Information from Sedo, along with an Afternic sales analysis, reveals that the typical domain name purchase is under $1,000.
It’s always bothered me that domain name aftermarkets reveal “average” sale prices for domains. Averages do not represent typical domain sales because they include outliers like Vodka.com, which sold for $3M. So if a domain seller sells 100 domains for $100 each and one domain for $3M, then the “average” domain sale price is nearly $30,000. But domain sellers shouldn’t expect $30,000 — they should expect $100 for their domains.
Sedo CEO Tim Schumacher talked about average sales prices at the ICANN meeting in Lisbon, Portugal on Sunday. But he also revealed Sedo’s median sales price, and it tells a different story. The average sales price is about $2,000, but the median price is around $600. The median is the middle point at which half of domain sales are above the amount and half are below the amount.
Domain Name Wire conducted analysis of Afternic’s reported sales from 2006 and found similar numbers. The average sales price was $1,665 but the medial sales price was $750. (These numbers do not include sales that buyers or sellers requested not be disclosed.)
The message isn’t that domain values are low, but that sellers need to understand what’s really going on in the market. As Ron Jackson points out in his sales charts at DNJournal, the top sales are exactly that. They do not represent “typical” sales. The “typical” domain name sale is under $1,000.
Andrew in the same article Buydomains talks about their average sale being around $2k.
\”We think that roughly $2,000 is roughly the ASP of the current market. And we don\’t think it\’s going to go up that much.\”
Adam, that makes sense for a median (assuming that might be what BD is referring to?) given the quality of their domains. On the flip side the median sales price at DNforum is probably $50 or so
I believe the average would be even lower for TDNAM and SnapNames markets.
I just reread the Buy Domains comments from the ICANN meeting. They refer to the “average” sale price being around $2k, but I think they’re referring to their median sale price. Interesting comments from Name Media (Buy Domains) as they focus on this price range. They have some larger sales but they’re really looking for small and medium size businesses for buyers.
Jason, TDNAM is definitely lower; snapname’s median is probably lower but its average is probably rather strong.
Both are too general measures and thus, practically useless. You need to first find clusters of similar domain names, and then find the price (average, median) and the standard deviation for each cluster. Moreover, you can also statistically analyze price increases/decrease within clusters. Analysis shows that not all price clusters have appreciated in value.
The above methodology has already been publicly available for a while, should you be interested.
Is there anywhere that shows average/median domain name sales prices by category. It would be intersting to see the trends here.
It would be nice to also know the Mode & a standard deviations to get the full picture.