New Namesilo Marketplace

Hey Everyone - a few replies to the messages/requests posted yesterday:

Arca said:

- Saving a wire transfer payout profile. All the wire transfer details have to be filled in with great attentiveness each time to ensure that the money is sent to the right bank account, and I anxiously check the info I've filled in over and over before submitting the wire transfer payout order. Would be really convenient if we could have a wire transfer payout profile on file instead. I also have to say, NameSilo wire transfer payouts work really well - I get access to the funds in my bank account faster and more smoothly than I've done with any other marketplace or escrow provider.

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This sounds like a useful feature and one that we would certainly make voluntary. Might need a little time on it, but sounds like it is something we can do.

Arca said:

- Can you make it easier to locate and camel case new marketplace listings? The bulk camel case function is already great, and makes it really easy to update the letter casing of a large amount of domains. But if you have a lot of domains listed and camel cased already, and transfer-in and list another 50-100 new listings every now and then, it's pretty inconvenient to change the letter case for just those new listings. At least I haven't figured out any better way than going through my entire portfolio each time to camel case the new listings (so scrolling through mostly camel cased domains, looking for the few that I haven't updated). Maybe you could add a 'show only lower case' domains filter? That would make it a lot more effective to locate the listings that need to be updated.

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No problem - there is now a "Cased" Yes/No search option in the Advanced Search area.

Arca said:

- If we include a note when we accept an offer, do you forward it to buyer? When we accept an offer and include a note, that note does not show up in the negotiation history, so I am assuming it might not be forwarded to the buyer. I might be wrong here as I don't know whether the buyer actually receives such notes, but if it is indeed not forwarded to buyer, it would be good if you could make the change so that buyer does get the note.

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I was about to reply "yes" assuming this was the case, but after we looked at the code, we realized that messages when accepting an offer were not sent to the Buyer. This has been updated and a note when accepting an offer will now be included in the email. Thanks for bringing to our attention.

Arca said:

- Block bots from sites like archive.org and screenshots.com. These sites record the landing page with BIN price. Some end-users dig up this info during negotiations and then use it against you if the domain had a lower BIN price in the past. I'd rather not have end-users (or anyone else for that matter) be able to access past pricing history in this way.

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We will be looking into ways to possibly block the sites/spiders you listed. I've personally heard mixed reviews about whether standard robots.txt blocks are sufficient and respected, but we'll take a look.

Arca said:

- Not related to the marketplace but could you implement an export selected domains to a csv file function? So if we select certain domains and click on the export csv file button, we get only the selected domains, rather than the entire portfolio. Alternatively, an export from folder option. Right now it's only possible to export the entire portfolio to a csv file.

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No problem - this has been done. On both the Domain Manager and Financial/Marketing pages, if you select any domains and then click the CSV icon, only the domain(s) you selected will be in the file.

Thanks as always to everyone for the suggestions, feedback and discussion!

Hi, sorry if this has already been asked, but I was wondering if there was any way an offer amount entered into the 'Interested in this domain?' form could become an official offer amount, the same as if it had been done through the 'Make Offer' button.

I thought having two Make Offer methods might be confusing buyers. After I receive an email from a Marketplace form submission, I then have to ask the buyer to make the offer again via the Make Offer button, rather than simply being able to accept and have the transaction go through.

Am I missing something? What are other peoples thoughts on this and how they find using the system?

Hello @namesilo , regarding domains listed with Afternic for Fast Transfer, the pertinent email never hit my inbox, and hence I have not enable F.T. I believe this is a known issue that has been reported before. Still, Afternic sends a "reminder" email everyday for these domains.

Is there a way to have the email sent or resent, so that I can enable the FT? Thanks.

Asfas1000 said:

Hello @namesilo , regarding domains listed with Afternic for Fast Transfer, the pertinent email never hit my inbox, and hence I have not enable F.T. I believe this is a known issue that has been reported before. Still, Afternic sends a "reminder" email everyday for these domains.

Is there a way to have the email sent or resent, so that I can enable the FT? Thanks.

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Hello. Please email [email protected] for the fastest help so we can look into your account. We do not have any known issues regarding our integration with Afternic, but we will be very happy to look into your account/domains via our support email address. Thanks!

namesilo said:

Hello. Please email [email protected] for the fastest help so we can look into your account. We do not have any known issues regarding our integration with Afternic, but we will be very happy to look into your account/domains via our support email address. Thanks!

