Evaluating a domain name

A listing is a set of facts you can check. It is not a valuation. Open any name and read the same fields in the same order. payarmor.com is one place to practice. Its asking price is the catalog price of $4,000. That number is not a comparable sale and not an estimate of what a similar name would bring.

Read the name before the price

• Say the second-level name without “dot com.” If you cannot say it once, cleanly, stop there.
• Count the words the page already counted. The word split is the one stored on the listing, not a suggestion.
• Look for a spelling note under the summary. If there is no note, the summary did not mention a spelling issue. That is not a certificate that the spelling is easy.

Then read the price, and only the price that is printed

• The buy-now amount is the asking price. Card checkout is not open, so the button sends a purchase request.
• The 24-month line is the rent-to-own monthly price from the inventory. The buyer fee is 0%.
• The schedule on the name page is the full set of terms from 6 to 48 months, in steps of 6. At 24 months the monthly amount is the listed price. Every other term divides that 24-month total by the term and rounds to the nearest dollar.
• The difference versus buy now is arithmetic on those two figures. It is not a discount claim and not a market comparison.

Trademark, then the things that are missing on purpose

The trademark badge is the level stored for that name: Low, Low-Med, Med, or High. The sentence under it is the research note. Neither one clears the name for your product. There is no verification badge, because ownership verification is not recorded on catalog listings. The line on the page says “Not recorded.”

These are absent because the data does not exist, not because a filter is hiding them:

• No traffic, search volume, or ranking.
• No appraisal and no comparable sales.
• No price history, so there is no “price reduced” flag.
• No listing date, so there is no “recently listed” flag.

If you make an offer

Catalog names have a private minimum. An offer under that minimum is declined, and the reply does not include the number. Raising the offer is the next step. The page will not hint at the floor. Do not treat a declined offer as information about other buyers. No offer count is published.

A short pass

1. You can say it and type it.
2. You have read the trademark note and you will run your own search.
3. You can pay the asking price, or you have an offer you are willing to send knowing a low offer is declined without an explanation of the floor.
4. You have compared it with at most two other names.

If it fails the first step, the rest does not matter. Choosing a business domain is the step before this one. What to check before a domain transfer is the step after you decide to send a request.

Other guides

• Choosing a business domain
• What to check before a domain transfer
• How rent-to-own prices work
• All guides