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.Com
sales provided the numbers needed for 1Q-2011 to win
the year over year comparison against 1Q-2010. $16.3
million in .com sales were reported in this year's
opening quarter, besting the $14.5 million reported
in the same period a year ago by 12.4%. The ccTLDs
and non .com gTLDs both slipped slightly
against last year. Reported country code sales volume fell
from $5.5 million to $4.3 million, a 22%
decline, while non .com gTLD sales slipped a little
over 6% from $3.1 million a year ago to $2.9
million this year.
(Editor's
Note: It is important to keep in mind that the minimum levels
that we track and
report in our weekly
domains sales reports start at $2,000 for .com
domains and $1,000 for all other extensions. Total dollar
volume levels would be considerably higher if we tracked
the vast number of sales at the lowest end of the market.
By the same token, the median sales figures we will be
discussing below, would be lower if we tracked the lowest
end of the market).
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we get to median prices, I want to note that the number
of transactions in each category broke along
lines that were very similar to the dollar volume
results. 4,706 sales across all extensions
were reported to us in 1Q-2011, a 15% jump
from the 4,077 reported in 1Q-2011, but
again .com accounted for almost all of the rise. 2,718
.com sales were reported in 1Q-2011 vs. 2,086 in
1Q-2010. There was little change in the other two
categories. There were 1,109 |
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Image: Boaz
Yiftach/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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ccTLD
sales reported in 1Q-2011, down just a hair from
the 1,162 reported in 1Q-2010. For the non
.com gTLDs, the 880 sales reported in
1Q-2011 was a bit ahead of the 827 reported
the previous year.
As last year's
Sex.com sale showed, one or more
unusually high sales can dramatically skew the dollar volumes
from one quarter to the next. So most view median sales prices (the
number at which half of all reported sales were
higher and half were lower) as being a better
measure of performance from one year to the next. The impact of a few
blockbuster sales has almost no impact on the
median price. |
Median
sales prices were down slightly in every category in
1Q-2011 compared to the same quarter a year ago. Across
all extensions, the median price slipped from $2,643 in
1Q-2010 to $2,588 in the first quarter of this
year. Among the .coms the number declined from $3,188
to $3,000. For the ccTLDs the median edged down
from $2,040 to $2,025 and for the non .com
gTLDs it ratcheted down from $1,877 to $1,750.
Again,
as noted above, we track non .com sales starting at $1,000
(rather than the $2,000 for .coms) so for the ccTLDs and
non .com gTLDs having hundreds of sales below $2,000 pulls
their median price down compared to our .com numbers. To
get a true apples to apples comparison there, we can
eliminate the sub $2,000 sales in the non .com categories.
When you do that, we see an interesting anomaly - the
country codes actually posted a higher median price
than the .coms on 1Q-2011; $3,475 for the country
codes vs. $3,000 for the .coms. The median for non
.com gTLDs when you back out the sub $2,000 sales is $2,800,
not far off the .com median.
In summary,
after a big closing quarter in 2010 (fueled
largely by the Sex.com sale), the opening quarter
of 2011 saw domain sales holding their own
vs. year ago values (generally up a bit in total
dollar volume but down a bit in median sales
prices). 1Q-2011 was certainly not a spectacular
quarter due to the absence of the kind of 7-figure
sales that make headlines, but
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those
kinds of things tend to average out over time. As
the year goes on, we will like see a little more
activity at the ultra high end of the market which
will pull the overall numbers up.
Still, that has
never been the sweet spot in the market.
The vast majority of sales fall in the $1,000
to $5,000 range and, week in and week out, we
still see lots of action at that level.
Millions of new businesses continue to come online
every year and they still want the best name
within their budget they can get to serve as the
foundation for their internet enterprises.
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Image: nuttakit/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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