

Domain name valuations - hanifvirani
http://jacquesmattheij.com/domain+name+valuations

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Alex3917
How much of each domain is worth depends on how it's being sold. For example,
I was asking a domainer how much my domain eskimokissing.com would be worth
the other day, and this is what he told me:

If it expires and drops, 300 - 600 dollars.

In a wholesale liquidation of an entire portfolio: 800 - 1200 dollars.

On it's own, with a list of 50 potential companies that you're willing to cold
call, and you've put in the work to find the right person within each company:
6,000 - 20,000 dollars.

The above scenario, but if there is a bidding war between two or more
companies: 15,000 - 40,000 dollars.

So the answer is basically it depends how much work you are willing to put in
to sell them. With some of these domains it's clear that you can put together
a list of 100 leads if you're willing to put in 10+ hours per domain, but with
others I would guess that you would probably have to liquidate them at bargain
basement prices to get any money back.

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vaksel
That's way more than it's worth.

That keyword term only gets 210 searches a month, and there is no real way to
monetize it...short of just doing a blog.

I'd say that's worth 200 bucks tops...and that's with bidding to drive up the
price...since you'll have a hard time finding people actually wanting to get
it.

~~~
Alex3917
You may well be right, that's just what I was told. The logic was that it's a
dictionary term, and so a company like Eskimo Pops might want it for a
marketing campaign. Or maybe some sort of adult site targeted at women, that
was the other angle.

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erikstarck
The fact that business.com cost $345,000,000 makes me weep. I mean, look at
it!

I guess the old real estate saying is true: "location, location, location"...

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I'm still waiting for domain valuations to eventually plummet, as it just
doesn't seem that people navigate to sites that way. The only thing that it
provides is lower barriers to come back for a second visit.

~~~
brfox
I used to be more likely to click a link on Google if the domain name looked
more authoritative. So, a lot of those common names with high prices would
seem to be valuable for that reason. And, I think Google ranks sites higher if
the domain name has the keyword in it.

These days with so much spam, I try to avoid domain names with my search
keyword in them.

~~~
haploid
"And, I think Google ranks sites higher if the domain name has the keyword in
it."

There is some effect, but it's not that significant. Bing, on the other hand,
seems to weight domain names _very_ highly.

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evanjacobs
One other data point for you. Groupon.com was purchased in May 2009 for
$250,000. Source: <http://mixergy.com/domain-business-tip/>

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spxdcz
One of the valuable ones that I can spot is daz.com, "Daz" being a popular
Procter & Gamble brand of soap powder (at least, in the UK):
<http://www.dazwhite.co.uk/> \- I'd guess they'd quite like the .com for their
brand.

~~~
staunch
FYI Even _entertaining_ an offer from P&G could open him up to the possibility
of losing the domain under ICANN's rules.

~~~
tristanperry
It depends when the Daz trademark was registered.

The domain was regged in 1998, and if the TM was registered after this date
then it should be okay.

There are pushes by some US law makers (e.g. the silly Senator Olivia Snow) to
change this so that TM holders have much more rights over domains, even if the
domain existed before the TM, but for now it should be fine.

Would be worth consulting a domain lawyer if an offer is made for it though.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Daz, as held by P&G, was filed for in 1941 in UK, class 3 -
<http://www.ipo.gov.uk/domestic?domesticnum=614056>.

A company called Mills Brothers BV hold an internationally registered mark
"Daz" in classes 18, 25 too.

I'm sure there are several others.

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romaniv
I see these prices as a clear sign that the current DNS system needs to be
replaced. It's ridiculous. They are driven up by "scarcity," but there isn't
any real deficit. Names are just letters and numbers, and there is infinite
number of combinations, there is virrually infinite number of relatively short
combinations.

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that there are only a few TLDs, none of
them are very meaningful, so it all effectively converges into a single
namespace.

If there were TLDs like .games, .mag (magazine), .press, .news, .comp and so
on, no single domain would hold so much "value".

For companies, you could have a reserved .corp TLD where every entry has to be
verified (so only a registered business with matching name can own it). For
products, you could have .prod.

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ohashi
They are working on that and I think it's a terrible solution. Here is why:
consumer's want life to be easier. Remembering the name of every company and
then adding .com is hard enough. Now I have to remember
companyname.companyextension? There have been plenty of TLDs launched which
all just failed. .biz anyone? .info?

The scarcity isn't artificial, it's the limited amount of recall a consumer
has for information.

~~~
romaniv
I don't think it's fair to say that they (ICANN) are doing what I've described
above.

ICANN's policy: \- Create close to one new TLD a year. \- Either make it
converge to the same logical"namespace" (what's the difference between .biz
and .com?) or make the new TLD highly specialized and charge "premium" prices
(.mobi).

This does not alleviate the "deficit". For example, if you own food.com and
someone else buys food.biz, you're in conflict. Solution? Offer lots of money
for food.biz. Oh, but there is also food.mobi! You company has a mobile app,
right? So you try to buy buy food.mobi as well. The system encourages you to
hog the domains.

What I've described: \- Make a large number of TLDs available at the same
time. \- Make them describe the type of content the server works with.

This would create a multitude of logical namespaces, which _would_ drive the
prices down. If you own food.review and someone else owns food.wholesale,
you're not competing for the same name any more. This wouldn't completely
remove contention, but it would reduce its intensity.