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Will do , thx !

EmotiveDomains said:

Hi, sorry if this has already been asked, but I was wondering if there was any way an offer amount entered into the 'Interested in this domain?' form could become an official offer amount, the same as if it had been done through the 'Make Offer' button.

I thought having two Make Offer methods might be confusing buyers. After I receive an email from a Marketplace form submission, I then have to ask the buyer to make the offer again via the Make Offer button, rather than simply being able to accept and have the transaction go through.

Am I missing something? What are other peoples thoughts on this and how they find using the system?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. This is actually something we considered when we started providing the landing page templates with "submit offer" forms, but thought that the landing page offers were more informal and not really considered a firm/binding offer. Would be interested to hear what other people think as well.

I'm not sure how we'd implement if this is something that we decided to end up doing since our system does require some additional information from Buyers when making formal offers in our system, but I'm sure we could come up with something

namesilo said:

Thanks for the suggestion. This is actually something we considered when we started providing the landing page templates with "submit offer" forms, but thought that the landing page offers were more informal and not really considered a firm/binding offer. Would be interested to hear what other people think as well.

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I'd expect it to be a formal offer

My personal opinion would be, if the offer section of the form cannot be a binding offer, perhaps it's best not to have it as part of the form. Just leaving the official Make Offer button for serious buyers.

Asfas1000 said:

Is there a way to have the email sent or resent, so that I can enable the FT?

Click to expand...

First de-list and then re-list your domain with afternic. If it's an internal glitch, it'd act as refresher, reloader.

Started testing NS marketplace (i.e. sales landers) and looks good so far. What's your favorite sales template? IMO they're all quite good but went with the template build around NameSilo main site as I think the FAQ is great and answers most of the questions that the possible buyer might have straight away.

@namesilo any upgrades planned for NameSilo MarketSites?

@namesilo - Thanks for quickly responding to my suggestions!

namesilo said:

I was about to reply "yes" assuming this was the case, but after we looked at the code, we realized that messages when accepting an offer were not sent to the Buyer. This has been updated and a note when accepting an offer will now be included in the email. Thanks for bringing to our attention.

Click to expand...

Could you update notes to be included with rejection messages too?


One annoyance I've been encountering many times is buyers opting to pay via a payment plan after we have gone through offer-counter offer negotiations with the implicit understanding that the amount was to be paid in full in a one-time payment. When buyers visit a domain, they have three options 1. BIN OR 2. Payment plan OR 3. Make an offer. When buyers opt to make an offer, they go into negotiations thinking that they have relinquished the option of paying via a payment plan, in order to seek a lower price by making an offer. However, after offer-counter offer negotiations have completed, buyers "discover" that when it's time to pay, they can still chose the payment plan option to pay for the price after negotiations.

This has been happening to me numerous times (I guess up to 20-25% of my active payment plans came about in this way). I've often agreed to the absolute lowest price I am willing to accept, buyer promises to pay the full amount right away, I or they accept the price; they go ahead and set up the lowest down payment and lowest monthly payment over as long period as possible. So instead of getting, say $1500 on that day like I expected, I get $115.38 paid over a total of 13 months.

In general I am a huge fan of the payment plan option, as it has enabled me to make certain sales I wouldn't have been able to make otherwise, and I often suggest it to prospective buyers as a way for them to make the purchase more manageable. But I am not a fan of how some buyers send me an offer saying they will pay $1000 today, I accept their offer for a quick sale, they discover that they can choose the payment plan option, and instead of paying me $1000 today like they said, I end up getting 13 monthly payments of $76.92 instead. It's clear from their wording that they have gone into negotiations expecting to make a one-time payment of the amount they are offering, and I accept their offer expecting the name to be paid in full. But when it comes time to pay for the domain, they discover that they can set up a payment plan, and a significant number of them do this instead. My issue with this is that the payment plan option did nothing to help me close the sale, as the buyer was never aware of the fact that they could set up a payment plan after our negotiations in the first place, and they expected to pay in full. In these situations the payment plan provides no benefit to me as a seller, the cash inflow from the sale will be stretched out over a long period (usually a year), thereby delaying my access to the funds generate by the sale, and you risk the buyer defaulting on the payment plan before completing all installments, and possibly getting the name blacklisted or something along those lines before returning it to you.

