“According to data from three leading independent companies tracking the domain name marketplace, DNJournal, Domain-Spiegel.de and Sedo.com, the secondary domain marketplace–the marketplace where already registered domain names are bought and sold — experienced strong gains both in terms of the volume of sales and the overall sale prices for domains compared to the previous years. According to Domain-Spiegel.de, a German publication that closely tracks the sale of domain names, the domain name marketplace experienced explosive growth with more than 1,400 transactions reported — compared to only 500 domain transactions reported in 2003 and with just 400 domains sales reported in 2002. In addition, the average sale price of a .com domain increased more than $1,400 from 2003 to 2004, with the average domain selling for more than $9,700.”

Full Press Release

When looking at the data one should keep in mind that Sedo and “domain-spiegel.de” originally were very much focused on the German market. While this has changed over the years, the increasing popularity in .INFO names could be related to this fact. However adaption of the new gTLDs (info/biz) has certainly improved.

Since the part of the secondary market covered in the press release mostly is limited to the public auction markets, it would be very interesting to also see numbers from the drop-name catchers such as pool.com.

I know it's a little late for a follow-up…

Netcraft: Panix Hijack Prompts ICANN Review of Resellers' Role

Apparently Melbourne IT had their Reseller authenticate the transfer
request on their behalf, and they failed to verify legitimacy.

While I find that the new current transfer process does make it easier
to complete transfers, end users are still confused by the rules and
obligations involved. Especially those, who just want their service
provider to take care of any technical issues, and just want the
services to work.

A possible solution is to list the reseller as the admin contact, which
seems to common practice in Britain. The only downside is that if the
reseller goes out of business or 'turns evil', it might take a bit of effort on the registrant's end to re-gain control of the domain name.

For registration service providers and their customers a seamless from one registrar to another is desirable.

In the end, who are we doing all of this for? Is it not our business to
make things as easy for the consumers/end users as possible.

Jottings.com » 49DollarsWasted.pro | domain name and web development blog

Andrew registered a second level .PRO names with Encirca.biz, only …