Domain Age As A Domain Valuation Factor
Another thing that is of very small consideration but worth mentioning is domain age, something that . You can usually find the age of a domain and how long the owner has owned it by using a service like Whois.net.
Perhaps more important, from an offering point of view, is determining how long someone has owned the domain. If you use the Whois.net service youll find a Creation Date and that will let you know how long someone has potentially owned a domain .
Still, if you find a domain that has been owned for 10 years and figure that most non-premium domains are about $10 a year to maintain, you can assume, all other factors mentioned above aside, that the owner will want to get his $100 back. This is on you whether you think they deserve it or not.
What Factors Make A Domain Name Valuable
Knowing whether you have a valuable domain on your hands doesnt require a ton of work, but it does require that you understand the factors that lead to a domain being valuable.
Often, the value that a domain holds will be determined by how desirable the domain name is. The list of factors below can help to illuminate whether or not your domain is valuable, but its not a science or always right.
Theres always the chance that your strange and unique domain could align with a phrase from another country, or be the ideal name for a new startup.
Overall, the conditions below will be a good indicator of how valuable a domain actually is.
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5. sedo.com
Sedo.com is the worlds biggest domain brokerage. Sedo provides an instant appraisal service once you become a member and log in.
There are many other sites onlinesome require payment and others are free. From my experience, the five best ones are listed above, but another site, URLAppraisal.net, provides an instant appraisal service that you may want to try out.
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General Value Of A Domain That Is Your Brand Name
If you find yourself in a position where someone owns the .com of your brand name, youre in a pretty tough spot to negotiate and you likely didnt do enough preliminary research before choosing your brand name.
Thats the harsh truth but should be understood if you are entering a negotiating position. Still, it doesnt mean that youll end up spending a bunch on a domain name because someone else owns the brand name that you went with.
For example, a client of mine who owns a flight charter company , had a brand name of Great Flight. Unfortunately, this domain, GreatFlight.com, was not available at that time so he settled for GreatFlt.com.
GreatFlt.com didnt meet a lot of my general marketing criteria for a domain name:
- It wasnt easy to spell
- It wasnt easy to remember
- It wasnt technically his brand name
The client asked that I help him decide what the domain GreatFlight.com was worth as he knew it was important to his branding . Taking the general marketing considerations in mind but also the SEO value of a domain is important, and youll learn more about that below.
The story actually ended pretty well as we found that the owner was willing to negotiate. The site had no SEO value and other than being a fairly generic and easy to spell and remember domain, really had no other inherent value. I think the original owner was asking $1,500 for this particular domain but my client ended up getting off him for like $300 or something that did not break the bank. Winning!
Valuing Your Domain Name
Domain names are tricky to value. They are completely unique. There is only one of each domain name available. Thats why someone reached out to you about buying the domain namethey cant buy a copy of it!
Here are three resources you can use to figure out how much to ask for your domain name.
1. Estibot
Estibot is a free and automated domain name appraiser. Automated domain name appraisers are controversial. The key is to not worry too much about the specific value that Estibot says your domain is worth. Instead, look at the supporting information Estibot provides.
For each domain name, Estibot displays:
- If the domain is registered in popular extensions If your domain is example.com, are example.net and .org both registered by someone else? If a domain is registered in multiple extensions, its a good sign that theres a demand for the domain.
- Comparable domain sales Estibot has a database of public domain sales that its aware of. While no two domains are the same, this helps figure out what similar domains have sold for.
- Search analytics Domain names with more searches and competition for search ads tend to be more valuable, all things considered.
2. NameBio
NameBio is a free database of comparable domain name sales. Although Estibot uses its own database of comparable sales in its valuations, NameBio is a standalone database with over 1.9 million sales and has excellent search features.
NameBio search parameters include:
- Placement
- Extension
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Domain Valuation Services To Check Out
The following domain appraisal sites offer a convenient service thats accurate and easy to use. They can determine your domain value and provide you with data to back up those findings. Of course, theres no guarantee that youll actually get what these domain valuation tools tell you. However, the information they provide can provide you with a realistic asking price to get you started when you want to sell.
Why $10000 For A Domain Name Is Still Cheap
Domain names are now an integral part of any business. Whether the use is primarily for email, a company website, or part of a marketing campaign anyone starting a business must secure a domain name.
The difference between a domain name and other marketing expenses however is you are acquiring a presence which help future customers define you, not leasing one.
Owning a premium domain has become expensive with the average price of a domain name hovering around anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000 however how expensive is this?
If one were to compare the price of almost anything compared to its original cost could we not classify everything as expensive. A $3 bottled water costs how much to produce? Or a $300 pair of designer sunglasses which probably cost less than a mocha to manufacture?
Somebody has your name and they are squatting on it?
Unless you have a trademark on the domain or someone is intentionally capitalizing on monetizing a typo of your trademark no one really is a squatter in the domain name industry. Whats even more interesting is for those people who complain that somebody has their name, but lack a trademark or other legal form of similar use, is almost the equivalent to saying that your grandmother owns my dream home except now they are inferring that your grandmother is this evil natured women and not a smart investor. Real estate ownership is acceptable by public opinion and so should be domain name investing.
How much is a domain name worth?
