I think appraising a domain is one of the most difficult task for a domainer. So to ease out some tension, i am going to write a guide which can help you in appraising your domain yourself.
First of all the value of domain is always depend on this factor that how badly some end user or another domainer need that domain. If they are desperate than they can really pay the original owner a good amount for that one.
I am going to list down few questions which are frequently coming into the mind of any domainer during their domain name appraisal.
Que. Why we need appraisal?
Ans. This question will be there in the mind of every domainer. They might be thinking that they can sell their domain at any price they want but this is simply not true. Truth is, in that case you will hardly be approached by any end user or other domainer at all. So always set price in such a manner so as to attract all the potential end users towards your domain and for this you will need approximate appraisal of your domain.
Que. Is age a important factor in the appraisal of a domain?
Ans. Truly speaking age is good for SEO and is not at all important factor for Domain Name appraisal.But i will agree with this fact that “All Premium Domains Are Aged But Not All Aged Domains Are Premium”
Some of the important factors which are needed to be taken care of during domain name appraisal are listed below:
- Traffic: Here we are referring to the traffic received by completely blank domain through type ins. In case you are using domain parking service than in that case if you are receiving traffic on that parked domain which will eventually result in some income. Now this is one of the most crucial factor in the valuation of the domain. It is a general fact that most of the parked pages are not earning even a single dollar per year but in case your domain is earning from something from domain parking than this can result in the increased value of your domain. Let us take example of “SEX <.> COM”. Due to huge amount of type in traffic this domain had achieved an Alexa rank of 22k and you can easily see that this domain without content beats many websites with content by a big margin.
- Domain Extension: This is also one of the major factor in domain name appraisal. As a thumb rule, .COM is the most valuable till now. Every end user prefer their domain to be .COM . As far as ccTlds are concerned they can also go for decent prices, if a end user prefers. Again entire hing depends on the end user and what they want.
- Length of domain name: Both end users and domainer will usually prefer one word domain but there are many instances in which more than one word domain is needed. So as a thumb rule the selling rate of Shorter keyword domains is always more greater than than lengthy domains containing 3 or more words. As a reference i want to mention the sale of a long domain here. The domain is send””flower””to””india””””com. Please remove those quotes. this domain is sold by one of the member of the namepros.com for a hefty price of 1100$. Now think yourself that there are still some end users which prefer keyword rich long domains. So at the end it all depend on the end user .
- Age: As i has already mentioned that age have no effect at all on the price of the domain but as a thumb rule age definitely adds value to a given domain.
- Singular Vs Plural: This case depends upon the type of word. Let us take example of link.com and links.com. If we compare them than links.com have a upper edge over the link.com irrespective of the fact that link.com is shorter than links.com. So the fact that whether a domain is plural or singular can heavily effect the value of the domain.
- Numbers and hyphens in the domain- As a thumb rule, do remember this fact that number and hyphens always decrease the value of the domain. Why the addition of hyphens and number decrease the value of a given domain? The answer is very clear that if a domain contains number or hyphens than it will be very difficult to make one understand the correct URL via voice. SO avoid hyphens and numbers at any cost.
- Pronounceable and Brand able domain: As a thumb rule a easily pronounceable domain is always tend to be brand able and hence increases it’s value.
- Domain typos and misspellings:Suppose let us take a situation that the domain sexy<>com which you want is already registered by someone and than you introduced a error such as sxy<>com which is available. Than this situation is k nown as typos or misspellings domains. In most it decreases the value of the domain many times but in some in very few situation it will tend to increase the value of the domain.