Where are all those anti bitcoin spammers who were making threads that Bitcoin is unusable and the fees are killing it? I sent a transaction yesterday that costed me 2$ and got confirmed in less than 20 minutes. If you want to wait you can pay just 1$! That's less than they'd charge me for withdrawing money from an ATM in another country.
Given the low number of unconfirmed bitcoin transactions I would say you paid a lot for your transaction. What wallet are you using? I think you could have made your transaction for for 1 dollar or so. I know electrum usually suggests fees a little higher than what you would have to pay, so it's good to always check how much you should pay for yourself and adjust it. Of course that if your address had a few outputs already, then that value would be more normal.
Yes I used Electrum. It suggested something like 30 satoshis per byte and I went along with it because it didn't look like much compared to what I had to pay a month ago.
The main difference in cost is the number of addresses engaged in the transaction. If it moves coins from 2 or 3 in a wallet it usually ends up costing much more and that's why I ended up paying over $2 for mine.