HOW TO FIND THE FAIR PRICE OF A DOMAIN NAME BEFORE PURCHASE

The purpose of this page is to hopefully give some ideas to whom who do not have much experience due domain name appraising. Unfortunately putting price on a domain name is not as easy as buying a car or appliances, in this case we could find lots of different sources to get the fair price.

Please note what you read here is strictly our own opinion based on about 10 years experience at this field.

Our point is to find a common ground that works for both sides (you as a buyer and us as the seller). One thing is certain here that we are not the multi-million dollar organization with lots of fancy departments and thousands of dollars advertising cost or things like that (at least not now), so this situation bring us at a level that makes us to be able to afford applying lower and more affordable prices on our domain names because we have seen a similar domain name of ours is appraised somewhere else for over 20 times higher.

When you buy a domain name, there are two things you can do with it — build a website or sell it for a higher value. Although many people follow the first path and create their websites, earn through various methods and maintain these websites for continuous revenue, other people believe that their domain names could be worth more than the original price they paid if someone in the world could be interested in buying them.

Buying and selling domain name has evolved into an industry where quality domains are being sold everyday through the web. However, entering the domain industry may not be as easy as you think. For sellers, they believe in the value of a particular domain name so much that they would actually enlist a high price. For buyers, regardless of how desperate they want that domain name, haggling for a low price and agreeing at a fair price is their goal. When two parties involved in buying and selling domain names can not agree on a price, this becomes a problem.

Since there is no standard value for all domain names, buyers and sellers could push their own price until one party stops negotiating. The only thing that could make these two parties agree on a fair price is through domain appraisal.

Here we are not dealing with tens of thousands of dollar domain names, about 90% of our domain names ranges between 50$ to 1000$ based on different factors and information, including brand recognition, marketability, traffic, dot-com value and comparisons with similar domain names. If we were dealing with expensive domain names you could get help of Third party companies who offer domain appraisals for both buyers and sellers of domain names to arrive at a fair price based on the current market.

The 'science' of valuing a domain name is becoming big business. There is already thirty or more big appraisal firms in existence and many more are appearing on the scene, but are their methods really scientific, and is there any common ground in the way that they value names? I personally don’t believe so I also believe at the end the point is to involve themselves to the deal to get their own piece because they know both parties mentally need to feel safe by coming to them for appraisal if even at the end no fair price is really taken place. Anyway, our suggestion is to read the following simple rules hoping to help you out;

1) The most important is your budget and how much your chosen domain name describes your business. Basically
     how many of the definitions of a Good Domain Name applies on your chosen domain name.

2) Visit Other Domain Name resellers and find similar names and compare the prices to get the general idea.

3) If you are looking for more fairness contact one the appraisal companies (we described above!) and asked them
     for help, they will certainly help! REMEMBER, SOME TIMES YOU PAY FOR A T-SHIRT MORE THAN WHAT IT
     WORTH FOR JUST THE MATERIAL, WHY? BECAUSE IT IS UNIQUE FOR YOU AND IT FITS YOUR NEEDS AND
     REQUIREMENTS. So not always calculations, tables, graphs or what so ever completely apply on such cases.

4) Discuss your budget and condition with us openly and if you are really interested in your chosen name keep the
     negotiation open and don’t give up, we promises we do our best to make it work if even it takes a while.

5) IF YOU LIKE IT TAKE IT, YOUR DOMAIN NAME WOULD BE WITH YOU AS LONG AS YOU HAVE YOUR
     BUSINESS AND WE UNDERSTAND THAT.

Good Luck,


1995 Questek Data Inc.	Contact Us		Mar 2009

How To Appraise A Domain Name Fairly