Domain Name News, Domaining Articles: How To Buy, Sell & Develop Domain Names

Mirror, mirror on the wall, how much is my domain name worth? Hello? Please mirror say something, say my domain name is worth $1 million!  After hours,days,months and years of staring at the mirror for an accurate appraisal for my domain name just went nowhere.

The mirror on the wall was not able to answer my question, so I decided to pack my bags and cross into the World Wide Web to search for an answer.  Over the next decade I came cross many who claimed to have the powers or wisdom to answer my question.  Each had their own system, formula, algorithm, secrets that promised to deliver the answer I was searching for.

Like a fool I fell on my knees and cried in joy when I heard the first domain name expert tell me that my domain is worth $25,000 dollars.  I jumped and jumped around like a little boy screaming out loud. A loud angry voice from the other side of the room shouted “Shut up, your domain name is not worth anything!”.

What? Why? The angry voice never replied back, I was left confused and before I know it I looked up and I was no longer in the room with the domain name experts.  I was standing on a spider web that seemed to never end, it stretched out so far into the darkness that I felt lost.  Suddenly out of the darkness a voice called me by my name and told me that I’m interested in your domain name.

I shouted out “Who are you? How do you know my name?”.

The voice with its calm voice replied back “I’m John Doe and I’m interested in buying your domain name, do you have a price?”.

John Doe? Who the heck is John Doe? I replied back with “Hi John, Thanks for emailing me, my price is $25,000″.  The voice instantly replied back with “$25,000 is fair price, consider it sold.”.

Like a fool I got distracted by the calm voice that resembled honesty and integrity.  I ran as hard as I could to find the room with the angry voice and shouted out “I sold my domain for $25,000, who’s the fool now”.   The angry voice laughed out loud and his friends joined in and started to throw stones at me and questioned my domains value and the buyer.   Confused and bruised, suddenly the calm voice spoke again and said “I like to send you the money as quickly as I can, but first I need you to get a professional paid appraisal for your domain name”.

What? Domain name Appraisal? I thought you said you agreed to buy the domain name and now you want me to pay your trusted sources for a domain name appraisal?

Here we go again, back to the same question “How much is my domain name worth?”.

The calm voice now sounded more like a con artist and my instincts told me to investigate the email and the individual.  I thought about going back to the angry room for help, but the angry voices where still laughing out loud.

Suddenly the Gods and Goddesses of the world wide web appeared one after the other.  I didn’t know what to do or which one to approach.  The Romans believed in many different gods and goddesses. For everything imaginable they had a god or goddess in charge.  I decided to step toward the most brightest and most powerful God of them all “GOOGLE”.  I knelt down and asked question after question and GOOGLE replied back with answer after answer.

My instincts were true, the calm voice was a domain appraisal scammer a con artist who has been cheating people for years.

I felt foolish and angry that I made a fool of myself for posting that I had sold a domain name for 25K.  I decided to learn from the experience and never jump to conclusion before doing my homework on all incoming domain name offers.

I spend the next 5 years listening to GOOGLE and learned how to value domain names.

All this time I was asking irrelevant questions regarding domain names, what I should’ve been asking is “How many End Users could benefit from my domain name?”.

No one on the world wide web could put a real value on my domain name.  They can put a price on it, anyone could do that.  I once priced a reg fee domain name at $1 million, I didn’t know better but it didn’t mean it couldn’t be sold for a million.

It took me a decade to realize the question you need to be asking is not how much your domain name is worth but how many end users are available and how many end users could benefit from your domain name.

Majority of us buy and sell reg fee domain names.  Knowing how many end users are in the market for your domain name is very important!

I apply this question “How many end users could benefit from my domain name!” on every domain name I purchase on a nightly basis!

I spend over a decade searching for domain name appraisal valuations and none of them to date helped me with pricing or pointed me in the right direction.  However I will say this, reputable domain appraisal sites like Valuate.com do provide good information on the domain name itself.  I use it myself occasionally and benefit from it from it very much, but when it comes to pricing my domain name, it all comes down to how many end users could benefit from my domain name.

I hope you enjoyed this article and learned something new that took me a decade to master!

Until my next Domaining Article, Happy Domaining!