Escrow.com may be the largest platform for third party domain name domain name sales transactions. This morning, the company unveiled a short report (pdf file) featuring domain name sales trends from the past year. The data shared is based on the 8,500+ domain transactions worth “[M]ore than US$300M” transacted via the escrow service provider for the year. There are still 10 days remaining in 2023, so it is incomplete.
Interestingly, it looks like this is going to be a down year for domain name sales on Escrow.com. According to a report shared by Domain Name Wire in September of 2022, there were $256 million worth of domain name sales transactions in the first half of 2022. The figure shared in today’s report is ‘more than $300 million USD,’ for this entire year, so it could theoretically be any number above $300m. I would imagine that $300m figure is relatively close to the actual figure though. I asked for a bit of clarity to understand how 2023 compares to 2022.
Escrow.com shared the top 10 domain name extensions by sales volume and average sale price. Notably, Escrow.com reported 210% growth in .AI domain names and a 16% decrease in .IO domain names. .XYZ is not on the list at all, and I would be curious to know how its volume compared year over year. I don’t think Escrow.com published this type of report last year, so I can’t do my own comparison.
|
Rank |
TLD |
Average Price (USD) |
|
1 |
.com |
$41,693 |
|
2 |
.ai |
$26,441 |
|
3 |
.io |
$15,858 |
|
4 |
.org |
$18,984 |
|
5 |
.net |
$17,491 |
|
6 |
.co |
$18,750 |
|
7 |
.co.uk |
$13,708 |
|
8 |
.ca |
$15,547 |
|
9 |
.it |
$12,804 |
|
10 |
.com.au |
$13,023 |
Adding a bit of commentary to the report, Escrow.com CEO Matt Barrie commented about what he is expecting to see in 2024, which could be good news for domain investors:
“While we didn’t see venture capital funding return at the levels it was in 2021- VC funding is a driver of domain activity- we did see strong interest in artificial intelligence related domains. Interest in .ai domains surged this year as businesses started rushing to cement their names in this space and we had marquee sales of names like prompt.com and chat.com. We expect this trend to continue in 2024 and we’re likely to see a new wave of venture funding pouring into AI startups, which we believe will set new records for prices.”
Humnnn….I wonder why dot com is number 1,
Anybody can humor me why dot com is number uno on the list…
Strange indeed
I see . ai and .io as a fad, stronger than .xyz but after integration of ai into most web apps and technology, is it worth noting, not really. 2024 and 2025 will be a return to a much stronger .com market.
I’m not so sure. Maybe .AI as AI features become simply that… features integrated within existing apps. To soon to tell as it’s a new space.
But I think that .IO will always be a strong alternative option for companies (particular software and tech) where they are unable to get the .com for their chosen brand name.
But not having the .com and grabbing an alternative extension, always loses traffic to the .com brand version. An .io extension may be memorable within tech communities, but .com pulls related traffic from all industries. .com is so much more powerful and valuable.
Much respect to all dot’s out there…
………..but .COM is ur DADDY!!!