As for remembering domains, I don't see how adding meaningful TLDs would make
it harder. Is food.review really harder to memorize than foodreview.com?

~~~
ohashi
First off, there is a whole debate about launching hundreds of new TLDs going
at ICANN. It's pretty much the hottest issue there is. They are trying to do
exactly what you're suggesting, a registry free for all.

Second, yes, food.review is harder to remember than foodreview.com. Trillions
of dollars have been spent branding .com into consumer's minds worldwide (also
local ccTLDs in some country trump .com because of use/adoption). Wait, did I
want food.review or food.guide? or was it...? People do get confused by URLs,
having the same TLD (.com/or whatever your country uses) makes it easier to
remember for average consumers. The biggest thing I think a lot of people here
forget is, YOU'RE NOT NORMAL. Average consumers aren't hanging around at
HackerNews, a site for the tech elite, and their behavior doesn't match this
audience (you).

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pier0
Domains are worth whatever a buyer is willing to pay, not what people in this
thread or automatic tools on the internet believe/suggest.

I've had domains that I hand-registered in the last two years sell for 4-5
figures and other that according to experts/tools are very valuable, but that
simply do not attract any buyer.

And I'm not even a regular domain investor (or domain squatter as people on YC
seem to believe all domain investors = squatters).

Anyway, I think the blog poster has a pretty good idea of what his domains are
worth, but he's just trying to raise attention and possibly start a bidding
war on the 2-3 interesting ones. Some choose to do their auctions through
auction houses, other uses more creative forms.

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tristanperry
Speaking as someone with a fair bit of domaining experience, unfortunately a
lot of the domains listed are worthless, with the exception of daz.com which
is a 5 figure domain, ww.com which is a 5 (possibly 6?) figure domain,
secondhandcar.com which IMO is a 4 figure domain, webcamsoftware.com which is
4 figures, and a few others which hold a <$100 value. So there are some
valuable domains, but the majority are worth $0 in my opinion. _(Note: I don't
mean to sound insulting when I say they're worthless - indeed, I literally
mean it that their valuation is $0)_.

It's also worth noting that the domain industry got hit a fair bit by the
recession, and it's possible that some of the above domains would sell for
slightly higher than the rough range I've given (espeically the two 4 figure
domains I quote, which could go for low 5 figures in the right circumstances).

It's quite common to see people (as the blog post says) regging domains on a
whim since they look good, but usually such domains regged on a whim are
worthless. And unfortunately it does seem to be the case here.

Anywhoo, I'll send my semi-informed appraisals along to the blog author now.
I've been a domainer since I was 16/17 (am 20; 21 next month), so whilst I'm
not an expert or anything, I have a fair bit of domaining experience and hope
my appraisals are somewhat useful.

And I'd possibly advise that he looks at DNForum.com and NamePros.com (the two
big domaining forums; the former is paid-only though) a little bit to get a
general feel of domain prices.

~~~
sebseb
I have a few domains I would like to sell. Would you give me a quick valuation
range like you just did with those?

~~~
jtheory
...I thought of posting a few I was curious about as well, but that would get
silly pretty quickly.

Just about everyone here probably has 5-10 domain names (if not more) that
they've registered somewhere along the way with a side project in mind that
hasn't materialized yet.

I personally am wondering if anyone knows of a way to put a domain name in
escrow -- I had an offer for one of my domains from someone with a side
project, and tried to work out a solution where he could have it for free, but
if his project hadn't gotten any traction after a few years, it would revert
back to me (since maybe I'd have found time for my own project by then...). No
dice, though; he didn't know/trust me, the legal aspects were too confusing,
and so on.

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qeorge
daz.com and ww.com are valuable (~$100k-250k), the rest he'd be better off
keeping.

secondhandcar.com could be valuable to the right person. You could probably
get $50k from the right buyer.

The rest are nice, but not "must haves". Unless a domain is rare and generic
its not worth > $10k. Color.com, Mint.com, Tires.com are rare and generic,
most of these are not.

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portman
PSA: the "historical domain sales" are _wildly inaccurate_.

I suspect there was a bug in the script/procedure he used to scrape, because
they don't match up to the sources below.

Edit: here's a decent list [http://www.webcooltips.com/the-most-expensive-
domains-sales-...](http://www.webcooltips.com/the-most-expensive-domains-
sales-ever-big-list.html)

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mortenjorck
Can anyone recommend a good domain name marketplace or auctioneer that doesn't
have some kind of volume requirement? I merely want to unload a single domain
name that I think stands a chance to chip in on my DSLR habit.

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lowprofile
It seems that the jury is still out on domain name value in this new age of
panda-monium. If I had a trendy green biz the greenbits one would be nice.

ww.com is the aesthetic winner though.

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dotpavan
I am surprised to see ww.com in the list there. Unless I missed something in
the recent past, wasnt it the webcam based venture he was working on?

~~~
warp
They are not for sale, from the article:

"Ww.com and reocities.com are there for 'curiosity value' only."

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ranit
Are you doing "silent auction" on us, trying to figure the value by the Law of
large numbers?

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sherazmahmood
Could you get similar types of valuations for non .com domains? For example
.me?

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antidaily
I'll give you an unopened copy of NHL 94 for Sega Genesis for ww.com.

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clistctrl
Just throwing it out there, if any of you are looking to get into the gay
business I'm the owner of MeatGalore.com and it is looking for a good home.

:( it was the bastard child of to much beer.

