Domain name appraisals

Putting a fair price on a domain name is a tricky thing to do. Various factors contribute to the value of a domain name, and many of them are subjective.

Obvious factors include such things as:

• the length of the domain name
• the extension (.co.nz / .org.nz, etc.)
• name recognition
• whether or not there are any numbers or dashes in the name
• the amount of existing web traffic to the domain name

Less obvious valuation factors include:

• the amount of searches for keywords from the domain name
• whether there are any trademarks on the domain name, or existing sites with similar names
• the existance of money words in the domain name
• supply and demand for similar names

Domain name appraisals are one way to get an independent view of the value of a domain name in order to reduce the risk of buying or selling the name at an inappropriate price. However from our experience the appraised values should be taken with a grain of salt - they are useful to give an indication of the order of magnitude of the expected price ($$$ / $$$$ / $$$$$ / etc.) but actual sales can easily be 10 times more or less than the appraised value. It's also helpful to bear in mind that domain name speculators are normally only willing to pay 10% - 20% of the price that end-user companies would pay.

We're not aware of any prominent New Zealand domain appraisal companies. However Sedo are able to conduct fairly detailed appraisals of .nz domain names and they are also able to assist with buying and selling such names.