Valuating Expired Domains V2 (And how you can buy a list of available ones)

By Hayden on 53

Valuating Expired Domains V2 (And how you can buy a list of available ones)
4 votes, 2.25 avg. tacos (49% full)

Note that this is part of the expired domain series which has been compiled in order of importance here.

<Disclaimer> A lot of people are having difficulty finding domains. There is a real learning curve, so please be prepared for this. As an option for those that are just starting out, I recommend you prove the model by first purchasing a few domains, or try out our latest service, RankHero.

RankHero allows you to test the viability of this method without having to invest the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars it takes to find, build, host and maintain your own Private Content Network. </disclaimer>

 

 

So I’ve gone through hundreds of available domains in the past month, and I’ve come up with a formula that is a lot more flexible than just the Standard/Premium model.  I’ve turned it into a Public Google Doc so everyone can see how it’s calculated.  Feel free to download a copy and use it for your own domains!

 

What’s Changed?

  • The biggest weakness of the old version was that some standard domains had a couple really strong premium features, though they were still showing the same value as before.  The same goes for premium domains that had stronger features than others.   This spreadsheet corrects that.
  • Root Domain mT and Domain Authority have been given a boost relative to the other metrics.
  • PA is being calculated for both the www and the non-www versions of the page (Google sees these as different pages unless there is a redirect).
  • Potential PR only adds to the value of the domain if the PR is above 3 (A series of IF/Then statements).

 

What will Be Added?

This is always evolving.  I plan on hooking up FB and Google+ metrics later.  Possibly Twitter too.  I may also come across other metrics (MajesticSEO/Ahrefs?) that could be useful.  I will update this post as I add things.

 

Can I still Buy Domains?

Update: I have added a post with a list of domains for sale here.

I plan on adding metrics to a similar private Google Doc and allowing people to purchase access to the URLs.  I should get to it early next week.   Once it’s up you can just paypal the funds and email me your transaction ID and the Rows you’re interested in and my assistant will send you the domain names and cross them off the list.

 

Other Uses

Even if domain buying is not your thing, this is a great way to determine the benefit of say – a linking site.   In fact the amount shown is likely a good amount to pay  for a permanent link from the page.  Just keep in mind that link placement could alter the value (I would put link within content area of page and link surrounded by content as big modifiers, I’d subtract 20% of the value for each of those elements if you can’t control them).

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Valuating Expired Domains V2 (And how you can buy a list of available ones)
4 votes, 2.25 avg. tacos (49% full)

53 thoughts on “Valuating Expired Domains V2 (And how you can buy a list of available ones)”

  2. Chris says:

    How do you download your own copy?
    I went to the online google doc, but I don’t see anywhere how to download this and apply this to my own excel spreadsheet.

    thx

  5. JP says:

    Hi Hayden,

    What do you mean by value exactly? What it can fetch on the open market? What they can buy from you for? Or is it based somehow on the revenue it can potentially bring in?

    • Hayden says:

      The value is just the price I’d sell it for really, which is mainly based on what I would pay for it. Anything $20 and up is worth developing as part of a private blog network imo.

      • Lucas says:

        By this, do you mean that the figures in your new spreadsheet columns 13, 14 and 15 (Domain Value, PR Value, and Value with PR) should have a dollar $ sign in front of them?

    • Hayden says:

      It all depends on what you’re trying to rank for. More competitive SERPs require higher quality links. $20 and up is worth developing. $100 and up is a serious link if you’re competing in a SERP that requires it.

      • Tony says:

        Hey Hayden

        Have you put up, or are you going to put up a tutorial on developing the domains.

        Ex criteria, content, where you find content that used to exist on the domain

      • Hayden says:

        I did put up a tutorial on how to turn it into part of your private blog network. I don’t suggest using content that used to exist from before, though that’s your prerogative.

  10. Mitja says:

    I was just wondering. Can you tell how many backlinks you need if you want to get a website from position 70 in google to position 1?

    That probably depends on the strength of the websites right?

  11. Rob miller says:

    I am finding loads of domains if anyone is int in getting them. Not from me but registering them.

    Then if int I can talk business beyond.

