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These are great numbers and very promising. Thank you for sharing this information.

Presumably, you meant First half of 2017 in the first sentence.

Oops! Yes, meant to write first half of 2017 :)
 
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We made the post above in early November 2016. At that time (about 8 months ago), we were very happy to see momentum starting to build for our Marketplace. As noted, at the time of that post, we had generated a total of $145,000 of domain sales in the first full year of our Marketplace. I am very pleased to report some more recent results....

In the first half of 2016, we have generated over $450,000 of sales, with our largest 2 months of Marketplace revenue happening in the last 2 months in a row.... June 2017 alone saw $116,190 in sales!

Many of the ratios listed from our November 2016 post above are still holding regarding the ratio of sale types (auction versus offer/counter offer). A few other pieces of data from just the first half of 2017:

Note that Offer/Counter-offer sale means a pure BIN sale in many cases
  • $450,967.35 in total sales revenue
  • $399,453.20 sold via Offer/Counter-offer sale
  • $51,514.15 sold via Auction sale

  • 1,083 domains have been sold
  • 830 via Offer/Counter-offer sale
  • 253 via Auction sale
  • $416.40 average sale price
  • $33,250 largest Offer/Counter-offer sale
  • $10,100 largest Auction sale
  • 71 sales setup with a payment plant
  • 1 Buyer charge back
  • Average payout in 6.4 days
We are very encouraged by this growth with our Marketplace and we would like to thank many NP members on this thread and others for their very helpful and well-thought out ideas for improvement. We remain committed to offering a good option for your domain sales and continuing to enhance our offering.

Thanks everyone!
830 offer/counter offer sales with only around 11% or 71 setup with a payment plan. I'm really surprised at that 11% number. I would think it would be higher. If we knew how many of the 830 were setup for the payment plan option it would put this number in better perspective. Is there any way to see how many of the 830 had the pay plan option setup? The 11% number may only be low because very few had selected this option. Would love to know if you can get those details. Thanks
 
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@namesilo - Here are two requests/suggestions:

Negotiation history

During negotiations it’s not possible to access the discussion (the “notes” sent with each offer/counter offer) that has taken place between buyer and seller prior to the most recent one. Each new counter offer made by seller/buyer makes all previous negotiation history inaccessible. I'm getting around this by taking a screenshot of every offer/counter offer note before it becomes inaccessible, but it would be much better if we could access all negotiation messages via the system instead.

Landing page domain case
It would be great if there was a way to bulk edit the domain case that is shown on the landing page (domainname.com -> DomainName.com). Camel casing domains one by one in the Financial/Marketing section is very inconvenient and time consuming, as it requires multiple clicks + navigation + page load/edit saving waiting time for every domain case edit. To make this process more effective, maybe you could let us tick the box next to a number of domains in this section, then let us click on a "domain case" button (can be added next to the other buttons in "actions for selected domains"), and then provide a text box with all the selected domains (either on a new page or as a pop up box), so that we can then proceed to bulk edit letter case for all the selected domains in the text box, and then save the changes.

We've just added an option to bulk-update casing from the Financial/Marketing page :)
 
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830 offer/counter offer sales with only around 11% or 71 setup with a payment plan. I'm really surprised at that 11% number. I would think it would be higher. If we knew how many of the 830 were setup for the payment plan option it would put this number in better perspective. Is there any way to see how many of the 830 had the pay plan option setup? The 11% number may only be low because very few had selected this option. Would love to know if you can get those details. Thanks

Hello, and thanks for the question. Of the 830 sales, 294 were setup with a payment plan as an option. The rest did not offer a payment plan. This number has increased over time as has the ratio of sales using payment plans. The results we posted above were for the first half of 2017. We did not introduce payment plans until February so a number of the sales were made prior to payment plans being available, and others were setup prior to payment plans being an option when the Sellers did not go back and update their listings.

Hope this helps.
 
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So we could say >24% of buyers are opting for the payment plan, when it's an option.
 
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So we could say >24% of buyers are opting for the payment plan, when it's an option.

Yeah, that is pretty accurate. Of course, price is a big factor. We have some micro-sales for $10-$20 that of course would not utilize a payment plan, so the percentage is actually a bit higher if we were to only consider sales over $100 or so.
 
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We have some micro-sales for $10-$20 that of course would not utilize a payment plan, so the percentage is actually a bit higher if we were to only consider sales over $100 or so.

Would people selling names for $100 or less have the payment plan as an option, though? I wouldn't think so.
 
