$600-$750: Median Domain Selling Price
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 since 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 ought to expect $100 for their domains.
Sedo CEO Tim Schumacher talked regarding 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 regarding $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.
Reglike conducted analysis of Afternic’s noted 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.
