Mike Mann’s crowdpricing domain appraisal system will have 4 appraisers

Mike Mann shared some details on how the upcoming DomainMarket.com appraisal system will work. He calls it a “crowdpricing domain appraisal system”.

About 10 days ago he announced that the appraisal system would be using 3 appraisers, costing $88 per name, but now he is up to 4 appraisers with no known price.

Here is what he wrote today on his Facebook account:

“Will use 4 appraisers per domain, out of around 25 of the world’s best in the pool in our system; each can log in and appraise any time there are names in queue. Will keep adding and removing appraisers based on their skills.
The customer will get a report with the final appraised value and any notes from appraisers, which will equal the average of the middle two appraisals.
Client will also be given a price range they can consider listing their name within our brokerage; the lowest and highest appraisal create the floor and ceiling. Wont be able to list outside that range.
Appraisers will be given a questionnaire for each domain to help guide the appraisal, and links to some data sources.
The client will be asked to provide anything they want to help us including: traffic data, any past info or offers, prices they paid, and dates.
This will be the only valid domain appraisal system ever and will remain so until the competitors copy it.
They think they know it all so could take a real long time. Ch ching.”

He also asked a question today on how to charge for the appraisals:

“Do you think we should charge them based on appraised price? if it appraises to $0 charge $20, if it appraises to $1M charge $200 ?”

He shared how much an appraiser would make: “Domain appraisers on our new crowdpricing platform will get $15 per domain x100?/day”

I don’t think I agree with this appraisal system. It is too expensive. An appraisal system needs to be very cheap and include a lot of domains. Otherwise it is not so useful. But then again who experienced domainer would do it cheaply?

I sent out some comments to Mike regarding this.

I told him: “There is no such thing as an accurate appraisal. An “accurate” appraisal would only be useful for a court or a loan. Appraisals don’t sell domains.” Mike told me I am “wrong”.

I then told him that “Appraisals might help your model with 250,000 BIN names. You are playing the odds. People that want to submit 1 of their best names will not be helped with this. They just want to get as much as possible.”

Mike told me: “The appraisal is as much as possible“.

I finally told him: “No, it is not. The appraisal price is more like a conservative price range that can be lower or a lot higher depending on the buyer. Also this range can change any minute depending on circumstances. You re-appraise your names all the time. What will the other people do?”

You can see my 4 previous detailed posts about Mike Mann’s new service here, here, here and here.