Survey: Sedo Top Online Domain Sales Site

No surprise in online domain sales category.

Once again, Sedo has taken top honors for “Best Online Domain Name Sales Site” in the annual Domain Name Wire Survey.

48% of respondents to the fourth annual survey selected Sedo as the top site, roughly equal to last year. In second place, with only 14% of the vote, were domain name forums. Here are the rankings:

1. Sedo 48%
2. Forums 14%
3. GoDaddy (TDNAM) 8%
4. SnapNames (Non-expired) 7%
5. Afternic 6%

Domain Distribution Network, eBay, and domain newsletters each received less than 2%.

There are a few things to notice about these results. First, size matters. Sedo completed over $75M worth of sales for its customers last year.

Second, forums continue to lose their luster for selling domain names. This is probably because the quality of domains listed for sale at popular forums has deteriorated. Although not as bad as eBay, buying domains on forums requires lots of sorting through sub-par domains listed as “premium”. Last year forums took 20% of the vote.

Finally, it will be interesting to see what happens with SnapNames. Although customers could sell domain names through the platform previously, in January the listing process became much easier. This resulted in a flood of listings that overwhelmed buyers. Later this year competitor NameJet will enhance its listing options. Listing on NameJet is currently limited to beta customers, but soon customers at partner registrars will be able to list domains for sale on the site. NameJet will be added as an option in this category in next year’s survey.

See more survey results here.