    That’s if everyone is fine with that. Email is irnwho at gmail dot com

    • Hayden says:

      Fine with me but I want to warn people that cleaning lists is a hard job, and even the interns that have been doing this for 100 hours+ are still not entirely able. It sucks to spend money developing a dud.

  12. Lucas says:

    I’m still not completely clear about a couple of basics. When you are using the SEOmoz tool for researching expired domains:

    1. which tab do you keep it on? – Inbound Links – Top Pages – Linking Domains – Anchor Text – Compare Link Metrics – OR doesn’t it matter?

    2. Where are you getting your stats from? The BLUE horizontal ‘summary’ bar at the top OR from lower down the page?

    3. On the ‘Compare Link Metrics’ page there are 3 different areas – Page Specific Metrics – Subdomain Metrics – Root Domain Metrics. I have watched the SEOmoz help videos but I am still unclear about how to use these.
    – If we are looking at expired domains, shouldn’t we be looking exclusively at the ‘Root Domain Metrics’ section? Although this is often different from the blue horizontal summary data at the top of the page.

    EG: When doing a search on an expired domain, which has NO pages, why would we even look at ‘Page Authority’? What ‘page’ is this supposed to refer to when dealing with expired domains?

    My intuition tells me we should only be looking at stuff that relates to ‘Root Domains’ but that doesn’t seem to be the case so I am a bit confused.

    As an additional unhelpful bit of info, the SEOmoz help video seems to refer to subdomains when it is clearly supposed to be about root domains!

    NOTE: I know some of these things are touched on in Hayden’s original videos but it’s done quickly and after studying the SEOmoz stuff I remain unsure.

    4. Can anyone provide a link to an article or info on how www-domains-com relate to domains-com and vice versa?

    Thanks.

    • Hayden says:

      I look at root domain metrics on the compare metrics tab. I also look at the links on linking pages and make sure that all links to the root domain is selected in the filters there.

      The root domain includes both www (as www is considered a subdomain). I only look at the PA of the www vs non-www because Google considers that a separate page. When redeveloping the sites WP automatically redirects the versions so it’s not a big deal, but in analysis it matter.

  14. Lucas says:

    Sorry for a further post but here is one problems I have come across a few times. I have found a domain which displays:
    www-domain-com DA: 47 PA: 56 LRD: 400 Domain MT: 3.73
    Which looks good
    BUT it displays:
    domain-com DA:47 PA: 1 No Data Available for this URL

    Potentially, this is a very good www domain, and a good non-www domain, but why are the figures so different, and how do I assess it?

  15. Ben says:

    Lucas just use whichever figure is the highest.

    Then when you build your domain, if the www. version has a higher page authority then make sure to use that.

    In the wordpress settings you can make sure it uses www or not.

    • Lucas says:

      Hello Ben,
      thanks for your reply. This When using Hayden’s calculator, the value difference in quite substantial between www and non-www, so I would like to try and understand that.

      • Hayden says:

        This is an error with SEOMoz. If it doesn’t see any links on one version it misreports lots of the metrics. Just go with the version it does have stats on.

    • Hayden says:

      I will post the list Monday. Right now it’s just going out to those that still had open orders with me. The price will be what’s in the “Value with PR” column.

  17. Trevor says:

    Hayden, thank you this is amazing.
    I would like to know if anyone has successfully flipped any of these domains. I’ve put a few up for auction and I have several more that I would like to sell, and some tips on how to get the most out of them would be very helpful for myself and anyone else reading this.

    thanks

    • Rich says:

      Echo this request – Hayden, getting an update on how your interns are doing, and an update on progress / process for flipping your sites via flippa would be fantastic!

  19. dee says:

    if you find a good domain with premium features, but not a tld, lets say a .ca or .cc domain.

    would you go out and purchase it?

    • Hayden says:

      If it’s part of a blog network and the tLD is cheap than absolutely, the ccTLD really doesn’t seem to matter. But if I want to turn it into an adsense site I’d need to check the LMS, contextual CPC and CMI (APA, see keyword research videos if you don’t understand this term) on the local country for the TLD, as it won’t rank well on google.com.

  20. John Hicks says:

    Ive noticed a few glitches in the domain appraisal system that can be easily overlooked based purely on rigid parameters.

