I’m one of those domainers who usually tries to avoid giving people domain appraisals at all costs whenever possible. Let’s face it, domain appraisals are rarely accurate and even if they are accurate in a reseller environment, whose to say the person asking for an appraisal will be targeting resellers or what a potential end user may be willing to pay? Unless the domainer plans on selling his domain immediately upon receiving the domain appraisal, who’s to say it will even be accurate when the time comes to sell it (eg. any 2008 domain appraisals are probably 30%+ inflated today).

That said, this post is about why you should ask for domain appraisals. I’ve seen a few other experienced domainers do this as well and I’m sure they’re not asking for an appraisal because they need help pricing their domains.. Domain appraisals are 100% free advertising. Go on a domain forum and ask for an appraisal on your domain and most of the time you’ll get 100-200 domainers view your thread — that figure doesn’t include the many more who saw your domain in the appraisal section but didn’t open the thread. Ask for an appraisal on DN Forum, ask for an appraisal on Namepros, bump up the thread saying you aren’t happy with the answers you’ve received, disagree with one of the posters just so your appraisal thread gets bumped up to the top and he’ll hopefully argue with you bumping it up to the top again, etc. I’ve bought no small number of domains having never known the domain was even for sale until the domainer listed it up asking for an appraisal. Launching a new website? What better way to get a few readers from day 1 than to ask for an appraisal of the domain or for people to review your website? You might want to make your domain appraisal thread titled “domain dot com” rather than domain.com to avoid the possibility of search engines picking it up in the event you get appraisals below your expectations. If the domain appraisals you receive were above your expectations, be sure to link to that thread to show any interested domainers what other domainers thought the domain was worth.

Related posts:

1. Domain Forums: The 80-20 Rule
2. 9 things I hate to hear noobs say when domaining
3. Massive NNN.ca Drop