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Would people selling names for $100 or less have the payment plan as an option, though? I wouldn't think so.

Right, that's what I was trying to get across. Most sales under $100 would either not offer a payment plan, or Buyers would not be motivated to select a payment plan even if it was offered.
 
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Hello, and thanks for the question. Of the 830 sales, 294 were setup with a payment plan as an option. The rest did not offer a payment plan. This number has increased over time as has the ratio of sales using payment plans. The results we posted above were for the first half of 2017. We did not introduce payment plans until February so a number of the sales were made prior to payment plans being available, and others were setup prior to payment plans being an option when the Sellers did not go back and update their listings.

Hope this helps.
Thanks for the detailed info. 71 payment plan sales out of 294 that were setup with a payment plan. That gives us 24% of the ones setup with a payment plan sold using the payment plan. That's about where I thought it should be. The original 11% number seemed low and now we know why.

These numbers are really interesting to sellers and I'm sure to you also. I was curious if you could go a bit more in depth into the numbers. Is there anyway to tell us how many of the 294 sales that were setup with a payment plan were sold for under $2,000 and how many were sold for over $2,000? It would really give sellers a good idea as to what price buyers decide not to spend a lump sum and instead spread it out into payments.

If you can't do this I completely understand because I'm sure it will be time consuming. To make it easy, just PM me the 71 sales with the sale price for each sale and I will do the work for you. I don't need the names, just each individual price for the 71 sales.

I have always been a big believer that payment plans give buyers a big incentive to spend more money and these numbers may show that. It will also tell you if you should market the payment plan option more aggressively to sellers and buyers.
 
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We've just added an option to bulk-update casing from the Financial/Marketing page :)
This is working great! Thanks for adding this feature.

If you could add the portfolio selection option to the financial/marketing page, that would make it even easier to stay on top of domain casing for marketplace listed names.

A few other suggestions:

Counter-offer negotiations
Offer history box: If possible, please increase the font size of the messages exchanged between buyer/seller to the same size as the other text in this box. The text font is so small that it's quite difficult to read these messages without zooming in. Having the same font size as the other text in this box should fix the readability issue.

Also, when one negotiation ends, and another begins, please create a space between different negotiations in the offer history. A new offer is shown seamlessly after the past offer of an ended negotiation (so a new offer looks like just another message in the prior negotiation thread). A space between old/new negotiations would fix this.

It would also be nice if there was a day/hour count down or something for how much time is left before an offer is going to expire. Right now there is only a US time and date, which means that people in Europe, Asia, Australia, etc. first have to figure out what NameSilo's time zone is, and then calculate what time the offer will expire in their own local timezone. A count down timer would work better for everyone globally.

Also, on the seller resources page, where active offers are shown, it would be great if you could show a count down timer under "Offer Expires" instead of US year/month/date 00:00:00.

Payment Plan
Regarding the payment plan option discussion on this page, there might be an increase in buyers opting for the payment plan option if this is more intuitively available from the landing page. Simply showing the "make an offer" button on the landing page has caused a significant increase in offers, compared with when this button simply said "more info", and when a prospective buyer had to sign up before being able to see the make offer option after clicking on more info.

While the payment plan is indicated as available on the landing page, there is no intuitive way for a buyer to actually access this option from the landing page. A buyer has to click on buttons that do not indicate payment plan in any way ("buy now" "more info" "make an offer" etc. depending on what kind of sale it is) to set up a payment plan.

One small change you could make without having to make any major design changes to the current landing page is, is to change:

Payment Plan: Payment plan available
to
Payment Plan: Available - Start Payment Plan
or
Finance This Domain: Start Payment Plan

and then hyperlink the text right of colon so that it's underlined when you hover the cursor over it, and clicking on it leads the buyer to the payment plan page. This could make it more intuitive for someone who is interested in setting up a payment plan to access this option from the landing page. "Start payment plan" is also a call to action (and actionable, as it's a link), compared with the passive (and unclickable) "payment plan available" line. If you make this change, you could also consider to change the buy now button back to simply putting the domain directly into the shopping cart (like it was set up before).

You would then have these 3 options on the landing page (if a sale is set up as a counter offer sale with payment plan available):

Buy now button --> the name is put into shopping cart and can check out directly (for names priced below $5000)
Start Payment Plan link --> buyer is sent to set up a payment plan
Make an offer button --> buyer is sent to the make offer page

With this setup, all 3 purchase options are now directly available on the landing page, and each button/link leads to exactly what it indicates.
 
