1. Sedo's so-called valuator is a joke, you should hear how hard I laugh when I add names to Sedo and I see those "suggestions", they're way out there and all are to inflate your domain price, I don't recall seeing too many suggestions to list a name for $60 when it's a $600 name
I agree that the Sedo pricing tool is erratic, but NOT that it produces inflated prices on average. Like an experienced real estate agent, the Sedo tool is (or ought to be) attempting to set prices that will maximize turnover, and their profits are won by competing for listings, not by eking out a better price for the seller.
I have priced some listings at 50% to 100% over the pricing tool, and they have sold. Conversely, many that were priced via the tool, or for less, have not sold.
Since human experts can't agree, why should we expect an automation tool to be any better? So in sum, I think Sedo's tool is an honest attempt to set a price at which a buyer and seller might be willing to transact.
That said, there are some exceptions. The biggest exception is low-value domains. Sedo's new pricing algorithm has a minimum of $299 assigned to all domains. The old pricing algorithm had a minimum of $99.
Another pattern is that Sedo's tool tends to overweigh the keyword, and underweigh the extension and the letter/word-count, IMO.
Also, Sedo's tool overrates meaningful words that are not great businesses; but Sedo's tool has an excellent sense of the value of brand-names; while Estibot underrates great words and great brand names if they are not already frequent product-search words with high ad-bids. It is as if Estibot is catering to domainers seeking parking income rather than resale, while Sedo is serving businesses looking for an online brand identity.
For example, I recently sold HealthyFresh.com at Sedo for the $1,295 price set by the estimation tool, whereas Estibot estimated it at $230. On the other hand, Sedo's automated tool set TrainDirectory.com and DailyWeb.net at over $10,000 each, when IMO a realistic Sedo sale price for either is more like $500 to $900. I can readily imagine a mass-market product (a smoothie or other beverage, an air freshener, or a feminine hygiene product) named HealthyFresh; it's harder to see how to make a big business out of the other two.
In the old days, Estibot was habitually much higher than the Sedo pricing tool; now the reverse seems usually true. I will believe that two perfectly honest and reasonably competent systems will have been achieved when each estimator is higher and lower than the other about 50% of the time!
In sum, if you have business domains in major extensions that Sedo's tool values at $349 or more, and your goal is to sell rather than hoard for clicks, it's not a bad place to start; you are neither thieving nor getting royally screwed. Start at the tool's suggested price; if it doesn't sell in a year at Sedo, drop the price. (I am assuming that you are fairly passive, as I am; that you are not full-time researching and contacting potential buyers, which is a practical impossibility if you have very large numbers of $xxx domains.)
If you use Sedo and Estibot both, and you always set pricing at the higher of the two, you may feel good about "not leaving money on the table", but you'll flip fewer domains. If the goal is to flip them, you could always set at the lesser of the two estimates, and then drop prices as needed. But develop your own judgement over time.
3. I think it was Adam who said on one of his theArtoftheName.com videos that .US is the only ccTLD its nationals actually run away from (sorry, Adam if it wasn't you after all lol), and I agree. Most .US names sell really low or just don't sell, they should do away with the "restriction" that a .US registrant must live in the US (which is not really enforced by any registrar to begin with) and maybe then .US regs and sales will pick up
I recently sold TaxiDriver.us at Sedo for $390, just a bit over the Sedo tool's recommendation of $370.
I like .us for development if the keyword is political or for protest. For example: a libertarian rant at fascism.US; Andrews Air Force Base news at AAFB.us; blogging at justicesystem.us, etc. In fact, I think .USA would be a much more successful TLD than .US even though it would not be a ccTLD.
I also like .us for development if it's a memorable hack, such as mend.us for a fix-it site.
.us for purely local businesses (e.g., pianorepair.us, artsupply.us, movingvanrentals.us, has not taken off; and I wouldn't consider it for my own business unless the .com is already developed by a strong corporation whose industry differs from mine, so that I would not lose returning customers to them.
