Is Domaining.com Worth $3,000,000?
Domaining.com is one of my favorite sites and I visit the site on a daily basis. If you have visited the site recently you most likely saw that Francois has the Domaining.com domain name listed for sale at a buy now price of $3,000,000 (the price does not include the website but Francois has mentioned that he may be willing to selling the website with the domain name if the price is right).
Some Positives:
- By far the most authoritative sounding domain name for anyone in the domaining niche
- Good (but not great) existing traffic level
Some Negatives:
- No real content (not a concern if one just wants to buy the domain but definitely a concern for someone wanting to buy the website)
- Limited revenue to date
Two questions for you:
A) How much do you think Domaining.com is worth? (please specify whether your are referring to just the domain name or the domain name + website)
B) How much do you think that Domaining.com will end up selling for? (if you guess within $10k of the sale price if any then you will win a 3 month free Domain Superstar premium membership with full access to all the premium features for our domain name tools)
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My husband buys and sells domains. He said is a premium name but 3 mill maybe over reaching.
DNJournal is possibly worth $3 mil today. Domaining.com, not soo much. I don’t think it will sell, it’s not like the website is up for auction or anything. Too high expectations.
Estibot says 4,300 usd. I think the good price is 500,000 usd.
I can’t see the site and domain being sold for more than $100K, even at that it would be a struggle to make money. The domain itself is only successful because of the website, the website is only successful because it is an aggregate source of other sites sontent. Before the website ever existed I would never have typed in “domaining.com” in the browser.
Also, the agg site could be easily replicated in the morning and placed on another similar domain like domainsource.com, domainnews.com, domainers.com which would seem more relevant. Also Sedo, Afternic, DnJournal, DnForum might wake up some day and decide they want domainer traffic and do the same. However, it is hard to monetize traffic from domainer traffic vis a vis end user traffic. If the owner has received a decent offer lately he should run with it.
it’s expensive, but NOT the MOST expensive domains of the World (and of the Universe) that still are these:
the $100M http://www.themostexpensivedomainnameintheuniverse.com/
and the $16,000,001 http://www.domainspriceworldrecord.com/
The domain/site will not reach mid 6 figures. A high 5 figure or low 6 figure offer would be a very good deal for François. The $3M tag has done it’s job of grabbing everyone’s attention. Divide this figure by 10 and we’re still not close to what this site will probably end up selling for, if a motivated buyer comes along. It’s a great resource and makes an excellent home page for all serious domainers. But, as stated above, the system/feeds can effortlessly be cloned in under 24 hours under a domain of equal quality.
Um, how would you make back your 3 million.
Compare candy.com and domaining.com and which would you buy.
If it was domains.com it would be better.
Candy has a huge market, domains are still small.
Domaining is now a reseller market.
I think $100,000 is about right.
I think it’s worth very little. Everything they do can and is already being duplicated by sites like namebee, and their traffic is not that much bigger than namebee anyway. To be fair, I have no idea who is duplicating whom. The point is the website produces nothing unique or proprietary. Domainers are a very small group that is very tech savvy. There are really no outsiders who are accidentally coming across domainer stuff. If a website is useful to domainers, domainers will find it and bookmark it.
No it’s not worth 3 mill, plain and simple! The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the price tag was “Dream on, dreamer”.
Don’t get me wrong, I like domaining.com and they have some great bloggers, but that price is in no way realistic.
The domain itself won’t generate enough money EVER to earn back the money you’d have to put on the table, even if it was $500,000.
I think it should sell at around $800,000 (with website), its an established domaining resource that works because it combines all the expert domainers insights. I’ll be surprised if it actually sells for $3 million (No offense Francois).
Don’t think it will sell that much. Too small a market
Just another site that falls into BullShitWebsites.com
STOP talking about the curent site, and comparing what is not comparable. We are talking about the domain name ONLY.
Wake up guys, we are the industry that glorify internet names value, and this is simply THE name of our industry!
