NameSilo

analysis Domain Sales Strong in First Half of 2019

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The first half of 2019 has been great for domain sales with the rate of NameBio-reported sales up 28% and the average price up almost 17% compared to full year 2018. The sales rate is up in all three major legacy extensions .com, .net, and .org, although average prices are down in .net and almost unchanged in .org.

The rate of sales in .ai is strongly up. Several other country code extensions (such as .co and .de) continue to have high average sales prices. The .me extension is up in both sales rate and average price.

Sales in new domain extensions taken as a whole are down just over 30%, although the average price is up slightly to about $4000.


Sales Numbers

I used the NameBio database to look at how the rate of domain sales in the first half of 2019 compares with 2018. There are possible seasonal variations so we would not expect the full year to necessarily follow the trend of the first 6 months.
  • In the first 6 months of 2019, there were about 53,200 NameBio-recorded sales across all extensions, compared to 82,900 in all of 2018. If that rate continues for the rest of 2019, we will see a year-over-year increase of 28%.
  • Since .com dominates the aftermarket, the .com-only numbers are also very healthy: about 46,000 sales in the first half of 2019 compared to 70,000 in all of 2018, or an increase of just over 31%.
  • The number of sales in .net is up almost 22% with 1,482 sales in the first 6 months of 2019 compared to 2,432 for the full year 2018.
  • Sales in .org are up by almost 23% to 2,651 sales in the first half of 2019.
  • Sales in the .info extension are down 5% with just 123 sales in the first 6 months compared to 259 in 2018.
  • Sales across all new domain extensions combined are down 31% in the first half of 2019 with 507 sales in the six month period compared to 1,474 in all of 2018.
  • If we look at all country code extensions, the number of sales is up almost 12%, but that hides some huge differences across individual country codes.
  • The sales rate is down in the .cc, .co, .de, and .io domain extensions, but it's up in .ai, .me, and .tv.
  • While there were 340 sales in the .io extension in the first half of 2019, the rate is down over 26% compared to the 921 sales in the extension in all of 2018.
  • While .ai reporting changes may partially account for the difference, the rate of sales in the .ai extension is substantially up (more than 375%) with 745 sales in just the first 6 months of 2019 compared to 311 in all of 2018.

Average Prices

I also took a look at how average prices during the first six months of 2019 compared to 2018.
  • Across all extensions, the average NameBio-reported domain sales price was about $1545 in the first six months of 2019, up almost 17% from the 2018 average of $1323.
  • If we look at .com alone, the increase is even more significant with a 26% increase from $1582 compared to $1256 in 2018.
  • Average .net prices are down almost 22% from $722 compared to $924 in 2018.
  • There is almost no change in average .org prices at $844 during the first six months of 2019.
  • Perhaps surprisingly, average .info extension sales prices are up by 21% to $787, although the number of sales is limited.
  • The new domain extensions saw the average sales price up slightly to $4020 from $3878 in 2018. Notably, many of the higher-priced sales were sold directly from the registry that owns the domain extension ("registry sales").
  • If we look at country-code extensions in total, the average price is down almost 17%, although the average is still strong at $1923, higher than the major legacy extensions.
  • While the number of sales in the .ai extension has increased substantially, the average price in .ai is down 62% to $531 compared to $1416 in 2018.
  • While .co prices are down slightly in the first six months of 2019, the $2272 average price is still higher than most other extensions.
  • The .de extension remains strong, with an average price of $5170 in the first 6 months of 2019 compared to $4576 in 2018.
  • While it seems to have largely passed under the domain radar, the .me domain extension is having a good 2019. Not only is the rate of sales in the extension up more than 21%, but the average price is also up by almost 55% to $1504 in the first half of 2019 compared to $972 in 2018.

Sales Data

I used the NameBio database for these comparisons. It's worth noting that not all venues report to NameBio (e.g. Afternic, DAN/Undeveloped, Efty sites, and most private sales are not reported). Also, even though I used data for sales $100 and up, there will still be a mix of wholesale and retail transactions in the sample. Furthermore, some sales are reported well after the sale, and occasionally a sale may be removed, so the precise numbers will vary slightly depending on when you access the database. The lower-than-average prices and higher-than-usual sales numbers (rate) that we are seeing in .ai may reflect more domainers investing in domain names related to artificial intelligence.


What Is Your Experience?

Please share in the comments section your own experience on how good the first half of 2019 has been.

Also, do you have plans to change your domain investing strategy as a result of the trends you are seeing? For example, are you encouraged by the strong sales and prices in the first half of 2019 and thinking about increasing your domain investments, or are you changing your weighting in different country-code extensions?




