Domain name market firm Zetetic released a study last week indicating that domain names are selling briskly and at sometimes at heady prices. A review of 8,000 transactions since 1996 showed that the average domain name returned almost four times the original purchase price after an average of 12.5 months. When asked whether a market trend could be determined for the present, Zetetic's chief Keith Pieper told MarketingVOX "I think the market has come down to realistic resale levels and the buying/selling process is less speculative and more rational than it was during the bubble."

The median original purchase price for a domain was $891, and the median sales price grew to $1,450. The longest recorded holding period before a sale was 4.1 years. Not all domain names led to profits, of course. In a sampling of 74 domain names, a dozen proved to be money losers, and four were sold for the same price for which they were bought.

Men.com proved the most profitable transaction, winning a profit of 88 times the original purchase price of $15,000, growing to $1.32 million when finally sold in 1999. The biggest transaction for which public data is available was the Business.com $7.35 million transaction in 1997.