Many members are unable to place domains prices properly. They sometimes hire professional services for appraisals. The main goal for writing this domain appraisal guide is to help newbies to learn how to value your domain names without the help of professional appraisals. Now without wasting further time let me give you a quick overview of the major points taken under consideration while determining the value of a given name.

Here are 10 Points:

1) TLD. (Extension of the domain name)
2) Keyword itself (The domain name without extension)
3) OVT (The Overture of the particular name with or without extension)
4) Length of Domain name. (Like 3 letters or 4 letters)
5) Dictionary word or not.
6) Pronounceable (The sounding and the pronounce ability)
7) Brand able (Best example Google.com)
8) Singular or Plural
9) Keyboard relation (Some people look at it that if the domain is easily type able or not)
10) Google results (This also some people consider while buying the domain name)


Now let me explain you in detail:

1) TLD .com is the commercial TLD and most widely used TLD. Even a newbie can understand what .coms stands for. If some one wants to go to some site then naturally type in the site name and .com extension after it. So .com version of the domains names are highly priced compared to the other version of tld's for the same domain.

2) Keyword Itself The keyword means the domain itself. If it is poker or casino then great. If it is greatestcasinos then it is weaker compared to the casino or casinos. Keywords usd for the domain name itself are very helpful to establish a brand and market it easily.

3) OVT The overure data shows us the number of searches performed on that particular keyword. So it gives a basic idea that what kind of traffic to be expected if we build a site on this kind of domain name. This is not 100% fool proof. Bcause after launching your site your site must also be well structured and should have better content then your competitors to get a better placement in search engines.

4) Length Of Domain The length also plays a major role in valuation of the domain name. Shorter the better. If the domain is short say 3 or 4 letters then it can fetch high prices. Compared to the other long domains. (Here also there is a catch: fhur.com is short but it cannot get more then hotappz.com) Because the Hotappz one has general keywords and is brandable compared to the domain name fhur.com which is shorter one.
Another point in shorter domain is that there can be only 17576 combinations in 3 letter domains. So they are rare and are like some antique pieces so they are highly priced. For 4 letters there are 456976 combinations out of which all the nice ones have been regged for next 4 or 5 years. And even just combinations of 4 letters without any meaning are selling for $xx prices.

5) Dictionary If it is a dictionary word then it is good. And it can get better prices. Say a furniture company wants to sell furniture online on their website. So they buy furniture domain and redirect it to their company domain. Why? Because whenever a normal guy who wants to buy furniture types in furniture and places the .com extension after it in the address bar he navigates to the company’s site. And this way company can have more benefit for targeting more and more customers compared to their competitors.
So this is the value of dictionary domains.

6) Pronounceable If the domain is pronounceable then it will be easy for the users to memorize it and so more and more users can return to your site without going and searching it every time. This also helps establishing a brand name in the market.

7) Brand able Now if the domain is not even pronounceable and doesn’t have any major TLD then it will be very hard to brand it. The best example as I mentioned above can be google.com Because google didn’t had any meaning some years ago. But now every one knows what google means. Some examples for brandable domains can be like juhy.com, vhuv.com etc etc.

8) Singular or Plural Now if the domain name is a singular one then it will get more price then the plural version of that particular domain name. Like digitalpoint.com is better then digitalpoints.com Some times there is an exception in this kind of domains also. EX: LatestGirls.com is better then LatestGirl.com Because the End user wants to see girls not a single girl In this kind of situation the plural one get more $$’s then the singular one.

9) Keyboard relation Now some company which is spending good amount on the domain name and wants to brand it will also take in smaller points like this one. EX: fhur.com is easily type able on the keyboard compared to jyos.com (I don’t go 100% with this theory but then also it has a little weight when valuing a domain name)

10) Google results Some people also see google results for a given name. Now this also doesn’t has any relation with the domain name google will just show you the results of the pages which contains that particular word. This can be helpful to do some SEO afterwards though.

If you have any questions then please let me know I will try my best to answer them.