Hat tip to Michael Sumner (@Michael), CEO of NameBio, for creating and maintaining the domain sales data resource used for this analysis.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
That was a great research. Thanks
 
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NameBio not having Afternic/GoDaddy data is a big negative IMO. Majority of sales are through Afternic or GoDaddy Auctions (non-expiring). That's where most of my sales come from.
 
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NameBio not having Afternic/GoDaddy data is a big negative IMO. Majority of sales are through Afternic or GoDaddy Auctions (non-expiring). That's where most of my sales come from.

Just curious as to whether you place them on the 7 day public auction or feature them? I've not had a lot of success on GodadGo (probably due to my strategy to say politely) and wondering what the secret is.
 
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Just curious as to whether you place them on the 7 day public auction or feature them? I've not had a lot of success on GodadGo (probably due to my strategy to say politely) and wondering what the secret is.
Buy It Now with Make an Offer option.

Mark
 
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It's great to have such stats, helps us fill in the picture. I wonder if you have country code breakdowns? I wonder because this year a couple of unexpected extensions sold for us.

(sorry to be looking for more after your hard work!)
 
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I'm curious what the results would be for the 1st half of 2019 compared with the 1st half of 2018?
 
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You are a valuable asset of domaining community @Bob Hawkes . Thanks for all the work.
 
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Well coming up to month 17 and still never had a sale......How do I check that there isn't some kind of black mark against me or my IP address?...Gary

It could be due to domain sales being heavily biased to being a numbers game combined with luck (imo).

Re black-mark IP, that's not relevant if parked, and its called Fail-Listed or Clean which status can be easily checked at some of the parking providers.
 
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I wonder if you have country code breakdowns?
I did not do all country codes separately for the analysis but here are the data for those I did (and the total for all country codes in top line).
CCFirstHalf2019.jpg

The first column after TLD gives the number of sales in the first half of 2019 and the next in the total of 2018. The next column gives the percentage increase or decrease in the rate. For example the rate of sales in .co is down about 21%. After that the next two columns give the average prices in USD for first six months of 2019 and 2018, followed by the percentage increase or decrease that 2019 is compared to 2018. The final column is a total sales volume number.

While they would be included in the top line all cc, I did not separately look at other country code extensions such as .us or the European ones.

Bob
 
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I'm curious what the results would be for the 1st half of 2019 compared with the 1st half of 2018?
Yes, that would be a more meaningful comparison, i agree. It would not be hard to do for the small number TLDs, but for things like .com and all TLDs it is not easy to extract from NameBio (as far as I can see) because of the huge dataset.

I do plan to do a similar analysis to this one at the end of the year comparing for an entire year the various TLDs, and that will not be susceptible to possible influences of some months being stronger.

Bob
 
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This is great information. Great to see dot-com up. I'm surprised by the newG performance.

Wonderful work @Bob Hawkes !
 
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Great analysis Bob as always.thanks for sharing.
 
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Thank you so much :xf.smile:
 
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Is the recent $30m sale included in the dot com sales total? That would be 1 or 2 year's sales for some venues.
 
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Is the recent $30m sale included in the dot com sales total? That would be 1 or 2 year's sales for some venues.
I took the data on July 2/3 so yes it was included. Your question emphasies an important point, however: average prices can be hugely influenced by a few big sales. For example if that one voice sale was excluded both .com and all TLDs average price would be down in first half 2019, instead of significantly up, compared to the 2018 data.

I have plans for a future report that looks at just how strongly influenced the average price is by a handful of high value sales.

Thanks again for the question.

Bob
 
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Someone earlier asked about a comparison with the first half of 2019 vs the first half only of 2018. If I do that for the new gTLDs there were 507 sales in first 6 months of 2019 vs 636 for the first 6 months of 2019. So the rate of sales (as number of sales) is still down when that comparison is done, but it is down by just over 25% instead of about 31% as reported here when we look at the entire year of 2018 as the comparison.
Bob
 
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thank you Bob!
 
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Your question emphasies an important point, however: average prices can be hugely influenced by a few big sales. For example if that one voice sale was excluded both .com and all TLDs average price would be down in first half 2019, instead of significantly up, compared to the 2018 data.

If you;re going to exclude the "bottom" of the amounts (the sub $100 sales) then you probably need to drop a similar number of the high-end amounts - to get more life-like numbers throwing out the top and bottom 5% for example.
 
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Thanks for this amazing analysis to create discussion!
 
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