question Self Listed Marketplace vs Third Party

Self hosting is just that so it is more than option of hosting domain lander. Any blog will do more than parked domains in traffic. Most domains with small amount of work will easily out perform a normal lander for traffic but probably could learn some lessons from marketplace landers for simplicity or design. Domains might help with type in and exact match but it trickles till you give content juice.

Which payment processor would be nice to use in case of your self host your domains ?

davidc1 said:

Which payment processor would be nice to use in case of your self host your domains ?

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I have used marketplaces and have given away some of pie and paypal but seems dan could be a good option low fee if bring client.

Dan! Sedo? = what's the URL again to list all your domains in one link? (Old school usage)

satsdifference.com said:

Dan! Sedo? = what's the URL again to list all your domains in one link? (Old school usage)

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https://sedo.com/member/my-domains/import

the main thing to consider is that Dan, Sedo and co already have traffic. How are you going to drive prospects to your self hosted marketplace?
It's like having a shop in a busy mall or in a deserted area...

ohyeahdomainer said:

the main thing to consider is that Dan, Sedo and co already have traffic. How are you going to drive prospects to your self hosted marketplace?
It's like having a shop in a busy mall or in a deserted area...

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also their personal advancing:

for ex: my latest sale for 15k happened fast money because I had it listed on godadddyAfternic all 25k along time-ago. since that, i received an email from their afternic agent On NEGOTIATED for less 15k acceptable to me and more than i coulda even dreamed to ask for myself! !!


- have a special day

and i wasn't about to renew that domain: lesson (list `em)

ddzc said:

I was wondering, has anyone performed any sort of A/B testing

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I think, over the years, I've tried/tested them all.

The bottom line is: whatever you have your name pointed is where it will likely sell. Using a platform that has its own branding and links at the top and bottom of a page to search for 'other' domains (other than from within your own portfolio) is only giving your visitor a chance to buy from someone else.

Learn how to price your domains, put that fixed price (sometimes with make offer as needed) and give the customer as many payment options as possible.

Exactly as said before - these marketplaces have the traffic already, people are going shopping there like to shopping malls, checking different options - exact, similar, alternatives, playing with words etc - all your names can be seen there for such people.
If you want to create your own marketplace - it's totally possible, but will take lots of time, effort and SEO. And starting to get quality traffic will be an even more complicated task.
And still you can perfectly do both at the same time - have your portfolios on these marketplaces while developing your own platform.

satsdifference.com said:

Dan! Sedo? = what's the URL again to list all your domains in one link? (Old school usage)

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For Dan the structure is:
https://dan.com/domain-seller/your-name?
Need to insert your own your-name, of course. For me my seller name is my two word name, and I need to use a dash between them where the space is for it to work.

You can if you wish also include descriptors to show only ones with a certain TLD, price range, etc. e.g. this structure shows just the .org names in my portfolio, ordered by length. I would make it a link, but not sure if allowed to by NamePros rules, but hopefully showing it as example to answer your question is allowed.

https://dan.com/domain-seller/robert-hawkes?&tld[]=org&order_by=length-asc

Bob

I combine the two. I don't know why, noticed Chinese buyers love buying from my site, even if I listed same domains on third-party marketplaces. As for third-party marketplaces, I've more sales on DAN than any of them.

ohyeahdomainer said:

the main thing to consider is that Dan, Sedo and co already have traffic. How are you going to drive prospects to your self hosted marketplace?
It's like having a shop in a busy mall or in a deserted area...

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that's not the case
domains do have traffic
and you serve them the traffic

Exactly...

It is a good topic, @ddzc and thanks for starting the discussion.

It may depend partly on the size of portfolio and the quality and type of names, whether a separate marketplace is best. While one can save on commissions, and have control over content and in particular negotiations, some potential buyers probably feel uncomfortable with a brand they have not heard of, perhaps. Even with Escrow, Dan, Sedo, etc. closing the transaction and handling payment, probably still some buyers prefer one of the big marketplaces.

If I was starting from scratch, I like a lot what is offered by things like SHWL. You have advantage that your names do not compete with a whole pool of names from others, as on the marketplaces, yet have 24 hr response and transaction handling from SH for your names, if you tick that option. And no expense of hosting and although standard listing process is somewhat time consuming, not as much as your own site, perhaps.

Bob

ohyeahdomainer said:

the main thing to consider is that Dan, Sedo and co already have traffic. How are you going to drive prospects to your self hosted marketplace?
It's like having a shop in a busy mall or in a deserted area...

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Most end users don't use Dan or Sedo. They go to a popular registrar like GoDaddy and start typing in domain ideas.

If your domain is listed for free on Afternic it will show up for sale on GoDaddy and many other registrars.

I think you guys aren’t giving end users their due credit. They have zero problem finding a name they really want no matter where it points. Anyone who doesn’t know what they want yet can be overwhelmed by too many choices and the chances of them picking your name on a site with many choices (like a brandable market) are minute. Most of what sells wherever brought its own traffic imo.

I think most buyers already know what they are looking for before going on marketplaces like dan, sedo, afternic and others.
In my opinion buyers first type the name on the address bar, so if the domain lands on your own landing page, there is a chance to sell... If the landing page is set up with all the informations about the sale.

