The 1% (or something within a factor of maybe 2 or 3 of that) is I think valid as an industry wide total if you are only counting sales of say abve $100 or $200.
Clearly some names at some prices can sell easily with a 100% ratio. Similarly some poor names will never sell. The 1% is expected as an industry wide average, not the figure for any individual portfolio.
I think the 1% is a reasonable number to use if you have moderate skill in finding names on drop or missed gem hand regs or find great across the dot match ngTLD names. Those with big portfolio can of course after a few years compute their own ratio that will be valid to their expertise, name picking style, pricing, and marketing/promotion skills.
If your figure is about 1%, then you need to average about $1000 per sold name to break even, assuming that you are investing in names with a $10 renewal fee. I think the 1% figure is a useful reminder of how tough it is to even break even in this business. I suspect that only those who do better than average even break even.
For those not at NamesCon, Paul Nicks used the 1% figure in his model which was based on an investor buying names at auction/closeout/BIN at average prices (I forget precisely but about $75-$100) and then selling them at prices in $2500 to $3500 range to retail customers.
In my model (
Is Domain Investing Even Profitable?) published a few months ago at NameTalent I used 1/73 probability based on best estimates of for sale and sold numbers, although also assumed lower selling prices than in Paul's model.
Bob