poll What % of domain sales go unreported?

I would guess around 80-90%. The vast majority of sales are likely made up of direct sales and sales via venues like GoDaddy/Afternic which no longer report sales.

Brad

A few years ago Sedo stated that 80% of their sales are private.

I knew I had read the 80% figure in a Sedo doc - here it is:
https://sedo.com/fileadmin/documents/pressdownload/Q4_2011_Domain-Market-Study-Sedo_US_1_.pdf

Top 10 Public Sales
To the right is a list that shows the top 10 public sales over Sedo’s Domain Marketplace in 2011. Over 80% of Sedo’s sales revenue during the year is private, and is not included on this list. Sales prices are in the currency that the sale took place in]

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Here is another old report - I had no idea Sedo had over 300 staff, amazing none work weekends:
http://www.equitystory.com/Download/Companies/adlink/Annual Reports/DE0005490155-JA-2010-EQ-E-00.pdf

carob said:

I knew I had read the 80% figure in a Sedo doc - here it is:
https://sedo.com/fileadmin/documents/pressdownload/Q4_2011_Domain-Market-Study-Sedo_US_1_.pdf



Here is another old report - I had no idea Sedo had over 300 staff, amazing none work weekends:
http://www.equitystory.com/Download/Companies/adlink/Annual Reports/DE0005490155-JA-2010-EQ-E-00.pdf

Click to expand...

That is Sedo only. Outside of sedo, private sellers almost never report. I'd say overall, 95%+ are unreported.

This is another poll that is built in a wrong way, limiting the choices to 50%+ max. It is a no brainer that it is over 50%.

Around 70-80% go unreported. I understand why people are against it, past sales can hinder future sales.

I once had an offer come through for $1k for a name and they said that's all they would pay because that's what it sold for in the past, many years ago. Trying to educate them otherwise was a waste of time.

Thanks for the poll, but as others have said I wish there were more high categories, such as choices of 90%+, 80-90% etc. I voted 50%+ as I am sure that the Afternic, low value Sedo and DAN easily account for much more than 50%, probably more than 80% or even 90% of sales.
Bob

There are many reasons not to report sale:

- financial/accounting
- confidentiality/NDA
- Vulture investors that will bombard your buyer with junk that they think should be of interest
- GD/other appraisals going up, if you found a good niche and increasing your cost of acquisition in future
- More competition from others going for the same pattern, also adding to the cost of acquisition.

Recons.Com said:

- Vulture investors that will bombard your buyer with junk that they think should be of interest

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This is the one and only reason why I don't report my sales anymore.

Recons.Com said:

There are many reasons not to report sale:

- financial/accounting
- confidentiality/NDA
- Vulture investors that will bombard your buyer with junk that they think should be of interest
- GD/other appraisals going up, if you found a good niche and increasing your cost of acquisition in future
- More competition from others going for the same pattern, also adding to the cost of acquisition.

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Really good summary, thanks.

One more thing I would add: if you own several similar domains in a niche, for example singular and plural, if you sell one cheap and the price is published it makes it harder to get a good price for the others.

Although GoDaddy don't report their sales, indirectly they publish many via their Domain Appraisal page because it shows related sales, presumably only from GD: https://godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal

If the price was over 25k it just says over 25k. It does not seem to show older sales - I tried a few old sales I had had on GD and they did not show up, but a recent one did.

Probably people will scrape those pages so they may limit searches or selectively publish results, which might be why we had a thread on here about someone hitting a daily limit for searches on there and wondering if in future the appraisal at GD will be a paid feature.

in terms of cash or in terms of no of sales ??????

Recons.Com said:

There are many reasons not to report sale:

- financial/accounting
- confidentiality/NDA
- Vulture investors that will bombard your buyer with junk that they think should be of interest
- GD/other appraisals going up, if you found a good niche and increasing your cost of acquisition in future
- More competition from others going for the same pattern, also adding to the cost of acquisition

Click to expand...

I would add one more reason. A professional seller may simply feel that reporting a sale would not benefit his business in any aspect. Nor would it harm in many cases, but why bother? Just to satisfy one's ego?

Most aren’t reported. I do love seeing when a name I sold is in DN Journal though!

Recons.Com said:

There are many reasons not to report sale:

- financial/accounting
- confidentiality/NDA
- Vulture investors that will bombard your buyer with junk that they think should be of interest
- GD/other appraisals going up, if you found a good niche and increasing your cost of acquisition in future
- More competition from others going for the same pattern, also adding to the cost of acquisition.

Click to expand...

Totally agreed. There is so much hassle and potential complications, that I never ever have reported any sale, and will never do. It is simply safest just to keep everything confidential between seller and buyer, unless you are 100% sure that buyer would actually enjoy you publicly saying how much ROI you did on the particular domain name you sold to him

Saying above, I certainly like to read about sales of others. But I just do not know how buyers feel when they read how some domain investors are publicly bragging at social media like: "name XXXXXXXX sold for $22 900, purchased in Jan 2017 for $7" .. I think this is extremely unprofessional towards buyers ... it can impress some fellow domain investors though, but I just personally do not see any advantages in doing so.

With all the pros and cons of reporting I'm wondering why nobody has come up with a way to do "confidential" reporting?

Is that happening already? I'm not aware of any so...

The data can be used internally for future appraisals but the exact details won't be disclosed to the public.

Yes, it would take effort and trust would be a factor but the benefits would/could be worth it in the end.