Editorial Policy

Why a brokerage publishes editorial standards

We earn a commission when a domain changes hands. That means every piece of valuation guidance on this site is written by a party with a financial interest in you completing a transaction. There is no way to write our way out of that. The only honest option is to state it plainly, then show the working behind anything we assert so you can check it rather than take it on faith.

Domain buyers are routinely asked to wire five and six figures for an asset they cannot inspect, on the word of a stranger. In that setting, an unsourced number is worth nothing. This page is the standard we hold our own material to, and it covers everything published under Insights and on our blog.

Who writes this material

Articles are written by the brokers and advisors who run client mandates: the same people who research ownership, open outreach, negotiate price and manage the escrow and transfer steps. Guidance about negotiation comes from people who conduct negotiations, not from a separate content team writing about work they have never done.

We do not accept guest posts, sponsored placements or paid links, and no third party pays to appear in or influence anything published here. You can read more about the firm on our About page.

The conflict, stated directly

We are paid on transactions. Guidance that encourages you to buy is guidance that benefits us. That is a structural conflict, and describing it does not remove it. What we can do is constrain how we write so the conflict has fewer places to operate.

How we manage it

Valuations are evidenced, not asserted. A price range we give you is supported by named comparable sales you can look up yourself. If we cannot point to comparables, we say the range is weakly supported rather than dress up a guess.
We advise clients not to proceed when the price does not justify it. Walking away is a normal outcome of an acquisition mandate, and we say so during the engagement rather than after you have committed.
No article on this site exists to talk a reader into a purchase. If a piece cannot stand as useful to someone who ends up buying nothing, it does not belong here.
We do not manufacture urgency. Domains are occasionally lost to another buyer, and that is worth saying once; it is not a reason to compress your decision.

How valuation guidance is produced

A domain valuation is an estimate built from a small number of observable inputs and a large amount of judgement about a thin market. Our domain valuation guidance sets out the method in more detail; the inputs we work from are these.

What we look at

Comparable sales. Recorded prices for domains of similar length, extension, structure and sector. Comparables are the load-bearing input, and a valuation with no usable comparables is a much weaker document than one with several.
Extension and length. The registry the name sits in, character count, whether the term is one word or several, and whether it survives being read aloud over a phone call.
Traffic and type-in history. Whether the domain receives direct navigation, whether it has been developed before, and what its prior use might have left behind.
Renewal and holding costs. The annual registry and registrar cost, premium renewal pricing where a registry applies it, and what holding the name will cost you over the period you intend to keep it.

What is genuinely unknowable

Some of the largest determinants of what a domain will actually sell for cannot be observed from outside. You cannot know what the current holder paid, what they owe, whether they are under any pressure to sell, or whether a second buyer with a strategic reason to own the name will appear during your negotiation. Sale prices for private transactions are frequently never published at all, so the comparable set you are reasoning from is incomplete by construction.

A valuation is a range

We deliver valuations as ranges, with the evidence for the top and bottom of the range shown. Anyone quoting you a single precise figure for a domain is selling something, whether that is the domain itself, a valuation product or an appraisal certificate. Treat a confident number with no comparables behind it as a marketing claim rather than an analysis.

How we handle claims about our own work

Client mandates are confidential. Buyers engage us specifically so that their identity and their interest in a name stay out of the open, and that protection is worth nothing if we later use the transaction as promotional material. The practical consequence is uncomfortable and we would rather state it than work around it: we cannot show you the transactions behind any claim we make about our own record.

Because we cannot evidence such claims, we do not make them. You will not find transaction counts, total value brokered, success rates, average savings, client testimonials or client logos anywhere on this site. Those figures are trivially easy to type and impossible for you to verify, which is exactly why they are so common in this industry.

A testimonial falls under the same rule. We cannot name a client without breaking the confidentiality they engaged us for, and a glowing quote attributed to nobody demonstrates nothing, so we publish none.

What we offer instead are mechanisms you can check before any money moves:

Payment and transfer run through a licensed escrow service, so funds are not held by us and are released only when the transfer completes.
Valuations are delivered in writing with the comparable sales they rest on, so you can audit the reasoning rather than trust the conclusion.
Engagements are covered by a written non-disclosure agreement, and our approach to buyer anonymity is described in full under confidentiality.
The sequence of an engagement, from brief through to transfer, is set out step by step in our process.

If a mechanism we describe is not what you experience in practice, that is a factual error on this site and we want to hear about it.

Sourcing

Claims of fact are sourced to material you can reach without going through us:

Public sales databases for comparable transaction prices. Where a figure comes from a reported sale, we identify the domain so you can look up the record yourself.
Registry and registrar documentation for anything about transfer mechanics, auth codes, transfer locks, renewal pricing or restrictions on a particular extension. Registry policy is the authority on registry behaviour, not our recollection of it.
ICANN policy sources for transfer policy, WHOIS and registration data access, and dispute procedure including UDRP. Where a procedure has changed, we cite the current policy rather than the version we learned it under.

Claims that depend on current market conditions are dated on the page, and the date reflects when the claim was last checked rather than when the page was first written. Registry pricing, extension demand and comparable sale levels all move; a statement about them is only as good as its date. If you find an undated market claim on this site, treat it as stale and tell us.

Use of AI

We use AI tools to assist with research, first drafts and editing. We are saying so because you have no way to detect it and because a firm that conceals it is telling you something about how it handles other disclosures.

The limits we work within are straightforward. Every published piece is reviewed by a broker before it goes live, and that broker is responsible for its accuracy in the same way they would be for a document they wrote unaided. We do not publish unreviewed generated analysis. No AI output is delivered to a client as a valuation, and no comparable sale appears in our work without a human having confirmed the record exists. A generated sentence that sounds authoritative and cannot be sourced gets deleted, not softened.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, email [email protected] and describe the error. Email is our only contact channel and we reply within one business day. You do not need to be a client, and you do not need to be certain you are right before you write.

Factual errors are corrected promptly once verified. Where a correction is material, meaning it changes the substance of what a reader would take away, we note the correction on the page itself rather than edit silently and hope nobody noticed. Typographical fixes and clarifications that do not alter meaning are made without a note.

Common questions about how we work, including fees and what an engagement covers, are answered in our FAQ. If you want to discuss a specific mandate rather than a point of editorial practice, start with brokerage or write to us directly.

Editorial policy