discuss Estibot is a failure, why do domainers insist on using it?

jamesosix said:

Seriously, its such a flawed piece of software and yet all i see in domain circles is "estibot this" and "estibot that"

Why do domainers insist on telling other domainers what esitbot apprises something at? It is actually starting to make me question whether a particular domainer is serious or not.

I'm going to start saying "my folks appraised this at xxxxxxxxxx value, because they probably have a better insight to a domains value versus estibot!!

Is it just me that feels this way?

I say we should start considering NOT using estibot EVER because it is full of s***.

Discuss.

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I inquired about a domain that I really liked via email. He responded with with an Estibot price. I responded with: "I am no longer interested. I do not do business with anyone who quotes me a price based on Estibot."

Damn shame.

Your right that the valuations are generally a load of waffle but I find it fairly usefull to use sites like estibot and domainindex etc to find out the rough searches and visitors to a domain but yeah you could pick a number out of a hat and compete with their valuations.

Yeah, never use Estibot for anything

I think a lot of newbies are misled because some leading blogs continue to pimp or advertise estibot, without mentioning its shortcomings when it comes to appraisals.

I understand they do a premium service, which is fine if its stats and facts, but yeah, my beef is with the free appraisal service (just to avoid any confusion)

I say we start a campaign for domainers to stop using estibot when discussing values. haha

Shane Bellone said:

I inquired about a domain that I really liked via email. He responded with with an Estibot price. I responded with: "I am no longer interested. I do not do business with anyone who quotes me a price based on Estibot."

Damn shame.

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If I liked the domain that much, I would still have countered his initial offer. You just never know.

UniflexDomains said:

Your right that the valuations are generally a load of waffle but I find it fairly usefull to use sites like estibot and domainindex etc to find out the rough searches and visitors to a domain but yeah you could pick a number out of a hat and compete with their valuations.

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It's usually way off on those stats too, I only rely on Adwords and the Keyword Tool.

Even though Estibot is worthless, it can help with a sales pitch, especially when I know the domain isn't worth anything near what Estibot values it at. Sure most domainers know it's useless but you might find that one potential buyer who might be in awe at the valuation, especially if its priced way below it. Every little helps, I don't take domainers any less serious who quote it and it's not just newbies who do it, but I also know they know Estibot is useless.

I find it useful for relative values as a quick snapshot. Since it does factor in some good objective information, if domain A is $100,000 and domain B is $150,000, I can generally be safe assuming the search volumes etc are better for B. Since I use their Chrome widget I can take a quick look without even leaving the page I'm on. As for absolute values it is useless as said.

stub said:

If I liked the domain that much, I would still have countered his initial offer. You just never know.

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Exactly...

cocaseco said:

I find it useful for relative values as a quick snapshot. Since it does factor in some good objective information, if domain A is $100,000 and domain B is $150,000, I can generally be safe assuming the search volumes etc are better for B. Since I use their Chrome widget I can take a quick look without even leaving the page I'm on. As for absolute values it is useless as said.

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Here is a snapshot that made me write this thread.

A seller was asking about his .co.uk domain on NP that everybody in the thread agreed it was reg fee (and not what esitbot said at xxxx).

I run an adult site I own, through estibot that is actually earning money and it returned a zero value.

How is it a lonely domain doing nothing that domainers value at reg fee can come with an estibot value vs an a live site that makes actual money having no value?

I'm with Shane on this, if somebody even mentions estibot in a potential sale I will more than likely not take them as serious and probably walk away.

stub said:

If I liked the domain that much, I would still have countered his initial offer. You just never know.

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Half of the domainers I've dealt with are unrealistic. Estibot says it's worth 65k so they want 100k. It's not worth the time.

I dont advise people to swear by Estibot but Estibot has its place. I'm not an estibot hater. It has alot of info on it, so use what you need.

Shane Bellone said:

Half of the domainers I've dealt with are unrealistic. Estibot says it's worth 65k so they want 100k. It's not worth the time.

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More than half of the domainers I deal with are unrealistic, which is one reason I don't visit the Make Offer thread. How do you know they used Estibot price, when the Estibot price and their asking price were different? He may have been hoping you were an end user. I for one, don't sell to other domainers (intentionally), so I always price to the end-user price (but I don't own any domains worth $100k). If I am interested in a domain I usually counter.

As an aside. I once was an end user for a domain that was on DNS. They quoted me a crazy price, way above end-user pricing (approx 10+ times the price of similar sold domains). I just ignored any email after that. I would say though, I wished I owned the domain and had it for sale on DNS. They were very professional, very thorough, very polite, very logical. They wouldn't leave me alone for about 2 months. In fact I just received another email from them about the domain, which is about a year later. That was all from an initial inquiry, to which I never replied. People who use DNS and broker their domains thru them, get a very good service, imho. If seemingly expensive, they do get good prices. And I can see why. I was very impressed with their service.

iAchilles said:

...
Even though Estibot is worthless, it can help with a sales pitch, especially when I know the domain isn't worth anything near what Estibot values it at. Sure most domainers know it's useless but you might find that one potential buyer who might be in awe at the valuation, especially if its priced way below it.