Because there is nothing to indicate that buyers will be given the option to pay via a payment plan when they enter offer-counter offer negotiations, it might be better to disable this option as a default payment option. When as a seller, you agree to the lowest price you are willing to accept, and buyer then "surprises" you with setting up the lowest monthly payment over the longest time period as possible, you have been force to "double" compromise on the sale, with the latter providing you no additional gain whatsoever.

However, there are situations where the payment plan has its place in offer counter offer negotiations and can provide a beneficial negotiation tool. For example, if buyer finds the price too high, I might suggest the payment plan option to them. This can help convince them that the price of the domain can be managed via the payment plan, and in turn help close the sale with certain types of buyers. When the payment plan provides me with a negotiation benefit in this way, helping me close the sale successfully, I am fine with providing both a discount and letting the buyer set up a payment plan, if they so wish.

I am not sure how the payment plan could be "toggled" on or off for offer/counter-offer negotiations in a way that doesn't complicate things too much. For example, if you inquire on a Huge Domains name, they usually respond that price is $2500, but they can go down to $2000, however, their payment plan option is only valid if they pay $2500, while $2000 is only available if you make a one-time payment. This seems too complicated, and I if negotiations revolve around two prices being offered and countered back and forth, it would probably create to much confusion. Not a good idea for the namesilo marketplace system. Similarly, if buyers have to "request" a certain payment plan, practically having to set up a payment plan and then send it to seller for "approval", it would provide a cumbersome negotiation process if payment plans are being sent back and forth like this. Also not a good solution; and moreover, the offer counter negotiations shouldn't be based around the payment plan in such a way.

One thing that might work is, leave the payment plan option disabled by default during offer-counter offer negotiations (leaving only the option to make a one-time payment of the agreed on amount), and then providing an "enable payment plan" button sellers can tick when we send them our counter offer. Once the button is ticked, it simply enables the payment plan option again (i.e. simply re-activate the system in its current form, where they can pay in full at once or set up a payment plan according to the preset payment plan settings - no need to make it more complex than that). In order to keep things simple, it might be better to only let sellers bring this option into play as a negotiation tool, (since buyers don't know the ins and outs of the namesilo system, I am afraid giving them this option might lead to confusion and misunderstandings on their part) and besides, I have yet to meet a singly buyer who have brought up a desire to pay via the payment plan during negotiations. They all enter offer-counter offer seemingly thinking they have given up the payment plan option altogether, as there is nothing in you system (afaik) indicating to them that they will be able to set up a payment plan after offer-counter offer negotiations.

Again, while I think the way offer counter offer payment options are presented to buyer after negotiations need to be adjusted, I am not sure about how to best disable/enable the payment plan option for offer counter offer negotiations in a way that works for all sellers. But hopefully by outlining the pros and cons of some of the scenarios that often take place in these situations, you can get an idea of some of the drawbacks inherent in the current system, and start to think about ways to improve this aspect of offer counter sales.

nomen said:

Started testing NS marketplace (i.e. sales landers) and looks good so far. What's your favorite sales template? IMO they're all quite good but went with the template build around NameSilo main site as I think the FAQ is great and answers most of the questions that the possible buyer might have straight away.

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I also prefer template #1. Being integrated with the namesilo site it lets visitors get familiar with namesilo right away, which starts the process of building trust immediately. The other templates, while looking good, also look drastically very different than the namesilo site, which has a functional but also slightly dated appearance. When visitors click-through from the other landing pages they don't know what will happen next, and they most likely expect to continue on the landing page "site" - instead they are sent to an entirely different site with a different look. Sending them directly to the namesilo page seems to provide a smoother experience from buyers and avoids the disconnect between the external landing page and the namesilo site.

namesilo said:

Yes, we will be adding some form validation rules to landing pages with the optional contact forms.

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Has this been implemented yet? While I prefer template #1, I am also really interested in giving the no sign up contact form a try (once minimum bid amount is carried over from the listing settings; I don't want to waste time on the $1, $10, $100, $200, etc. low-ballers).

Recently released templates are looking good of course, very good, but this is no doubts personal visual preference. It would be interesting if NameSilo could release some sales stats on the real productivity of all the new templates, most notably where the domain with a new template had a fixed bin price and was using NameSilo dns at the same time, as such a combination implies that the buyer likely arrived to the page with a "new" template, and simply completed buynow process (vs. for example finding the domain on the marketplace page with or without negotiations, where the template config is less relevant)

Haris said:

@namesilo any upgrades planned for NameSilo MarketSites?

