Buying 2nd hand stuff makes sense for one reason – it’s cheap. In 2010, not many people can afford to blow money on new things or if they can, they’ll try not to. That’s just the mentality of the modern day buyer…
sell
how to value a domain name
These past few weeks, i’ve been beefing up my knowledge on domain names. I’ve also been beefing up my domain name portfolio, adding an estimated $13,000+ to what i already have (according to estibot).
Although i’m still learning, i’ve built up a huge collection of links and tips when buying / hunting for domain names and like i said in a previous post, i’ll be revealing all in a 3 part series of in depth blog posts for RSS subscribers only, which will be published sometime between 18th-22nd of this month (next week).
If you haven’t already subscribed, do so now or if you’re not familiar with RSS, simply pop in your email below and get the latest updates from this blog directly to your email address.
Domain names – unlike sites, are difficult for me to value. I see all domain names as $6 registration fees. So when i buy a domain, i don’t think i’ve bought something worth $5,000 – even though that may well be the case.
As a test of my own ability to value domains, i’m going to put my own value on a few domains coming up for sale on bido.com – we’ll see how good i am.
Here’s a list of domains up for sale over the next 9 days. I’ll put a value on each of them and re-visit this post 9 days down the line to see just how good i am. By the end of it all, i should be in a much stronger position to value my own domain portfolio more accurately;
- yardtrimmer.com – $410 ($1,000)
- ultimatemedicine.com – $130 ($80)
- panics.com – $670 ($4,900)
- wirepay.com – $1200 ($200)
- edaycare.com – $50 ($110)
- greatvenues.com – $400 ($390)
- fixedloans.com – $4750 ($8,300)
I’ve also added in estibot’s valuation in brackets. Hopefully, i’ve underestimated everything as it will mean my own domains are worth a lot more than what i previously thought. I’ve valued all these domains prior to checking estibot’s value… basically going on gut instinct or first glance.
So in total, i expect these domains to sell for $7,610 – estibot predicts $14,980 – we’ll see who knows best 
$1940 worth of domains for $32.50
I’ve bought 4 domains now in the past couple of days – all keyword .com’s. They have a combined value of $1940 according to estibot.
I got all 4 for a combined total of $32.15. In fact, i got two of those domains for BELOW my usual registration fee of $6.
I got one for $4.25, the other for $5.50 
Now that’s what i call working clever… i didn’t think i could buy better domains for any less than reg fee, but now i know you can if you’re lucky 
So now the question is – how accurate is estibot? Lets be extremely pessimistic here and say the real value of a domain is 1/20th of what estibot predicts – it still means the domains are valued at $97 – 3 times MORE than what i paid for them
In my own experience, estibot is pretty accurate with it’s predictions for small-medium sized sites and domains. For larger sites, it’s slightly skewed because it can’t paint an accurate picture of traffic or RSS readers etc… plus it doesn’t factor in current revenue.
But all of my new domains have been valued on keyword frequency in search engines… what that means is the domains i have are pretty popular, common search terms. So they’re very strong keyword domains and being dot com’s, they’re not gonna lose any value whilst i have them
I have one or two more ‘big buys’ lined up this week – domains valued at close to $1k. One of them has over 230m results in google I doubt i’ll be so lucky as to get all of them on a shoestring budget, but who knows… most i’ve paid so far for a domain has been $16.25 and that domain was valued at $910 
All i need to do now is build up sites around these domains then flip them based on unique design, simple functionality and with a real focus on the value of the domain name.
imagehostme up for sale
Fresh from the baker’s oven, imagehostme.com has been put in the shop window.
I’ve decided to sell it ASAP rather than twiddle my thumbs waiting for it to gain traffic or pagerank or something that would make it more valuable. Sell, sell, sell – that’s the way it has to be if i want to earn some cash and invest more in BeerChief.
So imagehostme has gone up for sale on sitepoint – it costs $10 to list a site there, so if it DOESN’T sell, i’m gonna be be -$10 
I’ve set a minimum bid of $30, a reserve of slightly more, and a BIN of $100. I’m hoping it’ll fetch $70+. It’s a long shot, but someone might fall in love with the design and hit the BIN at $100
As with everything i sell, it’ll all be reinvested back in to other stuff. I now have 15 more domain names that i need to buy. They’ll cost ~$90, but assuming i sell all 15 sites for an average of $50, it’s a $750 return, or $660 pure profit. That’s very do-able over 2/3 weeks.
If imagehostme.com sells for anywhere near the BIN i’ll probably continue with image host designs for my next 2/3 sites, then move on to other ‘webmaster tool’ related sites, then i’ll chuck in the odd custom wordpress theme or two. Either way, i’ll continue to work hard and churn out some sort of semi-respectable design/content.
Whilst the money is nice, the REAL value is of course in experience… buying/selling, design, content creation, databases, transferring files/folders, learning about scripts and needing to edit bits of php, meeting new people, gaining some extra links etc.. that’s all invaluable experience.