Know Competing Prices

When you are setting buy it now prices on your domain names, or when you are responding to a purchase inquiry, it’s important to know prices for comparable and similar domain names. It’s easy to find these similar domain names, and taking the time to look can keep a prospect interested.

For many of the inbound inquiries I receive, the prospect is also looking at other domain names. For instance, if someone inquired about BreastLift.com (a domain name my company owns), they might also be looking at BreastLifts.com, BreastEnhancement.com, BreastAugmentation.com, and perhaps BreastLift in other domain extensions. If I reply that my price is $100,000, and one or more comparable domain names is much less expensive, they may cross my domain name off their list.

Some people don’t care about losing a prospect when it comes to their premium domain name. As a domain seller though, I would rather sell a name for less than the ideal price rather than lose a great offer. For instance, if the prospect could buy an alternative domain name for $65,000, it might behove me to lower my asking price to come more in line with a comparable. There may not be a lot of people willing to pay that much for a particular domain name, and pricing a domain name more competitively might be helpful in closing a deal.

A secondary reason for knowing comparable prices is because it might make sense for you to buy the other domain name if the price is right. Perhaps the owner of the plural domain name has lower expectations than you, and you can buy it for a great price. This will eliminate the chance a prospect chooses another domain name down the road, and it may also allow you to upsell or cross sell a prospect who wants to buy your domain name. You may even be able to get more money for the pair of names because the prospect would see it as a way to prevent a competitor from operating on a similar property.

Whether you are looking to buy other names in a particular field or want to be sure your domain name is priced competitively, it is wise to know prices of similar domain names that might compete with yours.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

14 COMMENTS

  1. It is very relative what is “comparable” or “similar” domain name. For company ABCD, domain name KLMN.com has no value, but ABCD.com has high value. Comparable? Not for user ABCD. As every domain name is extremely unique, “similarity” is just wording using by seller to push price higher. But what actually seller should do is to point out to value of the name as a unique online identification matching user’s brand or product/service keyword. Another words, when someone sell LLL.com for $20k, or LL.com for $300k, it does not mean I should do same. I would ask much more.

    • I would say 99 of 100 domains are sold for less than is its value due to lack of patience. I understand some (most?) of people cannot afford to wait, but this fact actually is the major difference between ordinary domainer and real domain investor.

    • fair price is a dollar more than the offer of the second highest bidder. unfortunately, exploitative sellers are rewardly more amply in the domain market than any other I can think of

  2. A single letter, or digit can knock the price down by 99%, hence some of the big warehouses, and their 2nd tier names with the added lessor plural, or more imaginative registration can be hard to price against when they are in the $1,000 – $2,500 for these added character type domains. Takes a lot of educating.

  3. Clever post to promote your domain. Since you removed the like/dislike buttons on the comments maybe it would be to your benefit to add them to the post only. I think it could help you write better posts because you can get a real feel for what people do or do not want to read. Just a thought.

    • Not trying to promote it here since the price is set for an end user rather than domain investors. I think it works well for the sake of illustrating the point of the article and using some make believe name wouldn’t be as helpful.

  4. Sad that I had a potential buyer inquire about a .COM domain name related to women’s purses and they thought $799 was way too expensive. I wonder what the comps are on that?

  5. It never ceases to amaze me how somebody can write a thoughtful post with articulate rationale and thoughts, but someone can come along who disagrees with some or all of it, and therefore thinks it’s okay to call into question the veracity of the approach, or even the motivations of the writer.

    Here’s what’s true:

    1. Everybody has different viewpoints.
    2. Disagreeing with a view does not discount the original view; it’s just a different approach or view. Having additional ideas or a different approach doesn’t make one guy’s approach invalid. If it works for him, it’s nice he shares.
    3. If you own a blog and you have stuff to sell, there’s nothing wrong with promoting your own stuff.
    4. If you listen closely, it will validate your own approach, or add something new. Everything is an opportunity to learn, tweak and empower.
    5. I know a lot, but I don’t have a steroid ego that I can’t learn. I learn from myself. I learn from my mistakes. I learn from losers and i learn from winners. I learn from my failures and the failures of others. I learn from small inroads of mine, and from those of others. I learn how to build and persevere and adjust and improve and to revamp and to empathize and rethink and to brainstorm. I learn every day. If I didn’t, I’d be bored silly.
    6. Being helpful is a lifestyle choice. I teach people, encourage people, help people. A lot of them never do, downstream. Those who do will find a much happier life.
    7. If you try to help people publicly, you will also find yourselves misunderstood or a target at times. It’s just part of the gig, unfortunately.

    Thanks for being so transparent, Elliot. I know you’ve helped a lot of people along the way.

  6. @Tasha Kidd

    6. Being helpful is a lifestyle choice. I teach people, encourage people, help people. A lot of them never do, downstream. Those who do will find a much happier life.

    If you really think that the blogs you read that are full of advertisements are there only to help people than I have a bridge for sale that you’ll love.

    I am an avid reader of Elliot’s and meant no disrespect to him and I know he didn’t take it that way. I thought it was a clever way to promote the domain and still think it’s clever but you also answered that one too.

    1. Everybody has different viewpoints.

    • I understand, Todd.
      I didn’t mean to single you out… I see it in worse proportions on other posts.

      … and no, I don’t think blogs are purely altruistic ventures, but they are a lot of work, and there should be a payoff at some point, for both the provider and the reader.

    • I appreciate both of your comments. I didn’t take offense, but it felt like I was being “called out” a bit for something that was done innocently. That said, people say worse things to me and it comes with the territory. As they say, “no harm, no foul.”

      I think that it is clear that this blog is a business venture. If it wasn’t monetized, I would be better served spending my time doing other things to generate revenue for my business, especially because I spend so much time on here.

      I try to make sure that I answer questions and participate in the discussion. If you come here to learn and have further questions or comments, I don’t shy away from taking part in the conversation.

      Anyway, I sincerely appreciate your comments, here and in response to other articles.

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