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Yeah, we are actually looking at a few different possible templates to upgrade the look of the MarketSites. Nothing definitive yet, but on our radar.

Arca said:

Could you update notes to be included with rejection messages too?

Click to expand...

No problem - this has now been added as well.

Arca said:

One annoyance I've been encountering many times is buyers opting to pay via a payment plan after we have gone through offer-counter offer negotiations with the implicit understanding that the amount was to be paid in full in a one-time payment. When buyers visit a domain, they have three options 1. BIN OR 2. Payment plan OR 3. Make an offer. When buyers opt to make an offer, they go into negotiations thinking that they have relinquished the option of paying via a payment plan, in order to seek a lower price by making an offer. However, after offer-counter offer negotiations have completed, buyers "discover" that when it's time to pay, they can still chose the payment plan option to pay for the price after negotiations.

This has been happening to me numerous times (I guess up to 20-25% of my active payment plans came about in this way). I've often agreed to the absolute lowest price I am willing to accept, buyer promises to pay the full amount right away, I or they accept the price; they go ahead and set up the lowest down payment and lowest monthly payment over as long period as possible. So instead of getting, say $1500 on that day like I expected, I get $115.38 paid over a total of 13 months.

In general I am a huge fan of the payment plan option, as it has enabled me to make certain sales I wouldn't have been able to make otherwise, and I often suggest it to prospective buyers as a way for them to make the purchase more manageable. But I am not a fan of how some buyers send me an offer saying they will pay $1000 today, I accept their offer for a quick sale, they discover that they can choose the payment plan option, and instead of paying me $1000 today like they said, I end up getting 13 monthly payments of $76.92 instead. It's clear from their wording that they have gone into negotiations expecting to make a one-time payment of the amount they are offering, and I accept their offer expecting the name to be paid in full. But when it comes time to pay for the domain, they discover that they can set up a payment plan, and a significant number of them do this instead. My issue with this is that the payment plan option did nothing to help me close the sale, as the buyer was never aware of the fact that they could set up a payment plan after our negotiations in the first place, and they expected to pay in full. In these situations the payment plan provides no benefit to me as a seller, the cash inflow from the sale will be stretched out over a long period (usually a year), thereby delaying my access to the funds generate by the sale, and you risk the buyer defaulting on the payment plan before completing all installments, and possibly getting the name blacklisted or something along those lines before returning it to you.

Because there is nothing to indicate that buyers will be given the option to pay via a payment plan when they enter offer-counter offer negotiations, it might be better to disable this option as a default payment option. When as a seller, you agree to the lowest price you are willing to accept, and buyer then "surprises" you with setting up the lowest monthly payment over the longest time period as possible, you have been force to "double" compromise on the sale, with the latter providing you no additional gain whatsoever.

However, there are situations where the payment plan has its place in offer counter offer negotiations and can provide a beneficial negotiation tool. For example, if buyer finds the price too high, I might suggest the payment plan option to them. This can help convince them that the price of the domain can be managed via the payment plan, and in turn help close the sale with certain types of buyers. When the payment plan provides me with a negotiation benefit in this way, helping me close the sale successfully, I am fine with providing both a discount and letting the buyer set up a payment plan, if they so wish.

I am not sure how the payment plan could be "toggled" on or off for offer/counter-offer negotiations in a way that doesn't complicate things too much. For example, if you inquire on a Huge Domains name, they usually respond that price is $2500, but they can go down to $2000, however, their payment plan option is only valid if they pay $2500, while $2000 is only available if you make a one-time payment. This seems too complicated, and I if negotiations revolve around two prices being offered and countered back and forth, it would probably create to much confusion. Not a good idea for the namesilo marketplace system. Similarly, if buyers have to "request" a certain payment plan, practically having to set up a payment plan and then send it to seller for "approval", it would provide a cumbersome negotiation process if payment plans are being sent back and forth like this. Also not a good solution; and moreover, the offer counter negotiations shouldn't be based around the payment plan in such a way.

