I find most of my domains in looking through the drops, via estibot, and then I run a list from justdropped.com through humbleworth.com I use estibot and humble to value almost every domain I buy, and I almost never use their numbers. You can look at our main site for domains to see our domains and pricing, 4dotcoms.com
Estibot makes it easy, even if their search numbers might be old, they let me search numbers, and I assume its a large part of the valuations, they also show if bid, and prices. Those are the main two things I look at. Sure I love short and catchy, but mostly I believe in EMD domains (only .coms) with searched terms, and I like for the searches to be over 1000, and decent bids, say over a dollar. Thats not all of it but I start with that name, that hits my look at “this domain”.
So esitbot says its worth over $500, has 1000 searches and a bid of $2. Okay whats humbleworth say, if under 500, red mark against it.
Then I look at QEIP, if its under $100 there, thats makes two more red marks. If I’m still on the fence I will likely check Godaddy’s appraisal tool. If under $100 or ever only $1500 at least another red mark.
Now keep in mind I do try to decide if I think its a good name for a website. Does enough people have an interest in this topic, should someone have a website on it. (and for me, can I/will I build a site on the domain).
If still on the fence I look on search results and see what is pulling up, are there ads (sponsored) results? Can I compete with those sites? Do they have products? Ads?
Finally if I cant really decide I use domainindex. If I hadnt decided by this point, I let it decide. If it says zero its gone, if it says more than zero than most times I might. Normally I never get that far, and most times well better than 50% I know if I am buying the name before I see any appraisal.
Are domain appraisals worthless, not to me, the combined price of all give me some idea. And if one of them have some crazy number, that cant hurt trying to sell it. If several of them say that domain sucks, history says if 4-6 domain appraisal services says the name has no value, you aren’t like able to sell it. My names tend to be priced in the 150-450 price, as thats what I think it is a fair price for the domain.