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Sign Up Professional Help
Industry professionals and aftermarket sites on average control maximum rates for domain names. The reason is that theyve access to huge networks of investors and have plenty of buyer traffic on their sites. They know the market closely, as well as know the costs investors are spending in ever domain name category. Experts can lead you better all the way through the investor market and buyers and give inside details on top bids and market trends. Actually, there are loads of aftermarket and brokerage auction websites.
The Lowdown On Domain Names
A website URL includes two main parts. In the illustration MyWebsite.com, the MyWebsite portion is the domain name and the .com portion is the domain extension. When we discuss domain names, were really talking about the proprietary coupling of the domain name and extension. With that being said, here are some interesting facts and data points that you may not know:
- The very first registered .com domain name was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985.
- In 2013, there were a total of 147.1 million registered domain names. There are currently more than 359.8 million registered domain names and counting.
- While every domain extension has its own regulations and rules, most domain names can only be 63 characters in length.
- The average domain name is 11 characters long and starts with the letter S.
- Out of all 50,000 possible combinations, there are no three-character domain names remaining.
- While the vast majority of domain names have one of the five most common extensions , there are technically 1,517 different domain extensions .
- The most expensive domain name valuation ever reported was Cars.com . It was included as part of a $2.5 billion valuation for the entire Cars.com business.
- In terms of publicly reported domain name transactions, the winner goes to Business.com, which sold in 2007 for $345 million. The next most expensive domains include LasVegas.com , CarInsurance.com , Insurance.com , and VacationRentals.com .
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With Real Estate It’s Location Location Location
A business website needs keywords that bring traffic, so the traffic can turn into leads and those leads into sales. How much a domain name is worth depends on how much traffic the keywords might bring to the website. Many variables go into traffic statistics, so you should use professional domain name appraisers like godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal, freevaluator.com, or EstiBot.com. They all use similar algorithms that look at:
The Extension
Extensions are what comes after the dot in any website name. Something.com is typically more valuable than Something.net. If a searcher isn’t sure if they want something.com or .net, they tend to start with .com. While originally there were only a few extensions available — .com, .net, .org, etc. — there are all kinds of niche extensions now, from .pizza to .photography.
Some experts say these industry-specific extensions might make a company look less legitimate, but if you decide to use one, domain names with relevant keywords on both sides of the dot can be worth more.
“Book.Sales” is better than “.book.”
Imagine a company called the Acme Book Sales Company, for example. The words book and sales might easily be combined in a Google search. Book and Acme will not be combined in a search window, unless someone is looking specifically for the Acme Book Sales Company. One problem with using these lesser-known extensions is that searchers may add a .com out of habit. They then might get an error message or find someone else’s site.
Research What Similar Domains Are Selling For
Ideally, you want to have an idea of what domains similar to yours are selling/have sold for. At the very least, this gives you a range to aim for.
The problem lies in finding that data. A lot of domain sales arent part of the public record, and theres no database that keeps track of them. Some resources, such as Domain Name Journal, compile data from different marketplaces to show you which web addresses have brought in the most money lately:
If you look to the right of that table, you can see the source for each record. Those are all names of domain marketplaces you can look through yourself. Sedo, for example, enables you to look up listings using specific keywords:
Value for most domains varies a lot, however, so the best you can hope to get here is a broad price range to aim for. Even so, this data can be incredibly valuable when putting the next approach into action.
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Domain Age And Other Seo Aspects
Domain age refers to the date on which the web address was registered. Domains that, for example, were registered in 2011 celebrate their 10-year anniversary in 2021. Whether the time of registration itself has an influence on how Google and others rate them isnt known. However, if the domain has already been active for years, this will surely influence the ranking and therefore also on the domain value. Especially the content and the number of backlinks that link to the domain determine the reputation of the web address. Another thing to consider is the trustworthiness of the web projects that were published under the domain in the course of time. From a technical, SEO point of view, this is relevant.
Even though websites published under the domain play a role in SEO evaluation, the domain value, as already mentioned, is not the same as the value of these websites. In other words, you only buy or sell the address, unless other conditions have been agreed upon.
What Impacts A Domains Value
All domain valuation tools typically use a proprietary algorithm, machine learning, and real-time domain market sales data to determine a domains value. Most of these tools compare the entered domain name to similar top-and-second-level domains. There are several other factors that can impact a domains value as well.
- Branding – domain names that have strong branding potential have greater value.
- Domain name length – domains that have 15 characters or less typically have a greater value.
- Popularity of the top-level domain – websites that use the most popular top-level domains are typically worth more than those that use less popular top-level domains. The most popular top-level domains include .com, .net, .org, and .co.
- Keywords – Domain names that contain popular keywords are often worth more than those without keywords.
- Backlinks – if backlinks currently exist, that can increase the value of a domain name.
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Things You Can’t Do To Improve Your Domain’s Value
There are a few things that you either cant change or require simply waiting to affect the value of your domain.
- Domain age: The older a domain is, the more it will be worth, but the only way to improve that value is to keep maintaining the domain for a long time. While its possible to set up a page on a domain and then just leave it up for years to get an older domain, this could actually hurt your domain value, because there is nothing there for customers to visit.
- Domain usability: Domains that are hard to spell, have non-alphabetic characters, are extremely long, or are otherwise difficult to type in are not going to be as easy to sell as short, easy to spell and type domains. Of course, you already own this domain, so you cant change it now.
- Domain extension: Just like the usability of the domain, the extension or top-level domain like .com, .net, .org, etc. cant be changed once you own the domain.