A look at Sedo’s sales, week-by-week.
Today Konstantinos Zournas over at Online Domain published an article with the provocative headline “Is Sedo Dying”?
Konstantinos published data from the most recent Sedo sales report and compared it to the same week the year before.
Last week it was 492 domains for $1.0 million compared to 545 domains for $1.6 million in the same week of 2015. He then points out:
You can instantly see that absolute value has dropped by half a million (if you take out autism.rocks that is not the norm), there are only 59 domains reported this year compared to 218 last year, sold domains are a bit down, and “buy now” listings are up.
It sets off alarm bells when someone shows so little data. And the reason for the drop in listed sales is because Sedo now only reports sales over $2,000.
Konstantinos did say he “checked many other weeks before these” in coming to his conclusion.
Are Sedo’s sales really down? Is it more than a hangover from what was probably a great Q4 thanks to China?
I charted out all of the weekly sales reports going back to the first week of January last year. For weeks that Sedo combined sales reports (e.g. two-week report after the holidays), I divided these evenly across the weeks. It also looks like Sedo didn’t send a report for one week last year, so there’s a one week gap in my numbers. Note that Sedo rounds its weekly transaction numbers, so the totals aren’t exact.
SEDO WEEKLY SALES 2015-PRESENT
It’s tough to see much of a pattern. Sales from week-to-week are quite choppy. The orange trendline shows upward movement, no doubt helped by a couple of big weeks near the end of 2015 and so far this year.
At the same time, total reported sales in the first 25 weeks this year are slightly higher than the first 25 last year — and even the last 25 of last year when Chinese demand was in full swing.
SEDO TRANSACTION VOLUME 2015-PRESENT
From a volume perspective, you can see the spike in late 2015 (thanks to three and four letter sales). You will also see that the past few months have been a bit lower than usual. Average weekly volume over the past 12 weeks has been 517 compared to 586 in the same 12 weeks the year before.
This isn’t a complete anomaly. The first 25 weeks of this year averaged 553 transactions. Last year it was 584.
The trendline is down.
I hope this data helps put Sedo’s sales in more perspective than a one week snapshot.
Now, the reality of domain name marketplaces is certainly changing. I doubt many end users go to Sedo.com to search for domains. Same with Afternic.com. There are essentially two major drivers of domain sales now:
1. People landing on a parked page
2. People seeing an exact-match syndicated listing at a domain registrar
The marketplaces that can win these two are positioned well.
The only metric that matters, is median price. I believe it’s at $500 at Sedo. At DNS it’s around the $2,500 range.
Theo, I’m skeptical of that, honestly. DomainNameSales / Uniregistry doesn’t report sales publicly, and I don’t remember seeing them publish any broad statistics either. Their data is entirely hidden, unless I’m missing something.
Sedo has been far more transparent, reporting mean and median prices, which I think are fairly representative of the domain market as a whole, regardless of venue. I’d be very surprised to see 1 website selling at a median price of $500 while another averages 5 times higher. After all, it’s much the same inventory at both.
Am I right in thinking that you’re referencing your own median sale price at DomainNameSales / Uniregistry? I’d expect your own portfolio average to be above the market average, no matter where you sell. That’s a function of domain quality, more ambitious pricing, and strong negotiation. However, we can’t extrapolate from your sales to other people’s inventory and selling habits.
The only way Sedo can increase the sales is by lowering their % of commission and bring at least some level of transparency for seller in providing basic info about the buyer. The data from which country the buyer is from doesn’t matter at all and showing such metrics is just worthless IMO.
The only way Sedo can Break Out is to give up on the silly 10M limit for Buy now designation. They are seriously behind the times in this regard. Or are they trying to push out domains on the cheap?
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist) (Domain Master http://www.UseBiz.com
Sedo has been in a steady decline since 2010 with a big drop in 2014.
More numbers tomorrow!
They reported all weeks last year. They just forgot to email a few people one week. 🙂
I asked for the report and got it.
According to this graphic through 2013, it did not decline from 2012-2013.
https://cdn.sedo.com/fileadmin/images/about_us/Sedo_Infographic_2013_Q1-Q4_UK.jpg
I wish they were still a separate public company. It would make this a lot easier.
One year of increase can’t cancel 5 years of decline.
If I add up the reports from last year I get about $68 million sales, which is in line with the 2012 and 2013 numbers.
