All Posts Tagged With: "Domain Value"

Determine Your Website’s Value with DNScoop

Posted by Kyle Eslick on February 4th, 2008 | Category and Tags | 0 comments

Ever wondered about the value of your website? We’ve learned about the tremendous value a domain can hold, but a domain with an established website can hold even more value.

If you had a potential buyer for your website and were trying to determine the value, the buyer would take into account several key factors. A website will typically sell for about 10 times the monthly income it generates, but blog purchasers also factor additional things into the value such as Google PageRank, inbound links, number of posts, age of domain, and of course your Technorati and Alexa rankings.

If you are interested in getting an estimated value of your website, DNScoop is a domain and site value tool that claims to set a value for your websites. Simply input your website URL and it will go out and look up the necessary information then assign a dollar value to your website.

So how accurate is this tool? I input a few of my blogs to get an idea. Because of my recent domain switch, it looks like this site has lost its value (currently $660.00), but Kyle’s Cove still shows a value of $19,292.00. I also decided to check out Hack WordPress because it is sporting a brand new PR5 rating and has managed to collect several quality backlinks (including being featured by Smashing Magazine). DNScoop placed a value of only $2,450.00 on that site, despite the fact that it generates a majority of my blog related income.

As you can see from the above “appraisals”, I would only recommend using this tool for fun and probably not treat it as an accurate value for your website. How much does DNScoop say your website worth? Let me know in the comments below!

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Why Dot Com Domains Are The Gold Standard

Posted by Kyle Eslick on February 1st, 2008 | Category and Tags | 0 comments

In the past two weeks we’ve devoted a little time to studying domaining and what is all involved with being a domainer. It can be very time consuming, requires a lot of research, and does require a little risk, but the payout can be and usually is huge.

One thing people often ask is why dot com is such a big deal? Why can’t someone succeed with a country code domain (.us, .in, .cn, etc.) or maybe a dot net? The truth is, of course, that any business can succeed with just about any domain name. If you are getting inbound links and your content is relevant, search engines will find you. If your business is country based, it may even be appropriate to have one, but dot com will always be the gold standard.

Brian Krassenstein has written a post on a message board explaining why he feels dot com domains will always be the gold standard. If you have pronouncable or keyword-rich domains, investing in dot coms is about the safest investment you can make. Here is what Brian had to say:

Every month or two it seems as though new domain extensions are released by ICANN. They have one for almost every country now, and are now doing continents, such as .eu and .asia. We have .us, .biz, .org, .net, .mobi, etc, etc, etc. You would think that as new extentions are released it would deflate the values of the already existing domains out there. This is not the case though. .com domain names will always actually gain value as ICANN releases new top level domain extensions. Why?

When most people think about the internet and a website, they think .com. Even if they hear a domain name on the radio, see it on tv, or in a magazine, or are told about it by a friend, they will always think it ends in .com, even if it doesn’t. The large corporations and the most popular sites out there all end in .com. Only approximately 1/6th of the worlds population has access to the internet today. Even then, only about half of them are able to get online at their convenience. Having said this, things are changing, and changing fast. China and India who account for over 1/3rd of the worlds population are growing rapidly. More and more people in these countries will gain internet access very soon. It is predicted that the internet population of China and India will be 5 times what it is today by the year 2011. Now imagine if only a small fraction of these people decide to create their own websites. The demand for good keyword rich domains will explode. Most of them will not be able to hand register the .com versions so they will go for the cheaper versions such as .in, and .cn. When they do this, they are actually making money for whoever owns the .com verion of their domain since a good portion of their type in traffic will type “.com” instead of “.in” or “.cn”.

Some other tlds that I recommend buying and holding onto in addition to “.com” are:

.es - These are being used for spanish language domains. Should grow significantly
.cn - China is large, very large, and .cn domains seem to be what most chinese recognize as the authoritive tld extension
.de - This is the German extension. For some reason Germans, unlike many people elsewhere in the world tend to love their country code top level domains

All in all, if you are thinking about investing in good generic or abbreviation domain names, go after the .coms. Over the long haul the risks to .coms are significantly less then that of other extensions.

Now, keep in mind, that you aren’t necessarily going to get rich by investing in just any dot com domain, but they are appreciating at a rate much faster than the cost of renewing the domain every year. There are currently 14.5 billion dot coms taken and they are continuing to disappear at a rate of roughly 30,000 a day. If you are looking for a safe investment, buy a few dot com domains that you like and just sit on them for a couple years. If you decide not to develop them, you can always resell them!

On a quick side note, I got an e-mail from another Kyle Eslick yesterday who found me via my personal domain name. Have you registered your families personal domain names yet? Even if you aren’t using them now, you’re going to want them some day and you can use them as an e-mail address in the meantime!

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How Do You Find a Good Domain Name

Posted by Kyle Eslick on January 23rd, 2008 | Category and Tags | 0 comments

In the world of real estate, all sorts of things factor into the value of a property. As you probably know if you’ve purchased a home before, one of the biggest factors in determining the value of a property (and resale value) is location. If you are a business that deals with walk-in customers such as restaurants, grocery stores, and gas stations, you are wanting a good location with a lot of people that pass by. In the world of domains, in order to find success, you need to train yourself to look for many of the same things that people look for in real estate. Here are the five things that I take into account when I’m considering buying a domain:

Domain Length - Domains with more than 13 letters can be difficult to sell in most cases, unless you have a domain that is the name of an established business.
Memorable - This kind of goes along with #1. A domain needs to be easy to remember for a business, and it needs to be easy to remember for a domainer. If you are cash parking, you are counting on a large amount of traffic from people entering your domain into their web browser.
Easily Spelled - If the word(s) in your domain are hard to spell or can be spelled in multiple ways, it probably is best to avoid it. This also applies for words that are spelled differently depending on the language they are spelled in.
Includes Keywords - A potential buyer for the domain will probably come to you because all good domains with their keyword are taken, so they want to purchase an established domain. Generic domains can be good as well, but will require more marketing to sell, where you will often get direct offers for keyword-rich domains without any work.
Avoid Plural - The name of this site used to have Kyle’s in it, but that was a mistake I made long ago and rarely did a day go by that I didn’t regret it. People would think my name is either Kyles Eslick or Kyle Scove. That is why I’m so adamant about avoiding plural when it comes to domain names.