An industry that is STILL just a BABY.
I know domaining.com will sell for +3 millions and I am not sure at 50%, 100% but at 1000%.
I think it’s Rick Schwartz that said if you are not able to turn down a $500k offer you could never get a million offer. I turned down a 2 million offer because it’s 3 millions that I want and it’s the minimum. I will not negotiate anything under this price and with anyone.
As I said in another blog, maybe the current buyer will not push his offer to my reserve but no problem, another will do it. If not now, further and he will have all is life to think about the opportunity he lost.
For the few ones with no info, the domain only, was already purchased +$100K around 3 years ago. Our industry is growwwwwwwwwwwwwing! And I just should continue pushing it so it grow still faster.
Domaining.com is recognized by the biggest domain bloggers and industry members as the aggregate source of blogs and info for domainers. (“Namebee?” Never heard it mentioned within my circle of pro domainers.)
However, does that compute to $3 mill value? No… but if I was ready to expand on this domain, and based my growth on what Francois already has done, and how far the brand has come, that DOES have value, behind the actual domain name itself. I predict its selling price would be around $500k – $750k. AND I would recommend that the buyer immediately take the site and continue the great job FC has done with it.
@Johnny -
“To be fair, I have no idea who is duplicating whom”
As I have stated elsewhere, I am one of the many fans (duplicators). My 2 original objectives were:
- to provide a “backup” (for myself) of Domaining.com (ie. respect to Francois)
- to experiment with Wordpress
But, I am posting now to comment on traffic. The interesting thing is that my search engine traffic has been minimal (eg. 1 in the last month!) – I assume because of the duplicate content issue.
I also tested the same news aggregator style site in about 10 other markets with similarly lousy results.
Best.
- Paul
$50,000 could be a reasonable price including website.
I estimate the domain alone is worth $25,000. But, my guess is that the final sales price will be $50,000 (without the website) because it has a good amount of traffic to it. As long as the new owner puts up interesting domain related content, the traffic would probably continue, so that is valuable.
With the website included, I would estimate $100,000, but it is hard to give an accurate value without knowing the exact traffic and income stats.
People supposedly turn down offers all the time. What matters is what you sell it for. Offers don’t mean anything. Anybody could offer any amount at any time and never follow through. It happens all the time.
Sure domaining sounds good to industry professionals, but the regular end user has no clue what that means, and that’s why it will never get 3 million or even close to that amount. I’m sure this was really just a big linkbait scheme, and it worked
You got your links, you can remove your pricetag in a week or so once the buzz of how crazy you are is done.
3 Million is a deal in 5 years when domaining is so mainsteam like SpongeBob Squarepants and there are live auctions on TV like Barrett- Jackson Car auctions and where all the end users are in Sky boxes bidding like crazy because they know traffic means dollars.Nuff Said!!!!!!
I wouldn’t buy it for $10,000. Turning down an offer for $2 million? Crazy but I can’t believe it’s true. You are just fishing for a value. Remember Skenzo was going to pay $1 Million for Advertising.com and settled for DomainAdvertising.com for under six figures. Domaining is a bad word. Moving on to advertisers and end users- media/advertising are the keywords that are meaningful.
There’s no way on earth it would sell for $3M in our lifetime. Didn’t he pay $180k for it a few years ago? Why would the domain alone be worth the likes of Candy.com. That is a freaking joke, our industry is so small. I would be surprised if he was able to sell it for a profit.
Turned down $2 million? I love intelligent discussion but it got a bit deep with that statement. Valuations are certainly built on possibilities but possibilities can be built on any name. Sedo doesn’t exact relate to domains now does it? If you truly received this offer and my education and intelligence tells me this would be a huge overpay, I would suggest you take it and start your next project
Francois, I like using your site but gotta say that you are dreaming man.
It’s OK to dream though and I hope you wake up one day and find it came true.