One thing that might work is, leave the payment plan option disabled by default during offer-counter offer negotiations (leaving only the option to make a one-time payment of the agreed on amount), and then providing an "enable payment plan" button sellers can tick when we send them our counter offer. Once the button is ticked, it simply enables the payment plan option again (i.e. simply re-activate the system in its current form, where they can pay in full at once or set up a payment plan according to the preset payment plan settings - no need to make it more complex than that). In order to keep things simple, it might be better to only let sellers bring this option into play as a negotiation tool, (since buyers don't know the ins and outs of the namesilo system, I am afraid giving them this option might lead to confusion and misunderstandings on their part) and besides, I have yet to meet a singly buyer who have brought up a desire to pay via the payment plan during negotiations. They all enter offer-counter offer seemingly thinking they have given up the payment plan option altogether, as there is nothing in you system (afaik) indicating to them that they will be able to set up a payment plan after offer-counter offer negotiations.

Again, while I think the way offer counter offer payment options are presented to buyer after negotiations need to be adjusted, I am not sure about how to best disable/enable the payment plan option for offer counter offer negotiations in a way that works for all sellers. But hopefully by outlining the pros and cons of some of the scenarios that often take place in these situations, you can get an idea of some of the drawbacks inherent in the current system, and start to think about ways to improve this aspect of offer counter sales.

Click to expand...

Interesting, and thanks for the feedback as always. I guess the biggest issue would be in figuring out the timing of the negotiations. Also, sales are available to any Buyer even when in negotiations with a different Buyer. Therefore, if payment plans are disabled for 1 Buyer, they would then be disabled for all Buyers. Perhaps an option would be to remove payment plan as an option on the sale just prior to accepting an offer?

Arca said:

Has this been implemented yet? While I prefer template #1, I am also really interested in giving the no sign up contact form a try (once minimum bid amount is carried over from the listing settings; I don't want to waste time on the $1, $10, $100, $200, etc. low-ballers).

Click to expand...

Not yet, we've been monitoring form inputs and have not seen many which would fall into this category. Seems most forms that get submitted contain ranges or simply expressing interest or asking for the lowest possible price. As we get more feedback form people using the forms, we are of course always happy to consider adjustments,

tonyk2000 said:

Recently released templates are looking good of course, very good, but this is no doubts personal visual preference. It would be interesting if NameSilo could release some sales stats on the real productivity of all the new templates, most notably where the domain with a new template had a fixed bin price and was using NameSilo dns at the same time, as such a combination implies that the buyer likely arrived to the page with a "new" template, and simply completed buynow process (vs. for example finding the domain on the marketplace page with or without negotiations, where the template config is less relevant)

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Thanks for the questions. We are actually looking to make a post with recent Marketplace results as we have done a few times in the past. When we do, we will try to include breakdowns based on landing page template.

EmotiveDomains said:

My personal opinion would be, if the offer section of the form cannot be a binding offer, perhaps it's best not to have it as part of the form. Just leaving the official Make Offer button for serious buyers.

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Thanks for the feedback. We'll look into this further to see if there is a good way to perhaps allow contact form offers to be binding or not as a configuration option when setting up the landing page. This one will require some thought

namesilo said:

Perhaps an option would be to remove payment plan as an option on the sale just prior to accepting an offer?

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Sounds like a good way to address the issue I outlined in my post.

@namesilo - Here are some features you can consider introducing:

Total pending payouts
On the “pending payouts” page it would be useful if you could add another row at the bottom of the pending payouts table to show the total amounts. Thanks to the payment plan option numerous smaller payments are made frequently, so a number of new payments tend to accumulate in a short period of time. It’s difficult to get an idea of the total amounts of payments that have been made just by glancing over this table that lists all the payments. I find that I have to pull out a calculator each time I want to get an idea of the total payout amount I have pending. If you could show the total payout amount at the bottom of the table that would make it more convenient for sellers to quickly get an idea of the total amount of gross and net sales. Just something simple like this:


The ability to exclude something in search
Can you add a symbol to let us exclude something from search? For example, if I want to exclude a certain portfolio folder or domains with a certain nameserver set. Say if I don’t want to see domains using Sedo's nameservers I could type in my search query keyword followed by *sedo to exclude this, or if I didn’t want to include domains in a portfolio called “personal” I could add *personal to my search query (keyword *personal). Basically this would work the same way as when you add a hyphen in front of a keyword to exclude it from the search results when doing a search engine query (a hyphen would obviously not work for domains, as they can contain hyphens). Another symbol like *word or ^word or (word) could be used instead.

