Are people really getting $50K+ for websites

I keep seeing really insane prices for domains

[ogletree]

I have been looking arround for sites and any site with a few backlinks go for $10K plus. A pr6 seems to be like $500K or so. Are people really buying these things. Do people just sit on these things forever hoping oneday they will find some sucker. Their are a ton around $30K that don't even have content or backlinks.

[ukgimp]

>>A pr6 seems to be like $500K or so

Man, I have assets at over 1 million. Simply horse, they dont make anywhere near that. There has to be a ROI for a website sale. I am guessing that that people who think these sites are are worth 500K are living in some sort of temporal flux and think they are living in 1999 when it got really crazy for a while.

I tried to by a £5 name the other day, not a great one either and the bloke turned his nose up at a reasonable 3 figure offer. Fine, I will find another name, keep your domain and wait for ever to get 10K or get decent turnover now.

Muppets :)

[ogletree]

Thats what I was thinking. I put some real good domains on Ebay and only got a $2 bid on them. I guess the places that list domains for sell are making a killing off these idiots holding off off for their big sale. Some of them are like 13 chars long and have dashes in them.

[ukgimp]

I stand by by closing word :)

Muppets

[TallTroll]

Some domains ARE worth tens of thousands, but only good single word generics, or names with killer branding potential, IMO. There are only a very few such in the world, and someone would need to have a really good reason for buying them now. I can't imagine why you would wish to pay $500k for a very-easily replicable PR6.

Surely the $500k would be enough to build a killer site, and support a massive marketing push, enough to get a "natural" PR7/8

[Scottish chickadee]

heck if you can really sell sites with a good pr for 500k..i have at least 6 up for sale as of now! lol

lou
xx

[Mr Bo Jangles]

A pr6 seems to be like $500K or so.

I'd be very interested to know what gave you that idea ogletree.

Cheers,

[Shak]

ebay is neither the place to BUY or SELL domains.

PR has no real implication on value, unless its a PR8 or above, and the buyer is GOOGLE algo savvy.

Shak

[ogletree]

I have looked at many domain for sale websites including Ebay. Ebay being the weirdest one. I have found a few good deals on Ebay. I have purchased 3 websites in my time that were mind blowing deals. Of course both of them I just stumbled over. I bought 2 florida proof sites with tons of backlinks that I still consider to be the best deal ever. People don't understand they can sell domains for under $10,000 all day long. I don't know why they think they can get so much. I have paid $3000 and $10,000 just on it's Google value.

Domain buying for Google value is still a good idea. You really need to know what you are doing. A lot of senior members here thought I was a nut when I bought one of those. (shak). That site has returned it's value over many times. I think most of that was because I should not have announced what I was doing. Of course I don't care now I don't work for the people who own it now.

It is very very important to find out if the backlinks will stay.
Here are a few rules.

1. Check ownership of backlinks and make sure the guy selling the site does not own them.
2. Decide if the backlinks look perminate
3. Decide if the backlinks will dissapear if you change the site.
4. DMOZ and Yahoo listings will go away.
5. Check backlinks of the backlinks. Try to make as big a map as you can to try and find a linking pattern.

They are a needle in a haystack but a very valuable needle if you find one.

[cabbie]

Ogletree in your first post you say domains are over valued and in your last post you said that you bought a pr7 and made many times the price you paid for it.
Both can't be right.
:)

[1milehgh80210]

Nothing (that sells), on e-bay is overpriced.
Something is worth only what some-one else will pay for it.
People tend to discount e-bay because 99% of the sites/domains are crap. But thats true on other domain selling sites too. The auction format gives a truer indication of value.

[Shak]

Domain buying for Google value is still a good idea. You really need to know what you are doing. A lot of senior members here thought I was a nut when I bought one of those. (shak). That site has returned it's value over many times. I think most of that was because I should not have announced what I was doing. Of course I don't care now I don't work for the people who own it now.

absolutely, wanna know why?

Shak

[cabowabo]

We have bought many domains from domain brokers and when you pick up the phone and speak to them directly and start to go over the traffic, customer database, etc. the true value of the domain begins to show. We generally end up buying the domains for a lot less than the posted amount. Nearly all domains are inflated, by picking up the phone and speaking to the right person you can usually get the domain for half of what they are asking. Unless you are getting a customer database with the purchase, or unless it is an incredible domain (i.e. shop.com), we never pay more than $2,500.00 for a domain.

Cheers,

CaboWabo

[robho]

Like anything, domain names are worth what somebody will pay for them. I recently sold a two-word domain for over $5000 that had no links, had never been developed - but did have reasonable type-in traffic.

