SEDO listings up 40% - Market is Booming

[accentnepal]

You may recall as 2006 approached Sedo reached the mark of over 3 million domains listed in our sales catalogue. Now just months later there are over 4.2 million domains listed! This growth, coupled with increasing number of domain sales per month, is an indicator of how quickly the industry is picking up.

Contributing to the increase are the many large portfolio professional domainers entering the market and the successful launch of the .eu domain. For those involved in the domain industry this is a sign of strong growth.

source (nothing more there):
www.sedo.com/links/showhtml.php3?Id=1234&tracked=&partnerid=&language=us

"many large portfolio professional domainers" -- read that as big, inexperienced money. The cynic would say "dumb" money but that is only due to the scale of things. Imagine a stock market where shares cost less than $10, and you can only buy one share of any company.

[regic]

The industry is picking up but a bubble is developing.  Those who are just getting in the game can be likened to the small investors who invested in Internet stocks at the top in early 2000.

[dnc_ont]

I sold my first domain on Sedo today for $250 ...  $225 less the 10% commission..  Works for me, not bad for my $11.98 investment.  (It just renewed a couple weeks ago)   

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=dnc_ont link=topic=3800.msg14496#msg14496 date=1148063440]
I sold my first domain on Sedo today for $250 ...  $225 less the 10% commission..  Works for me, not bad for my $11.98 investment.  (It just renewed a couple weeks ago)   
[/quote]



My best year on any auction site was on Afternic in 2000 (the top price I ever received for a name was $4K), but I haven't sold any domains in about 4 years.  The last ones I sold were in 2001/02 on eBay (my start as an eBay seller) as the domain market was crashing and I unloaded them for firesale prices of $50-$200.  I could kick myself now for doing that..one name I sold for $200 on eBay in 2001 was recently resold by my eBay buyer for $10K.    I could also kick myself for letting 200 names expire in 2003 when the market was at its bottom. 

[xppman]

I wish I would have bought a couple of domain names I was thinking of before.
Not to resell but for me.

The one I want now is PARKED. Strangely enough by someone in my field.
I don't know why they are not using it for themselves.
Common keyword search would put them up top every time
if they were selling the products they offer with the name.

[accentnepal]

[quote author=regic link=topic=3800.msg14494#msg14494 date=1148061176]
The industry is picking up but a bubble is developing.  Those who are just getting in the game can be likened to the small investors who invested in Internet stocks at the top in early 2000.
[/quote].
The question - indeed the multi thousand dollar question - is where is the top of the cycle. To some extent I will defer to Bargain here, he has been through it, but when the top domains sell for a few million, (diamond.com brought 7.5 mill and it has been a while since anything came close to that), it really seems that we have a very long way to go.

We are talking business addresses here and for a, say, major diamond broker, 7 mill in the advertising budget is almost petty cash.

Still, I cannot say that I have sold a name for decent money. I have dumped a couple and have a bunch that I am not going to renew, mostly .info I paid $1.74 for. But it has only been a year since I started buying names at reg fee and it takes time.