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Has anyone used undeveloped.com to sell domains? They claim to be able to increase a domainers sales by 54%.
Nice with the new rental feature. But as mentioned, there should be an option to buy also.
I wonder what it is a reasonable monthly rent? One percent of the BIN? Or less or more? I guess there is no standard for this.
Also not sure if Undeveloped has a minimum amount. Maybe their administration cannot support sending just a few dollars per month with bank fees and everything.
The buy option will be offered soon.
I would highly advice to not make paralels with real-estate for domain rentals. The average purchase price of a house is significantly higher and so requires a lower rental fee.
Since domains are significantly lower priced than houses the rental fee should be in balance and higher than for example 1% of the BIN price.
We'd advice rental prices in this region:
1: BIN less than $1,000 = $50 to $70 / Rental fee a month
2: BIN between $1,000 - $5,000 = $70 to $250 / Rental fee a month
3: BIN between $5,000 - $20,000 = $250 to $750 / Rental fee a month
And so on. In our pilot period, we set up rentals at even higher price ratios than mentioned above. Keep in mind that end-users will opt for renting your domain simply because they would like to take pressure of their cash flow.
Buying a domain for $1,000 in one go or renting it for $50 a month is significantly more affordable and doable for a very large group of potential end-users that currently wouldn't transact with you.
To conclude don't set too crazy high rental prices to scare away businesses, but also don't set the rental fee too low.
In the future, once we have more data at our hands we'll publish a domain rental index per extension to give you an impression of what's the norm and how rental prices increase/decrease over time.
Kind regards,
Reza
From my experience it's worse at undeveloped than elsewhere as of this moment in time.
The legally biding contract is ignored by buyers they simply don't care about it and just ignore threats etc. knowing nothing to fear at the 3/4 figure level if they default. If buyers don't care about it then remove it entirely and just accept a ton of time wasters, will probably get more sales without it.
At SEDO for example barely had a fake buyer, same with afternic, there's something wrong here.
Hi Joro,
Of course you have more cancelations at Undeveloped than on the other platforms. Our marketplace is significantly differently designed than other marketplaces. Don't forget we used to use other marketplaces before we were fed up and started building our own marketplace.
The leads that get canceled you wouldn't even notice on other platforms just like the additional sales you have at Undeveloped because of the same mechanism. The mechanism that results in more non-serious buyers to slip through also makes sure you actually end up making more money at the end of the month.
As far as I'm informed, at Afternic you don't even get notified of a pending sale but only when the buyer pays you'll see a transaction forming. So you have no idea how many sales you're missing there because those buyers never complete the entire process.
I have said this a lot of times and will keep repeating it. Creating a low barrier for your buyers is the best setup available.
If we now build extra barriers and first ask buyers to create an account, verify the account etc before the buyer can place a bid, you'll lose a lot of sales. This is a proven fact. Some of our biggest sellers that switch to our marketplace for the first time, see an increase of xx% in sales and net revenue on a monthly basis. They will also see an increase in canceled transactions, but again that's accompanied by more sales and a nice low barrier for buyers to purchase a name.
Lastly, we offer free brokerage support for all transactions, we chase all buyers on Undeveloped to make sure all legit ones convert etc. I don't see other platforms offering this while maintaining such a low commission as Undeveloped.
Cancelations are simply part of this business, it is annoying but don't forget what your main goal is as seller: to generate the maximum potential revenue from your portfolio and Undeveloped is fully optimized for that.
So again, I get your frustrations guys but our low barrier setup is good for all of us. If we wanted to change it, we could do it easily and save costs while we're at it since we'd require less staff to chase buyers for you. But that's only going to cause fewer fake offers coming and fewer sales for all Undeveloped sellers and that should never be the case. We don't want to build another alternative marketplace, we're building the domain marketplace of the future.
Kind regards,
Reza
Hi RezaIf we started publishing our sales, we'd be represented in the daily top 10 every day in terms of transaction value.
Often sellers that sell domains above $5k just don't want to share their sales so you'll only see the lower ones being reported.
Hi Joro,
Of course you have more cancelations at Undeveloped than on the other platforms. Our marketplace is significantly differently designed than other marketplaces. Don't forget we used to use other marketplaces before we were fed up and started building our own marketplace.
The leads that get canceled you wouldn't even notice on other platforms just like the additional sales you have at Undeveloped because of the same mechanism. The mechanism that results in more non-serious buyers to slip through also makes sure you actually end up making more money at the end of the month.
As far as I'm informed, at Afternic you don't even get notified of a pending sale but only when the buyer pays you'll see a transaction forming. So you have no idea how many sales you're missing there because those buyers never complete the entire process.
I have said this a lot of times and will keep repeating it. Creating a low barrier for your buyers is the best setup available.
If we now build extra barriers and first ask buyers to create an account, verify the account etc before the buyer can place a bid, you'll lose a lot of sales. This is a proven fact. Some of our biggest sellers that switch to our marketplace for the first time, see an increase of xx% in sales and net revenue on a monthly basis. They will also see an increase in canceled transactions, but again that's accompanied by more sales and a nice low barrier for buyers to purchase a name.
Lastly, we offer free brokerage support for all transactions, we chase all buyers on Undeveloped to make sure all legit ones convert etc. I don't see other platforms offering this while maintaining such a low commission as Undeveloped.
Cancelations are simply part of this business, it is annoying but don't forget what your main goal is as seller: to generate the maximum potential revenue from your portfolio and Undeveloped is fully optimized for that.
