Free Appraisal Software & Expired Domains Tools

[Linda Buquet]

Hi All,

I just discovered some free software that looks pretty good but have not tried it yet.

Free appraisal software and expired domain software.
When I get a chance I will appraise some of my own names and see what they are worth.

http://www.namematters.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20

Let us know if you try the software and what you think.

[sbeco]

Here's another domain name appraisal software program.

http://www.dnpromoter.com/appraisal.html

What's interesting to me is the small number of criteria these types of software use to determine the value of a domain name. I still can't find a complete list of evaluation criteria that is used by the more expensive companies to determine the "potential value" of a domain name. This Domain Name Promotor software (link above) uses only 8 criteria to evaluate the worth of a domain name:

1. Descriptiveness
2. Length in characters
3. Length in words
4. Spoken test
5. Breadth of Applicability
6. Dot-value
7. Hyphenation
8. Abbreviation

Surely there must be more criteria to consider than these eight. These eight are some of the more "objective" considerations, but I want to know what are the "subjective" considerations used to evaluate the potential worth, or even the current worth, of a domain name.

For instance, in the list of 8 above there is no mention of how this sofware will measure the value of a domain that has an existing website with a high PR in the search engines. Or how it determines the potential value of owning a domain that links to "The Latest Hot Thing" on the net, which would require a subjective analysis, not just objective, i.e. the number of characters, the length of name. Or does the domain name have a "weak or strong" trademark value?

In any case, I would be skeptical of any software application that claims to be able to accurately evaluate the potential worth of a domain name using only "objective" criteria. There are so many other subjective elements that come into play when evaluating the potential worth of a domain name.

So...

Does anybody out there know where to find the complete list of evaluation criteria, both subjective and objective? If we can nail this down we can all go into business as domain name appraisers! Or, at least we won't get ripped off by unscrupulous appraisal companies who refuse to tell us what criteria they use to evaluate the worth of our domain names.

[Linda Buquet]

One of the BIG things I think professional appraisers do that these programs don't is evaluate the actual selling price of similar names. Not sure where they get all the data.

The one I pointed to in my link seems to work great but seems to heavily weigh on length and # of words. One of my longer domains I think is worth more than one of my short 2 word domains but it rated them just the opposite.

[sbeco]

I've only read one book about this subject, but it was a detailed, good book. In that book the writer said that a one word domain name has more value than a two or three word domain. So the name "jobs.com" would be worth more than "findjobs.com". And "findajob.com" would be the least valuable name. For a long list of reasons.

But, if "Find A Job" was the trademarked name of a Fortune 500 company then findajob.com would be a very expensive domain.

There's so much to consider when evaluating a domain's worth. The net is still in it's wild west phase, so domain appraisal snake oil salesmen can get away with charging much more for a domain than it's worth, and as yet, as far as I know, legally they don't have to say precisely how they arrived at a price for the name...to the dollar...like charging $2488 for a domain. How did they arrive at that exact number? I'd love to see some legislation in this area, some standard, publicly known rules for all appraisers to follow.

[imvain2]

Sbeco,

In one of my rants about domain appraising I came up with a list of a few more criteria for determining domain value. Check out the link below.

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=22423

[sbeco]

Thanks imvain2 for the information. Very helpful.

This domain appraisal thing still boggles my brain. I'm just sitting here wondering how a specific dollar amount can be assigned to a hyphen, or lack of a hyphen, in a domain name. I realize there are many factors to "calculate," but specifically how much or how little does a hyphen add or subtract in terms of specific dollar amounts?

For instance, consider the domain "godaddy.com", the domain of a wildly popular website. Exactly how many dollars should be subtracted from the hyphenated domain "go-daddy.com"? Same website, same traffic, same business, but the hyphen changes it's dollar appraisal amount. Why, and how many dollars should be added or subtracted?

To me this is really silly stuff. I don't know how domain appraisers can look at people with a straight face and announce the price of a domain as being worth thousands and thousands of dollars when the domain is not the name of an established business or a proven popular commodity...like the domain "escape.com." By domain appraisal criteria escape.com would be very expensive. But escape to what? To where? Who is escaping? Why are they escaping? None of that matters in the domain appraisal game. What matters is that the domain is one word, easy to remember, easy to spell and a top level domain.

Oh yeah, and it has NO hyphen!

[edwinj]

Domain appraisal is not an exact science. There are no standards There are however certain guidelines. Some of which you mentioned ~ easy to remember, spell,...etc. Each appraiser simply tells you what HE thinks the domain is worth. That's why there's no right or wrong answer, sometimes.

Should you subtract $X if a domain contains a hyphen? I don't think it works that way. This issue about hyphens is tricky and has been debated widely. Basically, it comes down to 'intuitiveness', IMO.

E.g. if you're loking for information on Michael Jackson, for instance. Would you type michaeljackson.com or michael-jackson.com in your browser? Or if you were looking at investments ~ would you type RealEstateInvesting.com or real-estate-investing.com? (Typing the hyphens becomes a bit cumbersome, and it gets worse if you have to say it to someone; you'd go real dash estate dash...)

Various stats have shown that the average user would type in the non-hyphened versions. That's why RealEstateInvesting.com would GENERALLY be considered to be more 'valuable'. (But this is not always the case though.)

On the other hand, some experts argue that hyphened names hold an advantage in gaining better positions in the search engines for their keywords. (SE have evolved over the years and things have changed nowadays).

Sbeco gives a very good illustration with escape.com. For sure it would fetch a lot of money. Not simply because it is a one worder, easy to remember and searched for over 27,000 times a month on Overture...etc. but also more importantly because of what the name could potentially represent. That's why it is good to ask those questions that Sbeco raises ~ escape... where? who? why?

Could it, perhaps, be used as an interactive games site where one could 'escape' to for a couple of hours? Or a discussion forum to 'escape' to, maybe? The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. But once you 'brand' it for whatever site you want to develop, your 'escape.com' suddenly becomes a very valuable commodity.

Ask yourself - "what can this be used for?" - before you register any domain and you will find yourself owning more quality names and less junk material.

Thanks for taking the time to read. :)

Edwin

[xmx]

My personal opinion is that domains appraisals
are quite dated, and that they use not the
best possible criterias.

As an example the domain name MyStockmarkets.com
is in my opinion more valuable of the domain name
MyPlanes.com.

For a normal appraisal software with its criterias
the shorter one would be more valuable, but if we
consider the target of the 2 domains it is clear
that the first one would let you earn more.

And this is just an example to clarify you my
personal opinion.

[imvain2]

Another concern that I feel an appraiser should take in concideration is both offline and online marketing values.

For example a domain name ending with .com and .net would be more valuable for offline marketing (print, TV, radio etc..) then say .info or .name.

But the domain name FireArm-Auctions.info would be more valuable for online marketing (search engines for example) then say eBay.com (eBay.com is just an example as I know eBay.com gets alot of traffic, so please ignore the current traffic status of eBay.com for my example).

[xmx]

imvain2,

the example of ebay.com shows that you can become
successful with any name if you have a super budget
and market your domain very aggressively.

It is the same for aol.com; the domain name itself
means absolutely nothing, but it has been used at
a very early stage of the internet evolution for the
AmericaOnLine company and it consolidated with many,
many users.

Also the domain name Amazon.com itself has nothing
to do with books, but it also started very soon.
It had also financial problems than solved them.

We could go on forever, but it is clear that if they
used those budgets also with a different domain name
they would have reached the same results, and perhaps
with a more targeted domain name even better ones.