While the old website will linger there a few days longer, I wanted to mention that HireMark.com is no longer mine.
I registered HireMark.com about three years ago. I created the website to promote my business as a freelance writer, training designer, and voice-over artist. Over the years, the site brought me several contracts — and for that, I’m grateful.
Earlier this week, though, I got a call from a company in North Carolina. They’d just trademarked the name “Hiremark” for one of their services, and they were curious as to whether I’d consider selling them the hiremark.com domain name. We went back and forth about the price a bit, and, eventually, we settled on a fee that pleased us both.
This was my first time to sell a domain name. In the process, I learned a bit about how the value of a domain name is calculated. In general, here are the rules:
1) If you have a single-word cot-com domain name that accurately described what you do (if you have, for example, Cars.com, and you sell cars from it), your domain will be valued at around $1.5 million dollars.
2) If you have a short, two-word dot-com domain name that very clearly describes what you do (something like buytickets.com for a ticket seller, or orderbeef.com for an online butcher), your domain will be worth around $20,000 to $30,000 dollars.
3) If you have a short, two-word dot-com domain name that’s easy to remember, but that doesn’t exactly specify what goes on at your web site, you can expect the name to be worth around $1,000 to $2,000.
4) In general, if you have a domain name that:
– ends in anything other than dot-com
– contains numbers or hyphens
– contains sound-alikes or misspellings
– adds “online” or “e” or “i” to another phrase
your domain is pretty much worthless.
5) If your domain is being purchased by a small company, they’ll probably pay no more than $1,000 to $2,000 dollars. If the domain is being purchased by a large company, they’ll pay as little as they can … but if your domain is important to them, they’ll pay a premium.
While the folks at Hiremark will enjoy the shortness, the dom-com-ness, and the memorability of the name, it doesn’t, at a glance, describe exactly what they do there. So, for their small company, the same name would have a value of around $1,000 to $2,000.
There are exceptions to every rule, of course … and, as with used cars, a domain name is really worth whatever you can get folks to pay for it. Still — I was very happy to sell them the name … and to make enough money in the process to buy this for Clyde and this for me.
Add comment