Battle of the Brokers

Davis, CA (PRWEB) June 6, 2007 -- While private sales account for the vast majority of the US$111 million domain resale market (more than 24 percent), eight exchanges or brokers compete for dominance while domain valuations skyrocket.

"Private transactions are where most of the big deals take place," Zetetic Senior Analyst Keith Pieper said. "But the market has gotten very lucrative with a dominant four holding companies accounting for nearly 46 percent of all transactions."

Combining the Afternic acquisition with BuyDomains, NameMedia is now a leading player in this space. In sheer volume, the domain name exchange market is lead by NameMedia, SEDO then GoDaddy, the only players managing over 1,000 transactions in 2006.

On a transaction level, Moniker leads this group with an average transaction value of US$45,308, followed by SEDO at US$7,180, NameMedia at US$1,845 and GoDaddy at US$822. The chart enclosed breaks down the leading eight exchanges and the trackable private market, for comparison.

Clearly, GDNX and Afternic's Bazaar are the liquidation outlets for anyone wanting to sell or buy a domain name for cheap. SEDO, BuyDomains and Afternic all compete for the middle tier of valued names with averages closer to the overall market average of US$5,582 in 2006.

However, quantity does not always yield quality. In addition to having the highest average sale prices, private transactions typically have some of the highest quality names as well, often with the shortest character lengths, highest number of incoming links, highest cash flow multiples, daily visitor counts and keyword popularity. However, GoDaddy domain names on average had the highest number of incoming Alexa links while SEDO domain names had the highest number of incoming Yahoo links on average. Domain names sold through Domain Cargo have the highest score for English Written and Spoken popularity while domain names sold through Moniker had the highest internet keyword popularity of the leading brokers. In general, Google Page Ranks are quite low in the resale market, with most exchanges averaging a one out of ten.

A free metrics table summarizing the various averages and scores of each broker is available FREE for a limited time to anyone purchasing a domain name appraisal at http://www.Zetetic.com

Methodology
The data above represents aftermarket or broker exchanges and not "dropped" or "expired" domain registries such as SnapNames. The data is only from transactions that took place in 2006. Visit Zetetic.com for more about Zetetic's research and data collection methodologies. While Zetetic makes every effort to collect and track the private market, it is commonly estimated that the private marketplace accounts for more than 80 percent of all domain name resale transactions, most of which are not revealed publicly. As a result, the "private" transactions listed above are only listed for directional purposes.

About Zetetic:
Zetetic is an independent domain name research company providing appraisal and analytical services to domain name registrars, brokers, owners, buyers, sellers, speculators and aggregators. Zetetic has aggregated over 39,000 domain sale transactions across over 100 sources since 2003 and has a historical database reaching back to 1996. Zetetic now adds nearly 2,000 additional transactions to it's database each month. Zetetic currently uses this information to provide domain name appraisals directly to domain name owners, buyers and affiliate resale partners using algorithmic and analyst appraisal methodologies.

For more information, please contact Zetetic at 1-877-ZETETIC or visit http://www.Zetetic.com

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