Jeff Mottle

So a client of mine from way back contacts me to do their web work even though I no longer do production work. This week they inquired about obtaining a certain domain so I had it appraised and started the process of inquiring about having it purchased.

In doing so I thought it would be interesting to have www.cgarchitect.com appraised as well. Was only $15, so I figured why not. Today I received the appraisal and apparently it's not as valuable as I thought. The domain name, not the site. The appraised value of CGA is between $76 and $198. I guess it's not all that surprising as the name itself means nothing to anyone but our niche market, but still...$76...come on!

I've been asked many times in the past through random emails if I would sell the domain name, but I've always told them to make me an offer and it would not be cheap. None have replied and I guess I now know why.

Anyway, thought I'd post a bit of randomness on a Friday. And no I won't sell you CGA for $200.

__________________
Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

vizwhiz

i bid $201 (million) but i might have To borrow a LOT (all) of This
Jeff, CGA is priceless, but for everything else There is MasterCard

i do all my 3d/cg learning online and by Trial by error

randy

Justin Hunt

It doesn't supprise me at all, who are the people doing the appraisal. Are they in any way connected or interested in this industry. You are right in that it is a niche market, but a rapidly expanding one. Just look at the attendance at SIGGRAPH this year and the amount of arch vizzers represented there.

When you get as big as UTube or myspace then I'll put in my bid of $77

friend of mine, who has his own archviz company said that his main long term goal was to sell the company for a fortune and retire at 36. What went through my head was, Who would buy a architectural Visualisation company?

JHV

psv1

Ne sutor ultra crepidam!
sad but true

wda

Append the domain.....

CGArchitectviagra.com should be worth a bit more. May not attract the individuals you may want, though.....LOL

__________________
From the calm seas.... Into the CG Fire...... Into the Heart of Texas

brianzajac

From my years in web design, I've learned that domains mean nothing except for commonplace words. For example, I'm betting that "jewelry.com" will have quite some value because people buy jewelry. On the other hand, how much would "bluenile.com" be? Well, for domain name purposes, not much. But, the site & content "bluenile.com" provides is woth millions. And, if you think it's good for SEO purposes, you're dead wrong. Google & the other guys couldn't care less about the domain name. That's one of the reasons why "bluenile.com" does well in search results - great content. And, ladies & gents, that's why "cgarchitect.com" does well - great content & connectivity with others in the same field.

__________________
3DAS
3D Architectural Solutions
Brian Zajac
http://www.3DAS.com
(941) 953-3DAS (3327)

vizwhiz

Jeff

you should sell some 'stock' options, etc
$1 or $10 a piece i will buy one or even Two

(what do we get when we buy stock options anyways?)

**

hey i know The guy who owns The Blue Nile restaurant in Tempe AZ
great Ethiopian food, and he knows Abebe Bikila, The famous Ethiopian

marathoner, one of my early childhood all-Time heroes
he ran bare-footed in 64' or ?? and won by a mile or so

randy

Ernest Burden

Ethiopia has only one famous person? Don't tell the Rastas that, they might get vexed.

Is the Nile blue anywhere along its length? I'm currently rendering a set of towers on the banks of the Nile in Cairo and thinking about what color to make the water. With all that silty flooding it wouldn't be blue.

I decided I wanted acmedigital.com but didn't have to buy it off its previous owner, just paid one of the registry companies to grab it the moment it was available after it expired--the guy didn't renew it.

Jeff, be glad you don't have a 'desirable/valuable' domain. Did you read about the illegal grab via forgery, then stolen millions, maybe even a murder plot over sex.com? Its nice that those of us that use CGA value it, but no-one else really does.

__________________
Ernest Burden III
AcmeDigital
architectural rendering

Koper

just googled architectural visualization and cgarchitect.com came 3rd.

the first two both are viz componies, cool work but one have tooo much flash animation.

also searched Architect & Visualize individually and cgarchitect didn't show up. A freind of mine is bussy googling up his site to get it in the top ten for when searched on google and he is getting there.

think the value might go up when it shows up as the first option when searched on different search engines??

brianzajac

Search engine rankings modify everyday for every search engine. However, if we're looking at it as a 'per-page' ranking, it's not showing up on the 1st. But, it's showing up on the pages after that.

What the focus should really entail is the number of times the term has been searched & where they're coming from (basically, making the visitor valid to CGArchitect). Here's a great tool I use to see how many people are searching for that word: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/su...ion&country=us (note if it doesn't work, just enter "architectural visualization"). Take a look at the Overture results - those are results queried from Yahoo's engine. So, in this case, it is receiving traffic. From there, you'll need to look at the search engine statistics for the CGArchitect website & determine how many people searched for that term, who they are (might be human, might be a search engine spider), and how long they typically stay on. Finally, and most importantly, you would need to gauge how many signups you did over the month & ask the user how they came to the site. This is easy to do: on the sign-up form, just ask how they saw the site (use a description box & not a drop-down box - you would be amazed at the results you get!).

I know this might be a bit long-winded, but there's so much to search engine marketing that people don't understand. I hope some of this helps.

__________________
3DAS
3D Architectural Solutions
Brian Zajac
http://www.3DAS.com
(941) 953-3DAS (3327)