Hello to you all,

I am wondering, how much is a domain name worth? I am asking this because I have my eyes on a domain name that is for sale on the internet, but the seller will only say "make offer". So I am wondering, before suggesting a price, how much is too much, or too little of a suggestion. What do your guys think?

I personally don't know what a good price would be when buying a domain from another individual. However, buying a non-registered domain is about $10-$15 depending on the registrar. 

Thanks Matt, that is what I was thinking.

Actually, it depends on a lot of things. For my electrical business, I got my Domain name for $8.00 per year with the purchase of hosting for a year from Bravenet. So in otherwords, some website hosting sites give you discounts for web domains if you use them to host. The one I mentioned also give generic free web builders to make things easy. I would do a lot of exploring before buying a domain name when you can make your own. The benefit to buying a web domain is its name power. In otherwords, if someone had "Perfect Puppets" already purchased, it would be more likely to be found then "SHould's Perfect Puppets" in a quick search.

It depends on all sorts of things: a .com with less than a couple of words, that has very popular words in it, can go for thousands. But .info's or other similarly weird-ending domain names go for less. The less popular the word in the name, the less it would sell for. Likewise, the harder the name is to type or remember, the less expensive it will be.

I recommend doing a google search, because there are a lot of informational articles out there (free to read) on domain names and how much you can expect to spend.

But as Matt points out, domain names goes cheaply - is it worth haggling with a stranger to get the ideal domain name if it costs a lot more?

(Incidentally, this is why lots of websites have weird names these days. It's not because they're trying to copy Google - it's that all the 'good' names have been taken, and people have had to be inventive about naming things)

I should add that you may end up also paying more than just the domain name - you may want to hide your contact details, as registrars MUST list your personal info and if you don't want your contact details listed, you have to pay to hide them.

Archangle is correct. The age and popularity of a name that has already been used comes into play if it is not a name that has been registered in the past.  You have to ask yourself how much you are willing to pay.  Also remember that there are some companies that simply buy up what they think might be popular names and then resell them.  See if you can find some history on the name.  

If you're also that keen, you can find out if you can get an appraisal done on the domain name. There are website specialists out there who do history checks etc, website comparisons, word comparisons (ie. how popular the words in the domain name are, how popularly ranked they are compared to other, similar/related words), and then tell you the selling price of the name. I think there are one or two places on the net that do this for free - although I don't have links to them offhand.

Also slight see if the name you want is available with a dash. When I registered Puppet Mart I found that puppetmart.com was registared but really was not a site there. It was like someone has simply bought the domain to later make money when someone came along who wanted it. However,  puppet-mart.com was available.

Also remember that as important as domain name may be, content is key. If you have content on your website that is valuable to your target audience, they are likely to find you.

So true Chris; even if you have the best name in the world, it won't help you in search rankings if there's no content or it's not updated often.