Wanted: Domain Appraisal London domains incl. Paddington.co.uk

[woopwoop]

Have received an offer for the set of London suburb/tube station names below. It's lower than I'd sell for but it did get me thinking.


actoncentral.co.uk
actoncentral.com
actontown.com
arnosgrove.com
becktonpark.co.uk
becktonpark.com
blackhorseroad.com
bowchurch.com
caledonianroad.co.uk
caledonianroad.com
canonspark.co.uk
claphamnorth.co.uk
claphamnorth.com
claphamsouth.com
dagenhameast.co.uk
dagenhameast.com
dagenhamheathway.co.uk
dagenhamheathway.com
deptfordbridge.com
devonsroad.com
eastacton.co.uk
eastacton.com
eccleshill.co.uk
elmersend.co.uk
elversonroad.com
essexroad.co.uk
eustonsquare.co.uk
fairlop.com
finchleycentral.co.uk
goldhawkroad.co.uk
goldhawkroad.com
greatportlandstreet.co.uk
greatportlandstreet.com
hendoncentral.co.uk
hendoncentral.com
heronquays.co.uk
hollowayroad.co.uk
hounslowcentral.co.uk
hounslowcentral.com
hounsloweast.co.uk
hounsloweast.com
hounslowwest.co.uk
hounslowwest.com
hydeparkcorner.co.uk
kensingtonolympia.co.uk
kensingtonolympia.com
kilburnpark.co.uk
kingscrossstpancras.co.uk
kingscrossstpancras.com
latimerroad.co.uk
latimerroad.com
northborough.co.uk
northharrow.co.uk
northwembley.com
oxfordcircus.org.uk
paddington.co.uk
piccadillycircus.org.uk
puddingmilllane.com
ravenscourtpark.co.uk
rodingvalley.com
ruislipgardens.com
sjw.co.uk (st. john's wood)
southacton.co.uk
southkenton.co.uk
southkenton.com
spitalfields.org.uk
stamfordbrook.com
stepneygreen.co.uk
stepneygreen.com
stmarylebone.co.uk
sudburyhill.com
sudburytown.co.uk
tottenhamhale.com
totteridgeandwhetstone.co.uk
upminsterbridge.com
wandsworthroad.co.uk
westfinchley.co.uk
westharrow.co.uk
westruislip.co.uk
westsilvertown.co.uk
westsilvertown.com

My plan was to start developing them into minisites (forum, newsfeeds, map, classifieds, local pics/stories, business directory - my first attempt).

I wondered what people thought? What would you value the set as? Would you sell or develop? Would you develop similarly to my plan (using free opensource software with custom bits - which is a pain come upgrade time) or differently?

Thanks for your tips/appraisals.

 

[woopwoop]

The initial offer I received was for £5000 (for all 81 domains).

They have since increased their offer but it would be nice to have anyone's thoughts regarding this set. It really has taken me a long time to build and names like Paddington I paid x,xxx for.

Thanks

 

[philiporchard]

A nice set.

Vantage is coming soon from http://www.appthemes.com/themes/

Appthemes do some quality themes, and looks like a good directory.

Some nice names in that set - I'd try developing the premium names and seeing how it goes.

 

[WealdDomains]

A nice set, as Philip says. Personally, I think they fall into several distinct categories :

- For co.uk, paddington seems out on its own, followed by heronquays and canonspark and maybe a few others such as hollowayroad, arnosgrove and (as a .com) stamfordbrook, with latimerroad and goldhawkroad a bit further behind : these really feel like solid area names as well as mere stations

- sjw.co.uk is a solid LLL with, additionally, good potential as shorthand for the area as you say

- You have some fairly strong org.uks with oxfordcircus and piccadillycircus, but I don't see them quite as good as, for example, oxfordstreet or piccadilly; spitalfields feels the best of these, especially after the regeneration in recent years and the location on the edge of the City

- As for the rest, they are (largely) stations rather than real areas : that's a subtle but deliberate distinction on my part, especially since so many of the older London suburbs also grew up around railway stations during Victorian times and created areas named after the stations. In your case, though, I feel lots of them have not yet made the leap from station to area. They are great for targeting commuters looking for property and services around a particular station, but perhaps not perfect for a broader community-based geo focus. Incidentally, after hesitating, I deleted hydeparkcorner from the first "paddington" section just before pressing send so, by default, it ends up here.

- Then, finally, there are those that just about exist, or existed, but have the feel of having been registered because they came up as one of the few that wasn't already registered from a much larger list of candidates drawn up using standard sources. I'm genuinely not criticising, and I have done the same myself. Across the UK more broadly, this often seems to apply to relics of the 1974 council reorganisations too.

I'm not going to be arrogant enough to value them - I've probably already been arrogant enough anyway ! - but I hope this highly personal analysis is useful in terms of how you think about and exploit the various chunks that make up the portfolio.

Regards,
David

 

[figleaf007]

Well, I reckon if you were to offer each one for a BIN of £100, you'd probably sell all of them for £8100, so you should be probably look for more (some would obviously go for more than others, but I'm averaging out). Outside of Paddington, I can see four I'd give you a hundred for straight off.

 

[Edwin]

David's analysis is very perceptive. You have a couple of star names, some solid middle of the road stuff and a lot of filler. You'd probably make more by selling the good stuff then separate a firesale for the rest - psychologically it's an easier sell than forcing the mental arithmetic of averaging 5 star names and 1 star names to some notional per-name average...

