Sedo today announced the results of its First Half 2014 Domain Market Study, revealing domain industry trends and changes based on transactions in its marketplace.
An infographic depicting findings from the study is available at http://bit.ly/1rMCO82.
During the first six months of 2014, Sedo powered 16,216 transactions worth a total of $35.9 million in sales.
Domain values increased year-over-year, with the mean average sales price up 17 percent to $2,214 and the median price rising 7% to $616.
The biggest trend this year has been the emergence of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs).
The highest public sale of a new gTLD domain was eat.club reaching $20,000 and the highest confidential sale reached more than $100,000.
“It’s exciting to finally start seeing new TLDs being traded and already commanding significant market value,” said Tobias Flaitz, Sedo’s CEO. “Even with this influx of new extensions, we’ve always predicted that .com domains would remain strong and the market is beginning to reflect that. We’re still early in this process and new TLDs are definitely being adopted at a much slower pace than many in the market predicted. There’s still a big need to better educate businesses and the public about the benefits of these new TLDs, and it will take some time until they’re being used by brands and corporations. But once that happens, we’ll see positive impacts for the domain industry.”
During the first half of 2014, .com retained its position as the most popular TLD, with over half of all sales (55 percent) being for a .com domain. In addition, the mean price for a .com domain reached an all-time high at $2,807, compared to $2,775 in 2011, $2,148 in 2012, $2,235 in 2013.
The popularity of Buy Now sales, where domain investors, consumers and business owners sell and purchase domains at a set price with no negotiations, continued to increase in the first half of 2014 as more end users wish to purchase domains quickly and simply. Forty-nine percent of all sales were Buy Now sales, an increase from 44 percent in 2013.
Additional Facts and Figures from Sedo’s 1H 2014 Domain Market Study:
First Quarter of 2014 was stronger than the second in terms of the number and value of sales, accounting for 9,241 transactions with a value of $19 million.
The top three public sales for the year were mm.com for $1.2 million, true.com for $350,000 and malls.com for $320,000.
The top three public domains sales under Country Code endings were kaffee.de (€100,000), mi.co.id ($60,000), and rabatkoder.dk ($36,500).
The top three public sales for domains under new gTLDs were eat.club ($20,000), jobboerse.berlin (€8,000) and print.club (€3,750).
Looking at the traditional alternatives to .com, .biz saw the biggest increase in mean price to $1,896.
Buyers appear to be willing to spend more on a domain than in the past, as the gap between price ranges narrowed over the year. Forty four percent of all sales for the year were valued at $500 or less, while domains that sold between $500 and $2,500 accounted for 40 percent of all sales. In Q2 2013, 53 percent of sales were $500 or less, and 35 percent were between $501 and $2,500.
More than half of all buyers throughout 2014 originated in Sedo’s two largest markets, the United States (36 percent) and Germany (22 percent).
