The domain name SelfieSticks.com was sold for $8,200 at a recent NameJet auction, according to The Domains. This amount might be considered reasonable, as anyone familiar with the domain name market knows that tens or hundreds of thousand-dollar-transactions (not to mention millions) are quite a rarity. Yet, there is one thing that prevents us from being happy for the unidentified seller: four years ago, they bought the domain at another auction for $29,100.
This story is a good example of how quickly the value of domain names can change. In January 2015, when the buyer paid close to $30,000 for the domain, selfie sticks were a novelty just entering the market, and interest in them was peaking. This is evidenced by Google Trends statistics, based on the frequency of search queries. The popularity of the selfie stick query was about 15 points and clearly trending up – an extremely good time to buy. At the end of June, the popularity of the query reached a maximum of 100 points.
However, the buyer was clearly not interested in establishing an online selfie-stick store but was apparently waiting for the right moment to sell. They either asked too much or just missed the right time; in July, query popularity sharply declined. Selfie sticks turned out to be a limited fad. Not that they are no longer used, but they have become too familiar as everyday objects to pay any more attention to them. As a result, today the popularity of selfie sticks is estimated by Google Trends at just 1 point (the statistics are based on search queries in the US).
