The prospective buyer presumably has a business idea for selling kids furniture so your name is ideal for them - which makes it a case of 'special interest' i.e. they have a special interest in that name - compared to the man in the street with no such business intentions. The scale of their enterprise will be a determining factor. If they have a lot of funding and its a serious venture, you may well get a 4 figure sum.
Just for back-up, why not run it through the appraisal service at GreatDomains? Dogboy wasn't too thrilled with their multi-word valuations, but it'll at least show due diligence on behalf of your client.
Then again, if your buyer is the type who pinches (and counts) pennies, $10.00 has four figures in it... (I'm not saying the domain is only worth $10, just that it's worth whatever the buyer is willing to pay. Hope they're free with their $$)
Exactamondo!
How much would The Coca-Cola Co. ask to sell it's brand name? It is just sugared water that they are selling, but the name is invalueble. look up a recent issue of BusinessWeek to see the exact value of the brand.
Remember that they are also going to be buying the clientele of the domain. What they do with your viewers is up to them, but you have (presumably) built up your sites reputation so that they do not have to spend money on advertising, search engine optimization or customer loyalty programs. People are visiting the site and that is important and that is thanks to you. It is for them to make the most out of it later., when they are the new managers.
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A figure I would fly around is 1cent per viewer per month (average of the last six months). Got 150,000 viewers last six months? That is 25,000 viewers per month or $250.
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(Note that I manage a non-profit site so maybe some more business oriented people here will have some different valuations. That I promise.)
A website/domain is very much like a piece of art which makes it difficult to price (the beauty is in the eye of the beholder thing). None the less, it is an investment in time, software, and branding. Profitability is a factor as well. Remember that .com domains names are pretty much used up. Sure, the prospective client might find a furniture domain that will suffice for business use but I challenge others to find a high level domain name as good or better than furnitureforkids.com- It's concise, easy to remember and has search engine appeal.
The price I originally stated was for the domain/website package. For the domain name only I would figure between $750 -$1500. Sure it sounds like a lot but when you average the price out over the time it will be in use it is a drop in the bucket when compared to server related and advertising expense (actually the domain name is part of the advertising costs). But I would still have them make an offer first.
I miss the good 'ole days when you could sell a domain name for a substantial markup in price with little or no effort. Nowadays, unless it is an outstanding name, you have to build the site up first and wait patiently...
>Abe
...the site/business is being sold separately. The amount is for the domain only
Interesting stuff guys, but don't forget that in this case he is only selling the domain name>Abe
...the site/business is being sold separately. The amount is for the domain only
But the domain is already drawing traffic, which is a ready audience for whatever goods the new owners want to peddle. A site with the name furnitureforkids.com a limited range of goods, namely furniture for kids...
Presumably the new owners do not want to make it a financial information site, so they already have an attentive audience, depending on the work of the previous owners. So, the closer they want to keep to the previous audience , the more they should pay for it.
If the original "buyers" don't like the price, try the guys that are buying the kw's at goto.
Childrens furniture is a good size industry online. My client had great success.
Thanks everyone for input.
but surely the domain name and the traffic come together? How can you sell the traffic to a domain name but not the actual domain name?
Or would you be redirecting traffic to funiturekids.co, whatever to another domain name at the moment..
My thoughts.. a domain by itself represents minimal effort and investment apart from being smart enuff to buy the name early, the cost of registration and annual updates. Ive found most ways of pricing domains to be pretty crazy. Weightings for shortness, keywords etc, and im pretty sure Se's will be reducing their reliance on domain keywords for ranking if they are smart.
What really counts is the quality and magnitude of incoming hits, email lists, data base of customers etc etc. That must be 99.9% of the effort. Goodwill is hard to quantify but may be the most useful way to go about it.
The time that domain names by themsleves were highly valued was in the dot com boom when innocents thought the domain name was everthing. Now they are definately worth something but how to price it. You are right, hard to do.
i know you cant do it now, but I would cost in the domain name with the costed value of hits, email lists, database etc...
Sorry, i know it dosent help much.
