Well done, Elliot. Thanks for sharing, Andrew.

Keep truckin!!

- @AndrewHazen

Please don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean to downplay brandable keyword domains in any way. If anything, they are the foundation of this business. Domains like Bananas.com are irreplaceable and priceless. But their values are not measurable. In order to take the domain business to the next level, we need a yard stick.

But my point wasn’t so much about the value of these domains, it was about what is actually selling NOW. For every pillar brandable domain sold such as Driven.com – there are 2 or more “Lead Generation” or Ecommerce keyword specific domains sold (IMO), and my feeling is that this is purely because of metrics. The price can be justified and investors and companies like that.

You mentioned your acquisition of Nashville.com. Even if you didn’t look at metrics for this domain prior to acquring it (and I’m NOT talking about traffic or parking revenue at all) – the fact of the matter is that the 6 figure price you paid for Nashville.com is justifiable. It can be calculated based on hard facts.

There are about 90,000 exact match searches in Google alone every single month for “Nashville”. Take into account the value of holding a top position in Google for that keyword and what it would cost to “buy” that position from Google – add to that some magic JuJu – and you would arrive at a DOMAIN ONLY (before you developed it) price / value between $150,000 – $225,000. Now, Nashville being Nashville I’d put a multiple on that just because. But you see my point.

A well done article from top to bottom.

More like this and we all win.

In my opinion, they’re both valid reasons to sell to endusers, but I have to tell you that as soon as a Buyer starts asking me about CPC/lead value I know he’s buying the name for a lesser reason – and that means he’s going to offer a lesser price than if he’s looking to brand himself.

The most we’ve ever spent on a name was six figures for Nashville.com in 2003. We never once asked any questions about CPC, lead value, etc. Didn’t matter because we already knew what we wanted to do with the name and we doubled our investment quickly.

The key to what you said “…domain sales reported” – the vast majority (I would say 80% – 90%) of all the biggest sales which happen are not reported. Most of those HUGE sales are based on metrics such as search volume, CPC & lead value – NOT on brand value. They are sold to companies who want a competitive advantage in the search engines in a competitive vertical.

I don’t mean to discount the value of brandable domains – not in the least – but I do want to emphasize that keyword descriptive domains are still king and represent the vast majority of large sales in my humble opinion…

The majority of domain sales reported seem to fit that category. Not about PPC or search metrics but more about the Brand value.

Endusers like brands

@Bulls

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