One of the most heated areas on a domain forum is the domain appraisal section. It becomes a duel back and forth between the thread starter and the appraisers. It is also one of the most popular and busiest sections on the forum.
Of course the quality of names runs the gamut from the very bad to the very good. A lot of times newer domainers use the appraisal section to list each new handreg they have made in the past week.
When bad domains are listed for appraisal they usually get $0 or reg fee replies. A lot of the time the person who started the thread gets nasty with the appraiser. The question you need to ask yourself is “Do I want an honest opinion of my domain ?” or “I just really want someone to agree with my valuation so I feel better about the purchase”
Its understandable and human nature to want someone to agree with you and your value of your asset. It is not what an appraisal section should be about.
First thing when starting an appraisal thread is give your own appraisal. Why did you buy this name ? What are the metrics you used to support the purchase ? What do you believe the domain is worth ? How did you come to the value ? Who are the end users for the domain ?
If you cannot do this then you got a fun name you like that probably has little value to anyone else.
Secondly do not battle back and forth with appraisers, they should be respectful and only give an appraisal if they have the time and effort to put into it. One or two word answers like $0 or reg fee, do not do anyone any good.
What you should do as the thread starter is look at the background and rep on the forum of the appraiser. Do they understand the language ? Do they tend to give thought out replies or short smart alec replies ? You need to always consider the source of who is appraising your domain.
So show some respect to those who take the time and give you a thoughtful reply, ignore the one word appraisals and don’t even reply and lastly remember it really does not matter what anyone thinks but yourself and the right buyer. The only exception is if you are selling a highly liquid domainer to domainer asset on the wholesale side. If LLN.com are going for one price you are not going to sell to another domainer for double that price.
Valuations are completely subjective.
An industry professional might think a domain is worth $50,000 because of a vertical it addresses.
A domain reseller might dsay it’s worth $3k because he knows he can sell it to the broker to $5k.
If the same domain is held by a company that doesn’t need to sell, they could assign a $100k price tag to it and probably get it too from one of the biggest companies in that vertical.
Your domain is worth what you are willing to sell it for, the common misnomer is that people say “it’s worth what someone is willing to pay for it”, if that were true we’d all be driving a Ferrari.
The ‘other side’ of human nature (i.e., the ‘not invented here’ syndrom) will always negate your potential to get an ‘objective’ view. And when it comes to non-dictionary, non-numeric names, crowdsourcing valuations is probably futile.
I almost exclusively focus on the future technologies space, so I’d never expect to get a ‘reasonable’ comment from folks who, for the most part (despite being good business people), don’t even know what the subject matter(s) of my portfolio is. And even those that do would likely say something like “…could be worth a few hundred bucks in ten years if the planets align.”
But all that matters is whether the end-user buyer ‘gets it.’ It’s extremely satisfying when I get contacted by PhDs, working (literally) in the labs, who really do ‘get it’ – and chase me to do a deal.
So the upshot is why frustrate yourself with forums if you know that there’s real value in in your holdings?
I don’t think there’s any domain name that is worthless, or worth $0.
In my opinion, every name is worth at least the registration fee, because someone paid that much for it. Therefore, that establishes the price. If a name is unregistered, or dropped, then it is potentially worth nothing at that point. Names can be worthless one minute, and in a second, worth thousands, or hundreds, or even millions.
An example, Humber.com was probably worth registration, or hundreds of dollars a year ago, but as soon as Mr. Humber nailed a no-hitter in baseball last season, the price of that name skyrocketed. So, we must bear that in mind. There is a time/life factor involved.
However, in the general scheme of things, I do understand the point made here. Interestingly, it ain’t funny when the rabbit’s got the gun. The other day, Elliotsblog did an appraisal post on his blog, where he started it off with his own name, which I assigned a registration-fee value, and he was quite antagonized by it. Yet he spent the entire course assigning no value to other folk’s names. What’s good for the goose is not really good for the gander in this thing. And that’s too bad.
(* hybriddomainer, do you suppose you could make the name of the poster on your blog a little larger?)
I fully agree with the view that most users feel that what they register is worth millions! But one also needs to understand that even odd names if developed well could be worth millions. Domain worth is a relative term and there may be reasons why a particular domain has been registered the way it has been. Long back who had thought of domain hacks. But many developed sites around domain hacks. Also rather than domain value, I strongly feel that any domain that is developed has value. I have a long list of domains that I own, and though some domain brokers I contacted say they are worthless! even estibot / valuate / domainindex shows a value of around $1000-5000 for many domains. Some even show me $0 as a value, but I hardly feel any domain would be worth $0 considering that all are dictionary name combinations. $0 value would have been for domains that cannot be pronounced correctly or are not dictionary names. I again state that domain valuations are relative and it all depends on how you develop each domain. I have seen very odd names I would hardly touch being auctioned for 1000’s of dollars and some domains that are worth 1000’s but I find hardly any buyers interested in buying the domains. Domain auctions are all about marketing your domain and if you make everyone believe that they are worth 1000’s they will buy it irrespective of their actual inherent value.