So again, I get your frustrations guys but our low barrier setup is good for all of us. If we wanted to change it, we could do it easily and save costs while we're at it since we'd require less staff to chase buyers for you. But that's only going to cause fewer fake offers coming and fewer sales for all Undeveloped sellers and that should never be the case. We don't want to build another alternative marketplace, we're building the domain marketplace of the future.
Kind regards,
Reza
I think due to lots of posts you missed my suggestion, allowing seller to communicate with buyer until to the point transaction is complete would solve this problem partly, don't you agree?
On the names buyers hit BIN it is irrelevant as they are to be paid out straight away but on the negotiated offers, it will help us to keep in touch with buyer and remind them for payments at our own pace.
For instance, I have a name on which buyer has not paid for a while now, all I got was one message from UD that we have sent payment reminder and that's it, would it not be better if I could simply have option to message buyer that if they do not pay, I would be forced to cancel the transaction within 24 hours and I could proceed with unchecking domain sold options to relist name.
Thanks, Reza. Great advice as usual and I look forward to trying it out. I am not sure who will want to rent when buying in installments in up to 24 months is available, but it will be interesting to see.
Does anyone have a feeling for what drives the nonpaying customers? Is it people who are deliberately messing with the system for nefarious purposes, or are most people who intended to buy the domain name but then had second thoughts right after, or possibly people who legitimately want to buy but have problems with a payment method? How to deal with situation depends on which most are.
-Bob
The binding contract is just not even worth putting on undeveloped as all the non payers get away with it never had so many on sedo or afternic just seems a mass of fake bids now or buyers...
I think due to lots of posts you missed my suggestion, allowing seller to communicate with buyer until to the point transaction is complete would solve this problem partly, don't you agree?
On the names buyers hit BIN it is irrelevant as they are to be paid out straight away but on the negotiated offers, it will help us to keep in touch with buyer and remind them for payments at our own pace.
For instance, I have a name on which buyer has not paid for a while now, all I got was one message from UD that we have sent payment reminder and that's it, would it not be better if I could simply have option to message buyer that if they do not pay, I would be forced to cancel the transaction within 24 hours and I could proceed with unchecking domain sold options to relist name.
Hi Reza
Thanks for taking time to respond. I have already shifted my all domains to undeveloped & hope we will do a sale together
Okay fine.
It looks like i've had 3 in around a week waste my time which is crazy. Why do you think it's getting worse?
Can you scrap the useless legally binding contract which buyers couldn't care less about and aren't afraid of defaulting on. It serves no one and will only increase friction when it's not needed. I.e. could put off people who are interested but don't want to see that.
I'm new to Undeveloped....
Do you guys take payments yourself?
whats your cut%?
Is escrow an option etc?
How exactly did it waste your time though when we take care of everything from sending payment reminders to calling your buyers to collecting the payment?
Sit back, relax and let us do your work for you. That's what we're for.
Hi Umer,
Thank you for the feedback!
Can you PM me the domain transaction you refer to? There are multiple automated reminders and reminders/updates sent by your account manager. So I'd love to look up what's happening with that transaction.
We've created a prototype for that model a year ago but couldn't find a way to make it work without risking the entire escrow process to get derailed. I trust you to follow our instructions, but even now some sellers that have to wait an hour or two, will contact the buyer and arrange the transfer directly between the parties themselves, creating a huge security issue.
We've seen transactions, where the buyer and seller post payment did the transfer directly and outside of our instructed process where the buyer then would claim to never have received the domain and then performs a chargeback.
What we then thought of as a potential alternative is to create standard action messages that you as a seller can submit when an agreement is reached to the buyer. I think we'll build this feature but I can't give an ETA or anything yet as it's not planned in a product sprint yet.
Kind regards,
Reza
I agree its nice to have the ability to cancel the sale whenever we want BUT how long do we wait? I've had sales that have taken hours and I've had sales that take the buyer a month to get back and start payment proceedings. Tough decision as to when to cancel that sale though. True, could move the domain to another platform taking inquiries during the wait time to cover one self.
It's a mindset. When fake buyers don't complete it gets hopes up that a sale is going to complete, especially with a contract behind it. As buyers clearly don't fear or care about the contract then why not just scrap it and get more offers from buyers that are put off by it?
The other problem is that the name is not put right back on sale, I had to wait about 5 days for my last incoming fake offer to be sorted and name re-listed AFTER the sale was deemed fake and canceled. That's too long for me tbh.
Hi Wizard,
I've just reviewed your account to see what kind of volumes we're talking about and observe you've sold xx domains with us and just have one canceled sale.
So I don't understand why you're so vocal about "all the non-payers" while you just have had 1 so far.
Kind regards,
Reza
It's a mindset. When fake buyers don't complete it gets hopes up that a sale is going to complete, especially with a contract behind it. As buyers clearly don't fear or care about the contract then why not just scrap it and get more offers from buyers that are put off by it?
Okay fine.
It looks like i've had 3 in around a week waste my time which is crazy. Why do you think it's getting worse?
Can you scrap the useless legally binding contract which buyers couldn't care less about and aren't afraid of defaulting on. It serves no one and will only increase friction when it's not needed. I.e. could put off people who are interested but don't want to see that.
Here are my two cents: I say leave the legally binding contract language in.
Why? We know that many buyers simply dont mind breaching a contract made by placing an offer on a domain BUT you never know when one of those buyers is bothered enough, by being reminded of their obligation to fulfill the contract they entered into, and makes payment.