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Newbies, Do not rely on Namebio sales reports!

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Mena

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One of the most common advice given to newbies on this forum is to go to namebio, study the sales reports and get a feel of what's selling and for what price. I don't think this is particularly great advice. If you don't know what you are doing, you could end up registering some really bad name just by using namebio sales data alone.

For example, GrassX.com just sold for 3900usd, GrassJ.com is available for hand reg, a newbie would hastily go and snatch that up. As a newbie myself, I have realized that some names just sell for reasons I don't understand.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
What would you recommend as a better way to estimate value than comparable sales?
 
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What would you recommend as a better way to estimate value than comparable sales?

I won't claim to be an expert in domaining just yet, so I'm not really in a good place to give advice. But personally, I have been doing a lot of research on what makes a good domain, instead of just looking at what has sold before on namebio. I insist, it can be dangerously misleading.

theprojectgirl.com just sold for 3401usd.
theprojectboy.com is available for handreg.
 
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Is that so?

did you make a comparable report for the two suffixes?

sales of 'x':
https://namebio.com/?s==IDM1kjN4EzM

sales of 'j':
https://namebio.com/?s==EDM1kjN4EzM

on both, the length is set at higher than 4 (so as to filter out the 4L liquid sales)

Instead of saying to 'not rely' on data, just say that newbies need to learn 'how' to read data.
 
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Well namebio might not have all the sales data, so one will not get to know what is selling and what is not, one can use namebio as general reference. But when you see an unusual name sold for xxxx or xx,xxx then before registering a similar domain, we should research it properly.
 
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I'm by no means claiming to be an expert here but as someone who has been in Both Retail and Business to Business sales and trained by fortune 500 companies to do so.
People sometimes forget TRENDS can factor into what domains sell or don't.
Part of my routine is manual and mundane but, I found that if you allow too much automation take over picking and choosing new prospective domain names. The AI engines often don't understand the sales process. I also like to think I am a bit of a creative person so depending on the Amount and what other ideas you can come up with the purpose of the domain name can be used to effects its overall value.
I input names into estibot for example all the time that blows my mind on both High and low appraisals.
This past month or so, for example, it gives almost 0 value to domain names with CBDxxxx words in it but if you do a Keyword search on CBD OILS or CBD products man the Search Volumes through the roof and the comp is very low on some of the longtail stuff especially.
 
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Namebio, is the best.

It’s a tool, that helps.

@Michael always here to help answer.
 
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One of the most common advice given to newbies on this forum is to go to namebio, study the sales reports and get a feel of what's selling and for what price. I don't think this is particularly great advice. If you don't know what you are doing, you could end up registering some really bad name just by using namebio sales data alone.

For example, GrassX.com just sold for 3900usd, GrassJ.com is available for hand reg, a newbie would hastily go and snatch that up. As a newbie myself, I have realized that some names just sell for reasons I don't understand.
the sale was made because X on the end. but not grass as a keyword.
 
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I recommend GoValue its much better than namebio but not intput good available for registration dot com domains ;)
 
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One of the most common advice given to newbies on this forum is to go to namebio, study the sales reports and get a feel of what's selling and for what price. I don't think this is particularly great advice. If you don't know what you are doing, you could end up registering some really bad name just by using namebio sales data alone.

For example, GrassX.com just sold for 3900usd, GrassJ.com is available for hand reg, a newbie would hastily go and snatch that up. As a newbie myself, I have realized that some names just sell for reasons I don't understand.
There's a reason it is the one of the most common things that people advise to newbies. There are two ways to learn what makes a domain name valuable and which ones sell. One is to gain first-hand experience by buying a ton of domains, pricing them, and actually (hopefully) making sales. The other is to read what thousands of other people are collectively selling. One of those approaches takes years, lots of money, and lots of risk. The other just takes a little effort. Guess which one is which :)

What you have illustrated, however, is that domain+price is not the entire picture. And I absolutely agree with that. Lots of the sales that leave people scratching their heads were actually sold because they were a developed website before and have lots of backlinks, and presumably traffic as well. So Archive.org and Moz are good places to check when you're feeling confused about a price. But there are so many other factors to consider, like how many companies use the name, search volume and CPC numbers, sales velocity of the keywords, and on and on.

