Appropriate price to buy a parked domain

My son is intending to start a website. It will market a service in the city in which he lives.

The problem is that someone else has already registered a domain name using the all-important keywords. That domain name owner has simply parked that domain and has never used it.

He is willing to sell the domain to my son but didn't name a price. I checked the KW Suggestion tool and noticed that the KWs get only 2-3 searches daily.

Can anyone with experience in these things give me a general idea of what price my son should offer to buy such a parked, never-used domain? Thanks a lot.

 

I'd suggest you do some serious brainstorming and come up with 20-30 other options for a domain name. I'd try to strike a balance between:
- Keywords in the domain
- Domain length (the shorter the better)
- Cleverness/rememberability (I claim rights to that word )
If you absolutely have to have the parked domain, don't let the owner know that. If you think it's a rather obscure domain name, you can offer maybe $50 but the owner may hold out for more. (I'm assuming it's a .com, not some other TLD) Also, some domain parking services will tell you the traffic that a given domain is getting, for example sedo does.

 

It's a small world indeed. I too live in Medford Oregon Jim. Good to see a locals face here.

In regards to your question:
It's a good idea to use those facts when negotiating. If the keyword are low-demand keywords, make sure he knows that. If he insists you start off negotiating, just go low. Real low. $50 even. In the end it gets simple; Your son should pay what the website is worth to him and no more.

 

Exam and Greg-J, thanks for the good advice. I'll pass it on to my son.

And Greg-J, small world indeed. Our Medford stay is almost over. I'll retire in May, then my wife and I are off to Alaska.

 

I beg to differ


Jim, you mentioned that the name is 'using the all-important keywords'
From this I gather that there can be several other combinations of those keywords and even more if you use '_' & '-'.

Based on the little info you gave I don't see the domain name that valuable as it has multi words and is location specific, so like exam said, offer $50.00 and in the mean time try to come up with an alternative if he rejects.

 

What do you do in Medford Jim?

 

Just because you have the longest list of the longest stuff
Ok, so I generalized... Sorry

 

LOL, No worries

 

Everytime I have tried to buy off sedo, I give my first offer and the people counter offer with like some insane price. lol
I quit going there after the owner of with.us(i think that was the domain) gave me counter offer of a quarter million dollars with an attached message
"I have recently had higher offers, I will sell no less than this"
Is it me or him who is out of touch? For a quarter million I could score a beautiful .com

 

Maybe even "beautiful.com"

 

Greg, I'm currently (soon retiring) the pastor of South Valley Church, between Phoenix and Talent, next to the Farmers Market.