I recently won a one word .io domain name auction at Park.io. I spent a few hundred dollars to purchase the domain name, which I think was a pretty reasonable deal. I then listed it on Afternic for just shy of $15,000, which would be a solid ROI should it sell.
In addition to the Afternic listing, I submitted it to Atom because I think it’s the type of domain name that could stand out. Upon submission as a Premium domain name, Atom said it is “Eligible for Instant Approval.” It gave me a recommended price of $69,495 with a price range of $17,399 – $208,499.
A quick look made me think I severely underpriced the domain name when I listed it on Afternic. Even with this “low” price, a sale would net me $12,000, giving me a nearly 2,900% ROI. That’s pretty strong.
Of course, a 2,900% ROI pales in comparison to the greater than 12,000% ROI that would be achieved with a sale on Atom at around its suggested price. It would seem that listing it on Atom is the way to really maximize the ROI on this domain name.
However, listing it for nearly $70k would also make it highly unlikely that I can sell this domain name. Frankly, I think that number is way too much. It sounds great to me, but overpricing it by such a huge amount will make it much less likely to sell.
AI pricing tools can be useful as one data point, but they should not replace market judgment based on personal expertise.
A strong AI valuation may be flattering, but if it pushes you to price a domain name beyond what the market will realistically bear, it may cost you a sale rather. Using AI as a valuation tool is helpful in the event you may have undervalued (or even overvalued) your domain name. However, as with all AI tools, it should be taken with a grain of salt. In this case, I am increasing the price on Afternic to $25,000 and putting it for sale on Atom for $19,495.
Note: I recently wrote about a similar topic related to Atom appraisals and pricing. Now that Atom is offering instant listing approvals for domain name submissions, it is even more relevant.
Does the domain start with an “f” and end with an “s”? 😉
Of the ~13 appraisal tools I know about, most give wildly different results.
But I think a tool that aggregates appraisals could be useful for getting average/median appraised prices.
You could then feed it domains from recent sales (that the tools have not yet been trained on) to determine which appraiser is the most accurate.
Might be difficult to pull off without partnerships as most appraisers put their service behind a CAPTCHA/Cloudflare turnstile.