Seller resources
Please add a list with “awaiting payments” to this section, or make it possible to get an overview of domains awaiting payment in another way - for example add a filter to the active sales section.

Also, please add a list of recent non-payments to seller resources, showing the last 5-10 unpaid for domains. Non-payments happen frequently and since these domains have to be manually relisted it would be good to have an easy overview of which domains require such attention.

Notification when buyers don't respond to our counter-offer.
Please send us a notification email if we make a counter offer that doesn’t get responded to tell us that the buyer hasn't responded and that the negotiations have therefore been closed. Currently domain negotiations are just silently closed without any indication to seller when this happens.

Optionally disable payment plans for offer-counter offer sales
The issue I outlined here continues to happen. I hope we will see a solution to this implemented asap. The solution you suggested here would work well.

Arca said:

@namesilo - Here are some features you can consider introducing:

Total pending payouts
On the “pending payouts” page it would be useful if you could add another row at the bottom of the pending payouts table to show the total amounts. Thanks to the payment plan option numerous smaller payments are made frequently, so a number of new payments tend to accumulate in a short period of time. It’s difficult to get an idea of the total amounts of payments that have been made just by glancing over this table that lists all the payments. I find that I have to pull out a calculator each time I want to get an idea of the total payout amount I have pending. If you could show the total payout amount at the bottom of the table that would make it more convenient for sellers to quickly get an idea of the total amount of gross and net sales. Just something simple like this:
Show attachment 79211

The ability to exclude something in search
Can you add a symbol to let us exclude something from search? For example, if I want to exclude a certain portfolio folder or domains with a certain nameserver set. Say if I don’t want to see domains using Sedo's nameservers I could type in my search query keyword followed by *sedo to exclude this, or if I didn’t want to include domains in a portfolio called “personal” I could add *personal to my search query (keyword *personal). Basically this would work the same way as when you add a hyphen in front of a keyword to exclude it from the search results when doing a search engine query (a hyphen would obviously not work for domains, as they can contain hyphens). Another symbol like *word or ^word or (word) could be used instead.

Seller resources
Please add a list with “awaiting payments” to this section, or make it possible to get an overview of domains awaiting payment in another way - for example add a filter to the active sales section.

Also, please add a list of recent non-payments to seller resources, showing the last 5-10 unpaid for domains. Non-payments happen frequently and since these domains have to be manually relisted it would be good to have an easy overview of which domains require such attention.

Notification when buyers don't respond to our counter-offer.
Please send us a notification email if we make a counter offer that doesn’t get responded to tell us that the buyer hasn't responded and that the negotiations have therefore been closed. Currently domain negotiations are just silently closed without any indication to seller when this happens.

Optionally disable payment plans for offer-counter offer sales
The issue I outlined here continues to happen. I hope we will see a solution to this implemented asap. The solution you suggested here would work well.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions as always - give us a few days to take a look and we'll post a response then.

Ok - a few updates:

Arca said:

Total pending payouts
On the “pending payouts” page it would be useful if you could add another row at the bottom of the pending payouts table to show the total amounts. Thanks to the payment plan option numerous smaller payments are made frequently, so a number of new payments tend to accumulate in a short period of time. It’s difficult to get an idea of the total amounts of payments that have been made just by glancing over this table that lists all the payments. I find that I have to pull out a calculator each time I want to get an idea of the total payout amount I have pending. If you could show the total payout amount at the bottom of the table that would make it more convenient for sellers to quickly get an idea of the total amount of gross and net sales. Just something simple like this:

Click to expand...

This has been done.

Arca said:

The ability to exclude something in search
Can you add a symbol to let us exclude something from search? For example, if I want to exclude a certain portfolio folder or domains with a certain nameserver set. Say if I don’t want to see domains using Sedo's nameservers I could type in my search query keyword followed by *sedo to exclude this, or if I didn’t want to include domains in a portfolio called “personal” I could add *personal to my search query (keyword *personal). Basically this would work the same way as when you add a hyphen in front of a keyword to exclude it from the search results when doing a search engine query (a hyphen would obviously not work for domains, as they can contain hyphens). Another symbol like *word or ^word or (word) could be used instead.

Click to expand...

This has been done. You can now add "^" before a search string on the Domain Manager page to exclude that string.

