Hi Could you guys help me put a value on www.spirita.co.uk? This is a domain I purchased to compliment a .net site of the same name. I haven't used it yet apart from 3 things: 1. I use it for personal email. 2. I use it as a dump for forwarded email from other sites. 3. I have a subdomain www.fitness.spirita.co.uk off it. I get a load of highly confidential email from a big organisation with a similar website name to mine. Being called Spirita and in the UK they presumably would have liked my domain but I already had it. In trying to sort out the mess, they have suggested buying my domain from me as one option. I have no idea how to estimate it's worth, both as a site (the subdomain) and it's value to me in hassle factor transferring, regrouping and changing email addresses. The subdomain is PR3 and I've been working hard on it so many links will be lost, otherwise I will just purchase a new name and transfer it. Some links I can get redone, some I will probably lose and I will have to wait for Google to pick it all up again. AGain it's a time spent consideration. My main email address is on this domain and that is a big hassle to change. It's value to me is clearly worth more than the sale value of it as a going concern but the only interest to them would be the domain name. If anyone could take a stab as to what the subdomain itself would be worth and/or what would be a reasonable price to expect them to pay, I would welcome your thoughts. Regards, Gay
Thanks for that. I wouldn't sell it sell it to them for that sort of money, purely from the point of view of the amount of work I would have to do to get back to square one. I suppose it's a question of what it's worth to me and what it's worth to them. It's very usefull to have some feedback though. I wouldn't want to ask them for a sum that was totally ridiculous from their point of view. I would rather say 'not for sale' than just seem greedy. Thanks again, Gay
Whilst I think its good to get others opinions, only you know what its worth to you, in the sense that only you can put a value on the hassle you will have changing your emails. I have a very similar problem, I get personal and highly confidential emails for a British Sports Team, I have had emails detailing contract talks and payments etc. I have emailed the team and told them that their solicitors etc are using the wrong email address, this has stopped a little but I still get 1 or 2. Now ask me to change my email address for them and I have to say that there is no way I would sell my main email address for $1000 (£500). It would have to be significantly higher than that and then I would have to put a clause in saying they had to forward any mail from my email address to me for 12 months to ease the change over or better still allow me to keep my email address. Hope this helps!
Thanks Hopper. Yes it is a difficult one and I'm really not sure what figure I would consider worth it. At £5000 I would say yes, no hesiation, at £1000, no way. Clearly £5000 is out of the question but I'm going to find it hard to decide on a figure that would be worth it to me and not seem outrageous to them. I wasn't really expecting the subdomain to worth much as a 'going concern' and since they aren't in the fitness equipment business I suppose it's a bit irrelevant other than to justify what I'm asking. Gosh this is so hard
You need to hard ball them and shoot for 10,000 after that they will offer 7-5 thousand and think they got a deal.
I had the same sort of thing happen to me. A company asked me to sell them the domain I use for all of my personal stuff (blog (linked to above), email, family member's email, etc...). The name itself is an anagram for my family name, but the company that was asking about it was in the airline industry. I spent a ton of time thinking about what it would take for me to sell it, and came up with the same sort of figures you're looking at. No way would I sell it for $2k due to EVERYONE who knows me knows that's my site and my email addie (not to mention my family members who have addies under it). However I knew I'd walk away from it smiling if the offer was in the $10k range. After much sole searching and thinking about what dollar amount would help my family out the most vs how much trouble would be involved, I shot them back an offer of $8k with the willingness to let it go for $6500. They responded back offering $500 and telling me how this was a fair price and how what I had suggested was way out of line and how they were doing me a favour by going as high as they were. They basically came off as big time asshats. I sent them back an email explaining how I arrived at the figure and then offered them my lowest sale price of $6500. To which they replied something along the lines of "no way you're ever going to sell that domain at that price". At that point I decided for once and for all that the domain wasn't for sale. (That is of course unless someone offered me a garbage can full of cash.) One thing you might think about doing. Asking if they would be willing to buy the domain with the following stipulations: 1. you retain control of the subdirectory. 2. You retain your email addresses and full access to them. If they would agree to those two terms then there wouldn't be any reason not to sell the domain and you might pick up a nice chunk of change to boot.
A similar thing happened to me years ago with some business premisies we own, someone approached us to buy the premises (they were not for sale and have never been for sale). He asked what it would take for us to sell the premises. I said a bloody fantastic offer as it would probably involve moving a business. He went away and then came back later with an offer that was less than the market value of the premises. Some people have no idea.
Thanks both. I think you may be right in that I'm probably wasting my time thinking about it. I doubt they will want to pay what it's worth to me. Gay