i own a domain site ppiusa.com, that i no longer use. someone seems to be interested in purchasing it, and has asked how much i want for it. how do i go about determining value? anyone have a feeling for value? i did not consider it to be a particularly special domain.

Just for the heck of it I Googled 'Domain Name Broker' and didn't like what I saw. If you think the domain really has value maybe you ought to get some kind of professional involved, like a lawyer or the equivalent of Ari Gold on Entourage. They'd probably want to take a percentage, which is ultimately in your best interest IMO.

Several years ago a former client bought the domain Florist.com for a million dollars. Not much later, he sold it to the current owners for a very hefty profit. To you the domain might not seem too special. Be sure to get what it's worth.

It would probably depend on who wants it and why. If it is the People for Progress in India - USA, a non-profit, they probably won't want to pay too much. If it is an acronym for the next hot gadget from Apple, then you can probably get a bundle for it.

Any idea who is looking at it?

eBay sells domain names. You can put it up on eBay and see what bids you get.

i do not. however, the initials of my company was PPI. there are a lot of ppi's and only one ppi.com, and one ppi.net. i could not get those.

seems i own ppiusa. com&net, and ppiusa.org is available for the taking.

It is worth whatever someone is willing to pay. There's no other way to figure out what it is worth than to start negotiating. It is a short name and that makes it generally more valuable than longer ones, but otherwise it is hard to know for sure.

Find out who it is that is interested.

Depending on who it is, you could also flip the question and ask what they're willing to pay. They're going to hit you with their low number and perhaps even try to justify the cost. However, there were a couple times when I did this with a high value domain and the potential buyer offered something in the low 4 digits on a domain worth high 5 to low 6 digits -- the buyer knew it -- but the buyer was testing the waters to see if I knew the true value as someone not knowing much about the value may let it go thinking they're getting a quick couple thousand, but it in some cases it can't hurt.

I've bought and sold domains myself anywhere from $100 to $250,000. Your one word domains with a meaning will typically have a good value. Even a domain with one or two letters of significance and an important word (where the two combined have a meaning - easy to remember) can fetch a pretty penny. For example, ireport.com went for $1 million USD.

You can always get an appraisal from someone like afternic, but there are things appraisal's don't consider such as who the potential buyer is or if there is a specific demand for the name.

I'd ask yourself, is it worth anything to you at the moment? Any plans on using it again or any potential value on your side? If you have no plans, I'd then ask myself what would I be happy with? ...but do find out who the buyer is and establish a benchmark for what it's likely worth.

Good luck!

SDF is quite right.

If the potential purchaser is a large organization and their plans to launch a product or service using your initials is something they are wishing to brand on the net with a domain as close to the name as possible, then they would of course be willing to pay much more than someone who hopes to start a business out of their garage.

Additionally, if you have a good name, hold on to it until you get the right offer.

I can't comment specifically on the OP's domain, but it is good to know the buyer and have an idea of why they want it.

Is the buyer a large corporation with millions in sales and the domain goes along with their business plan, or is the buyer someone who likes the domain but plans on using it for basic site out of their home.

In the end, it is what the buyer is willing to pay, but if you have something of value, the first potential buyer may not be the one to offer the true, potential value of the domain. Sometimes you have to sit on it. Another buyer may come along or an old potential buyer may come along a month later and make a higher offer.

Find out the demand, importance, know your buyer, and if it is a company, do your research. Also watch out for larger companies going to a smaller business, contact network admin, or other 3rd party to grab a higher value site. Sometimes you can connect the two by doing your homework.

Best of luck to the OP.

OT - where is the best place to go to register domain names cheaply. I remember godaddy.com on super bowl ads. Are they the cheapest? Or reliable?

I have found godaddy to be very reliable, their customer service fairly responsive (via email in usually 12 hours, and unless something has changed, U.S.-based reps via phone who are usually helpful), but their interface to be way more complex and non-intuitive than necessary.

I use namecheap.com for the bulk of my domain registrations.

I can't comment on customer service as I've never had to call them. However, I've not had any problems with their website and interface.

The bulk of my domains are there, but i don't use their name servers for most domains.

Have also registered a couple domains via bluehost.com -- bluehost.com is a large web hosting company; while I haven't gone live with any of my domains there, I found their customer service to be extremely helpful.

As far as web hosting goes, I'm looking to move some stuff over to bluehost that would be best suited for the type of service / environment they provide.

Otherwise, I have a couple Apache servers that I run as I've been keeping my hosting "in house" - I have a couple here, and also in data centers.

With data centers, I rent the rack space and they provide a static IP with high-speed internet connectivity. Each has pro's and con's as I must maintain my equipment in the data center and physical access is limited; the servers are highly redundant between power supplies, RAID hard disk setup, items such as hard disks are hot swappable, etc.

Lot of different options - if you're looking for domain reg + hosting, it may be easier to pick one company that offers both, but look for quality web hosting and pricing that meets your needs.

I have used joker.com for about the last 10 years. They only do DNS registration and administration stuff - no hosting or email or anything lik that. They're based in Switzerland. I think I usually pay about $12/year for .com domains. They offer free email forwarding, url redirects, etc. Website is pretty clean and intuitive, though their email forwarding is sometimes a little slow.