Arca said:

Seller resources
Please add a list with “awaiting payments” to this section, or make it possible to get an overview of domains awaiting payment in another way - for example add a filter to the active sales section.

Also, please add a list of recent non-payments to seller resources, showing the last 5-10 unpaid for domains. Non-payments happen frequently and since these domains have to be manually relisted it would be good to have an easy overview of which domains require such attention.

Click to expand...

Done. There is now a new drop-down on the Active Sales page for "Payment Status" where you can select "Waiting" or :Payment Plan". We also added a new section to the Seller Resources page listing the 10 most recent missed payments.

Arca said:

Notification when buyers don't respond to our counter-offer.
Please send us a notification email if we make a counter offer that doesn’t get responded to tell us that the buyer hasn't responded and that the negotiations have therefore been closed. Currently domain negotiations are just silently closed without any indication to seller when this happens.

Click to expand...

We will look into this further. Should be working, but we will perform more tests.

Arca said:

Optionally disable payment plans for offer-counter offer sales
The issue I outlined here continues to happen. I hope we will see a solution to this implemented asap. The solution you suggested here would work well.

Click to expand...

Perhaps we have not understood.... can you let us know what is preventing removal of the payment plan option for any such sales?

Thanks again for the suggestions and feedback.

namesilo said:

Ok - a few updates:



This has been done.



This has been done. You can now add "^" before a search string on the Domain Manager page to exclude that string.



Done. There is now a new drop-down on the Active Sales page for "Payment Status" where you can select "Waiting" or :Payment Plan". We also added a new section to the Seller Resources page listing the 10 most recent missed payments.



We will look into this further. Should be working, but we will perform more tests.

Click to expand...

Awesome! Thank you! Probably a good idea to add these and other recent changes, such as exporting only selected names to an excel file, to your knowledge base or FAQ sections so that more users can get a chance to take advantage of them. Maybe add a "tips and tricks" section listing such features.

namesilo said:

Perhaps we have not understood.... can you let us know what is preventing removal of the payment plan option for any such sales?

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What is preventing the removal of the payment plan option for such sales is that once you get an offer the settings are fully locked in. We are not allowed to edit the settings of a domain sale once there is an active offer. The system completely blocks us from editing settings once there is an active offer. So once I get an offer I cannot disable the payment plan option because the system is preventing it. If the sales listing has the payment plan option enabled, there is just no way for me to disable it for such sales once I get an offer, so it is the system itself that is preventing removal of the payment plan option for offer counter offer sales. Sorry if I have not been clear enough, however, when I first brought up this issue I tried to go into detail as much as I could, and I am not really sure how to elaborate on it beyond what I wrote in my original post:

Arca said:

One annoyance I've been encountering many times is buyers opting to pay via a payment plan after we have gone through offer-counter offer negotiations with the implicit understanding that the amount was to be paid in full in a one-time payment. When buyers visit a domain, they have three options 1. BIN OR 2. Payment plan OR 3. Make an offer. When buyers opt to make an offer, they go into negotiations thinking that they have relinquished the option of paying via a payment plan, in order to seek a lower price by making an offer. However, after offer-counter offer negotiations have completed, buyers "discover" that when it's time to pay, they can still chose the payment plan option to pay for the price after negotiations.

This has been happening to me numerous times (I guess up to 20-25% of my active payment plans came about in this way). I've often agreed to the absolute lowest price I am willing to accept, buyer promises to pay the full amount right away, I or they accept the price; they go ahead and set up the lowest down payment and lowest monthly payment over as long period as possible. So instead of getting, say $1500 on that day like I expected, I get $115.38 paid over a total of 13 months.

In general I am a huge fan of the payment plan option, as it has enabled me to make certain sales I wouldn't have been able to make otherwise, and I often suggest it to prospective buyers as a way for them to make the purchase more manageable. But I am not a fan of how some buyers send me an offer saying they will pay $1000 today, I accept their offer for a quick sale, they discover that they can choose the payment plan option, and instead of paying me $1000 today like they said, I end up getting 13 monthly payments of $76.92 instead. It's clear from their wording that they have gone into negotiations expecting to make a one-time payment of the amount they are offering, and I accept their offer expecting the name to be paid in full. But when it comes time to pay for the domain, they discover that they can set up a payment plan, and a significant number of them do this instead. My issue with this is that the payment plan option did nothing to help me close the sale, as the buyer was never aware of the fact that they could set up a payment plan after our negotiations in the first place, and they expected to pay in full. In these situations the payment plan provides no benefit to me as a seller, the cash inflow from the sale will be stretched out over a long period (usually a year), thereby delaying my access to the funds generate by the sale, and you risk the buyer defaulting on the payment plan before completing all installments, and possibly getting the name blacklisted or something along those lines before returning it to you.

