Figuring out your domain name worth or your entire domain portfolio takes time, online tools and dedication if you want to sell your names at a fair market price.
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Domain names are unique. How do you come up with an accurate valuation for your domain names? Do you know what makes your domains valuable?
What if someone is interested in purchasing one of your domains would you know how to value your domain?
How would you figure out a basic pricing plan when you decide to sell your domains?
You should handle your domain investments like any other financial investment. You have to gather all of your stats like similar domain sales, visitors per month, monthly revenue, etc.
If you have all of your information together, you can provide these stats to your potential buyers and offer them a fair amount for the domain.
On the flip side, if you don’t have any pertinent information handy, then you risk stockpiling your domains and wonder why you can’t generate any interest in your portfolio.
Your domains may be worth a lot of money, and then again, they may be worth nothing.
You’ll have an excellent domaining business if you can sell your domains at a reasonable amount and sell the names for a comparable figure that other domains have sold for in the past.
There are quite a few online sources that you can utilize when you are ready to sell your domains. In this post, I will share seven online sources to help with the process of evaluating your domains.
Source: Igloo.com
Questions to Ask to Improve the Value of Your Domain
Domains were created to help make it easier for web users to connect with websites easily; therefore it is crucial that your URL is short and easy to comprehend.
If it passes the radio test, then you will have a name that can potentially bring in a nice profit for your business venture.
- Does the name sound right when spoken?
- Is it memorable?
- Does it pass the radio test?
- Is the name generating type-in traffic?
- How many results appear in Google when you search for the term?
- Is the domain easily understood?
Who Are Your Customers?
Your domain name worth is at most as valuable as someone is inclined to pay for the name. Thus, knowing what other similar domains are estimated at in the market, how much the domain name is in demand, and how much the buyer is willing to pay for the domain will help you come to a fair market value price.
Evaluate Your Domain Name Worth with These Tools
Since most of the online sources are for estimation purposes for a website or a domain name, some of these appraisal sites listed below can assist with gauging the assessed valuation of the site or domain name in question.
1.) DNJournal - DNJournal lists domains that sold during the year. Smart domain investors will use this list to compare their domain to other domains of similar comparable value.
Real estate agents often use lists of houses that have sold in the area to compare their listings to other homes that have sold of similar value in the neighborhood.
If you are a fan of any of the Million Dollar Listing Shows on Bravo, then you know that the agents use these comparables to set a price for their listings.
The idea is to view domains that are similar to your domains and the selling price of those domains.
For example, if you own headshots.vegas and you note that headshots.xyz sold for $2000, well you have the “.xyz” domain to use as a comparable, also if you can find the .com, .net domain names and the price they sold for you can look at the percentage difference between the .com, and .net
You are doing the same thing that a real estate agent does and that is to find all comparable houses that sold in the area and understand the value of the home before they set a price to the house that they are hired to sell.
You have to understand the value of your domain before you accept any offers from potential buyers.
2.) Namebio - Namebio has a section where you can enter your keywords and see the sales price of similar domains that sold in the past. You can enter your keywords “before” or “after” your keyword.
So if your name has the word laptops in it, then find all the other domains from the search results with the word laptops in the domains and look at the prices that those domains sold for and use those figures as your comparable.
The goal here is to find 5 to 10 other domains close to your domain and examine the prices that they were sold for so that you can figure out and set a price range for the domain that you are selling and the purchasers' expectations on a fair price for the name that you are selling.
You’ll begin to understand that buyers will try and lowball you for your domains. For instance, your domain might be worth $3000, but your first offer might be $250 from a potential buyer.
Now if you truly know that the value of your domain is $3000, you can show your comps to your potential buyer and let them know that you’ve found 15 other domains similar to yours with a selling price of X amount of dollars.
So with the numbers that you present to the potential buyer, you can try and get the person up in price.
You are showing them the approximate value of other domains compared to yours. You’ve done your work, so if the person is serious, then they can up their dollar amount just like they do on the real estate shows.
Nevertheless, you don’t want to come up with some bogus number without checking any stats. Please use sound judgment when pricing your names.
Don’t think that the name is worth $30,000 because you feel that it is a good brand name when other names sold in the past for $600 or $700.
Yes, you may have a hot name, but you will have to set a reasonable price for the name if you expect to generate any interest in the name.
3). Domain Index is a service open to the public that calculates price ratios for domain names to mark the progress of their price levels. The in-depth system gives a complete immediate valuation founded on the value or sales price.
4). Estibot is a credible, free appraisal tool that provides millions of appraisals on a daily basis. Estibot considers a range of variables that they use to determine domain valuations. But, they mainly center on elements like the domain’s previous sale price, keyword optimization, and CPC.
Estibot is trusted by investors, domain brokers, registrars, parking companies, and financial institutions to create true fair market value based on actual sales and other measures.
