How to appraise a domain to earn profits more effectively

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You’ve got a long list of domains in your portfolio. Collecting them since you first hopped onto the domain bandwagon. Now you want them appraised and you login to your favorite forum and all you get is negative feedback. You stick to your instincts and ignore all the comments on your precious portfolio. This article will point out why some domains are completely worthless and why some are worth millions. And by the end of this read you will be able to find great domains and purchase them at unbelievable bargains.

I’ve listed a couple of pointers that you need to evaluate before purchasing a good domain.

Revenue & Traffic:

Traffic is what is going to drive revenue. Domains with high traffic in a short period are extremely valued by the online community. The most popular way to collect revenue is through domain parking. On purchase, domainers pay the price of a domain along with 1 years revenue. For instance, movieclub.com was for sale. Lets say the price of the domain in the sellers eyes is $1,500 and is making $5 a day in revenue in parking. The domain would sell for $3,325 ($1,500 for the domain and $1,825 for the revenue.)

Keywords:

Keywords determine ad competition, popularity, and also search volume. Hence are extremely important when looking for domains to purchase. Keywords are the best source to judge the value of a domain. Good way to find out if a keyword is popular or not is to check their value through a Keyword Tool which basically reports search volume and ad completion. Lets take movieclub.com for instance if you do a search with the Keyword Tool for “movieclub” you can see that the Ad Competition and the search volume is pretty high. Look for keyword rich domains. Also make sure that the keywords go good with each other. If you have 2 really good keywords but are not related to each other, the domain may probably be worthless.

Back Links:

Back Links are a sign of a marketing that was done for the domain. Back Links are a common method to increase traffic onto a particular website. There are multiple websites that help you see if you have Back Links on major search engines for your domain.

Length:

The length of a domain is an important factor that needs to be taken into consideration. The shorter the domain the higher would be the estimated value. This does not mean that it will automatically be worth more if it is 7 characters in length. Keywords too need to be taken into consideration here.

Search Engines:

You will need to take into consideration all the popular search engines. Everyone wants to get their page ranked on popular search engines. Search engines add value to domains because they can increase exposure of your domain to a much higher proportion of users. The more the better.

Age:

Not playing an important role, age too needs to be taken into consideration while appraising a domain. A 3 year old domain has been estimated to be a bit more valuable that a domain that was just registered, simply as it has already been exposed to multiple users and has lasted for quite a while.

Page Rank:
I can also add here that PR (Page Rank) is important. If a domain has a good PR is will be worth more as well. This can also tell you if there was a site up on the domain as well. This is attractive for buyers because if a site was once up it could be still getting traffic.

Negative Keywords:

I have repeatedly mentioned that good keywords are extremely important. However, mismatched keywords, and other special characters can bring down the value of a domain such as “-”, Numbers, misspellings, and domains that just don’t make sense.

Evaluation:

Let me take you through a process of how I evaluate a domain.

movieclub.com is the domain I will evaluate.

Google: 257 Frequency:103 Backlinks:145 Ad Score for these 2 words together are zero. The search volume is pretty much non existant. Just over 2 months old. The 2 keywords do not fit together. There is a site up on it now but not bringing in much revenue. Length is kind of long for a domain like this. I would classify this domain as a Brandable. Which basically means for this domain to have any value it would have to be marketed and branded by a website. So as far as reseller value I would value this domain at Low $xx mark. For an end user it could be worth millions.

This article is to show people what a domain might be worth to a domain reseller. If you don’t think your domains are worth anything then try developing mini-sites for them. Making a good website always adds value to the domain name. Also this article is for .com’s but can also be applied to ccTLDs and other extensions.

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