The above five examples are intended to be used as a guideline. For example, I do purchase domains longer than 13 letters occasionally, but it isn’t ideal if I’m looking to resell it. I try to only do so if they are the EXACT keywords someone would use to do a search.

How do I buy Domain Names?

When I go to buy domain names, I always use a service called PCNames (full review here). You simply input a desired domain name or a keyword you want to use, then search. PCNames will then display a bunch of available names using that keyword, and I’ve found they often make some great suggestions. Once you’ve found one you want to purchase, click Select and pick your registrar of choice. Going through them you get help finding your domain and you get a discount (for example dot com domains are $7.15 at GoDaddy when referred by PCNames).

What registrar should I use to buy domain names?

I get this question a lot. Does it really matter? Yes and no. I usually recommend people use GoDaddy altogether, or at least to register domains that they intend to flip, because it is the most popular registrar. This makes it a lot easier to transfer a domain from one person to another because their are better odds that a potential buyer either uses GoDaddy, or at least has a GoDaddy account to house the domain. Transferring from one GoDaddy account to another is really easy, but transferring between registrars adds some extra hassle.

What is this domain worth?

If you follow the above steps 1-5 and find one that meets that criteria, you should have a fairly valuable domain name. As long as the name is short, brandable, and avoids hyphens and other things, it has a lot of potential. A domain is technically worth what someone will pay for it, so its hard to nail down an actual value of a dot com domain name. But once you’ve come up with your price on that, though, you can follow the 1/10/30 rule to determine the other TLD values. This means that a dot net version of the domain is worth about 10% of the dot com counterpart, and the dot info version is worth about one third of the dot net value (or 1/30th of the dot com domain value).

You’ll find that domainers will often closely monitor what similar domains are selling for to determine the value of their domains. Another thing that increases a domains value is natural traffic (traffic coming from users entering the URL into their web browser). These will sell a lot better than one that doesn’t have natural traffic because you can easily monetize them using cash parking techniques.

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A Few Good Domains For Sale

Posted by Kyle Eslick on January 8th, 2008 | Category and Tags | 0 comments

In the past I’ve spent some talking about the value of a good domain name and about how all this valuable real estate is quickly disappearing. Over the last 15 years most all one word and two word domains are gone, with a majority of the good three word domains disappearing very fast as well. It has become increasingly difficult to find a keyword-rich domain via a domain registry and many people are being forced to buy/sell/trade domain before launching a blog or website.

While digging through my domain registrar account, I realized I’ve got some pretty good domains in there that are just parked or redirected to one of my existing sites and not really being used. Most of these domains were purchased with a plan for using them, but I’ve been kind of stretched thin lately with my existing sites and so I decided to see if I could find a better home for them.

Prices are included as a reference point, but some of the domains are negotiable on the price.

WebBrowserWars.com ($10.00) - Great domain for blogging about the competition between the different web browsers.
GetOnlineDeals.com ($10.00) - Great place to blog about the latest deals around the internet. Also includes many possibilities for monetization, such as Amazon and Google AdSense.
GetYourOnlineCoupons.com ($10.00) - This is a keyword-rich domain for promoting online coupons. There is a good market for online coupons, and advertisements tend to convert well.
UltimateResourcesOnline.com ($10.00) - Great domain for cheat sheets, resources, etc.
WebBrowserWorld.com ($10.00) - Great domain for blogging about the competition between the different web browsers.
UltimateCheatSheet.com ($20.00) - Great domain for cheat sheets, resources, etc. The term “Ultimate Cheat Sheet” gets tons of searches on Google every day.
GetWordpressThemes.com ($20.00) - Great domain for hosting a bunch of themes (both paid and premium themes).
FacebookProducts.com ($20.00) - With the success of Facebook and high click through rate of Facebook users, this is a great domain to write about Facebook, Facebook applications, etc.
PremiumSEOTips.com ($50.00) - Great keyword-rich SEO domain. Trying to find a good domain with SEO in it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack these days.
WordPressBits.com ($70.00) - Incredible domain for a WordPress niche site.
PremiumWordpressPlugins ($300.00) - This is probably the best domain you could possibly want for a premium WordPress plugins website. As WordPress continues to grow and evolve, many plugin authors will start charging for some of their plugins. This is a great domain to host and sell these plugins.
WordpressConsulting.com ($600.00) - There are tons of WordPress consultants that make a living doing work with WordPress. Here is an optimal URL for a business name.

You can find additional domains for sale on my domain page, Domaining Online. Please contact me if you are interested in any of the above domains and we’ll try to work something out. As they are sold, this post will be updated removing those domanis. Good luck!

P.S. I often run across good domain names that I don’t end up purchasing. I certainly don’t like to see them go to waste, so I’ve been considering throwing them into a post and publishing it here for my readers to purchase them. If that would interest you, let me know in the comments below! Also, if you’ve got any domains for sale, feel free to leave them in the comments below for other readers.

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