The best part with Estibot is the variety of details that they offer in their report when you use their service to evaluate domain names. Do note that Estibot is free, but you only get limited domain searches per day.
5.) GoDaddy has a free appraisal service that uses a range of factors to determine the values that they provide for the appraised domain.
GoDaddy’s appraisal tool takes into consideration different parameters such as the length of the domain name, how much similar domains have sold for, or whether or not the domain uses common keywords.
6.) Sedo offers an appraisal service once you become a member. Sedo calculates the value of the domain based off of search engine suitability, buying and selling expectations and advertising success.
7.) Free Valuator - The best part with Free Valuator, is its dedication to acquiring numerous viewpoints on a domain’s valuation.
The tool contains valuable practical data as well as rankings from Google Pagerank and Alexa in their results.
Free Valuator determines the value of the appraised domain per comparable sales history, website rankings, and keywords. You can achieve various perspectives on a domains performance with this tool.
Contributing Elements in Domain Name Valuation
You can get a general idea of your domain name worth or entire portfolio by examining some of the basics that go into valuing a domain name or portfolio.
How old is the domain? A lot of the good domains were registered ten to twenty years ago, the domain age is another barometer that you can use to estimate the potential value of the domain.
Although true, using the age measure doesn’t indicate that every domain registered in 1999 is of higher importance than domains registered in 2012. I’m just saying that you can use the age of the domain as a general idea of the value of your domain.
How many search results appear in Google for the phrase? A good indication of the popularity of a domain is the number of results for the term similar to your domain name in Google SERPs.
For instance, if you search for stickball in Google, you’ll receive about 40,800,000 results. Now if you search for baseball, you’ll receive over 809,000,000 results.
Obviously, baseball is more popular than stickball. Therefore, if people are creating tons of web pages to the given topic at hand, then the greater demand you can anticipate for your domain.
How many advertisers are listed in the SERPs? If you search for your term, do you see a lot of advertisers in the SERPs in Google?
If you do, then you can guess that your domain will have a potentially higher value when it’s time to sell.
You can use a tool like Semrush to gauge the prices that people are paying Google when their ad link is clicked on for the given search term.
How much type-in traffic is the name generating per day/month?
Is the Domain Generating Any Revenue?
Another avenue that you can look into in regards to your domain name worth is to see if there is any revenue for the domain(s) in question.
Perhaps you own a domain like Las Vegas Shows.vegas that has about 1,175 visitors on a monthly basis or brings in $30 to $60 per month.
If that is the case, then what you should do is sell the domain for the multiple of its revenue. You may get buyers to purchase the domain name based on the multiple criteria that you set up.
The buyer may say that they are willing to purchase the domain for 30 times what it makes per month.
Basically what you want to do is use this pricing model to sell your domains if you are viewing the year to date sales list and you don’t have any comparables, or you do find some domains that are similar but sold for less than what you were anticipating.
If you look at Namebio, and you find all the names similar to yours that have sold for $30 or $60, but your domain is making $30 to $60 in revenue on a monthly basis, then your name has real value with those visitors and the simple fact that you are generating money is an added bonus to selling your name.
You most likely can sell the domain at a multiple of the revenue. If you use this model, then you can find or let buyers know the dollar amount that your domain makes per month.
You will need to have all of your stats together like the visitors and revenue that the name makes on a monthly basis.
Use Google Analytics to Investigate Your Domain Stats
Google Analytics is a great tool that you can utilize when displaying your domain stats to your potential buyers.
Google Analytics will show where the organic visitors are coming from or reveal additional dependable sources so that your buyer knows that you aren’t paying for this traffic and that it is all organic.
Given These Points
Domains are valued anywhere from zero to thousands to millions of dollars. Many factors can contribute to the value of a domain name.
With that said, the different factors that determine the value of a domain are fluctuating all the time. At present, it seems that domains will keep rising in value on the whole which is good if you are a domain investor.
Domains are some of the greatest internet real estate assets that you can own. At the same time a good portion of these domains, for the most part, are worthless.
You can register these names for under $20, and the running costs of these names are trivial. You can research and find that some web hosting companies will give you a free domain that is included in their packages as an incentive to host with their company.
On the flip side, more or less a good portion of domains are worth a lot of money. Don’t assume that it is just the dictionary words or short names as you might assume.
Product phrasings, brand names and brilliant combination of words can all be valued extremely high. Not to mention, the value of these names can fluctuate just as stocks change in the stock market. Any new trend hitting the scene can increase the cost of a domain incidental to the name.
The real test is learning how to calculate the amount of a domain name. If you pay attention to the news, you’ll see that businesses are buying domain names that are relevant to their company name and paying thousands if not millions for these names.
Hopefully, you will use these domain appraisal tools and suggestions when you are ready to cash in on your domain or finding a new domain. You can research and shed some light on your domain name worth to see its potential.
All in all, the unquestionable worth of a domain is the demand and what the market has to say, how much a person will pay for the name and how important the name is to you.