That said, there was value in what members added to the thread, which by your leave I am preserving and would ask for your further input: How would you go about valuing a hypothetical domain - Example.com - which has whatever other hypothetical characteristics you would care to add.
Here's the initial replies <with minor edits, forgive me>:
TheGuyAboveYou : I would say it highly depends on the number of clicks per day and the the keywords it is ranked on and the industry. Not that you didn't know this :).
If you are ranked #1 on poker on Google then you can make millions.
If you are ranked #1 on <Migratory Sponge> Studies then you don't make much income.
I have seen sites selling for 1 to 2 times a years net earnings.
* * * * * *
PatrickDeese: Like someone else said - it depends very much on the niche, level of traffic and its potential for monetization. It also depends things like if you have 20 pages or 20,000 pages on the site.
How <will someone> monetize the site and how much money <is the site currently earning> - and what aren't you doing that would make the site worth $$,$$$ or more to someone else?
It's not the PR that matters. At least not to anyone who has a clue.
IF the PR comes from links from a number of well respected authority sites then that (should) say something about the quality of the content or website. THAT has value. However, given the efforts of some to hunt down .edu or .gov links, even those links can be devalued in some cases. Even such links have to be scrutinized for their true value.
When it comes to valuing a domain - the "domain as the value" equation - has to look mostly at traffic: type-in, nature of, PPC costs for such traffic, longevity of such traffic (fad versus "insurance"), etc.
To get a realistic sense of the value of a domain you have to present a great deal of information.
Here's a thread that goes into some detail about how to value domains. It doesn't answer the question about what any one domain is worth, but it does a pretty good job of laying out a framework for analyzing a domains worth.
[webmasterworld.com...]
The business of buying any domain that might offer an algorithmic advantage is an entirely different matter. Algos and SE filters are fickle. The value you assign to "older domain" or "high PR" has to take into consideration 1) the state of the art in assessing the role of such factors (very few real experts, lots of theorists); 2) the likelihood that a new or adjusted filter/algo could cripple any benefit.
Frankly, by the time "the public" is discussing how to take advantage of the latest algo insight, it can be assumed that the algo writers are looking for ways to filter out the opportunists AND the real opportunists are no longer putting the eggs in that basket but instead into the next basket.
