Here's an analysis of eBay sales trends over the past six months. I've excluded domains selling for more than $100 as I consider them outliers on eBay. All figures quoted below are based on trendlines calculated from weekly figures, thereby smoothing out irregularities.
Of course the usual reservation applies - "This is only eBay and so doesn't represent overall market trends." Very true, but it does represent eBay sales trends.
Mean prices have fallen over the last 6 months at an average rate of about $1.31 per month - that's a total of $7.86 over the period. The trend was a drop from $23.24 to $15.38, which is a fall of 41% based on the midpoint.
The corresponding figure for the last 3 months is even less encouraging. The average fall was about $1.94 per month.
Highs and lows were -
The best week - November week 2 - mean price $28.47
The worst week - March week 2 - mean price $13.24
Possible explanations -
1. Have average remaining registrations fallen? Yes, they have. This was particularly evident during April, when average remaining registration was about 4.3 months, compared to an overall November-March average of about 7.7 months. Overall the drop accounts for about 23 cents of the $1.31 monthly fall.
2. Has the quality of domains fallen over the period? I've seen no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Average quality has been pretty static.
3. Has the market been flooded lately? There were certainly a lot more domains on sale during April than previous months. Overall, the number of monthly sales has increased by an average 25 per month over the period, which is a whopping rise of 150 domains per month over the period. (The average monthly sales figure for the period was 466.) It's impossible to calculate what effect this has had on prices. I feel it must have had some effect, but doubt whether it completely explains the fall.
Taking the above into account, that still leaves an average monthly fall of $1.08 at least partly unexplained.
Here are the percentile trends -
The 5th percentile fell from $10.02 to $4.54, a fall of 75% based on the midpoint.
The 25th percentile fell from $13.18 to $7.76, a fall of 52% based on the midpoint.
The 50th percentile fell from $19.16 to $11.22, a fall of 52% based on the midpoint.
The 75th percentile fell from $28.13 to $18.79, a fall of 40% based on the midpoint.
The 95th percentile fell from $54.27 to $40.89, a fall of 28% based on the midpoint.
It's worth noting that the actual 5th percentile figure for the last week of April was just $1.18. However, the trendline smooths out such abnormalities.
In conclusion, it looks as though there has been a real price drop not completely explained by the recent flooding of the market. The fact that April week 4, when most of the flooding happened, wasn't the worst week over the period bears this out.
Finally an acknowledgement. My previous posts in this thread were based on data I collected myself. However, the above analyses were mostly based on data posted by Nem0 both here and (I assume) at llllsales.com. Thanks for doing that Daniel. I've repped Nem0 for his considerable efforts gathering and posting all this information. If you find this post useful I ask that you do the same.
