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The best way to determine the value of your rare domains is by keeping track of sales reports. TDVR.com, Namebio.com as well as the sales report threads on DNForum and Namepros offer a great picture of not only the current selling prices, but also show you the current trends.
If you have the time, we also recommend that you do some research into past sales prices. Making a graph of past sales over a time frame of say 5-7 years often helps to determine what that type of domain will be doing 5 - 7 years from now. People always say if only I had know what the domain prices would have been back then, I'd have invested (or dumped) more. But, you actually do have a window, if you take the time to look.
Past history charts work great for LL.coms, L-L.coms, LLL.coms, NNN.coms, and a few others. However, they are not quite as good with when it comes to LLLL.coms. It's been less than a year since all were registered, which makes it extremely difficult to determine just what the trend is. Or, what people will be doing in the future. Wouldn't everyone love a crystal ball, to be able to know In 5 years, what domains will most endusers want? What will the investors and collectors be searching for, etc..? Questions like these are on every domainer's mind and often lead to very interesting debate on the forums.
Just like in the real world where collectors focus on their specialty (Example: lots of people collect cars. However, some focus on antiques, others on sports cars, some on luxury, etc..) so it is happening with LLLL.com domainers. There is a large group of domainers whom currently call themselves the VCVC and CVCV kings. For them, investing into anything other than these would be a waste of money. On the flip side, there are those people whom are on the prowel right now in search of anything that appears to be a good deal. They would rather have QXZX.com for $35 than ABAM.com for $2000 (note: these are examples only.) There are the "repeaters". The repeaters eyes sparkle with anticipation whenever they see a domain name with repeating letters. They collect double repeaters, triple repeaters and the holy grail of domains (I say this because I've never seen one for sale, but people say the exist), the quad repeater. Oh yeah, I almost forgot the all vowel crowd. This crowd of investor's is a kind of snobby bunch as you'll often find them turning up their noses if a Y is in the wrong position (For example, if a Y is at the beginning of a word, it's a consonant.)
With so many people collecting so many different types of LLLL.com domains, there are lots of opinions on which domains are the best values and how to determine the value of a LLLL.com. We've posted some expert advice from various domainer's below on this subject. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following article excerpt comes from our friends at Daily Domainer
Please visit their website at: http://www.dailydomainer.com
What determines the value of a LLLL.com domain? .......Obviously, LLLL domains that constitute a real word, such as LOVE, RARE or BLUE are most valuable. For all the other domains, general consensus among domainers as well as letter frequency statistics indicate that there are premium letters, average letters and bad letters. - Premium letters: a b c d e f g h i l m n o p r s t
- Average letters: j k u v w
- Bad letters: q x y z
An LLLL domain that contains only premium letters (e.g. defi.com) will be considered more valuable than a domain that contains one average letter (anwe.com), two average letters (ivew.com) or even a bad letter (qefu.com). Another aspect considered by domainers is the distribution of vowels and consonants, which is expressed by the most valuable CVCV (consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel, e.g. baka.com), followed by VCVC (vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant, e.g. ofam.com), CVVC (consonant-vowel-vowel-consonant, e.g. geat.com) and VCCV (vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel, e.g. opke.com). Interestingly, several of the so-called average and bad letters are popular in other languages. For example, j, k, q, x and z are frequently used in Pinyin Chinese, while v, w and z are relatively common (more so than j or p) in German. Demonstrating the English-language bias in the mainstream LLLL domain valuation model, Adam Dicker, the owner of DNForum, reports that he sold zwas.com and zzzq.com for more than 5 figures each........ The following article excerpt comes from our friends at 4LetterNoob (and now BQB!)
Please visit their website/s: http://4LetterNoob.com and http://BQB.com
Bad letters aren’t “bad” in every situation, as FAQs, an example provided by dezineright on Namepros elucidates and as sales of strong acronyms such as UK or RX in example reinforce. .......To accurately appraise any 4 letter .com in a reseller environment (this is the only type of appraisal I believe in giving — nobody is qualified to tell you what an enduser will pay), you’d certainly need to know the name in question, it’s pronounceability and the desirability of the letters (including in other languages and how it’s desirability in foreign languages may influence it’s value to a predominantly English domaining population) and the desirability of the order in which they present themselves, the likelihood of finding an enduser, whether there’s any significant traffic or age which may complement it’s value, any significant collector value (may be influenced by rarity, pronounceability, or other characteristics such as extreme age, extremely premium letters, all vowels,…), what similar names have gone for recently (if this data is available), current trends and fads, the availability of comparable domains (more choice likely means less value),… There really are an infinitesimal amount of factors influencing the value of a particular domain on a particular day, and I’m sure a statistician could draw up another hundred I neglected to mention (eg. how might selling right at tax time influence domain valuation? Chances are that big domainers are paying in whereas smaller domainers may be getting some money back, could this have an effect?)........
The following article excerpt comes from our friends at Domain Magnate
Please visit their website: http://domainmagnate.com
.......High end 4L.com’s names, mostly cvcv.com had the highest increase as of lately and it’s not surprising. There are only 2500 quad premium (e.g. only containing the premium letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T) CVCV.com domains (consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, e.g. topa.com, dola.com, nama.com etc.). Out of these names containing H and F are lesser quality. Another 2100 cvcv domains consist of the above letters and one of: U, K; which are considered the best of the non premium letters. And add to these another 1500 domains including V, or W and some of the above mentioned letters. In my opinion these 2500+2100+1500 = 6100 names are the top of the creme 4 letter domains. Other letters: Z,X,Y,J,Q are usually harder to make a brand of and are less attractive to a western, English speaking person. Nevertheless Z is popular in German (hint: cvcv.de with z) and Q is great in Chinese - both of these countries are big off- and online. ‘J’ may also be included in the good letters, but personally I don’t like it, other than the first letter in some ‘jixi.com’ cases........
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