I have a pretty memorable domain name that I have owned for years , but have not used. Recently I started using it in my business as an easy to remember e-mail to put on cards and stationery. I evaluated it on one of those self appraisal sites a couple of years back FWIW. I think it came back $5 to 10k. I recently received an offer to buy it and was given roughly three options. 1) Buy the domain name for $3,000. I AM NOT INTERESTED IN THIS or in countering given the low offer. 2) The buyers would develop it, drive traffic to the site and make money off of it and give me say 10% of the gross (estimated $30 k to $50 k )for the next 3 to 5 years. NO WORK FOR ME. 3) Give me business leads from their other existing sites, with somewhat similar domain names (that I know make money and do generate business) and also leads from my domain name as developed for say the next 3-5 years. I could make conceivably about $120 to $240 k, but I would have to realistically do say 5 or more hrs per week work for the next 3 to 5 years. Once we agree on the terms and they performed for say the 3 to 5 year period they would completely own the domain and its contents. PROBLEM: I don't have any clue how to evaluate these offers, though I do understand the type of work I would have to do in option 3. I have long thought about developing the site sort of like they plan to do and how they are doing so on at least one of their sites that I am familiar with, but don't know how. The potential buyers are not real forthcoming ,naturally, but tell me it basically involves a lot of continual submitting to search engines and getting listed in directories and dealing with changing Goggle algorithms for instance. Sounds like too much work to me. Not my area of expertise. Anyone know anybody who could give me some answers on how to evaluate this offer or how realistic it is to go into competiion and develop my domain name myself? A business consultant? Internet sites or forums? A web marketer? A bright young business or computer student?
I have bought and sold a lot of domains over the years and have never had any luck with anything that was "lease" based. Only once have I taken payments and that is on a 7 figure deal, and even then the domain stays in escrow until the contract is fulfilled. I base almost all of my purchases and sales on the http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm sales reports. I have been purchasing 2 word product domains for about 10k lately, if you scan the current reports and the year to date reports http://www.dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm you can usually find something to use as a comp to get the price you want / or to pay the price you want
Thanks for the site. It certainly made me think that the $3k straight cash offer was in the ballpark. I knew the value of raw domain names had fallen, but had no idea what they are going for. At $3,000 it is worth it to me just to have a good,established sounding, domain name. Now the development part of a domain name into a money making business, either on their part, or, not so likely, my part is still a mystery. I think it all gets down to whether people doing simple internet searches, wind up with your site/business coming up on the top page. From my limited research, you can get relatively cheap services that "guarantee" you a top 10 listing in say Google, or Yahoo type searches, but to get and stay in the top 3 to 5 (where most people buy from) in any sort of relatively competitive business is not inexpensive and or cheap. Anybody know if it can be done without just paying a lot of money to either the search engines or to someone to keep fiddling with the site?
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No legit seo will guarantee anything - 99.9% of those services will take your money and get you blacklisted Slow and steady works, go to a site like www.webmasterworld.com , there are a lot of pros there that have posted everything you need to succeed online. Once your site is up and running well, just keep adding content either through articles or a blog and you will start to show up in the rankings. You might also want to find some related directories and get ($) a listing. It is not as easy to get a site launched as it used to be. What used to take weeks can now run years as far as organic listings go. A great domain helps a lot with your inbound link juice but right now time and patience are your best friends. I soft launched a site about 18 months ago- lots of articles, info and product pages. Got it in some directories and then ignored it until a March. When I turned on the ecommerce section it started doing well immediately. It isn't a huge money maker but has already done over 100k in sales. Most of the time I am working on sites that I don't expect to generate money for a few years - that is kind of how things have evolved UNLESS you are really good at adwords and don't mind spending the $ with google. I got tired of the pay per click treadmill when some of my sites where budgeting 25k per month - I would rather take the time and let the business come to me for free with the natural listings.
