good economic sense to come up with some domains (be the first registrant) that are brandable, short, etc etc. Then put in the work for page indexing, directory listing, getting tons of one way back links, etc etc? I have quite a bit of employees that can do the above. I am just wondering if it's worth having such a system in place then reselling the domains once they hit certain milestones. Maybe have an industry by industry portfolio of "prebuilt, prepopulated" domains?

Appraisal of a domain name is a very tricky project, and it will vary depending on the type of buyer you are. Many are concerned with current income (parked, or other) in order to determine the value of a name. I've seen countless names that sell for much more than you might imagine just by the name alone, because they get a little traffic and are earning a decent amount. Some names just say the right thing, and the buyer wants it. To get a good picture of domain prices, you should look at DNJournal's Sales page for the non-auction/backorder domains. Domains that sell that aren't caught up in a bidding frenzy.
http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm

Another place to look are the Auction sites like Sedo and Afternic. Take a look at the Recent Sales.
http://www.sedo.com
http://www.afternic.com

I like to use URL Trends to get a quick overall picture of a domain when I start to research what it's value might be, before I make an offer.
http://www.urltrends.com

At the end of the day that's why the saying usually goes.. It's worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

Buyers with a lot of domains are always looking to develop many of them, but don't always have the immediate resources and time available to get this done. Every now and then I browse the other forums like Name Pros and Site Point, etc.. to try and pickup some small cheap sites in a niche I might be looking to develop and transfer the content to my own domain. It's usually easier for me to buy them, than develop them myself. There's a guy I bought a site from for example with a business model consisting of developing small quick sites and selling them inexpensively. Examples of this would be:
http://www.gangsterfilms.info/
http://www.famoustrains.info/
http://www.boxinggreats.info/
etc..

Who the heck wanted RubberGloves.com that bad?

See where it says it was picked up through Snapnames? That's an example of the bidding frenzy I mentioned through the backorder services. You probably shouldn't look at any Snapnames, or Pool or Enom names for an accurate representation of domain values overall. They tend to go a bit higher than normal but if the market continues you might look back this time next year and think about how cheap some of these names are. You can look through the DnJournal archives for 2004 for example and see some really great bargains that might've seemed crazy at the time.

It wouldn't be surprising that RubberGloves.com would be worth $19k tho, to at least a few people/companies.

Thanks man, I left one or two factors off of there that interest me personally, but it gives a general idea of the width of things you want to look at.

Also really hard to say unless you know someone's intent on domain purposing. Brujah hit that aspect very well in his post.




PS: Gene I'm hitting you up on ICQ in 15minutes. :thumbsup

just pay sedo 20$~ and they will tell you its worth 100k :winkwink:

Seriously another good issue on this topic. Domain valuation is fun and all...but at the end of the day it really boils down to what your client list is and who you can put them in front of that will buy for decent pricing.

Many boards are plagued with under priced domains imo.

Which is great if you are on the right side of the fence.

:)

bump, cause this is a good thread.

I'll tell how you how most people appraise their domains. They think about how much they like the domain and how good it sounds to them. Then they set a price which seems like "a lot" of money to them. So if they are poor, they will appraise the domain at $2000 because that is "a lot" of money. If they are rich, they will appraise the same domain at $200,000. The whole process is retarded, but that's pretty much how it works with most domainers.

There is however, a very small minority of domainers that do know how to correctly appraise domains. Their process is complex and I dont feel like explaining it.