Oh, I am only counting domain names. Not money. These are the numbers I am talking about. (more tomorrow)
Money is a lot more difficult to decipher with Sedo’s reporting and a sale like sex.com or a couple of ll.com can skew everything.
As I said in the article Sedo has a couple of brokers that do most of the work and account for most of the big sales that never appear on reports and keep the revenue up. Once these are gone, game over.
They need to lower the $60 charge to match Flippa $9 fees, and get rid of $10000 max limit. They should work on 247 including Saturday and Sunday during domain/ fund transfer period …..
They should have instant auction listing on website once we paid fees on credit card, rather than waiting 2 working days for credit card clearance. GoDaddy is excellent in instant auction listing once check out with credit card.
They should waive valuation fees and charges on listing over $10000. Or they should get rid of $10000 limit. I can list over $10000 limit at Afternic , DNS, Namejet, Flippa without valuation fees…..
Sedo has a penchant for proclaiming their vaunted Valuation system is proof that their decision to limit Buy Now designation is limited to 10,000$. This is nothing but an attempt to cap out or limit upside potential for Domain Valuations. If we look at the true valuations on .COM Asset groups they are far outpacing Sedos rediculous attempt at lowering the bar on valuations so as to make it easier to sell .COM Asset Properties on the CHEAP! Whats up with that? SEDO you need to follow .COM Centric valuations NOT Google-Centric Psuedo Valuations. You are losing market share, wake up ! Domainers are shunning you , as they are getting wise to what real valuations are as opposed to Fraudulent Google-Centric Valuations, which you are mimicking.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist) (Domain Master http://www.UseBiz.com)
The limit has been changed to $50k if I am not mistaken.
I have all domains listed on Sedo and DNS. I cant remember the last Sedo sale.
Wherever you park, that’s where a disproportionate share of inquiries / offers will come from.
Some buyers still do visit the market place itself in order to search for domains to buy. For instance, I have 1 domain right now where the buyer has made simultaneous mid $x,xxx offers at both Afternic and Sedo. My domain is only parked at 1 of the 2 platforms, obviously. Yet the buyer still goes to the other.
And that situation – of having parallel offers at both Sedo and Afternic – has arisen for me more than once this year alone.
The biggest problem Sedo and most other platforms have is that they have no real distribution network, I think they are mainly reliant on park pages to produce sales, that isn’t something they control.
Since they lost Godaddy I’m surprised Sedo sales have held up as well as they have. Sedo (and others) are lucky that Godaddy’s aftermarket platform is so poorly implemented.
They have a pretty strong distribution network. Just not as strong as Afternic because of GoDaddy.
I many of our domain names on sedo but im rare to use sedo as i find much better places with no % taken its a joke how much they charge even for a small sale now they havent moved with the times its stayed the same the sales i do get on sedo always work out to be non payers anyway !
true…it’s UDRP will kill domains name investing ultimately
@Supratik Basu,
As terrible a miscarriage of justice as the abusive UDRP complaints undoubtedly are, they are comparatively few in number – measured against hundreds of millions of domains registered.
Many of the misguided UDRPs (though unfortunately not all) are “kicked out of court” with a RDNH brand burned squarely onto the complainants’ forehead. Many more domains are well defended and preserved even when panelists fail to declare RDNH (reverse domain hijacking).
Of course, the unwarranted legal fees are a pain in the neck for domain owners. And the occasional loss of a valuable domain is far more disastrous.
But this kind of UDRP abuse, is not enough to crush a whole industry built on domain investment. The aftermarket involves far more money than the money being siphoned off by parasitic UDRP filings. So domaining will definitely survive just fine.
Even so, we need to peel off the leeches.
Actually, it’s the UDRP itself that’s fighting for its survival. Today I published an article here at DNW showing a 6-year decline in filings against domains in .COM and other legacy gTLDs.
Unless the UDRP can reform itself, it may one day go extinct. The policy is up for review at ICANN as we speak. Forums like WIPO and NAF, which adjudicate UDRP complaints, must find a more effective way to handle the genuine cases of cybersquatting. Brand owners are filing such complaints less and less.
main problem in UDRP is Common Law Mark…any so called Brand gets the verdict on their favor even if they don’t have any TradeMark and this is pure abuse IMHO
just right in time, pls check
http://domaingang.com/domain-law/oracle-corporation-grabs-oracl-com-domain-via-udrp/
just right in time, pls read
http://www.adrforum.com/domaindecisions/1674542.htm