Realistically though most good domains, if they sell at all, go for the low-hundreds of dollars at best unless they have something special (and PR isn't something special - easy to add, easy to remove). 99% of domains are unsaleable at any price.

[ogletree]

I am not talking about PR. I am talking about lots of links that put the domain into the authority catagory. That is worth something. If you can buy a site with real good quality links that you could never get it is worth it. When Florida hit I bought a site and within a week I was back. That was invaluable. My purchased site still outranks my old site for some of those florida hit words.

In my first post I was talking about people that had sites for sale that had no value at all. My next post talked about buying sites that did have value. Even then I would not pay more than $10,000 for google value.

[robho]

I am not talking about PR.

Sorry, I took the bit about "A pr6 seems to be like $500K" as meaning you were discussing the value of PR, rather than a site with many backlinks.

I agree a domain with (third-party!) backlinks has some value, but finding a buyer who realises that is the tough bit.

One reason you might find they are over-priced is by the time the sites get thousands of backlinks on Google there's often been a lot of work on the site over a number of years, and the owner would be reluctant to sell it for a low price when they've spent all that time on it.

It's an emotional price, based on "investment" rather than current value (so it'll probably remain unsold for a long time).

[Teknorat]

In your opinions are there any valuable domains left to be claimed? Or has everything of value already been snapped up.

[chicagohh]

Excellent domains are dropping every day.

[Compworld]

I have a few PR7 sites that have been around since 1998, so if anyone wants to give me 500K for them, by all means, lets talk business. :)

But seriously, where would someone go to sell a few domains for a fair valued price. eBay is not for domains, any where else that should be considered?

CompWorld

[cyberfyber]

<<PR has no real implication on value, unless its a PR8 or above, and the buyer is GOOGLE algo savvy>>

I'd agree totally with this. To be honest I feel that only anything less than PR4 and more than PR7 are worth paying attention to in as far as market value is concerned.

Less than 4, don't bother. More than 7, definitely pay attention to. Between 5-7 (inclusive), will simply need additional work.

[ogletree]

PR plays a very tiny role in google value. I am not talking about deleted domains if anyone thinks that. Google value has more to do with quality of backlinks. For spammers that are going to make a very spammy looking site they may need to buy a domain that has a few backlinks. If you can pick up a PR4 for $200 or so if I was going to make a big doorway bottom feeding site that I don't want any of my existing sites to link to. Also if the site is ranking for some terms that you want that is a way as well. I have purchased several domains and have never regretted it. Sometimes it is just the quickest way to get in.

[stever]

absolutely, wanna know why?

Shak

Inquiring minds want to know, shak...

[markus007]

I saw a PR 5 with 5 pages go for 200 grand yesterday on ebay, but only because they are in the top 3 for bad credit and a few others. But who on earth would spend that much money on a site you can make in a half hour, and be destroyed with one google update.

[Dpeper]

I was watching that site on ebay as well as was astonished. That is sold for that, but I think there might of been a "real" business being bought in that auction They had proof of profits of 35,000 a month for like 2 years. And I think they were guarnteing the first months profits to be around there numbers. Still amazing.

[limitup]

If the site makes 35k a month profits for 2+ years, why is it amazing that it sold for 200k? Seems like a good deal...

[surf_boy]

I have been reading this article with a lot of interest, but could someone explain to me what does PR(#) mean?

[brotherhood of LAN]

surf_boy have a look at this thread [webmasterworld.com], under the "pagerank" heading.

[random2]

I run a domain name registrar and the only way I'd buy a domain name for several hundred to thousands of dollars would be based on 1.backlinks 2.real traffic and 3.popularity. Something as obvious as sex.com, business.com, money.com, etc. can be worth millions because of ROI as well. There are plenty of dreamers out there trying to sell domain names worth the $7.95 I charge to sell ours!
They are nuts. However, it's a good thing to purchase domain names that are very closely related to your specific industry that would help bring more traffic to your site(s). But most are rarely worth the thousands of dollars the owners claim. Just my opinion.

[Webwork]

In a dark cloud week a silver lining is found in flipping 3 domains for a very healthy sum. Amen. Exhale. No, the domains had no PR. No, I didn't measure the domain traffic. Yes, the buyers were very sophisticated.

[edit_g]

The Australian government paid $201,000 to obtain the website domain name for Tourism Australia.

[travelbiz.com.au...]

And this was last week - clueless is as clueless does...

I can see lots of good reasons for buying domains, but a lot of the high profile purchases are just not indicative or even remotely in the same realm of the real world of domain buying and selling (much of which is done by people here and happens very much under the radar).