At Halcydon.com, we are very involved in finding the fairest price for our domains; we believe that all things being said, that our pricing is very competitive.
By stating how we price our domains, we hope that we are transparent and also highlight some of the pitfalls that new owners found out too late after buying a great sounding domain.
In some cases, we do not access our domain values, but have to use the valuation given by the domain selling service. This is the case all the domains we have with the brokers Brandpa and BrandBucket. We only list domains there if we feel they are fair market price.
In all other cases, we carefully scrutinise the domain to find it value. Here is a list that we go through to ensure our pricing is fair:
Domain sale history.
We look at past domain sales to evaluate what the price for a domain is. We include domains with similar meanings, similar spellings, and categories with the domain we are selling. Occasionally, we have domains that don’t fit neatly into a certain classification. In such cases, we think laterally and try to find something that can fit.
We will often exclude outliers in prices (too high, too low) and sales which took place over 10 years ago. We also take into consideration the current market prices of similar domains.
We look through tools such as NameBio.com and DNJournal.com to find historic sales of domain names.
Domain name extension.
We have a variety of domains, including domain hacks, and other top-level country domains. We do feel there is a place for domain hacks and the creative use of domain names. However the majority of our domains are dot.com domains because:
- They are by far the most recognised domain extension
- They work well in nearly every category and classification, despite being designated for commerce.
- Many reputable registrars even allow free whois lookup protection for dotcom domains, a service that many top-level countries do not allow.
This makes dotcom domains a little more expensive, but also more universal. However, there is always room for thinking outside the box and domain extensions such .co, .ly, .rs, .al offer creativity for businesses that are more unconventional (and often at a lower price point).
Length of domain and characters used.
Generally, the shorter the length of the domain, the more desirable it is – and the more expensive it is! However, there are ways around this with domain hacks. For instance, the domain commute.rs can be the shorter spelling of commuters.com, and because it is not a dotcom domain, it is less expensive.
We also only use domains with ASCII ACE characters; this is a limited set of ASCII characters (i.e. a-z, 0-9 and “-“). While this limits the reach of the alphabet, it enables most DNS protocols to handle the domain properly.
Domain history: archive, age, & backlinks.
We believe that domains should go through a background check before you buy them! In many cases, a great sounding domain becomes available, but spammers may have gotten ahold of it and put porn, gambling, (often illegal) pharmaceuticals, and other low-value content on it.
This could have a detrimental effect on your domain, particularly for search engine optimisation. While such domains can still be rescued with some effort; we believe that effort should also be listed in the price! This is why we do our best to ensure domain names do not have a history of poor quality content.
Older domains are also said to have a higher value for search engine optimisation. While there is no clear consensus for this, the belief is that domains that have had a previous history in search indexes such as Google will have a better chance of reindexes and ranking, over a domain that has been registered for the very first time.
Finally, we do not sell domains for backlinks! A common tactic by many search engine optimisation specialists is to buy an expired domain and use the strength of the backlinks to empower a clients website. This strategy is often used as a tactic called a private blog network (PBN), and although often difficult to detect, it is considered an unscrupulous practice.
We will check the backlinks wherever possible to ensure there has been no spam in the backlinks. However, the raison d’etre for our project is to find a perfect domain for your business, not a domain that has short term value for search engine optimisation.
With regards to backlinks, all of our domains point back to Kolibr.io using the “no follow” attribute, as to not inflate this site’s backlinks or use the domains we sell as a type of PBN.
Tools used for this may include archive.org, domaintools.com, majestic.com, and seospyglass.com.
Indexed by search engines.
With the exception of a few sites, all of the domains have listings indexed by Google and/or Bing search engines. We work to get our domains indexed to ensure there are no search penalties associated with it.
However, one of these exceptions is listing our domain with certain domain sale sites, such as brandpa.com. In these cases, we can not control the indexing of our domain because we have very little control of the landing page. In such cases, we try to provide as much information as possible on the landing page. For the most part, we have never had an indexing issue with brandpa.com
In other cases, we might have just acquired a domain and we are working on getting indexed. We will never purposely state a domain is indexed by a search engine when it is not, please check with us if you find such a mistake.
Keywords in the domain.
If the domain contains keywords, we will look at several factors that add to the value of the domain. These include:
- Search volume. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Keyword Keg, and SpyFu can give good indications of what local and global search volume is, which is usually searches per month. The higher the volume, the higher the value of the domain.
- Cost per click. This is how much advertisers will pay per click for a keyword. Combine with volume, this is also a factor in the final value of the domain.
- Google trends. Is the keyword gaining volume, losing volume, or does it have a steady volume? We typically look at the last 10 years to see what search interest is. This may also contribute to the final price.
- A real word? If the word can be found in an English dictionary, it has a higher value. We don’t limit words to English; we will also look at words from other languages. If we find them compelling, and understandable in an English context, we may offer them for sale on this site.
Final Thoughts on Pricing
We are working on the kolibr.io because we love domains! From years of experience, we know that there is a lot the average person may miss when investing in a domain for their business.
Each domain we have tells a unique story, and many even have fascinating histories. We believe our pricing is in touch with those stories and histories!