I would value the domain including the traffic it comes with to be worth no more than 100K.
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I think that Francois is right in his claims since we’ve often seen domains sold at high prices without any website nor traffic (and many of them still not used to do something useful)
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that said, also $2 million is a good price for the domain, so, I agree with those that suggest him to accept the offer…
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I’m sorry for the third comment on a row, but… before the insure.com domain has being sold for $16 million, I guess NO ONE would have seriously said that its value was in the million range… correct?
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2 million would be a sold in my hands. You can take that money and go in other directions to make even more money.
How much are you making off this domain right now.
I’ve studied domains for years now and I think the amount of alternatives to domaining is huge. Whereas there isn’t many for candy.
We also ad dn to names like dnjournal
In a bad economy prices go down.
Farid .. estibot?? You people have to stop using this for value. Use it for stats.
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Mike – did you skip Math Class?
take a look at domaining.com’s advertising rates – one single ad product brings in almost $100,000 a year
http://www.domaining.com/advertising/
HOMEPAGE:
Eight 240×60px ad spaces are available into our home page, four at top and four at bottom. For each impression every ad tile will move to the next ad space, this way all advertisers receive the same exposure (50% of time at top). You can purchase an ad tile and rotate as many creatives you want to different landing pages.
Cost: $1,000/month.
== $1,000 x 8 x 12 = $96,000
then you have featured listings, affiliate revenue, other spots, premium sponsorships etc.
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Steve Fox
There is a hell of a lot more margin in domains than in Candy.
The only reason less people criticized the candy.com sale was it was announced – rather than offered for sale at $3m. The deal was already done so everyone congratulated Rick after the fact. Coupled with the fact that everyone seems to want to stay politically correct with Rick in fear of … hell, I don’t know. Hes a good salesman, but half the stuff he says is fluff and all of you know it.
Now, if you have an industry with much more margin, at the beginning of its growth and already vested in the domaining world how is $3,000,000 a crazy price ???
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Truth
“The domain itself won’t generate enough money EVER to earn back the money you’d have to put on the table, even if it was $500,000″
Thats why you probably have no idea to make money on the web.
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Eric,
I respect you and your work but have to say you’re a little nuts to to think anyone would sell a website for 6 months revenue and domaining.com is only worth $100,000 with the website.
I guess you asking
$1,000,000 for watchmovies.com
$100,000 for oilwells.com
and $50,000 getsongs.com
is comparable. Not a chance
Peace – don’t know you but do respect you not like most of the posers out there
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Frank,
highly doubt thats you but whoeever the faker is – you’re nuts. Nice link to nameamin btw – You should check because Frank actually owns nameadmin.com
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My thoughts – I don’t care if its worth 500k or 50 million but when you have an industry leading .com, well into the 6 figures annually from ad revenue then how can you NOT justify $3,000,000.
Even $150,000 in profit a year (since it certainly seems like little cost) is only 20x earnings. I’m pretty sure earning are a LOT more so how is 10x or 15x earnings crazy???
Rick Schwartz – the people most of you swear on as the holy grail of domaining (cant say I subscribe) often has said good domains should never be sold less than 100x earnings. Half of you wear his cheerleading shirt and agree so ….
How is the price Francois asking any different?
In fact, its a much smaller multiple of earnings bringing the domain’s asking price into realistic ranges people/companies purchase assets on.
You buy the domain – how hard is it to replicate whats there?
In fact, its a very fair asking price.
The problem is its in the million dollar range and most people who comment on blogs in this industry cant seem to visualize even $100,000 (except the value of their triple hyphen .info of course) so of course its expected to hear most people saying its not worth it.
Look, its crazier to pay $500 for most of the names people buy on drops with no revenue or exact search value.
This domain is worth $3,000,000.
Alan,
“Thats why you probably have no idea to make money on the web.”
How would you know? I’m not going to follow your path and take this down to a personal level, I don’t feel the need to, nor do I think it’s necessary. But I’m going to say this.
