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how much is a non adult domain worth? (aside from what the market will bear)
i’m hardly a domain name squatter but i did register one name just because i liked it and cuz i thought it would be a good (future) business name.
i’ve had an offer of $500 for it (and said no)
it turns out that a very similar name is the name of a big time ‘make millions working from home’ scam.
so how much is it worth? out of curiousity? how does one put a value on this?
Have a look here, they got lots of domains on there:
sedo.com.
Problem is though, the domain is worth whatever someone is willing to pay. In most cases absolutely nothing. IF a name is similar to an existing business with a trademark attached, they don;t have to pay you they can just claim the name and get it off you. On the other hand if it’s a great name that no one just never though of it might be worth a bit. Short good domains (.com) are hard to get now.
I went through this exact scenario back in September except my buyer was a multi billion dollar entity in Europe. They had an intermediary contact me and offer $500 for my AlphaF|ash.com domain. I registered the domain about 8 years ago as the name of my production company. (I’ve replaced the L in the domain with | to avoid search engine detection for this post)
The domain had nothing on it for years but I had used the name & url on my model releases and at the end of some of my movies. Deutsche Börse Group had registered every other version of AlphaF|ash BUT my AlphaF|ash.com. Alpha F|ash is the name of a new service they now offer. They had registered the trademark in Europe and right after they registered it in America they contacted me to buy my domain.
To avoid the scenario that marketingbro described, and to maximize what I could get for my domain, this is what I did:
1) Contacted an attorney specializing in domain name litigation
2) Immediately put pages up on the domain
3) Advised the intermediary how busy I am and that selling the domain would mean changing a lot of paperwork and re-editing a number of films to change the contact info at the end, not to mention coming up with a new production company name. I don’t have the resources for that kind of work and it will cost money to get it done.
4) Reply kindly to the buyers intermediary within a day or two and make a personal connection.
5) Went to dnforum.com and read up on what is standard in my kind of scenario.
6) Decided on a price that I’m comfortable selling the domain at and not feeling like I could have gotten more. I call this my happy price, the price at which you have no regrets.
7) Counter offer double the amount I was willing to settle for, with explanation of why I came to that price. Through my research I learned that this is a negotiation technique to ensure you minimally meet halfway , which is the price you’re willing to settle at and me happy.
The higher the price the longer the wait will be between emails as companies have to work these things through their organization and get approval for large purchases. After a couple months of short emails back and forth we finally came to my happy price ( 5 figures ). We went through Sedo to finalize the sale and Sedo is a nightmare. Don’t expect Sedo to do anything without you pushing them. Sedo is an escrow service that makes more money the longer your money is in their possession. Even with me pushing Sedo it took them 3-4 weeks to get the money to my bank account AFTER they verified receiving the money from my buyer two days after I opened a Sedo account.
Sorry this is so long but I wish I had come across a post like this when I was in your position.
I would never never use Sedo. Escrow.com was the best service I ever used and much cheaper. They actually gently push the sale along. And they get your money out fast once it’s there. They also use ACH for money transfers in the US.
interesting story DOC!
i checked out some of those domain valuation domains and my domain’s value varied from $500 to $155,000
ROFL. (if they come back with another offer i’ll point out the higher valuation)
I have been “dabbling” in the domain name business for the past six months or so more as a hobby than a money maker; though it has produced a decent ROI. If someone offered you $500 then it is most likely worth way more than that to the person that wants it. You really can’t go by those automatic domain name appraisal websites at all. The one that most domain name buyers use for a real “rough” idea of the value of a domain name is estibot.com/appraise.php.
That one is based on a strict set of variables and doesn’t really take into account branding potential. It appraises a domain name that I bought, manhattangirl.com at $410 and I have already had offers for the domain name in the $X,XXX range.
