Thread: Estimating the Value of Domain Names

I looked at a bunch of domains today. I bought six of them, which is a very small subset of the number that I evaluated.

I bought one as a toy, one as a gift, three to develop, and one for speculation. It's that last one which interests me at the moment.

The domain I picked up for speculation is iphone3g.org.

Surprisingly, the domain doesn't seem to be vulnerable to confiscation by WIPO.

How would I go about estimating the value of a domain like this?

If it was a .com I would price it at around 23k based on the 11 Million monthly searches the term gets in Google.
.org I am not sure, interested in finding out what some of the domainers here think and also would be interested in hearing how much of a keyword advantage the domain name holds looking at the intense competition in Google.

If it was a .com I would price it at around 23k based on the 11 Million monthly searches the term gets in Google

Oh, really. I think you're way WAY off. Take a look at this:
Free Domain Appraisal, Domain Name Valuation and Keyword Research Tool

There were 36,000 searches in July 2008 and 7400 searches in June 2009 and estimated 6400 searches in August 2009. Numbers are going down pretty quickly for 'iphone 3g'.

I would, though, probably give it some value, perhaps $500 or so. If the domain was developed and you had rankings and traffic for that phrase then the domain and site would certainly be worth more: and if you actually had the rankings then most likely you wouldn't want to sell the domain and the site.

Even though there weren't many iphone-related decisions, that doesn't mean anything: it's still a TM and Apple could easily change their tune. It's not a generic domain, it's a TM domain and those are risky whether or not the TM holder has a history of going after people.

According to Results for iphone 3g it was 11 Million?

Seems high, but tool has been quite accurate for me overall.

Didn't mean 23k for the .org but for the .com

We really need to set a standard for those searches, and I'll try to help a bit.

1 - Forget about Estibot, that's the most stupid domain evaluation tool I've ever seen.
2 - When you go to Keyword External I suggest you start by selecting US / English searches only.
3 - Remember that Broad Searches are a lot different from Exact Match Searches.

In this case:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Shows 11M Searches for a broad match type and 2.74M for an exact match type.

That's obviously an insanly valuable name, worth the $12 or so Will invested in it; if I were him I'd easily dump another $500 or so trying to get a few articles and a little promotion as G valuates exact match names.

Now you ask, if that's so valuable why the heck was it available?

Easy... people go to Freshdrop.net and the first thing they do is ignoring "-" "www" and "numbers", that' why.

Originally Posted by Shenron

That's obviously an insane valuable name, worth the $12 or so Will invested in it, and if I were him I'd easily dump another $500 or so trying to get a few articles and a little promotion as G valuates exact match names.

I have to tell you that I would love to take a look at that.

Originally Posted by firetown

I have to tell you that I would love to take a look at that.

I can leave you with a little example that by no means can be comparable, specially because it gets less than 10% the # of searches.

I have bought/regged docx . net a few months ago (exact match for the recent MS word doc format) for less than $10, and have spent less than $200 developing and promoting it.

So what?

Well, I already rank #7 for docx and get hundreds of uniques per day, so I'm quite sure Will's domain could do a lot better, specially because he could easily get a lot of free quality backlinks for it.

Originally Posted by Shenron

Now you ask, if that's so valuable why the heck was it available?

Easy... people go to Freshdrop.net and the first thing they do is ignoring "-" "www" and "numbers", that' why.

Bahahaha! That is exactly what I forgot to do!

The real problem with this domain is that I can't stand Apple products, so I want it out of my inventory as soon as possible.

Therefore, I need to figure out how much (roughly) the domain is worth.

But, more than that, I'd like to learn a process for estimating domain values -- so that I can do this repetitively.

Originally Posted by Shenron

I can leave you with a little example that by no means can be comparable, specially because it gets less than 10% the # of searches.

I have bought/regged docx . net a few months ago (exact match for the recent MS word doc format) for less than $10, and have spent less than $200 developing and promoting it.

So what?

Well, I already rank #7 for docx and get hundreds of uniques per day, so I'm quite sure Will's domain could do a lot better, specially because he could easily get a lot of free quality backlinks for it.

yes, but the comp is something like 40 times as high, so would like to see just how much effort needed looking at the fact that none of the sites on page 1 has a keyword domain advantage

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

Bahahaha! That is exactly what I forgot to do!

LOL, I always "forget" that part also...

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

The real problem with this domain is that I can't stand Apple products, so I want it out of my inventory as soon as possible.

Offer it to Alex, I'm sure she will love it.

Originally Posted by Will.Spencer

But, more than that, I'd like to learn a process for estimating domain values -- so that I can do this repetitively.

Throw it at SEDO and wait for a few offers, someone might bite it.