Because there is nothing to indicate that buyers will be given the option to pay via a payment plan when they enter offer-counter offer negotiations, it might be better to disable this option as a default payment option. When as a seller, you agree to the lowest price you are willing to accept, and buyer then "surprises" you with setting up the lowest monthly payment over the longest time period as possible, you have been force to "double" compromise on the sale, with the latter providing you no additional gain whatsoever.

However, there are situations where the payment plan has its place in offer counter offer negotiations and can provide a beneficial negotiation tool. For example, if buyer finds the price too high, I might suggest the payment plan option to them. This can help convince them that the price of the domain can be managed via the payment plan, and in turn help close the sale with certain types of buyers. When the payment plan provides me with a negotiation benefit in this way, helping me close the sale successfully, I am fine with providing both a discount and letting the buyer set up a payment plan, if they so wish.

I am not sure how the payment plan could be "toggled" on or off for offer/counter-offer negotiations in a way that doesn't complicate things too much. For example, if you inquire on a Huge Domains name, they usually respond that price is $2500, but they can go down to $2000, however, their payment plan option is only valid if they pay $2500, while $2000 is only available if you make a one-time payment. This seems too complicated, and I if negotiations revolve around two prices being offered and countered back and forth, it would probably create to much confusion. Not a good idea for the namesilo marketplace system. Similarly, if buyers have to "request" a certain payment plan, practically having to set up a payment plan and then send it to seller for "approval", it would provide a cumbersome negotiation process if payment plans are being sent back and forth like this. Also not a good solution; and moreover, the offer counter negotiations shouldn't be based around the payment plan in such a way.

One thing that might work is, leave the payment plan option disabled by default during offer-counter offer negotiations (leaving only the option to make a one-time payment of the agreed on amount), and then providing an "enable payment plan" button sellers can tick when we send them our counter offer. Once the button is ticked, it simply enables the payment plan option again (i.e. simply re-activate the system in its current form, where they can pay in full at once or set up a payment plan according to the preset payment plan settings - no need to make it more complex than that). In order to keep things simple, it might be better to only let sellers bring this option into play as a negotiation tool, (since buyers don't know the ins and outs of the namesilo system, I am afraid giving them this option might lead to confusion and misunderstandings on their part) and besides, I have yet to meet a singly buyer who have brought up a desire to pay via the payment plan during negotiations. They all enter offer-counter offer seemingly thinking they have given up the payment plan option altogether, as there is nothing in you system (afaik) indicating to them that they will be able to set up a payment plan after offer-counter offer negotiations.

Again, while I think the way offer counter offer payment options are presented to buyer after negotiations need to be adjusted, I am not sure about how to best disable/enable the payment plan option for offer counter offer negotiations in a way that works for all sellers. But hopefully by outlining the pros and cons of some of the scenarios that often take place in these situations, you can get an idea of some of the drawbacks inherent in the current system, and start to think about ways to improve this aspect of offer counter sales.

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If you could please review this post again and let me know more specifically what is not clear about this issue I will try to clarify further.

That said, I think the solution you (or someone else from NameSilo) proposed in the initial response to my post would be a simple yet effective solution:

namesilo said:

I guess the biggest issue would be in figuring out the timing of the negotiations. Also, sales are available to any Buyer even when in negotiations with a different Buyer. Therefore, if payment plans are disabled for 1 Buyer, they would then be disabled for all Buyers. Perhaps an option would be to remove payment plan as an option on the sale just prior to accepting an offer?

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Hi not sure if this was mentioned, or is in some settings submenu, but I'll mention it here.

Sales landing pages are not indexed by Google - so if I google mysalesexample.com it does not come up.
This is deliberate since the lander pages are telling Google not to index them - this standard code is in the page sourcecode:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

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What about an option to have the landing pages indexed by Google?

Some time ago Sedo announced that such pages of theirs were now being indexed by Google, not sure about other platforms.