Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Domain Names : Domain value

[dgessler]

Hello,

I've just purchased a short 2 character .com from ebay, D-Y.com. I've seen on many auction sites (afternic, ebay..) basically any 3 letter .com's sell for a fairly high amount. I was trying to figure out which type of domain would sell higher, for example; d-y.com or dyx.com (x replaced with another letter). The dash won't really hurt a domain when there is only 2 characters in the name, will it? I think I bought the name at a good price, and if I cannot sell the name I will certainly develop it. Just looking for some opinions of others.

Thanks,
Dan

[Cyber]

dyX.com may sell better, but d-y.com would probably also sell very well.

[Franky]

dyx.com would sell higher.

Btw, I have a question regarding the 2 character/letter domain name. Which category does d-y.com fall into: two or three character domain name?

[Cyber]

three because of the hyphen. but two if you are only look at letters and numbers. so it depends on how you look at it

[dgessler]

lol yea- at afternic they considered them 2 letter domains. Also, I technically bought the domain from the seller at ebay, but I still have time to cancel the transaction if I want to, I'm going to really think about it, he's selling the domain for $70 ... yea ... wow! when was "rate this thread" field appear when posting? Is that something new at this site? Seems liek a nifty feature.

Dan

[Franky]

I consider it as a three character domain name, no matter what.
But I'd like to know the official category for it

[Chicken]

three character, as a hypen *is* a character, but overall $70 seems pretty good to me for a 3 character .com domain.

[thewitt]

Originally posted by Franky
I consider it as a three character domain name, no matter what.
But I'd like to know the official category for it

And who would you believe if they told you that this was officially a two or three character domain name?

It has three characters in it before the TLD. That makes it a three character domain name. It has two Alpha characters in it and a hyphen... How can anyone say it's a two character domain? Well, if they have an official definition that says this is two characters, well so be it...

As for what a domain is worth, you've just proved this one's worth $70.

As with anything that's for sale, it's worth what someone will pay and no more.

I wouldn't give you $5 for d-y.com, so it's not worth very much to me. That doesn't mean it's not worth $70 to you, or $700 to someone else. It's just not worth anything to me...

-t

[JayC]

The value in the shorter domain names is that they are easiest to remember and easiest to describe. For example, say you mention a domain name in a radio ad: dyx.com is clearly understandable, but d-y.com will take a bit of explanation. "d hyphen y dot com" is what you'd normally hear. And most likely somebody somewhere is going to go online and look for dhypheny.com!

The point is that as far as appraising the value of the name is concerned, it's a three-character name. Because it has three characters; and the hyphen is as significant as the other two.

As for "official" definitions, there aren't any. Or there are an infinite number: no entity has the authority to rule "officially" on the matter, and no entity has the authority to rule that anyone can't say that their definition is "official."

It's not really surprising that afternic would call it a two-letter name; it's better for them to make a name appear to be as valuable as possible.