If you hang out on domain forums, you might have heard that one way to judge the value of a domain name is whether it passes the “radio test”.  Simply, this means, if you heard the domain on the radio, would it be easy to understand and then visit if the domain isn’t spelt out for you.

There are many things to consider.  Homonyms, words that are pronounced the same but have different spellings or meanings, like: there and their, air and heir, whole and hole, and so on, may make a domain fail the radio test.  Some words may be more problematic to English speakers in the USA vs the UK, for example, because of differences in regional pronunciation.

Domains with hyphens are also problematic since you have to clearly pronounce the hyphen when saying the domain. Multiple hyphens or hyphens in odd places are particularly troublesome.

New TLDs may cause confusion if the listener doesn’t know that .whatever is the end of the domain.  They might just add a .com at the end when they are trying to visit the site.

If a domain doesn’t pass the radio test, it doesn’t mean it’s worthless, but there may be fewer buyers interested in it.  And there are of course exceptions to every rule. Flickr.com did quite well with a domain that fails the radio test and air.com is still worth a lot of money.

DomainAgents is a negotiation platform, but if you’re new to the site or have never used it, you may be wondering: well what does that mean?

DomainAgents is a neutral place where buyers and sellers can negotiate securely and privately.  They can trade as many counter offers to reach a deal as they need to and our staff acts as a liaison if either party needs any help.  If the one party stops responding, we’ll work to re-engage them in the negotiation.  Once an agreement is reached, we help make sure the escrow and transfer process is as smooth as possible.

Buyers come to us and buy a credit to engage our services and use the platform, so in some ways we act as a domain buyer brokerage, but we allow the buyer and seller to negotiate directly.  We share part of the credit revenue with the seller if they make a counter, so they are compensated for their time.  That’s part of how we guarantee that we will present the buyer’s offer to the owner.  You can’t reach a deal if you can’t get both parties to the table after all.

The goal of the negotiation platform is to make the process work for both buyers and sellers.  We’ve helped tens of thousands of buyers and sellers with millions of dollars of domain transactions.  We’ve built, tested, and rebuilt the platform to deliver the best domain negotiating experience possible.