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- We are often asked for advice about domain name and web site values. We are unable to provide others with values on our properties, will do so for properties we are interesting in acquiring, and for third party domains or sites typically only provide these consulting services for clients we are already doing other business with. As a starting point, however, we do have a few general words of advice.
- Online free or low cost (less than $100) domain appraisal services are usually worth less than you pay for them. They typically only (a) begin with the TLD (top level domain) the domain name is located in (i.e: a .com is more valuable than a .biz), (b) count the number of letters in the domain (usually the shorter the better), and (c) finally count how many times the domain name (as a search term) is typed into Google each month. They usually typically ignore the value of the existing business, existing content, a site’s user base, various rights held, the size of the market (sports.com likely has a larger target audience than maskingtape.com), the desirability of the name and value of the market (invest.com might attract more $ per customer in sales, and higher advertise rates, than say, swimming.com). The more built out the site to its full potential and the larger its operating budget, often the more important its revenue and profitability is.
- A lot of new specialty TLDs have opened for business lately. History hasn’t been kind to TLDs like .info or .biz, and the landslide of low quality TLDs has begun. Regardless of what the registries say who run new TLDs such as .camp, .rodeo, or .today, and regardless of promotion by registrars such as GoDaddy, why would any legitimate business or organization want to run on a domain like ‘apache.wiki’, when it is instead free (with huge SEO benefits) to use wiki. apache.org or apache.org/wiki/ instead? We do not own any properties in these new 2014+ TLDs
- If you would like to learn more about Internet domain names we suggest visiting sites such as: www.dnjournal.com
- DN Journal provides public year to date sales charts for publicly disclosed transactions. Please note that publicly disclosed transactions represent a minority of transactions known to occur. The vast majority of domain transactions nation-wide do not appear on these lists. Publicly disclosed transactions are often not fair market transactions between a buyer and seller, but often the results of ‘firesale’ auctions, and as such typically represent in all but the very strongest properties ‘wholesale’ (or worse) valuations significantly below what names and sites would realize if not sold under duress.
