Different domain 'experts' are familiar with different ways to view a domain, example insurance.com, is it worth 35M? A typical 'expert' that thinks of domains like Frank Schilling say well it gets X searches exact and Y are typeins and cpc is Z so value is XYZ
How about this, insurance.com is a 1 Billion to 3 Billion buck asset if not more, the reason, my experience is with developing keywords that a business acquires to offset costs and gain new clients. So to any billion buck plus insurance company, insurance.com was a billion buck plus asset. The reason is simple over 50 million people a month search for insurance related terms, auto insurance, car, life, home, health, whatever, and they do geo tags too.
Now guys like Schilling are worthless in putting pages on page 1 of SE's, so they see type-ins as the only value, well a keyword.com for a industry like insurance can pop any insurance term they want via development, auto.insurance.com life.insurance.com newyorkauto.insurance.com
You name it they can be page one IF they have a real seo/sem guru, the problem is they don't, so this asset went way under what it was worth
50 Million people a month and google can give any insurance company around 4 million of that traffic at a cost of 60 million a month in ppc, so 700M a year to be a player in insurance via ppc ads or buy insurance.com for 36.5M and develop it to be page one for almost any term
Now had allstate or prudential had a real SEO/SEM maven running their IT departments this baby would of been bought a long time ago
Bottom line is, to a domain investor a term like fortlauderdaletires.com is worth 10 bucks to reg it, it was sold for 500 to a end user, now that end user has to pay a seo company to keep it on page one of google with content that gets almost 20% response ratios
So when you have a good IT team that can make a high response page, then the real value of domains and control to business owners become apparent
I just bought a domain today for a nice sum, but to me, it's a asset for a term I want to use, yet it sat there for years even though big companies are using the same word .com, so it was a ONE X .com and 1X.com was used to catch traffic by a major company
So I bought the ONE version
To me, 1 and One domains are very brandable and for marketing you get to say One or 1 KEYWORD .com the
#1 KEYWORD whatever
Now most domain investors would laugh at a one or 1 domain, yet for major keywords they're brandable and okay, not fortune values, but nice values
Now GEOkeywords to any owner who is that keyword in that GEO are worth a lot, the reason they get page one IF they can find a SEO team that knows how to pop a keyword.com
It's not that easy for business terms, if it were, then all of Schilling's type-ins would be page one and they're not
Now real SEO gurus know what they can park on page one and keep it there
keyword.com is a keeper using and if it's a combo keyword the hyphen for SEO purposes is as good as the no hyphen
So a lawyer in say new york, his abclawfirm.com is not something that will ever stick on page one long, so controlling newyorklawyer.com or newyork-lawyer.com becomes a major asset since he has to pay 40 bucks a click for ppc
So a speculator looks at newyork-lawyer.com and laughs no type-in yet I would advise a client all day to own it and the non hyphen and the top 7 tld's with the keyword so now your competition can't do easier keyword development to stick a keyword there, so now page 1 if all the tld's are controlled by one source is completely in control of the company owning all of those keywords in 7 tlds. so in most cases it's GEOkeyword.com/net/5others and the GEO-keyword
So the guy that has that can be page one organic and no one in his industry will be able to stick a domain on page one long term since they won't have a keyword to stick and keywords developed properly are what google puts emphasis on, especially in GEO searches
So what are domains worth to businessmen that KNOW this, a lot, and if one is willing to invest in controlling the domains, then that person will end up controlling page one probably forever in his industry
When you actually manage SEM accounts like I do for many clients in many industries, you see the cpc that owners want to pay for a top left ad, I know what I charge to stick them on a first view map and it's not cheap and organic is part of the picture, even though most organic is now under the top left ppc and local maps
Also, geokeywords manipulate maps too, so when you realize GEOkeyword can pop a business on maps and organic and they also help buy ppc cheap, you understand the value to a business that keywords have
Most investors see only keyword.com they don't understand what a geokeyword is worth to professionals and businesses in that geo
Most major keywords in big markets now bring up all the big search directories, you very rarely see ABC whatever there now, UNLESS they own a geo for their keyword and they got a good SEO specialist popping it
So, depending on who the SEO/SEM specialist is advising a businessman spending money on a domain, that's why you can see huge numbers for .mobi and .us and .info other tld's that most 'investors' say are junk, they're not, they can pop google and a CCtld is worth it in that country for their business keywords too
autosoftware.co.za went for only 35K or so
to me it was cheap
I can assure you the SEO guy advising the businessman that will be using it that look, you sell auto insurance in south africa and english is the main language, and yeah, ppc for auto insurance is huge, so why not put almost 50K into the keyword that gets you 40 buck cpc clicks all day for free
now stuff like flowers.mobi, it's gonna one day control serp's on all mobile devices for flowers, I wish I knew it was up for auction, didn't know about it, oh well, it's a gem and I have a flower client and damn that's worth way more than 6K
Why, flowers cpc in many markets is almost 10 bucks cpc now, so controlling mobile serp's for flowers with flowers.mobi is going to be a huge thing
.mobi is way undervalued IMO
So, that's why you have prices all over the place
A guy like me that sticks page one for high cost cpc business terms can tell an owner to spend a lot of money on a domain that most 'investors' or experts would never think were worth anything
If a domain is in a tld that can pop google and it is a keyword with high cost cpc it's worth a lot of money
In 7 global tld's and in any CCtld where that keyword is also searched for
Some keywords change due to languages, but some are universal
the way people usually look at domains in this forum is biased toward exact matches in .com so they may get type-ins
Fine, don't value them for ppc and organic and maps and don't value how hyphens and other tld's besides .com can manipulate SE's
So that's why you have such a range of values, it depends on the real knowledge of the appraiser, and most domain appraisers use the .com type in valuation or well it's a brandable .com, the real value is what does the term cost a business in ppc, so how many organic clicks at that cpc will it bring for free
