In the few forums I have been a member of or visited that are doing member domain name appraisals, I wonder if some people have a firm grasp of what makes a domain name valuable? I say this with limited experience in reselling domain names and with the full concession that I have a lot to learn about the subject . . . but still: How many times have we seen a forum member throw up the most ridiculous of meaningless, unpronounceable, forgettable or just simply inane domain names and ask other forum members ......waddya think this baby is worth? Or worse, they have entered into the domain name speculation game and throw up a list of such inane domain names. This is a thread where I would really like to hear the opinions of others in answer to the question posed in the thread title: What makes a domain name valuable? I have the basics as: - type in traffic (incorporating keywords) - residual traffic (from existing backlinks) - DMOZ listing - Google Pagerank - Archive listed (to determine prior uses were all "white hat") - short if possible - meaningful and memorable - easily transmitted verbally (try relaying a hyphen in a radio ad for example) - does not infringe on copyright Can you add anything that I have missed?
You have most of them but missed a couple. And some of the ones you have don't really matter ie DMOZ TLD, probably the most important. .com above all others. Branding. Your domain name will become your brand. By hearing the name you should know exactly what the business concept is. If you don't, its a bad name. Easy to type Don't use hyphens or numbers Uniqueness. You don't want your site confused with someone elses. Register the other TLDs of your domain if possible.
Real words. People are caught up on this "2.0" thing, and most are chasing a dream. The big thing now is "Brandable", but very few know what it means or takes to create a brand. Plain and simple, it takes money. If you don't have the budget to market, you are wasting your time with "cool sounding " domains. The real truth is that the internet is young. It's users are not educated like a webmaster would be, and they search very simply. I have had many people tell me that my simple domains, that are 10 years old don't have any value because they are not "edgy". People don't surf "edgy", they search words. And I normally sell to people that get it. Many new webmasters buy on vanity, and age experience. They don't see the internet for the worldwide commerce platform that it is , they only see it from their little world. "booksave.com" may sound brandalbe, but people search for "Book Prices". (Crude example). This is where many webmasters loose out. They don't have any understanding of business, marketing, and economics. They only know SEO, and they follow information and from sources of things that have already happened. thinking forward is the way to make money on the web. So you are right. Most people don't have any idea of value in the business, and what is truly marketable. The ones that do, have already obtained their portfolios years ago. It is very unlikely, that if you are just getting into domains now, that you will ever have a valuable portfolio without luck, or some investment capitol. The good ones..the ones that businesses look for, are all gone. You can register an MFA domain, any day of the week, and there will always be a market for swapping $10 domains back in forth between new and inexperienced webmasters looking for Luck on the web.
I think you are confusing branding with keyword searches. I guess it depends on where your priorities lie. You need to determine where corporate branding lies in the equation vs SEO. Is quick hits more important than branding? Book prices will get you more hits initially but it has no brand value IMO. No reputable book company would call itself Book Prices. Youtube didn't call itself watchvideos. Google didn't call itself websearch. Vivid Entertainment didn't call itself bestporn. The highest volume searches doesn't mean the best brandable names and given enough time and effort, any site can rank for any keyword with any domain name.
in my book I think ovt is somewhat important. Make sure you are going for something that people are searching and want to know about or purchase...Also, age can be another important factor..When it come's to the SERPs aging can play a big roll...Plus, the others you mentioned before..PR, brandability, uniqueness..etc
True. My point kinda blended together. But my main point was, buying something that you consider brandable means squat if you don't have the money to give in the exposure to make it a brand name. You Tube didn't get where it is by spending $40 a month for for hosting and buying adwords. They spent MILLIONS over the YEARS! Yahoo did commercials on TV WORLDWIDE! Some of the biggest branding failure happened right in front of our eyes during the super bowl commercials of the 90's. One shot. 3 1/2 million dollars. So people thinking they can achieve any kind of branding success, on a worldwide medium, amongst 100's of millions of users, speaking multiple languages, with a $100 budget are smoking some really good stuff. And....people who really think that they are going to get a quality domain in this day and age for $40 are even higher. Everyone has this folklore in their head about 2 guys in a garage with no money, just a great idea, and it never really happened for anyone like that. I don't care what you think the Hewlett Packard story is. At some point, there needed to be some money. Some real money. Check out this site: Killer Start Ups..and you tell me, how many of these people have a good chunk of money invested, and are destined to fail? Most of them. And believe me, they didn't even get as far as they are, with $20 domains, and no business, marketing, or economic education. JMO
I don't disagree with most of your points here. Just pointing out that keyword searches and corporate branding are two entirely different things. I would point out however that search volume isn't everything and some of the highest sales in recent years have had low search volume. The reason for this is because the biggest companies don't care for type-ins, they care for marketability. ahl.com had little search volume but it sold for over 100k because the American Hockey League could use it to promote their league. Chinese only has an overture rating of 142k but Chinese.com is currently bidding at 150,000 Euros on Sedo because it has marketability for Chinese Business.
True, it's not everybody's cup of tea to make it real big like yahoo or youtube, but you dont need to be that big to be successful.
You are exploiting the "positive" factors who those who understand nothing. A domain is valuable if it's brandable. If you don't know how to brand a domain name, then you're not in the right business.
extension also the trend of the market. LLLL was dead for a while and it start selling again lately. Those generic word with rare extension is dying now
Last night i sold a domain for just under mid $x,xxx and it was a brandable with no high keyword searches. Quite simply the company wanted it, i asked them to make me an offer and after i fell of the chair i said it's a deal. I paid $10 for the domain about 5 days ago, it was a great domain but i wouldn't of been able to sell it here on the DP market for $25. That's why i only list my junk here, it's all people can afford. So what makes a domain valuable? Someone wanting it no matter what.
