How Much is Your Domain Name Worth?
You own a domain name you’re not using and someone asks if they can buy it from you. How can you figure out what it’s worth?
It’s not a simple as appraising a home; it’s very difficult to find comparable sales and attach a price to a domain. Every domain name is unique and it’s hard to compare one to another.
In fact, if you ask five so-called domain experts how much a domain is worth, you’ll probably get five different answers.
But you can get a decent idea of your domain’s value by taking a look at some of the factors that go into valuing a domain name.
1. How many other extensions are taken
If you own the .com of a domain and the .net and .org are also registered, that’s a good sign that the domain you’ve chosen is in demand. It means the term you chose for your domain (the second-level domain) is popular enough that people are willing to register it in extensions that aren’t as popular as .com.
2. If similar domains are taken
In addition to if other extensions of the domain are taken, also see if similar domains are taken. For example, let’s say you own the domain PickleballHome.com. Pickleball, which is sort of a cross between tennis and ping pong, isn’t a very popular sport and there are lots of Pickleball-related domains are available to register. Instead of buying your domain, someone can register PickleballHouse.com, PickleballWeb.com or PickleballPages.com for their website. This makes your domain worth less.
Compare this to BaseballHome.com, which is a much more popular sport. Most of the good alternatives to BaseballHome.com are already registered, which increases the domain value.
3. Domain age
Since most of the best domain names were registered a long time ago, the amount of time a domain has been registered can be an indication of value. This doesn’t mean that every domain registered in 1995 is more valuable than ones registered in 2010, but it can give you a general idea. You can see how old a domain name is by locating the “creation date” for the domain in WHOIS.
4. Search results volume for the term
It’s a good sign if there are lots of results for the search term matching your domain in Google. If you search for pickleball on Google, you’ll get about 500,000 results. Search for baseball and you’ll get over 400,000,000! Clearly, baseball is a more popular topic. The more people who have created web pages related to a topic, the more demand you can expect for your domain name.
5. Monthly searches for the domain
Pages indexed in Google are one thing. But the number of searches per month for the term can be an even more important measure of demand. You can get an estimate of the number of searches for a keyword by typing it in at SEMRush.com.
6. Advertising competition
If a lot of companies are buying ads on Google for the term of your domain name, it’s probably worth more money. SEMRush also estimates the prices people are paying Google when someone clicks an ad for the search term.
7. Comparable sales
Although finding comparable sales (“comps”) is hard, there are a couple of sites to check. NameBio.com and DNPric.es offer a searchable catalog of past domain sales. Only a small percentage of domain sales prices are made public, but you’ll find over a billion dollars worth of sales on these sites. If you’re selling a two-word domain name with baseball in it, it’s helpful to know what similar domains have sold for: BaseballGear.com $7,600, BaseballCap.com $4,601, UltimateBaseball.com $3,500 and BaseballMag.com $1,025.
No one data point will tell you how much a domain name is worth. But considering these factors can help you determine a relative value for your domain.
I used to own a domain name and I wasn’t making any money from my site, so i decided to not use it and it got expired after sometime. Then after a year or so, I checked it out the same domain name on Godaddy, it’s now available to register at over $1000 dollar. I wish i had known domain selling and buying are this much profitable. Thanks for pointing out these good points. I think selling domain name is better than just letting it expire. There are people who are making millions just by selling and buying domain names. The business is making a lot profit to many domainer. It takes right path to understand the basics to start earning some profit from domaining.
@Statchest The fact that your domain is for sale at 1000$ doesnt mean it’s worth it. You should put yourself down only when you see it’s been sold. One thing is to put a domain for sale, another thing is to actually sell it…
Sold. I don’t see it now as available to register, now one need to buy from other domainer, I think.
Hello NameCheap, for an organisation of your statute you should be ashamed of email marketing to promote this amateurish insight. This article contains no mention of link equity (aka link juice) such as Google PageRank, which is the true measure of domain value in SEO terms other than brandability. Not even a mention of the word “link”. But yet you talk about domain age is such a vague way. Seriously this is a pathetically amateurish insight which NameCheap shouldn’t be putting on their blog.
I have a complete set, more or less for my domain: .com, .org, .net. co.uk, plus some exotica .eu, .tv, .info etc and a UK/EU registered trade mark on the name itself. Would there be a market for selling the complete package?
the author does a good job hitting the high points…the bigger issue is that “baseballcap.com” sold for 4,600 bucks.
you can’t make a living in this business unless you start with a bunch of capital or got in early.
just like schilling cleaned up after the bubble burst, that is a possibility…things are always changing.
but right now? no. everyone who posts annonymously about how they’ve quit their job because of their internet deals is pretty vague when asked specifics.
i would estimate most domainers, including me, aren’t even close to break even.
Thank you for the information. Great job, @Andrew Allemann !
Nice article.
@Dan “Google PageRank, which is the true measure of domain value”
Calm down, your vitriolic aggression is unwarranted. Domains have never had a PageRank value, and probably never will.
Thanks Name Cheap. Didn’t know that domain name is worth $$$.
Had allowed a handful of domain names expired because of ignorance.
Could you write more on how to sell not only domain but websites
My friends and I even built a website with view of being agents for the fishing trip business. We can’t cope with the demands on our time (all of us hold a full-time job) & would like to sell it. It is one year old
Domain name plays a very important rule while starting an online business. Everyone should pick site name wisely. Otherwise you’ll regret on having not an awesome name.
Thanks for this article.
I’ve only registered a few domains. One I kept for 8 years with unfulfilled plans of using it until I was contacted out of the blue to see if I wanted to sell. I ended up getting $20,000 for globalcool.org – though I accept this is probably exceptionally lucky
I sure have a domain to sell “dicule.com”. I have a lot of things I am working on that’s why I am letting the domain name go
Thanks for sharing this information.
Thanks for sharing wonderful post information.
its wonderful knowledge thank you so much for sharing with us.
Thanks for sharing very good post.
Even though I don’t have a website of my own, it is pretty neat to see that they can be worth something. Since there is a lot of business out there going online, perhaps it would be a good idea to start investing. I’ll have to go off some of the advice you said and see about finding some similar domain names to buy.
It depends on the end user. For example, if you take a look at .IM domains, they only work in a niche market, namely for instant messaging or chat type of services.
Take one example of Beep.IM. A go daddy appraisal shows it’s worth $576 but owner would never sell it for such a low amount. Consider Adium.im which is listed at a measly $162. The end user essentially determines what the price will be. If there is an end user willing to pay for it then that what it’s worth.
Thanks for sharing very awesome post. I really like it to read the post in namecheap..
Thank you for the information. Great job, @Andrew Allemann !