aqls

Taking some examples of what I consider reasonable domain names.

It would be interesting for Sedo to walk through the Sedo valuation process.

examples:

htmltutor.co.uk
britishpubguide.co.uk
cheapestdebtconsolidation.com and .co.uk
cheaptraveltotokyo.com and .co.uk

All are currently unregged to make it fair to members of the board!

A generous answer from Sedo and I'll swallow some of my complaints

-aqls-

retired_member11

What are your complaints?

aqls

Many and varied.

I will keep them to myself in exchange for them sharing some of their fundamentals of valuing a domain name.

-aqls-

olebean

This will be interesting, I wonder if approval will be waivered?

aqls, you sure have marked you card!

Never mind appraisals, what about their calculation of CT payments? I don't know any industry where the advertisers don't know what rates they are working for!

sedo

Ah come on, don't me wrong here. I'm not interested in any bribery of any sort! Just thought we'd try and bury the hatchet with aqls. But any domain would do. And while that doesn't mean they aren't worth any less than the reg fee, these domains aren't too great. So here's what I'll do: I'll go through two ends of the spectrum, looking at a premium domain (earth.com) and one of the domains on this list that is regged (britishpubguide.co.uk).

PS: This might take some time though, I'm warning you all beforehand.

Ash

__________________
http://www.sedo.co.uk joanna.birch@sedo.com

aqls

ok, whatever.

The process and decision making is what is important to me.

- sorry, my whois lied, I didn't realise britishpubguide was regged.

but lucky him!

[added]
a) I find the middle ground more interesting than say earth.com
and b) we should perhaps do .co.uks?


-aqls-

sedo

Probably a good idea aqls. I’ll stick with britishpubguide.co.uk, and to illustrate CPC values, I’ll also look at securedloan.co.uk. Again, I’ll go through some of the factors that we use in valuation. I’m not going to spell out the entire process, as that would take forever, but I will mention some of the most important factors.

TLD and Market
The first thing I’d look at is the TLD obviously, and we all know that .com is the king of the castle. Most people rank .net 2nd, and outside of the UK and parts of Europe, many people do not recognize the full potential value of the .co.uk market. However, I think most of us here recognize that in many cases .co.uk domains have a higher earning potential than a comparable .net domain. In cases where a term is distinctly “British,” then .co.uk’s can be worth more than their .com counterparts. So when we look at TLD, we don’t just look at what the TLD is, but also where the intended market is, and how that might compare to other TLD variants of that name. I think you’d all agree that bangersandmash.co.uk would probably have more traffic than bangersandmash.com for instance, and consequently could be worth more. While britishpubguide.co.uk is a term that would be better served with a .com, we could make a case that securedloan.co.uk would be the most desirable variant. With britishpubguide.co.uk, I think the main market here would be tourists, so .com would be the best. However, I think .co.uk would be the 2nd best TLD here. In securedloan.co.uk’s case, the desirability would be based on the fact that secured loan is a term used primarily in the UK. You’d have to leverage that with the inherent limit in the traffic coming from the UK, however a quick look at Overture (discussed later) shows that secured loan is searched far more in the US than in the UK. So in this case, securedloan.co.uk could potentially be worth more than securedloan.com.

Memorability and length
The next thing we look at is the languages the domain is in and the length. Unlike most everything else in the world, shorter is better with domains. English is the most valuable language for all gTLDs (.com, .net, etc) and prove to be the most valuable with some ccTLDs (.cc, .tv, etc) and 2nd most valuable for others. German is the best for .de, French for .fr, … you get the idea. In this case we have two medium-long length domains in English. Securedloan.co.uk fares much better than britishpubguide.co.uk, which is not only longer, but consists of more words. Going hand-in-hand with length is memorability. The shorter it is, the easier it is to remember, and the harder it is to make mistakes when you’re typing it in.

__________________
http://www.sedo.co.uk joanna.birch@sedo.com

sedo

Industry Benchmarks
We also make full use of publicly available metrics, such as overture, Alexa, Marketleap, and so on. Overture is especially helpful when looking at search engine popularity and bid prices. Overture brings up 37 results in the UK for british pub guide, and 323045 for secured loan. As for the Bid Tool at Overture, the highest advertiser’s bid is £3.65 for “secured loan,” and 12p for “british pub guide.” It’s pretty clear that the more search results and higher max bids, the better. In this case, secured loan clearly has a great deal of inherent value, be it via a developed site or a parking page.

Brandability and Commercial Potential
Brandability ties in with both length and memorability. We’re looking for domains that are catchy and could provide ideal as branding opportunities. These factors also link into commercial potential, where we try to gauge where this domain fits into commerce on the internet, and it’s chances in it’s industry to make money. Both domains do well here. “Secured loan” is an often searched term in the Finance field, a field that is quite visible online. “British pub guide” could be classified under a Travel related term, another industry that has an extremely strong online presence.

Related Domains
Not to advertise, but one resource that Sedo has better than most valuation companies is it’s large database of past sales. We draw on not only all of our public past sales, but also all public sales available to us. This really helps us gauge the value of similar domains.

Traffic and Revenue
One of the more prevalent trends that we’ve been seeing is buyers solely looking at traffic and revenue when purchasing domains. Domain speculators are the main culprits here, and we’re seeing a great many mainstream investment companies considering or already having domain holdings. These investors look at the bottom line, and pay based on revenue multipliers. They might range anywhere from 1-5 years for typo domains, to 5-10+ years revenue for good generics. If you want to sell your domain hassle-free, this is obviously the best way to go, as these buyers will go for anything decent as long as it legitimately makes money. This is something we consider as well when making our valuations.

Etc
We also look at variants of the domain, the past history of the page (be it content or ownership history), and potential legal problems among other factors.

This gives you all a rough idea of some of the major factors we look into with regard to domains. This is by no means an exhaustive list, as each domain always presents its own research challenges. We do explore other factors, so if you don’t see something you think is vital in the domain valuation process, more than likely we do look at it as well. We are in the process of looking into way to improve and enhance our appraisal, and I’m hoping that some major changes will be in store somewhere in mid to late 2006.

As for these two domains, I don’t want to come out to exact values as there are owners of each respective domain and they may get offended. So this is by no means an indication of the accurate value, I will say that I feel that britishpubguide.co.uk should be valued at mid-high 4 figures GBP, while securedloan.co.uk should be worth low 5 figures GBP.


Ash Rahimi

__________________
http://www.sedo.co.uk joanna.birch@sedo.com

olebean

Ash

Thanks for that.

Intended market and industry benchmark?

Indended market suggests that all domains have "one" intended market, how does multiply markets figure in calculation?

What happens if there as no know industry benchmarks?

aqls

Ok, Ash,

Thanks for your time.

Comments anyone?

-aqls-