estibot

how good is my crystal ball?

A couple of weeks ago, i had a look at some domains coming up for auction on bido.com and put my own price on them along with estibot’s appraisal value. I said i’d revisit the results, but my plans were blown to pieces after bido.com hit the self destruct button.

Bido basically couldn’t cope with the insane traffic spikes it was getting and had to cancel the auction for fixedloans.com twice… they’re still repairing the damage.

Anyway, they did manage to sell 6 other domains, so here’s what they sold for, what i valued them at and what estibot valued them at.

So as you can see, surprisingly, i under valued the domains. Had they all been mine, i probably would have been happy with $2k for all of them. Just goes to show how i would have sold myself short

Estibot on the other hand over valued them. Not surprising really as it’s a robot and works of statistics and numbers whereas i just work of gut instinct

So what this tells me is that i’m pretty modest with domain valuations and i should perhaps trust estibot more than i do. I’ve said previously whatever value estibot gives me, i’ll get 1/20th of it for safe measure.

Anyway, once bido get back up and running i’ll continue this little experiment as i’d like to be able to accurately put a price on any domain I come across. It will help me greatly when buying and selling sites/domains.

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my domain secrets exposed

For the past couple of weeks i’ve been been buying several domain names BELOW my normal registration fee of about $6.

Not only are these domain names cheap, but some of them have an estimated value of $1k+ with estibot. I’ve been teasing you guys with these stats without revealing any details but that’s gonna change. Just to tease you guys further, check out this domain valuation - a domain i’m just after getting my hands on for just over $6.

Not enough to get your attention? How about this valuation on a domain i picked up for just over $9;

So screw my last post of $5610 worth of domains, i now have $13,510 worth of domains having spent less than $100 on them ($91.93 to be exact).

However, as ‘Girish’ has kindly pointed out in a comment, estibot is not bang on with it’s valuations. I’ve said in an earlier post, i generally take 1/20th of estibots valuation as my own valuation just to keep me grounded…

Even if we go by my 1/20th rule, it still means the domains are worth a combined $675 - more than 7 times what i paid for them.

For brandable domains, it won’t get it right…. for cracked domains or domains with an extension other than .com, it probably won’t get it right either. BUT for generic keyword domains, it is pretty accurate.

A few examples….

• looks.com sold for $86k 2 years ago, estibot values it at $110k.
• webhelp.com sold for $30k last month, estibot values it at $17k.
• typo.com sold for $25k last month, estibot values it at $15k.
• language.org sold for $12k 2 months ago, estibot values it at $11k.

Equally, there are plenty of times estibot gets it wrong, but when it comes to dictionary words or two dictionary words together, it’s not as far out as you may think and the sales in recent years prove it.

Estibot, unlike the others, won’t bullshit you and tell you you’re domain is worth $10million. If it’s not worth anything - it’ll tell you. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself on your own domains to take you back down to earth

Of course for the smaller domains valued at a few hundred, it becomes much more serious when you only get like $20 for a domain you thought was worth $300. It’s a massive difference to you… when you’re dealing with domains worth $10k+, getting $6k or even $3k doesn’t seem so bad, even though it’s a bigger drop…

At the end of the day, when you buy or sell anything, the price you buy or sell something for will be the price you and the buyer/seller deem the product to be worth. Much like selling a house, these sort of robots and even human appraisals are simply ‘guides’ - just because they say ‘x’ is worth $10k, doesn’t mean you’ll get it. You *could* get more… you could also (more likely) get less.

Only an idiot would register domains based solely on estibot valuations. Although i place a lot of trust in estibot, don’t be fooled - i don’t just use estibot to value domains… i’ll do my homework in google, see if there’s competition, try to find out if the domain has any history etc… if i don’t like a domain or don’t think i could do anything with it, i won’t register it, even if estibot values it at a couple of hundred.

The stakes are relatively low though for me, so i don’t spend hours and hours analyzing a domain and getting expert advice etc… at the end of the day, the max i’ve paid for a domain so far has been about $16 - it’s not going to bankrupt me

Anyway, i’ll be revealing all my tactics over the next couple of weeks (probably the week after this week as i’ve too much to do with my maths exam on thursday). I’ll produce a series of blog posts (about 3) to RSS subscribers only as i don’t want this to become too popular, too quickly, otherwise there’s too much competition, too many people use/try out the methods and it spoils the sense of bargain hunting for everyone.

It’s also a completely lose / lose situation for me if i blog about this openly as i’m simply adding extra competition for myself when it comes to getting these domains… At least if i keep it RSS only, it’ll help me boost my readership plus give something back to my loyal readers

$5610 worth of domains for $76.15

A couple of weeks ago i said i’d grabbed $1940 worth of domains for $32.50.

Today, i’m now sitting on $5610 worth of domains which have cost me a grand total of $76.15. I’ve no doubt i could sell all of these domains for more than what i paid for them - no doubt at all.

My most valued domain comes in at $1,200 and i paid $9.95 for it - just today. I’ve another valued at $1,100 which has over 230 million results in google for it’s keywords.

So although i’ve not been busy the past week or so selling sites or making money, i’ve still been keeping an eye on things.

As i’ve said before, there’s no way i can sell all of these domains for their estimated value - which now stands at $5610, but some of the domains are fairly attractive and combined with a unique design and some unique content, will sell for quite a bit

I now have 12 undeveloped domains which i’ve bought in the past couple of weeks, so they’ll keep me busy for the next month or more. Once i get this maths exam out of the way, it’ll be full throttle again at flipping sites. I have my eye on a new ‘netbook’ (ultra-portable laptop), plus i’m toying with the idea of launching a huge competition / giveaway type thing in combination with my potential skydive.

Exciting times ahead but this damn maths exam is holding me back for now

$1940 worth of domains for $32.50

I’ve bought 4 domains now in the past couple of days - all keyword .com’s. They have a combined value of $1940 according to estibot.

I got all 4 for a combined total of $32.15. In fact, i got two of those domains for BELOW my usual registration fee of $6.

I got one for $4.25, the other for $5.50 Now that’s what i call working clever… i didn’t think i could buy better domains for any less than reg fee, but now i know you can if you’re lucky

So now the question is - how accurate is estibot? Lets be extremely pessimistic here and say the real value of a domain is 1/20th of what estibot predicts - it still means the domains are valued at $97 - 3 times MORE than what i paid for them

In my own experience, estibot is pretty accurate with it’s predictions for small-medium sized sites and domains. For larger sites, it’s slightly skewed because it can’t paint an accurate picture of traffic or RSS readers etc… plus it doesn’t factor in current revenue.

But all of my new domains have been valued on keyword frequency in search engines… what that means is the domains i have are pretty popular, common search terms. So they’re very strong keyword domains and being dot com’s, they’re not gonna lose any value whilst i have them

I have one or two more ‘big buys’ lined up this week - domains valued at close to $1k. One of them has over 230m results in google I doubt i’ll be so lucky as to get all of them on a shoestring budget, but who knows… most i’ve paid so far for a domain has been $16.25 and that domain was valued at $910

All i need to do now is build up sites around these domains then flip them based on unique design, simple functionality and with a real focus on the value of the domain name.