This is a large, national, entertainment company. They have a .com and want to buy my version of their .org. They have the same names just different suffixes. There may or may not be a trademark issue, I don't want to disclose it here, but it is "iffy" as to whether or not a trademark is violated. Currently, my domain is just parked and not in use.
Let's just say they're expanding and making millions. How much $ would such a domain be worth? I'm thinking 10-50k, what are your thoughts?
There may or may not be a trademark issue
Be careful. Might be a trap. Or they might just be deciding whether to pay you, or pay someone else to force you to give it up.
Has it been in use longer than theirs?
Would it be worth a substantial amount if the .com were doing nothing at all?
Let's just say they're expanding and making millions. How much $ would such a domain be worth?
Things don't become worth more as I make more, to a measurable extent.
Now, how much is a secondary, "protective" domain worth to a big company? I've got a story on that one...
A couple of years ago, I sold a 4-letter, common-word .net for $35,000. BTW, the offer was unsolicited, and the initial contact named the price, which I accepted.
The company that bought it consolidated a number of sites of theirs that cater to users of widget services in various cities. They had been using a disparate collection of domains for each city where they promoted widget services. Some of them were pretty bad - .biz's etc. so this was a big step up for them. They moved everything over to the new domain. The company had maybe 20 of these sites, and I know they had several full-time employees, so one could at least guesstimate how much they might be making, or at least what their revenues might be.
About a year after the widget company bought the domain, Big Software Company announced a new initiative that is very central to their future strategy. Part of this strategy was a new "brand name" that was not a part of Big Software Company's previous branding. It just happened to be the same name as the .net that I'd first registered in 1995. They purchased the same domain in the .com version, and at the same time or about the same time, also purchased the .net that I had sold a year previously.
Part of their agreement (apparently) was that they had to hand over the domain, over night, with no prior notice to users, advertisers, etc. Essentially, this put the widget company out of business. That is, their entire web presense disappeared over-night, without a trace, replaced with a redirect to the Big Software Company's .com version of the same name. Imagine having all of your users and advertisers suddenly find that your site has gone "poof" without any prior notice! BTW, not only did the site go "poof" over-night, so did the SERPs. Big Software Company apparently has enough pull to have arranged that all references to the old content ALSO disappeared over-night!
(The way I found out about this is somewhat amusing. The widget company installed a fancy webcam on my balcony, as they wanted to continue to offer the webcam that I'd had running on the domain previously. I like to occasionally look at the pictures from the webcam on my balcony, and one day I went to do so, and was redirected to Big Software Company's new brand website. I reported to the widget company that somebody must have somehow hijacked their domain, and was masquerading as Big Software Company. It seemed obvious, as the domain registration at the time was in the name of some nobody in Canada. A few weeks later it was changed to Big Software Company. Anyway, they wrote back to say that they hadn't been hijacked, and had sold the domain name to Big Software Company.)
So, what's it worth for a company with a handfull of employees and 20 apparently successful location-based websites to just suddenly cease business over-night? They'd have to be compensated for the cost of starting all over again, the loss of business while starting back up on a new domain, plus a profit sufficient to make it worth-while. (Or enought to make it worth-while to simply walk away.) Perhaps even face the possibility of lawsuits from advertisers and partners who suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them.
My guess is that the domain went for a minimum of $1M. I'd imagine that the .com went for $10M, given the typical relative values of .com and .net.
A .net, .org, etc. can be worth plenty to a big company with the bucks, under the right circumstances, as a protection for a high-profile .com domain.
I don't feel badly about what happened, as I had no idea that Big Software Company would come along a year later and decide that this domain name would be a great brand name for their new service. (Although perhaps I should have known that EVENTUALLY somebody would see what a great name it was. However, there already was an established .com - NOT a parking page - which I had no reason to believe would be sold to somebody else much, much bigger.)
if it makes me 1000 per month with an average labor cost of 10 hour per week. then I know it has a base line value of 12000. 10 hours per week is 520 hours per year or 23/hour of work
now I know 23 per hour times that by 40 ( the hours they put ) and that's 48K ( given it's easier to do the calculation the other way, but knowing what you earn per hour, can give you a guess if you want to put more effort into increasing it's value )
Mojomike
Be careful. Might be a trap. Or they might just be deciding whether to pay you, or pay someone else to force you to give it up.
Actually it is. It is exactly that. Make an offer lower than $1,500 proposal, and they'll buy it from you.
Higher than that they'll file an UDRP and get the domain from you.
If they have the .com, and are a large company, let's face it, they can get it from you one way or another. How much money they make, or will make is not your concern. Ask them what they think is fair, and take it from there, but always remember that any money you get is essentially free money.
Be particularly suspicious if you were asked to get an appraisal and referred to the appraiser by a would-be buyer of the name.
After all they may just want you to buy an appraisal from the recommended appraiser.
Thats just my 0.02$.
Best regards
[edited by: Webwork at 1:59 am (utc) on Aug. 24, 2006]
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