The sale of Whisky.com for $3.1 million dollars sent the Castello Brothers to new stratospheric highs. It’s one of the biggest domain sales ever, with an entry at #19 at the Top Domain Sales of all time.
But how much do domain valuation engines say that Whisky.com is worth?
That’s the fun part of artificial intelligence; the metrics utilized for the calculation of a domain’s value can’t make up for the human factor of ingenious domain brokering. 😀
We ran the domain on three domain valuation web sites: Estibot, Valuate and Domain Index. The first two produced identical results, as Valuate.com runs on the Estibot API:
Whisky.com valuation at Estibot and Valuate.com
So Estibot.com and Valuate.com returned a value of $821,000 dollars for Whisky.com.
Meanwhile, the valuation at Domain Index was lower:
Whisky.com domain valuation at Domain Index.
Only $498,000 dollars at Domain Index for Whisky.com!
Many domain investors would have sold at that level, but not the experienced Castello Brothers, who wanted between $3 and $5 million in order to sell.
Congratulations on this amazing sale to the Castello Brothers, and their domain broker, Toronto Domainer.
This post is 100% true!
Congrats to David and Michael and the broker. Great result all around.
I found DomainIndex the worst valuation tool, Estibot “just” very bad… By the way, noktadomains.com valuates whisky.com at $ 834,600 – still not fair… Those robots are dumb formulas, nothing real that should be used in real life.
James – Indeed, this sale is one big boner for all domain investors 😀 LOL
Mike – One day maybe these tools will become more intelligent, hopefully.
Thank you everyone. Maybe I should go into the Domain name evaluation business j/k, I definitely think I can crack the #1 spot on that list. Give me a few months. Things are just heating up.
@DomainGang – I “played” with those tools for a while and results are crazy. One LL.com was valued $14.8k at DomainIndex and about $3.8mm at NoktaDomains. Ratio aprox. 1:250. For sure DomainIndex is out of reality here, therefore people should avoid to use it.
Michael – Now you can buy both Estibot and Valuate for a small chunk and tweak their data 😀
@DomainGang – That would be waste of money. Those valuation companies actually would love to be bought, but there is no value in such business they do, so I hope no one is going to do that. And don’t forget that Michael got whisky.com for free when he registered it, so he likes free stuff.
@DomainGang Re: Free Stuff
I remember walking over to the coffee shop in 1995 and my friend Milan was working there. I told him I could register his name Milan.com and he said how much? I said it was free to which he replied “then it isn’t worth anything”.
“then it isn’t worth anything” I should remember this conversation — a very expensive one!
@ Michael: Some friend you are if you didn’t reg it for them! LOL That’s a great story 🙂
>>I definitely think I can crack the #1 spot on that list. Give me a few months. Things are just heating up.<<
Bring it on Michael! Congrats on the whisky.com sale which is a win-win for all parties directly involved, and the domain industry.
Totally agree on the heating up comment – had two unsolicited low 5 figure offers in as many days, one for a direct match domain of a product in a small industry and the other a word that describes a niche service that can be delivered over the net. I would normally pull the trigger at that level but now have the confidence to counter much higher because I truly believe they will be worth more in a year or so.