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What’s a Domain Name Worth?

December 15, 2021
By James Gussie

The value of a domain name is not easy to gauge. With the proliferation of companies on different platforms, determining how much they should be worth involves understanding the market and industry trends across time.

The “website worth & domain value calculator” is a tool that allows users to calculate the current value of their website. The tool also includes information on how to find out what your website’s worth and its current market value.

What is the value of a domain name? Due to e-mail interaction, I have reason to talk about it today. Someone is attempting to sell me swot.com for $600,000. That’s $600,000, not $600,000, as in six hundred thousand dollars.

There was a recurring theme:

His initial e-mail said that he had picked me because of my job. I sometimes write and publish about SWOT, thus I assume I came up in a search.
I bit my tongue, replied to his e-mail, and inquired about the price.
He replied with a sum of $600,000. (Not only that, but it was a standard, courteous e-mail message.)
Given his non-native English, I assumed we were both confused about comma use and currency formatting. I replied by e-mail, wondering whether he meant six hundred thousand dollars.

If you’ve never gone to a domain auction, you should know that they are purchased and sold. According to reports, someone paid $1 $7.5 million for “business.com” a few years ago. I met a University of Oregon student who made a living by purchasing and selling domain names five years ago. I own more than a dozen, including several important (to me and mine) domain names like this and numerous other blogs. Some of my children’s names were available as domain names, thus I hold domain names for them. I didn’t purchase any of them; I only registered them. My firm, Palo Alto Software, owns roughly a hundred domain names, several of which (including bplans.com and bizplans.com) I registered first, back in 1995.

So here’s the second-to-last e-mail in the thread, from him to me (modified only for spelling and grammar):

This is the price, to be sure.

I believe you are startled since you are not familiar with this market, but I can assure you that the price will climb every year. This swot.com is one of the best.com names on the market, and I’ve already had many offers on it. I’d be delighted to do business with you if you know of any company that need a name like this.

This e-mail was going to be ignored. That is a three-order-of-magnitude overpriced item. I’d be willing to pay $600. So it was pointless for me to answer. But then I realized that my reaction would make a good blog article and would be useful to you. So here we go:

I’m not sure what you mean when you say “not from this market.” Of course, I’m not from [insert country name here], but I’ve been online for 13 years, own a dozen domain names myself, and my firm has over 100. We’ve purchased them a few times, but we’ve turned down more bids than we’ve accepted.

We were recently asked to join in an auction for “[domain name omitted],” which you’d think would be a suitable domain name for a business plan software firm. The offer was less than $2,500 an hour before the closure. There had been less than ten offers. We didn’t even put in a bid. Why? Because a new domain is far less appealing after you have an established domain that is already working–we receive close to a million visits per month to our website network– It’s quite difficult to accept it without compromising your marketing efforts.

There are situations when specific values are required. Someone gave us bplan.com, which they controlled and was scooping up traffic meant for bplans.com, after bplans.com had established itself. That one was purchased. For the sum of $2,000, And we spent many thousand dollars for paloalto.com in 1998, since our company’s name is Palo Alto Software.

You have two, perhaps three, benefits with swot.com: 1.) just four letters; 2.) business meaning (SWOT analysis); and, potentially, 3.) difficult to misspell. Maybe for the third, since swat is also a popular phrase.

You, on the other hand, have no traffic. [Note from the editor: He doesn’t.] Although the domain is registered, there is no website.] Existing traffic is by far the most effective technique to add value to a domain name. If you look at any of the well-publicized domain name sales in recent years, you’ll see that traffic is already there.

Someone could be willing to pay you more for swot.com than I am. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a consulting firm specializing in SWOT analysis that doesn’t have a domain name or has a lousy domain name and therefore can justify the cost. If I were you, I’d run a Google search for “swot consulting” and see who comes up with a terrible reputation, poor placement, or seems to have an incentive to spend more than I would. I merely did it out of curiosity, and if it were up to me, I’d dig into who owns swot-consulting.com, swotmanagement.com, and abarisconsulting.com. They’ve already set up marketing on SWOT, as well as related–but much worse–domain names.

Why am I informing you of this? My current profession is offering advice to entrepreneurs, and I believe this is worthy of a blog article to share with others so that you may benefit from free advice. And don’t think I’m trying to haggle… I’m certain you’d get a better deal from the three firms I just named than you would from me. And I wish you the best of luck.

So there you have it. That is a true story. All I’ve left out are a few names that might cause folks embarrassment.

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A domain name is a name that you give to your website or email. It is usually a word or phrase that describes what the site does. The “free domain appraisal” will help you figure out how much your domain name is worth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are domain names worth anything?

A: Domain names are worth a lot! You can get them for as little as $0.99 and sell them on the market, or you can buy one from another person and keep it if you like the idea of owning a domain name.