2008 Domain Name Market Study — Sedo Releases
Sales volume up, average price down in 2008.
Sedo has released its 2008 Secondary Domain Market Study (pdf), and it provides a wealth of information regarding the domain name aftermarket.
The domain brokerage firm sold over $77 million in domains in 2008, a slight increase of 8% over 2007.
Although overall sales revenue was up, the firm saw weakness in the fourth quarter. The firm sold 9,727 domain names in Q2 (the peak for the year) and only 8,754 in Q4.
As stated by the firm, the average selling price of domains decreased markedly in 2008, with .com prices falling in half from $5,016 in 2007 to $2,512 in 2008. The overall price for all top level domains fell 21% to $2,098. Although I have no doubt that sales prices have fallen, averages are very misleading. It may be weakness of million dollar sales that drag the entire average down. What matters to most domain investors is the median sales price.
47% of domains transferred by Sedo were .com, followed by Germany’s .de at 17%. .Net, .info, .uk, .org, and .eu each accounted for 4% of sales. I’m surprised to see .eu on the list as sales volume seems to be weak.