People don't know the difference between domains and websites. They don't know the word of "domain name" as they have never heard it before. They don't know how the internet and websites work. They know nothing including but not limited to domain marketplaces, domain registrars, domain forums, etc.

Marketplaces have only 1 real function: payment processing for sellers. They have no notable/vital function for buyers. So marketplaces are for sellers only.

As sellers/resellers are also buyers, only those buyers know those marketplaces and only those buyers visit marketplace websites. End users can't visit. Because they don't know and don't need to know. They are not in domaining business. They know their own offline businesses only, nothing more.

karmaco said:

I think you guys aren’t giving end users their due credit. .

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Go ask 100 business owners in all categories and I would bet 99% have never heard of Sedo, Dan or other domain marketplaces. But most have heard of GoDaddy, because they're running Super Bowl ads, sponsoring NASCAR drivers etc.

You need to go where the end users are, not what marketplace you like best.

Domains are unique. Unlike 99% of products listed on Amazon, there can only be one owner of each domain. So buyers who want that specific domain aren't going to care much about where it points as long as that place looks trustworthy and offers some kind of escrow service. This group of extremely interested buyers is also the reason why you hear about sales occurring without landers (in fact that's how we acquired Alter.com).

The real value of any marketplace is their marketing. How many more buyers can they help you reach? Especially those buyers that never considered your name in the first place.

I would personally recommend using the shotgun approach where you list your names at as many places as possible to target all available buyers. Some marketplaces may get you more sales than others but being on all of them gives you the best chance of success.

ohyeahdomainer said:

the main thing to consider is that Dan, Sedo and co already have traffic. How are you going to drive prospects to your self hosted marketplace?
It's like having a shop in a busy mall or in a deserted area...

Click to expand...

This is a good point, which is why I do the following:

1. Post all of my domains on sedo, godaddy, dan, etc
2. Point the nameservers of all my domains to my own marketplace website where inquiries come directly to me.

At this point, I'm curious if pointing the DNS to sedo, dan, etc, would convert more or now, just due to authority in general. This is the only advantage I see, it's not like they market your domain to potential buyers. Maybe I'll run a test just for fun in the coming months. I was wondering if anyone else had, and got curious. Great to see everyones feedback.

I’m testing this right now to see if I can scale my sales.
I’ve built a marketplace on an e-commerce platform and had a custom lander coded for CRO using Dan as the payment processor.

What has been interesting is that my traffic volume is pretty much the same as when the domains were on Dan (I still have them listed on Dan but now the dns is pointing to my website I get no hits on Dan at all). This suggests all my traffic is coming from type in rather than browsing a marketplace.
The main reason I wanted to test this was to be able to see the funnel stages like “adding to a cart”, and to have the ability the retarget the traffic on social media ads. I get that platforms like alter and SH run social ads for you, and I agree with Deven comment above completely on the marketing power, but when the 3rd party marketplaces retarget listings they bundle you with other domains - so it’s great for the marketplace conversions in general, but not so great for the seller (still better that no remarking though).

I haven’t started to retarget on my website yet as I need to build my pixel audience up first (I launched this month), but I’m very interested to get started to see what that does to conversion rate.

The main benefit is the Deep analytics and the ability to create marketing funnels, but I still don’t know yet if in fact the reality is that if someone is wants a domain enough they will buy regardless of the marketing tactics, and this only really works for “retail” sales.

When I look at the reported sales on here and the users that are very successful reporting frequent sales, it seems like they have large 10k+ Portfolios and are using the marketplace channels. A lot of the time and it’s more of an arbitrage model and a lot of the time selling back to domain to investors rather that more of a retail model. Obviously this opinion is only based on what I’ve seen that gets reported and who knows what’s not shared.

I don’t think you can really compare with a platform like godaddy as an investor and leverage their huge advertising power with a marketplace because they can sell something we all can’t - selling new registrations as well as existing domains.

Full disclosure I’m really new to this, its is a hobby for me at this stage and my day job is in Marketing. I’ve only sold 2 domains and I’ve started learning about domaining after those sales March this year.
My first sale was just shear luck that a brand wanted it and came to me direct. My second was a domain I had registered to use myself for a business in the future and I was approached by a godaddy broker.

As per my experience it doesn't matter where the domains are listed until they have a proper landing page with a professional look, that gives trust to the buyer, has trusted payment processors and all the necessary information a client wants.
Of course each option (marketplace listing vs. own marketplace) has its pros and cons, but the real power comes when you combine them. As mentioned above by others, the best way is to list your names in as many places as you can to increase exposure, BUT the name should be pointed to your own store, so the buyer comes to your store first, not stepping into a mall fist and then trying to find your name.

This is why we developed the perfect domain store for individual sellers, who want to save on commissions and monthly fees, have full control over their sales, negotiations, content editing, price, etc. and at the same time own their store, instead of renting it (DAN,SHWL,Afternic,Efty,etc). The power of this store comes with integrated payment options (CreditCard,Crypto,Escrow) but also giving the option of choosing marketplace payment processors like DAN,Afternic,Sedo, etc. (wherever you list your names) with Make Offer and instalment options right from your landing page. You can see an example store on Supernames.com and Brandshore.com.