There are too many to discuss in this post, so I would direct you to this video of a DNAcademy tool that aggregates the important things to look at:


It's a useful watch even if you don't have access to the tool itself, because it shows you what areas to be checking when you want to *really* understand why a domain sold for what it did.

You have to dig deeper to get a better understanding, plain and simple, because there are a lot of nuances in this business. For example, let's say you see three-character .com sell like 7b2.com. Then you assume all are worth a similar amount. But when you really start studying CCC.com domains you'll understand a lot of the value drivers like:

- Pattern matters tremendously (LLN > NLL > LNL > NNL > etc).
- Some letters are better than others (Chinese Premium vs Western vs Neither vs Both).
- Some numbers are better than others (0 and 4 are bad, but not always - think P90).
- Repeating or sequential characters have huge value (aa, ab, 88, 89).
- Having actual meaning trumps all, like N95.

Just blindly reading sales reports and going out trying to buy similar names without doing any homework is definitely a mistake. I don't think anyone was suggesting that though.

Otherwise you see GrassX.com and think "Hmm, Grass + Letter = Value". A slightly deeper understanding would tell you single letters as a suffix are sometimes valuable. A full understanding would tell you that X is a very popular suffix to add to a word, but most other letters have no value as a suffix. And with that full understanding you could search for Good Word + X .coms that are available to register, or keep an eye out for those types of names on the drop auctions.
 
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There's a reason it is the one of the most common things that people advise to newbies. There are two ways to learn what makes a domain name valuable and which ones sell. One is to gain first-hand experience by buying a ton of domains, pricing them, and actually (hopefully) making sales. The other is to read what thousands of other people are collectively selling. One of those approaches takes years, lots of money, and lots of risk. The other just takes a little effort. Guess which one is which :)

What you have illustrated, however, is that domain+price is not the entire picture. And I absolutely agree with that. Lots of the sales that leave people scratching their heads were actually sold because they were a developed website before and have lots of backlinks, and presumably traffic as well. So Archive.org and Moz are good places to check when you're feeling confused about a price. But there are so many other factors to consider, like how many companies use the name, search volume and CPC numbers, sales velocity of the keywords, and on and on.

There are too many to discuss in this post, so I would direct you to this video of a DNAcademy tool that aggregates the important things to look at:


It's a useful watch even if you don't have access to the tool itself, because it shows you what areas to be checking when you want to *really* understand why a domain sold for what it did.

You have to dig deeper to get a better understanding, plain and simple, because there are a lot of nuances in this business. For example, let's say you see three-character .com sell like 7b2.com. Then you assume all are worth a similar amount. But when you really start studying CCC.com domains you'll understand a lot of the value drivers like:

- Pattern matters tremendously (LLN > NLL > LNL > NNL > etc).
- Some letters are better than others (Chinese Premium vs Western vs Neither vs Both).
- Some numbers are better than others (0 and 4 are bad, but not always - think P90).
- Repeating or sequential characters have huge value (aa, ab, 88, 89).
- Having actual meaning trumps all, like N95.

Just blindly reading sales reports and going out trying to buy similar names without doing any homework is definitely a mistake. I don't think anyone was suggesting that though.

Otherwise you see GrassX.com and think "Hmm, Grass + Letter = Value". A slightly deeper understanding would tell you single letters as a suffix are sometimes valuable. A full understanding would tell you that X is a very popular suffix to add to a word, but most other letters have no value as a suffix. And with that full understanding you could search for Good Word + X .coms that are available to register, or keep an eye out for those types of names on the drop auctions.

Thanks for taking your time to put this together. The picture is much clearer now.
 
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You never know what the price actually means, until you do a deeper research.
1. Domain may have been included in a package deal. Namebio still reports it as separate sale (at least in many cases, maybe not all). So you accume some .io, or .co, or .net is more valuable than it actually is.
2. It may have been authority domain. Domain itself = little value; backlink profile = all the value.
3. Sales are reported with no possibility to screen whether the transaction went through. Seller may use two fake accounts to create inflated auction result. This transaction is not completed, but is recorded by places like Namebio. Later on owner can list it again, with this high price of "real" sale on file.
 
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