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Hey, I have registered a lot of domain at you, and I intend to sell those domains through you (as a escrow). I have never done it before, and want to know how this can be done most easily for all parts (me, you, buyer). Do you have a guide or something describing the process?
 
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Hey, I have registered a lot of domain at you, and I intend to sell those domains through you (as a escrow). I have never done it before, and want to know how this can be done most easily for all parts (me, you, buyer). Do you have a guide or something describing the process?

Hello, and thanks for using our Marketplace! We unfortunately do not have any guides at the moment for setting up sales, but it should be pretty straightforward. To get started, visit the Domain Manager page in your account, check the box next to the domain(s) you want to list for sell and then press the "Sale Domains" icon. Each field on the subsequent sale configuration page has a description. As always, feel free to chat, call or email us with any questions and we will be happy to help.
 
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Thanks for the detailed info. 71 payment plan sales out of 294 that were setup with a payment plan. That gives us 24% of the ones setup with a payment plan sold using the payment plan. That's about where I thought it should be. The original 11% number seemed low and now we know why.

These numbers are really interesting to sellers and I'm sure to you also. I was curious if you could go a bit more in depth into the numbers. Is there anyway to tell us how many of the 294 sales that were setup with a payment plan were sold for under $2,000 and how many were sold for over $2,000? It would really give sellers a good idea as to what price buyers decide not to spend a lump sum and instead spread it out into payments.

If you can't do this I completely understand because I'm sure it will be time consuming. To make it easy, just PM me the 71 sales with the sale price for each sale and I will do the work for you. I don't need the names, just each individual price for the 71 sales.

I have always been a big believer that payment plans give buyers a big incentive to spend more money and these numbers may show that. It will also tell you if you should market the payment plan option more aggressively to sellers and buyers.

We should be able to get this info, but may take a day or 2 :)

We will reply back here once we get the data together.
 
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We should be able to get this info, but may take a day or 2 :)

We will reply back here once we get the data together.

Ok - we were able to get through the data you requested....

Of the 71 sales that used a payment plan, they broke down in the following ranges:
  • $10-$100: 4
  • $100-$500: 14
  • $500-$1,000: 25
  • $1,000-$2,000: 15
  • $2,000-$5,000: 9
  • $5,000+: 4
The ratios for sales using payment plans versus not using payment plans is certainly higher as the dollar amount increases. Of course, we need to keep in mind that most sales in our platform for the given time range were between $200-$1,000. Over time, we have trended with higher sales prices and we expect that to continue in large part due to the lowering of our commission to 3% for sales paid for via wire transfer. In looking at things more closely, the common sense thought that payment plans are utilized more as the sale price increases certainly holds true. However, at the very top of the sales price results, the trend seems to go down. Most of our sales over $7,500 for example were to large enterprise Buyers. They appear much more willing to simply send a wire for the full amount and are not as likely to be persuaded by the option of a payment plan, or even drawn-out negotiations. We will do our best to remember to post our results a few times per year so that we can all watch these trends. For now, my personal feeling is that sales between $1k-$5k benefit the most from the option for a payment plan as buyers are more price-sensitive and likely don't have the same access to capital for large one-time payments as those in higher price ranges. Of course, this is a general statement and there are always exceptions.

Hope this has helped
 
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Ok - we were able to get through the data you requested....

Of the 71 sales that used a payment plan, they broke down in the following ranges:
  • $10-$100: 4
  • $100-$500: 14
  • $500-$1,000: 25
  • $1,000-$2,000: 15
  • $2,000-$5,000: 9
  • $5,000+: 4
The ratios for sales using payment plans versus not using payment plans is certainly higher as the dollar amount increases. Of course, we need to keep in mind that most sales in our platform for the given time range were between $200-$1,000. Over time, we have trended with higher sales prices and we expect that to continue in large part due to the lowering of our commission to 3% for sales paid for via wire transfer. In looking at things more closely, the common sense thought that payment plans are utilized more as the sale price increases certainly holds true. However, at the very top of the sales price results, the trend seems to go down. Most of our sales over $7,500 for example were to large enterprise Buyers. They appear much more willing to simply send a wire for the full amount and are not as likely to be persuaded by the option of a payment plan, or even drawn-out negotiations. We will do our best to remember to post our results a few times per year so that we can all watch these trends. For now, my personal feeling is that sales between $1k-$5k benefit the most from the option for a payment plan as buyers are more price-sensitive and likely don't have the same access to capital for large one-time payments as those in higher price ranges. Of course, this is a general statement and there are always exceptions.

