People still frequently sell domain names based on PPC revenue multiples. Personally, I don’t generally buy or sell based on a revenue multiple since that number is a moving target, but in case you do, here’s a quick tip that could help.

Do a quick back-of-napkin investigation about the domain name’s current owner. See what other domain names he owns and where he parks them. If he has a number of good domain names all parked with the same company, you can probably assume he has a more favorable revenue share with the parking company than the average client – which may or may not be you.

If his revenue share happens to be 50% higher than yours, you will make much less money even if everything else is the same – exact same landing page, same layout, same parking company…etc. If you change parking companies, that number is even more of a crapshoot.

On the other hand, if you see that his landing page isn’t optimized, or if you know your revenue share is on a VIP level, you could be paying an even better revenue multiple.

Just beware, as public companies need to disclose on their forward looking statements, “past performance is not indicative of future results.” This is especially true with PPC revenue.

In the New York Post this morning, I read about a cool new iPhone application that is awaiting approval from Apple called NYC Broken Meters. Users will be able to find broken parking meters in New York City, syncing information provided by the city with GPS mapping. Since NYC allows people to park at broken meters for one hour for free, it’s a handy tool.

The company plans to operate its website on the domain name NYCBrokenMeters.com, which is perfectly fine. However, I do think it would have been smarter of them to buy up other city BrokenMeters.com domain names for future growth. I think this is a neat app, which isn’t limited to one city. If the city of Chicago would release this information the same way as the city of New York, they could easily create Chicago Broken Meters…etc.

People often ask for my opinion on buying extended names like this, and I think this would be a good example of when it’s a good idea. If your company has the ability to easily expand to other areas, even if it’s not quite in the cards yet, I think it’s wise to spend the extra $10/name to buy those other domain names. Whether we’re talking cities, towns, products…etc.

Not only do you risk a competitor taking domain names that could match, but there are others who could register them and make you pay out the nose when you’re ready to move forward. It’s usually just a matter of time before someone else will grab them.