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Valuing a UK domain

How to value your domain in the credit crunch era- Charles Sykes, UK Domain Broker

Every domain owner is convinced that their domain is that one domain in a million that will be that jackpot winner and command a price tag of hundreds of thousands. If not £100,000 then at least £10,000. Recently I have made the decision to stop selling domains on WHYTHINK after explaining for the hundredth time that obscure, hyphenated domains are not worth £9,999 and are in fact not even worth the £5.89 you paid for them. What is apparent is that generic domains (ie report.co.uk) are less valuable than keyword domains (ie creditreport.co.uk).

I am an SEO consultant by trade and spend my week writing creative strategic marketing plans for clients. These always include new websites and hence domains. My clients are prepared to pay for domains, as they know that anything worth having will of been snapped up. They are less interested in the generic names (ie dog.co.uk) and are more interested in domains that give an idea of a websites reason d'etre (ie buydog.co.uk).

With any new client, I always have to start the merry-go-round of, "why can't we have shield.co.uk" (domain seller wants £15,000), "how much!", do they know who many widgets we need to sell to recoup that investment. We also exclude the domains where WHYTHINK cannot contact or even trace the owner. We currently have over £178,000 on the table for domains that we cannot buy as the owner has no address or has moved. Welcome to the UK domain market!

We swiftly move onto domains I have sourced and suggested.

The more open minded business people are happy to invest if they can see a clear return on investment (ROI). However when I look at their faces, I can see a sort of 'dot com bubble bursting cynicism come in when I price a domain at £4000 - £6000. They are intelligent people so they do not moan the fact that the domain was purchased for a fiver but I can see that I have a fight on my hands.

If I go down the route of this domain is valuable because it has a short memorable domain, I will be met by silence. Brands can be build without short catchy domains (think of the High Street). However memorability does have a value but in my experience this is the icing as opposed to the actual cake and no Marketing Director is going to sign off £10k on that alone, what they are looking for it the same as any investor, a monetary return on their investment!

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