Part of the process of interpreting comparables is understanding how relevant they are.  Changes in the domain market will affect how much faith we can put in similar sales.  If the market has become less good, we may be less likely to get a formerly reasonable amount.  If the market has become more frothy, our outlook may have improved.

On its website, Leapfish.com writes about about how big domain sales are less frequent than they once were.  "During the good old days of the Internet boom 'rags to riches' type stories of cheap domain names resold for hundreds of thousands of dollars [were] possible.  However, things have slowed down considerably since then and it is very rare to hear of a domain name sold for more than $10,000."

Of course, the infrastructure for buying and selling domains (online auctions like Sedo.com, real-world auctions like Moniker, certified offer services from domain registrars) and the ability to monetize purchased domains (Google ads, for instance), are clearly much improved from the boom.  There are newsletters and conferences for domain arbitrageurs. 

Domain Name Journal's Ron Jackson says "...As this industry continues to grow at an exponential rate, competition is heating up in every sector including registration and parking services, aftermarket platforms, media outlets, trade shows, and everything in between."

Domains Magazine says "the market for generic domain names is booming."  Research and appraisal services firm Zetetic reports that the domain name aftermarket broke the $100 million mark in 2006.  Domain broker Sedo claims that resold domain transactions sold for about twice the number of 2005, and quadruple the deal volume of 2004.  GoDaddy is now apparently adding 1 million new domains a month, which works out to one every 1.3 seconds... five times faster than five years ago according to GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons. 

This Zetetic press release claims that the average sale price during 2005 (nearly $5,000) was 8.5% higher than the previous year, while the median sale ($900) was 24% higher, as well as that the total dollar sales volume and the number of sales above $100,000 had nearly doubled.  In 2006, the average domain name resale price grew 13% to $5,582.