Hope this has helped
Thanks so much for the detailed stats.
 
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I apologize if this question has been asked. Is it possible to set up portfolios to be associated with specific types of selling? For example: a portfolio named "BIN390" to sell all domain names in that portfolio at BIN price $390, responsive landing page, set to maximum, etc. and then "MO" for make offer with reserve set to $5000, not show reserve etc. Selling will become very simple, by adding domain names to the desired portfolio.
 
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I apologize if this question has been asked. Is it possible to set up portfolios to be associated with specific types of selling? For example: a portfolio named "BIN390" to sell all domain names in that portfolio at BIN price $390, responsive landing page, set to maximum, etc. and then "MO" for make offer with reserve set to $5000, not show reserve etc. Selling will become very simple, by adding domain names to the desired portfolio.
Nice idea... I think you mean creation of custom selling profiles which allow us to set a bunch of settings via a template/sales profile...
 
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Nice idea... I think you mean creation of custom selling profiles which allow us to set a bunch of settings via a template/sales profile.
You said it much better. Yes, some kind of sales templates.
 
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My apologies if this has been asked before, is it possible to modify the letters in the domain display? So instead of "expertsexchange.com is for sale!", it's displayed as "ExpertsExchange.com is for sale!"
 
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My apologies if this has been asked before, is it possible to modify the letters in the domain display? So instead of "expertsexchange.com is for sale!", it's displayed as "ExpertsExchange.com is for sale!"
Yes. This feature was added recently. You should be able to modify this in your sale settings page
 
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I apologize if this question has been asked. Is it possible to set up portfolios to be associated with specific types of selling? For example: a portfolio named "BIN390" to sell all domain names in that portfolio at BIN price $390, responsive landing page, set to maximum, etc. and then "MO" for make offer with reserve set to $5000, not show reserve etc. Selling will become very simple, by adding domain names to the desired portfolio.

Hello. That is a very good idea and one that we will be sure to consider adding. Thanks for the suggestion!
 
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I'd like to clarify a point with the payment plans and wire payment threshold, where any payment over 5k must be wire payment and so is just 3% commission.

Let's say a domain priced at $10,000 is sold on a payment plan of ten $1000 monthly payments.

The buyer chooses to make each monthly payment by credit card. So is the commission the 7.5% you would expect on a non-wire payment?
 
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I'd like to clarify a point with the payment plans and wire payment threshold, where any payment over 5k must be wire payment and so is just 3% commission.

Let's say a domain priced at $10,000 is sold on a payment plan of ten $1000 monthly payments.

The buyer chooses to make each monthly payment by credit card. So is the commission the 7.5% you would expect on a non-wire payment?

Correct, it would be 7.5% for anything other than a wire transfer payment. If they made any of the payments via wire, then it would be 3%, but for all non-wire transfer payments it is still 7.5%.
 
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@namesilo - would it be possible to get paragraphs to be retained in the offer-counter message system?

If I send a message like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec id bibendum quam, non posuere leo. Integer sed tortor nec ante ornare volutpat bibendum et purus. Mauris condimentum diam massa, eget hendrerit est molestie hendrerit.

Nullam condimentum luctus venenatis. Aliquam sed venenatis arcu, vitae blandit sapien. Maecenas nibh ligula, posuere et lobortis quis, varius eget ipsum. Duis in dolor felis. Sed vestibulum gravida velit, eget tincidunt dolor iaculis nec.

Maecenas vel viverra est. Morbi venenatis tellus eros, a imperdiet metus tincidunt rutrum. Proin eu congue arcu. Nunc et risus est.


It gets formatted like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec id bibendum quam, non posuere leo. Integer sed tortor nec ante ornare volutpat bibendum et purus. Mauris condimentum diam massa, eget hendrerit est molestie hendrerit. Nullam condimentum luctus venenatis. Aliquam sed venenatis arcu, vitae blandit sapien. Maecenas nibh ligula, posuere et lobortis quis, varius eget ipsum. Duis in dolor felis. Sed vestibulum gravida velit, eget tincidunt dolor iaculis nec. Maecenas vel viverra est. Morbi venenatis tellus eros, a imperdiet metus tincidunt rutrum. Proin eu congue arcu. Nunc et risus est.
 
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