    Found a domain with the following metrics

    LRD = 1400
    PA = 58
    DA = 52
    MozTrust = 3.8
    Year = 2000

    This is a Premium +2 (5/6 tick the box) on the Hayden scale of domains, so far brilliant you may say.

    Using the new appraisal spreadsheet in this post, this yields a “Domain Value” of 350.

    The LRD seems to skew the “Domain Value” quite a bit so I think that possibly needs a bit of a retune.

    Looking into the backlink profile with SEOmajestic/ahrefs and SEOmoz and analysing the backlinks further using SEOspyglass yields a somewhat spammy backlink profile. So I have not bought this domain.

    Questions:
    Looking at wayback machine has seen this domain always be a spammy somewhat website nothing has changed in the 12 years of ownership yet the moztrust value and all the other metrics are great what gives?

    Surely if it has accumulated trust and backlink juice over 12 years and has not been penalised, (maybe been de-indexed but Im not sure how to check)

    Im considering buying this domain and testing the power of the backlinks coming from it in a case study.

    Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this?

    • Hayden says:

      If it’s spam it get’s discounted and never added to this list. 1400 LRD that are real is huge and a value of $350 is a bargain. Mostly domains like these will be comment spam, but occasionally you will find a gem.

      MozTrust doesn’t take into account changes to the site or spam. If it’s expired the only way to test whether it was penalized is to redevelop it. It’s possible that it will be fine and whoever developed it just neglected to renew it (has happened to me hundreds of times), but it’s more likely that they didn’t renew because it wasn’t ranking or earning.

  21. gino says:

    If anyone is struggling to find a few domains here are a few that didnt quite make the cut for me(valued in the 30s), have at em! (delete this comment if you dont want it here hayden, i just didnt want them to go to waste)

    tonicwav.com
    millcitytechnology.com
    wallace-chevrolet.com
    pcalemi.net
    penchookubpee.com

    • redwyn88 says:

      Am I being too picky? You say these didn’t quite make the cut for you but I’ve found dozens, maybe even a hundred or more, like these (the first two at least, I didn’t dig into all 5) and have been basically rating them as crap and not even considering them…

  23. Mike Ward says:

    Thanks for the list. Did I read correctly that a domain being linked will be rated at 1/2 the page rank on the next update ? For instance, 1 direct link from a PR6 will be a PR3 on the next update ?

  24. Jonathan says:

    Hi, how come on OpensiteExplorer the Page MozTrust and the Domain Moztrust will be so different? (e.g pMT of 4.17 and dMT of 1.5) Which one should we use when entering data into your valuation spreadsheet?

    also do we disregard MozRank or do you consider it in your valuation?

    thanks

    • Hayden says:

      Domain MozTrust. One looks at the page only (compared to all other urls in the index) and the other looks at the domain (compared to all other domains in the index). Obvously dMT will be high on a homepage as it is comparing it to lots of deeper content. If it has a high pMT and low dMT that means all the links the domain has are likely pointing at the homepage.

  27. Tim says:

    hayden, you said in your podcast with Spencer that PR5 domains could fetch around $500 at auction, yet this spreadsheet suggests it’s much lower than that. If you had a true PR5 domain, which you had padded out with a few articles, how much do you think it’s worth?

  28. greg says:

    Hi all. I tried registering a handful of .org.au domains with crazydomains.com but they are asking for proof of being a non-profit. Does anyone know of a registrar that is a bit lesss strict with registering .org.aus?

    • Hayden says:

      It’s not up to the registrar, it’s an AUDA requirement. So many great expired .org.aus too…

      Anyone up for starting a non-profit that has something to do with internet archiving???

  29. Dom Aina says:

    Great post, you may want to check out DomainKa, I think this site is also pretty good for getting a domain name.I’ve used it with no prob.

  30. Bryan says:

    Thanks for the spread sheet. This is going to make everything so much easier to evaluate.

    As I am new to the whole process of buying expired domains, do you think it will be possible to get an overview of where you get each piece of information and where to put it in the spreadsheet.

    I have an idea, but notice if I switch some numbers from one spot to another it creates a totally different value for the domain.

    Thanks

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