Escrow.com sees transaction growth yet again.
How’s the domain name market doing?
Quite well, thank you very much.
I reached out to Brandon Abbey, president of Escrow.com, to find out how business is this year.
Abbey says that Escrow.com’s transaction volume for domain names and web sites was up 15% in the first half of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. The dollar volume for these transactions was up a whopping 21%.
Keep in mind that 2011 was also a record year for the company, so the bar was high.
The increase could point to a strong market, increased Escrow.com market share, or both. I tend to think Escrow.com is also growing the overall escrow market by making it easy for people in a transaction to use an escrow services as opposed to alternatives (no escrow, lawyer escrow, contract, etc). It is grabbing a share of the market that previously didn’t use escrow to complete a transaction.
Escrow.com is taking some of the profits from these transactions and investing them in its infrastructure. Abbey says the company is completely redoing its backend systems and its customer facing web site. A few months ago it also launched a broker tool.
J says
Escrow.com is the only barometer or .com prices since almost all the best .com sales are now unreported; but they still use Escrow.com. Sedo and all other domain marketplaces are in selling leftovers business at this point.
Rob says
“Sedo and all other domain marketplaces are in selling leftovers business at this point.”
j, this is not at all surprising, not to me anyway. when these companies start whacking on a 20% or so commission even for domains sold (and truly lost!) within their automated systems then the crowds wise up and move along.
why is it that an amateur like me saw this but they did not? then again, perhaps they are one step ahead in realizing the delay in people leaving and they saw a lot of $ to be made before they implement step 2 and advertise reduced commissions again to get people back(???) maybe also they know that there will always be an abundance of people who are too complacent or fearful to price domains and negotiate themselves(???)
i removed all my domains from sedo a long time ago thanks to their underly generous parking payments and from the sales platform for their overly generous cut for themselves. any serious buyer will find the domains and contact me anyway.
escrow.com is having a great effect on the domain reseller market.