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This is a double edged sword, because people are not all stupid, and they might think you have no clue or worse, that you're trying to con them. I would certainly not take you seriously. If you quote estibot, in my view you cannot appraise your own domains, and perhaps I should try to take advantage of your ignorance.
And the same approach can be used against you to dispute your asking price.

Once I dealt with an end user, who came with two appraisals (from unknown sources), that were below the price we quoted. We said no way, they eventually paid the price.

In fact, good domains speak for themselves. The sales pitch is not even necessary and should be kept to a minimum. The end users get it or they don't. The more you try to justify the domain value, the more it becomes questionable.

At least, don't use estibot for appraisals.

sdsinc said:

This is a double edged sword, because people are not all stupid, and they might think you have no clue or worse, that you're trying to con them. I would certainly not take you seriously. If you quote estibot, in my view you cannot appraise your own domains, and perhaps I should try to take advantage of your ignorance.
And the same approach can be used against you to dispute your asking price.

Once I dealt with an end user, who came with two appraisals (from unknown sources), that were below the price we quoted. We said no way, they eventually paid the price.

In fact, good domains speak for themselves. The sales pitch is not even necessary and should be kept to a minimum. The end users get it or they don't. The more you try to justify the domain value, the more it becomes questionable.

At least, don't use estibot for appraisals.

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I agree and I should have clarified, I only ever use it on auctions when I'm selling cheap domains. Case in point accidentally listed in my sig. When selling lower end domains names, a good pitch with zomg estibot value can help make sales imho. When doing outbound marketing and dealing with inbound queries, I never utter the word Estibtot. The only thing I refer to is historic sales data.

I appraised one of my domain using Estibot and it gave me $50K, That domain was worth low $xxx.So I don't trust these appraisal websites.

It's flawed of course but whether a seller used it to validate a sales price or a buyer used it to justify a purchase price, you can be sure that it has contributed to a significant number of deals being done over the years.

Point blank it makes them feel good that something they bought has a "value" of X,XXX. This makes them feel like they are on the right track. So it is almost a domainers drug. Get hit by the estibot and crack out buying up shitty domains and trying to sell them for the moon!

sdsinc said:

I think a lot of newbies are misled because some leading blogs continue to pimp or advertise estibot, without mentioning its shortcomings when it comes to appraisals.

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Yeah I'm sure I've seen them being advertised or given as "sponsors" at the beginning of DomainSherpa interviews etc which is where a lot of new domainers try to learn the ropes. It's just a computer program that runs comparisons (offen not very good ones, like against other domains with the same amount of characters), and is therefore never going to be able to use a gut feeling or it's knowledge of the latest market trends. Still, if it's making people any money it has a place I guess.

My motto...

Use it when it helps you...trying to sell that dog to an end-user at $x,xxx
Ignore it when it doesn't

Paully said:

It's flawed of course but whether a seller used it to validate a sales price or a buyer used it to justify a purchase price, you can be sure that it has contributed to a significant number of deals being done over the years.

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@Paully is right on. I know I am guilty of making assumptions that buyers use all of the same tools and have the same knowledge as I do. The fact is that many people, perhaps most, don't really know and will see value in Estibot or other online estimators. If you are working in a large organization and are spending someone else money you often don't do as much research as if it was your own. If you manage a product and had budgeted $20K for a domain and the domain you found is listed at $20K, that may be the end of the research. The fact that the domain might have been only worth $6K doesnt even factor in. I have people submitting specific requisitions to my department all day and we don't shop around. If the buyer says buy xyz from this domain we do it. There is a tremendous amount of waste in most medium and large size corporations.

I've never used it myself to sell and it wouldn't move me to buy. When somebody mentions Estibot numbers, I feel the same way when somebody mentions Alexa numbers, they must be new.

Having said that, I do use it as one of the filters in Dropping.com. If you look at the obvious good names in let's say Namejet, the ones that have bids, most of them will be over 1k. Of the 8 in my Watchlist, 7 are over 1k. So it does bring the better domains to the front. But it's just one of many filters I use. Looks like about 1.4% of NJ names are over 1k.

Also, while I'm not impressed by the numbers and most experienced domainers aren't, maybe your end user is. Most probably aren't.

But, I still probably won't ever use it myself.

Esbibot is not perfect, but it has place on the market. Don't forget though that the only correct domain price estimation comes from buyer. I wouldn't halt negotiations with someone using Estibot, they can after all say that this estimate come from his dog's best friend (I had a guy told me that once), so I'd rather deal with computer program, that human coded, then animals)

JB Lions said:

when somebody mentions Alexa numbers, they must be new.

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What's wrong with Alexa numbers?
I've seen many time people use Alexa traffic estimations or SimilarWeb to analyze traffic, even in professional startup media, like Techcrunch. Do you think this companies provide incorrect numbers? Why someone would use their services then?