What are people paying for domains?

The prices vary a lot and you can get all from 0 up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for it. Right now there is an acution on SEDO where the domains planet.com and fly.com have the highest bids on $200.000 and $125.000.

I have not been in the domain business for that long myself, only a year and the highest price I ever got for a domain so far is $1,750. On the other hand it seems a lot easier to find domains that goes for $400-$800 each. Putting the domains on auction is what has worked best so far, at least for me. Lowest pay for a domain was $90.

Out of 43 domains purchased for $5.99 each I have sold 34 of them and the money I invested I have earned back many times over. I have to admit I have not been that active when fidning and selling domains and I know I could have made a lot more if I had put some effort into it.

Many people do this for a living! They buy hundreds of domains and put them up for sale and of course when buying massive amounts of domains I doubt they spend much time on research before they go ahead and make a purchase. It also means they have a generous budget to buy all these domains. Even if one domain comes for a little as a few bucks you still have to pay a lot if you buy hundreds.

That is not they way I trade with domains and I cannot say if my way is better or worse than others. All I know is that I have made a good profit by being a bit careful.
 I personally prefer to do some research before buying a domain; find out what coming trends are and carefully put together 2 or 3 relevant keywords regarding that trend that will form a domain name. I am also careful not to register names that are too long or complicated to type.