What is my domain worth? The 7 fields that turn a guess into a number
You will not find your domain's value in a database, and you will not find it in the replies you get on a forum. Both give you a number that sounds like an answer and turns out to be an opinion.
I spent the last week reading 606 public threads across the busiest domain communities — the appraisal section, the buying and selling section, the beginner section. In the appraisal section alone, 167 of 201 threads name a domain and ask for a value; 81 of them ask the same question in almost the same words. The replies were verdicts, not methods: one letter makes all the difference, I see no value, drop it, hold on. Not one thread handed the next person something reusable.
Here is something reusable. Seven fields. Twenty minutes. No paid tools.
Why the question has no single answer
A domain is not worth anything by itself. It is worth what one identifiable buyer will pay before your next renewal date. Two facts, both about a person you have not met yet: the buyer, and the deadline. Every "it's worth $4,000" that ignores them is decoration.
The seven fields do not produce a magical true price. They collapse the range until you can defend a number — to a buyer, to your accountant, and to yourself at 2am when the renewal invoice lands.
1. Five comparable sales, dated
A comparable is a sale, not an asking price, in the same pattern class: same extension, same structure (one word, two words, geo, three-letter, invented brandable), closed in the last two years or so.
The number you take away is a range, not a valuation. The low end of the liquid public comps in your class is roughly the wholesale floor: what another investor would wire today, quickly, with no negotiation.
Where to get them for free: reported sales in community threads, the sold sections of marketplaces, and the appraisal tools bundled into our own toolkit. Five is the minimum; three is a rumour.
The mistake that ruins this field: comping a two-word .net against a headline six-figure one-word .com sale. Different buyer pool, different budget, different asset.
2. Scarcity: how many doors are already taken
Count how many extensions of your exact keyword are registered. Nine or more is a demand signal — other people thought it was worth the registration fee. One or two usually means nobody cared. Then count the exact-match variants that are taken: plurals, hyphens, city versions. Scarcity is the reason a wholesale floor exists at all. Without it, you are not holding an asset; you are holding a receipt.
3. Buyer count: name three types, or your retail price is a fantasy
Write down three concrete buyer types. Not "businesses" — actual categories of buyer, each with more than one member. For a fitness name: gym chains running paid acquisition, app makers building workout products, supplement brands launching a subscription line.
If you can name three and each exists in multiples, a retail ask is defensible. If you can name one and it is a stretch, you are pricing for a lottery you have not entered. This field is the one that most "what's it worth?" posts skip entirely, which is why their answers dissolve on contact.
4. Category demand — as a tiebreaker only
Search volume, cost per click, and ad spend tell you a category spends money. They never tell you that someone will spend it on your exact string. Use them to order your own shortlist; do not use them to justify a price to anyone else. A high CPC on the keyword is how a hand-registered name ends up listed at $9,999 for three years.
5. Renewal drag: the field nobody puts in an appraisal
Take the yearly renewal and multiply it by the years you are realistically willing to wait. That is the price of patience, and it belongs inside the appraisal.
A sixty to ninety dollar renewal destroys any wholesale floor in the alternative extensions: a name that costs $80 a year to hold and trades wholesale at $120 is not an asset, it is a subscription. Within .com, a $12 renewal barely registers — that is a real, structural advantage of the extension, and it is the honest reason to prefer it. Check for a premium renewal before you buy, price, or renew.
6. History: continuity, not just age
Age helps only when the registrations are continuous. A name that dropped and was re-registered starts over — the calendar years are gone even though the name looks old in a whois lookup.
Check three things: what was actually hosted on the name, whether the inbound links are editorial or farmed, and whether the historical footprints look like something a buyer would be happy to inherit. Age opens doors with buyers who care about trust signals; it never substitutes for a good string.
7. Trademark and brand risk: the field that can zero everything above
Search the trademark register for your string in the classes where your buyers live. If a well-funded company owns the matching mark and is using it in the same market, your buyer count just went to one — and that buyer may prefer a dispute to an invoice. No string is worth a fight you cannot win. Do this field first if the name is a real word or a brandable that sounds like one.
From seven fields to a number you can publish
Wholesale floor = the lowest recent liquid comp in your pattern class, adjusted for renewal drag. This is your "sell it today" number.
Retail ask = the floor multiplied by four to ten. Multiplier near the top when three-plus buyer types exist and the string is clean; near the bottom when only one buyer category does.
The ladder: ask, target, floor. Keep the floor to yourself; publish the ask. A buy-now price on the landing page converts better than a form, because the buyer never has to ask you a question to find out whether they can afford it.
The sanity check: a buyer's offer should be compared with your hold cost, not with your hope. If an offer equals three or more years of renewal cost, and the name has produced no other inquiries, taking it is usually the rational choice — that is what the seventh field is for.
Worked example
Take an invented name so no one has a commercial interest in the answer: NimbusFleet.com, a two-word .com in the vehicle and logistics space.
- Comps: two-word fleet and logistics names in .com have closed from a few hundred dollars wholesale into the low four figures retail. Range: $300 to $2,500. Floor: around $300.
- Scarcity: the keyword pair exists in a handful of extensions, so mild demand, no gold rush.
- Buyers: regional fleet operators, telematics and logistics software makers, rental marketplaces. Three types, each plural. Retail is defensible.
- Demand: fleet-management software is an active ad category. Tiebreaker only.
- Renewal: $12 a year in .com. Hold cost over three years: $36. Negligible drag.
- History: no premium renewal, no obvious footprint to explain away.
- Risk: no live mark in the logistics software class; "Nimbus" is used elsewhere, so check the exact pair carefully.
Output: floor $300, target around $1,200, ask $1,800 published as a buy-now. The name has a number a buyer can accept or reject without a conversation, and you have a floor below which you simply hold.
Run the same seven fields on any name and you stop arguing about vibes and start arguing about two numbers: what a reseller pays today, and what a buyer pays before your renewal date.
What the seven fields cannot do
They cannot create a buyer. A perfectly reasoned price on a name nobody needs is still zero revenue, which is why the work does not end at the appraisal: it continues into where the name is listed, who is told about it, and whether the price is visible at all.
If you have filled in the fields and the honest answer is "no buyer and no floor", that is also a result. Dropping a name deliberately is cheaper than renewing it for three more years out of hope — and it frees the budget for the name that does have three buyer types.
The checklist, if you want it as one page
- Five comps, dated, same class, sold not asked.
- Extension count for the exact keyword, and for the variants.
- Three buyer types, each with more than one member.
- Category demand noted, and deliberately not used as a price.
- Renewal cost times realistic hold years.
- Registration continuity, hosted history, link quality.
- Trademark check in the buyer's class.
- Floor, target, ask — then publish the ask.
I sell a portfolio of 154 names — exact-match, brandable and geo — each with a buy-now price, a documented history check and same-day, escrow-protected transfer. You can browse the portfolio at dnwai.com/d and run the same checks for free in the domain tools. If you own a name and want a second opinion on the seven fields above, the contact page reaches me directly.
Buying a name this week?
154 exact-match, brandable and geo domains — buy-now price, escrow-protected, same-day transfer. See the portfolio · the contact page