When you bought a domain, or even before buying it you will want to know, what is that domain worth or so-called value. The value of a domain name is the price of any person/entity/organization (your buyer) has to pay in order to purchase a name for their website. The costs can range from a one-digit number to 6- or 7-digit numbers, depending on the valuation factors. Your domain could be the name of the next big start-up or brand. Sometimes companies buy a domain with the aim to brand or rebrand themselves into something new. That’s exactly when your domain name can become a part of something bigger and be known all around the world. It is good to have a range of domain names that would suit not only one type of company/person but as many of them as possible. If a company/person really likes your domain name and they are passionate about the idea of buying it for themselves, that’s when the value of your domain increases and can reach extremely high numbers, depending on how much your buyer is ready to pay.

So, how exactly can you find out your domain name worth? Well, there are special programs created for appraising domain names. They are called Domain Estimating Tools. There are a lot of variants of these programs but they all work in a more or less same way. For example, there is an appraising tool called EstiBot. It is pretty simple and easy to use: all you have to do is insert the domain name in a special line and it will show you how much can you approximately get out of it. This tool of course doesn’t count in the interest of a specific buyer. However, it still can give you a pretty accurate report on how much your domain can be worth it.

Here are some of the domain appraising factors:

• Monthly search volume for keyword (# of times the keyword is searched on a search engine)
• Domain extension (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .ventures)
• CPC for keyword (How much advertisers pay per Google Adwords click)
• Comparable sales
• # of other extensions registered for the keyword
• Age of domain name (when it was created)
• Current market conditions
• Marketability and brandability.

Judging from these criteria, domain name appraising tools are giving you a specific result. A lot of those factors are quantitative, but there are also qualitative factors that are considered by the tools. Comprehensive domain name appraisals have an expert who looks at the entire market and makes sure that the result of appraising is as accurate as possible.

A good starting point would also be looking at websites that have statistics for currently sold domains. From there you can found out which domain names are popular at the time, and which are not. Even if you don’t see the domain name that you are interested in on the list, you still can compare your domain with similar domains. The best websites where you can get this information from our DomainIndex, ShortNames, Domain Name Wire, and Sedo. Those websites contain a lot of information about the domain name’s cost, popularity and what kinds of businesses buy them.

But this all is just theory. If you want to truly understand how much money people are ready to give you for a specific domain name, consider listing it for sale. That way you will be able to see how much companies/individuals are ready to offer you. You don’t have to sell it if you list it, because you can just create a high enough reserve price so that you definitely will be happy when someone does buy it. Your main goal in creating a high price though is in letting people bid on your domain as much as they think is appropriate. It’s a little trick that will help you understand what price you can actually go.

Don’t forget the things that make your domain name more or less valuable:

• The popularity of the top-level domain you use.
• The keywords present in the domain name.
• The bendability of the domain name (i.e. does it make sense as a company name?).
• The length of the domain name (shorter is better, commonly-used phrases or words are even better).
• If there’s any existing traffic or backlinks to the domain name.

The domain name market can be really unstable and fluctuate a lot. Sometimes domain evaluation is not a certain number but rather a range of numbers. Domains can be subjective because they are a part of a dynamic market, so evaluations and appraisals can’t always be 100% accurate. It is good to remember that in order to get the best information. Note, that there are companies and websites that will do a thorough in-depth domain appraisal for an additional fee, which depends on the number of domain names that you ask them to check.