You make some good points,
@biggie .
big sales are a headline and mainly when published, you only hear about the sale price and not much more.
when you send readers to past sales sites, all they see is sold price and not much more.
all what occurred while such names were waiting to be sold, is untold.
as well as, what was done with the domain, after it was sold.
Yes, although often the time since registration is stated, so one could compute at least renewal costs. In most of the analysis I have done of major sales, I have looked at how the name is currently used, if at all. I believe that is one of the most important things for our industry, and I am concerned that so many names that sell for significant amounts do not seem to find meaningful use. For example
this article on NamePros looked at the highest-value .org sales and how they are currently used, and in what sectors. It showed
only about half are in meaningful use.
to me, it's what feeds the hype, when there is mostly talk about 4 figure + sales.
while the majority of sales are below that, and are what keeps the ball rolling
Yes, that is why every day I publish in my daily summary the
average and median sales price, which are normally about $600 and $250 respectively - most recent was $567 average and $249 median, day before $696 average and $287 median. The mix of wholesale and retail of course make any average somewhat misleading. The median rise, it used to be about $220, probably mainly an indicator of the increase in wholesale acquisition costs.
I did do an
analysis of the breakdown of prices, of .com at least, which showed that , and that is even without Sedo showing sales below $2000 and some other places like BuyDomains not reporting their lowest value sales. That started with the following...
"Domain name sales of value $100,000 or more represented only 0.10% of all publicly-recorded .com sales in 2018, but they accounted for almost 30% of the dollar volume of sales for the year. While average sales prices can be useful, they mask the fact that most sales are at much more modest prices. The typical .com sale, at least as publicly recorded, was about $265 in 2018."
Fairly some criticized because it was a mix of two populations, wholesale and retail. But while taking that into account,
only 16% of NameBio reported .com
sales were at $1000 or above for the time period I studied.
In my mind the most important message though, even more than that a lot of names sell for $$$, is that
the vast majority of names held by domain investors today will never sell. Some new to domaining find the 1% typical sell-through rate hard to believe, but actually only retail sales, it is probably less than that.
I do take to heart that when we report major sales,
it is important to place that within a context that is the exception, most domain names sell at modest prices if at all. I am sure all who write in the domain industry can do a better job finding the right balance in reporting, and will take your criticisms to heart.
Thank you for your comments.
Bob
PS I realize I did not answer your "Why do you think it is natural." Perhaps natural was not a well-chosen word, but what I mean is when you read media, for example business media, the stories are about startups that are doing well, and far less often about those that fail. Perhaps, it is because we can learn more from success stories? This week we read about Nobel prize winning science work. 99% of scientific and technical idea do not result in significant success. It is the nature of a challenging business. It is within that context I said natural, perhaps the wrong word.