Definitely not true. Some domains are garbage, have no resale value, are not marketable to anyone, will not increase in value, and the only way to make any money with them is to develop a website or blog and monetize it, and maximize that monetization. In the case of most webmasters, this means just enough content to get by, and adsense. In this case, it doesn't matter what the domain is. A $20 domain, barring some fluke of Pop Culture luck, is always going to be worthless, and you can get the same results, as far as value, by just registering a new one. The only thing you get from a cheap domain, is hopefully the fact that it is indexed. A good domain is marketable to business, and it stands alone and increases in value whether or not you have a site on it. Last year premium domains increased in value by 94%. NINETY-FOUR-PERCENT!! "Crappycrap-crap.net" didn't increase in value, just the ones that are marketable to businesses. Premium. There are only so many words, and combinations of words to be had. Now divide that, by the amount of actual goods and services, and the words that name or describe them, and marketable domains are rare, not to mention taken. And of course you probably want .com, right? OK follow me here: Domains like: Books.com, bookprices.com, usedbooks.com, bookstore.com,(and .org's, and net's) are going to increase in value every year. "Thebookpriceclub", "pricesofbooks", "bookbookity" "pricesbook" and every variation that is registered to simulate the words, and the way people use them, will never be worth any money, because there more ways to butcher a domain, but it will never be as good as the actual one, using real words, in the correct syntax, and conjugation. You can only arrange them so many times, before it's just worthless gibberish. And then that's it. Done. Over. One of a kind. The biggest fallacy that I see people doing to themselves is looking for "Brandable" domains. What they are really looking for is cool sounding domains, because, to truly make something brand able, you have to have a marketing budget to make it so. You can't "Will" , or "Hope" something into brandability. NONE of the brands, that roll off of peoples tongue were made that way by the companies hopes and dreams. It takes a plan that includes money. Only a very, very few will achieve any kind of brandability, purely from skills.(Actually, through out history, I can't think of any, nor did I learn of any in college, or know anyone that has seen it on a large scale) The public, just does not care that much. The only way for most of us to get them (readers) is to put it in their face, and that takes money. So yes, I laugh when I see posts, "Looking for something brandable, short .com, under $40", because right away, I see someone who is starting out to fail, and really does not have a clue where they are. And I say that for 2 reasons: 1. Either they are acting dumb, and fishing for a disparate idiot to sell them something cheap, and in that case they are playing a 10 year old game and just wasting time instead of just buying one. Not too many newbies that don't know any better have been able to get their hands on a good domain in about 3 years. 2. They really believe that domains are just laying all over the place, and that $40 is a lot of money. In that case, they are way out of their league in this business. Don't get me wrong, you have to start somewhere. I did. But if you truly do not know, that "Short, brandable," .com's are heavily sought after, and you have to pay an owner of one to get a good one, then you need to take a step back and look around at the real world. Because anyone who has been in this business more than 4 weeks, should know that you cannot truly get the domain that you are asking for, with a budget the equivalent to that of a bucket of chicken and a 6 pack. Just because you just got in the race, doesn't mean you can just jump in in the make up the rules as you go along. It started 15 years ago. So to say that you can make any domain valuable is not true at all. When companies and investors, look for domains, they don't care how much adsense it does. They want something that they can present to the world, that they can hang their reputation on, and that they can market. Only those kinds of domains increase in value and are true investments. Everything else is the equivalent of trading penny stocks. A $20 is a $10 domain to the next guy, there is not much difference. NONE! Domains like that have no value they are just web addresses. The really are not even worth $20. Domains are commodities, and they are coveted. and they are now rare, and it is getting worse. There are only a select few originals...everything else is a cheap knock off. Not many people seem to get that, but the ones that do, are buying like a Hooker at a crack house on payday. If you look at any domain long enough , you can make yourself believe that "in just the right circumstances, it may possibly be worth something to just the right, female, one legged midget, selling blue shoes in Rhode Island". The rest are trying to make a $10 domain worth $500 by putting adsense on it and spending all of their time SEO 'ng something that is only useful in the market place to another new webmaster who is just getting his feet wet. It is a revolving circle of cheap domains and worthless websites, crammed onto shared hosting with hundreds of other new website, because hosting companies know that this is the bubble, and to cram as many sites as possible onto one IP. A great domain, with a crappy website will still get you a very decent price on resale, provided it is not banned or used for anything unethical or illegal, but a great website, on a truly crappy domain, may be a deal breaker, or will definitely get you less money. If you are going to buy a "Brandable" domain, instead of an English language one..then you had better damn well market it and make it truly a recognized brand, because if not, to everyone else, and the general public, it's just gibberish. People don't get it..the domain is the identity. Not your seo skills, or your great new script, or all the flashy colors...what people who have money are looking for is the Identity, they can build the site, that is the easy part. The identity is what is rare, and once the one you want is gone. It will never, ever, ever be replaced. A nice domain (.com) will always be worth money. Always. It can mean everything to a business, and people will pay good money for that identity. They do not pay for the site. They pay for the domain.
I need to add that, the standard for what is valuable in the domain market, has already been set. The valuable ones are owned, and either being used, or are sitting in portfolios. If you are an investor, you can buy one now, and let it increase in value, and make some revenue off of it in the mean time, or buy one next year when it will be twice the price, or 3 years from now and spend more. For premium domains not to increase in value, the internet would have to fold completely,and consumers would have to loose all faith in it. Of course none of us believe that would happen, or we wouldn't be here on a help forum trying to get some knowledge to get into the game