What do you consider the most important thing to put a price on a domain name? Traffic matters, doesn’t it? Brandability?
Sure, domaining.com may be a industry leading domain name, but how big is the domain industry really? For you it probably means everything, for the average joe it means zippo, nada, nothing. 99% of the people on this planet couldn’t care less about what’s going on “behind the scenes” – in the domainer world.
Since you mentioned Rick’s blog, have you read his article about the number of true high rollers in the domain industry? Based on his numbers, there sure aren’t too many of them and I doubt they’d splash $3 mill on a domain like domaining.com. Why would they? I agree with Steven – “..the amount of alternatives to domaining is huge. Whereas there isn’t many for candy.”. I could probably list a thousand companies or more that would like to have their name on candy.com or toys.com, I can’t say the same for domaining.com.
Just as a little side note – the word “domaining” only gets 1900 exact searches every month – GLOBALLY. I’m not saying exact search results play a MAJOR factor right now, but they sure are a good indicator when it comes to the popularity of domain keywords.
To me this is a matter of keyword popularity, industry targeting and the average joe. The question you should ask yourself is – 1) how many people do you think go directly to Domaining.com (type-in traffic) 2) what kind of people are they? 3) What are they looking for? I think the visitors of domaining.com are people looking for information about the domain industry, which again is a pretty darn small industry.
Domaining in itself is a very lucrative business, but the domaining industry is too small and the possibilities with a domain like domaining.com are far too limited. Don’t even get me started on brandability…
It all breaks down to what someone is willing to pay for a domain. Like most people here I wouldn’t pay $3 mill for domaining.com, but you obviously would. I sure hope you’d have a marketing plan/strategy ready to earn that money back with a domain name that doesn’t give you a huge audience nor major marketing possibilities.
Nothing is impossible!
But without website, it is hard to sell it.
With website, 450K
$96k / year. You are joking right?
Even better, you know if there were 100 advertising spots on the site and you charged $1,000, then you would make 1000 x 100 x 12 = $1.2m/year. This is called a “what if” scenario.
Did you know that if the world was flat you could also add another 50 adverting spots, true. “Potential” advertising revenue natter is meaningless, actual revenue determines real value.
There may be an opportunity to expand domaining to make $5,000 / month.
However, one day soon the content providers are going to realise that they are not only giving away their content for free but they are actually losing revenue as they have not got a vested interest in the agg service. What DNJournal and other services does not realise is that using agg services is eroding their own ad revenue stream. What happens then the blogs/content provider band together and form their own agg service and bypass domaining completely?
The problem with agg services is that you never see the actual ads.
Well if anyone offered me $3 million for VentureNames.com, I think I MIGHT think about letting it go. Put it this way, you wouldn’t need to twist my arm too much
To be realistic, you could probably take 4 zeros of those 6 figures. And that’s a domain/site with more potential as far as rev is concerned. Domaining is a term for the industry, great as a news hub, but not much else..
Open to offers, domain and website included!
I agree with eric on the valuations of the domains.without taking in consideration traffic, revenue,and other factors (50,000 high end). Domaining.com is a good name but joe really now if you had one million dollars to buy a domain name, You would grab domaining.com before rio.com for half that. yeah sure buddy, You wouldn’t buy it for the value of the domain name, You’d do buy it for what it is and where you think it can go. Aggregators is a dirty word used by publishers of information,news,etc. . They saw this group as the biggest threat as subscriptions to their publications would decrease rapidly. Domaining.com aggravates information and is widely accepted and even promoted by its blog members. domaining.com being on the the domain tools website, kool. Anyways I see domaining.com as being worth more than 3 million in the future but they’re going to have to step on a lot of toes, hosting,domain reg.,secondary market,…I wonder what happens if they decide to not list certain members because it doesn’t make biz sense. My blogs are aggregations of my thoughts, so read into it