 

[woopwoop]

Thanks for your replies especially tour long reply David - I completely agree.

Vantage looks interesting - just wish I had the time (and probably more know how) to build out the domains.

I guess I need to focus on Paddington - if I can get that to work then there's hope for the others (If I can't get it to work with that domain then there's no hope).

Paddington was a low xxxx name I think, when I purchased it. But I was thinking that the price for all has to be between £100-500 each when averaged out. But if we're talking 500, then that makes the above a 40k set. Part of me thinks that it's not possible, but part of me says, 'why not?'. I'm not sure if that's an inflated price for an undeveloped set, or of it really represents their value and potential.

Edit- just saw your reply Edwin. I think that I'd only ever sell them as a set and it's true that i find myself feeling that even the fillers must be worth a couple of hundred (maybe only to someone interested in the set). Are there people around who ate onterested in sets like this?
I also find myself thinking that if a development strategy works, surely I can sell a couple of hundred pounds worth of business listings on each (plus ppc)? Or maybe that's too hopeful?

 

[GeekSlash]

As others have said they are a mixed bad, the station names with directions in them (Clapham North etc) and those whose name isn't really the name of the area (Stepney Green, etc) are worth considerably less and their potential for development as local sites is less (you'd want to make a site for the whole of Clapham rather than separate sites for the different parts of it).

There are some stars in here though, and some others are are names of distinct areas, even if named after roads (the Caledonian Road has a very rich heritage for instance). Perhaps a crude way of finding out is using Google's keyword tool to find how many exacts from the UK each term gets. Paddington gets almost 10k searches while a station that no one calls the local community around it, say Euston Square, gets only 1000 searches (33 searches a day) and is probably mostly people looking for a map of where it is and thus doesn't have much development potential. From a development rather than a domaining perspective ones like Spitalfields.org.uk, with 12,000 monthly searches, are the best. Communities don't necessarily need exact match .co.uk's to succeed, look at the ones I mention below.

I think your idea of developing them could work. Look at the traffic to some local London communities, for instance london-se1.co.uk for Southwark and urban75.net's Brixton section for Brixton (also not in London but Oxford's dailyinfo.co.uk is an incredibly popular local site and a lot can be learnt from its combination of online info and offline weekly/fortnightly bulletin sheet). Both regularly get dozens of forum posts per day on the area and have great traffic as they have useful info (business directories and little things like late opening post boxes etc). If you can replicate this you'd be in the money - featured listings, local ad deals with estate agents etc. But for this kind of site to work it really does need love - several areas have pretty dead communities and your Acton one sadly seems like it could be categorised as such.

If you're thinking of development potential rather than domaining you need to ask if you could allocate the time (or the money to have someone else do it) to make these a success. Realistically you'll need a 500 word news article about the area every other day to get a blog going and someone to monitor the forum and answer every question people put. You'll also have to spend at least a week walking around each area getting a comprehensive listing of every business, service and other useful local info (location and times of post boxes, location of street telephones, public toilets, etc).

I'm sure selling them individually you'd shift them over time. I'd consider buying one from you if the price was right and I move to that area and I guess others on here would too. But the potential there is still low five figures and you're likely to still have most of them in five years time selling like this. Most probably wouldn't fetch more than a few hundred other than the star names like Paddington which might be worth something big to someone trying to develop real estate in the area or for non-geo reasons (toy sales, etc).

To me it seems a serious offer and even if you plan to do development I'd think long and hard about it as development doesn't necessarily require exact match domains and most of these aren't really cut out to be good local sites as their names are of an area that either isn't really an area or is considered part of a larger area which would make more sense to develop. I'm sure you'd be able to buy one great domain for less than £1k of an area in London in the .co.uk from someone else on this board and make a test site there if you sold it, or even just go out and find an area with a unregistered .org.uk in London and build one there (I found a few just now that get 2400 exacts and would make sense to develop - if when I move to London in two months I wasn't planning to move to an area which already has a great local site I'd be doing this kind of development for myself).

 

[woopwoop]

Thanks for your advice.

Before I started collecting them, I did think about a name to cover a bigger area - and I actually bought an active forum called Virtual Norwood which covers a bigger area as you describe (Norwood, Anerley, Sydenham and Penge).

I thought about having a single London domain covering all areas - there are a few fairly successful websites that operate in this way, but very competitive (although huge potential).

The Norwood site that I mentioned has fairly strong roots in the community and regular posters. It hasn't really been commercialized (paid business listings etc.) but gets decent traffic and just reached 5000 members - spam isn't an issue on the forum although moderation and member spats can be an issue.

I guess it would be great if all of the suburb/station sites could become like this, just more commercialized and with less member moderation issues! - this might be an impossible wish.

A serious payday with these domains would be nice, but I think that it will take one buyer of all the domains - selling piece by piece will just take a long time and that part of domaining isn't fun anymore. I just want to get down to a few domains, develop them and have some income from them. Some of my other sites are performing very well, but the carrying costs of all the domains have quietly been hurting the profits.

Anyways, I appreciate your feedback and if anyone wanted to make an offer for the 81 domains for around £40,000 (£500 each) let me know (that doesn't mean I'm selling Paddington for 500!

 

[woopwoop]

Kingscrossstpancras.com and .co.uk now sold.

I'm sad that I broke off a piece of this set, but had a fair offer so took it (part of my new "try and say yes" philosophy).

If anyone is interested in any, make an offer!