Afternic experiment of January 2020

[AbdulBasit.com]

Hello everyone,

Last month I did an experiment with my entire portfolio by moving from Uniregistry sales lander to Afternic and today I would like to share some data with everyone to understand what happened last month.

As I keep sharing the number of domains in my portfolio which has now grown little over 3,500 to keep in mind.

I was contacted by many fellow domain investors for knowing how the new experiment worked out for me and I’m thankful to each of those for asking me.

My Afternic manager shared the reports from which I would like to disclose some key stats for better understanding.

1. There were inquiries on little over 500 domains in the entire month of January 2020.
2. Had couple of sales, one of which was DKAM.com which sold via BIN for $15,888. My first sale of 2020 and that too of 5 figures!
3. One of the sale happened via GoDaddy cart and the other via Reseller cart which I think means via partner registrar of Afternic.
4. None of those sales happened via sales lander which to me doesn’t mean the change hasn’t worked out. Sometimes the leads are in progress/negotiations going on with brokers and you never know when the domain gets sold.

Overall, I’m happy with the change even though there isn’t a sale made yet via the change I made last month. Also to note, the change I made was after a week was passed. However, I’ll stick to my plan of giving this change a time of at least 6 months and see how it works out.

Feel free to give your feedback or share your experience if you're using Afternic landers.

Thank you!

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

I get your point and agree that Afternic's distribution network is the best out there but you don't need to park your names with them in order to access this. If a potential buyer comes straight to your landing page you're basically gifting Afternic and extra 11%. Think how much you would have saved in a year?

That's why I think you should use different landing pages such as Dan or Epik.

I know exactly what you're trying to say and that's the main reason which never allowed me to take this step which I took starting this year.

I think paying that extra 11% is fine when I compare with all other platforms. Also I used to park with Uni sales lander and made many sales directly without the involvement of brokers. I don't see much harm in trying them out for some time and see the results. The worst thing could be I'll be going back to Uni landers. But I'm hopeful to continue in long run as I expect better results in coming months...

Thanks for your suggestion though

 

[loredan]

You can always make Afternic prices +11%

True that and I actually upped my Afnic prices but that's not the point.

The point is that Afnic landers offers nothing extra than any others and charges double the fees.

In terms of branding Afnic is on the same foot as Dan, they're both unknown to a potential buyer. Is not that Afnic is a super brand (like GoDaddy) known all over the world, so nothing to gain here.

In terms of design quality Dan's landing pages are far superior imo.

Dan also offers the chance to sell names by installments, Afnic not so much. A startup might not afford let's say Abdul's $20k price in one go but they might be happy to pay this over 6 or 12 months, so you might get some extra recurring sales.

Dan also pays very fast, you don't need to wait a week to get your money.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

True that and I actually upped my Afnic prices but that's not the point.

The point is that Afnic landers offers nothing extra than any others and charges double the fees.

In terms of branding Afnic is on the same foot as Dan, they're both unknown to a potential buyer. Is not that Afnic is a super brand (like GoDaddy) known all over the world, so nothing to gain here.

In terms of design quality Dan's landing pages are far superior imo.

Dan also offers the chance to sell names by installments, Afnic not so much. A startup might not afford let's say Abdul's $20k price in one go but they might be happy to pay this over 6 or 12 months, so you might get some extra recurring sales.

Dan also pays very fast, you don't need to wait a week to get your money.

I've seen fellow domainers saying a huge impact on their sales (positive) when Afternic landers started using GoDaddy logo so many people around the world are aware of GoDaddy unlike Dan which isn't popular.

The only good thing I find at Dan is their payment plan option which is what Uni and Afternic both are missing to date. They should introduce this feature which will bring in lot of more sales.

 

[Nikhil Jain]

Afnic landers offers nothing extra than any others

I do understand the basis of the points that you have raised above. But I am not sure if you have seen those Afternic landers. The major reason for trying out those landers would be that they hold the GoDaddy logo if you see. So the test here would be to see if conversions are better using that GoDaddy branding and trust or no.
To test it out, set nameservers on one of your domains to ns3.afternic.com and ns4.afternic.com.

The only reason I have refrained from trying out these landers is the fact that these (at present) do not offer BIN and Make Offer options, which eventually offers lower control over leads.

But that is something that will be worth watching out for from Abdul's experience with these landers.

 

[hui2000]

Congrats on the sale @AbdulBasit.com and thanks for sharing

 

[loredan]

I've seen fellow domainers saying a huge impact on their sales (positive) when Afternic landers started using GoDaddy logo so many people around the world are aware of GoDaddy unlike Dan which isn't popular.

The only good thing I find at Dan is their payment plan option which is what Uni and Afternic both are missing to date. They should introduce this feature which will bring in lot of more sales.

I don't know what to say re: GoDaddy logo, it's definitely useful to have it there on the page but endusers aren't stupid and they know the page they landed isn't GoDaddy but Afternic. In fact I know a guy who uses his own landing pages and has inserted the GoDaddy logo saying "Domain managed by GoDaddy" or something like that since his names are registered with GD.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're doing something wrong, it was just a suggestion to consider some other options. 99% of my names are on Dan or Epik landers however the last two sales were at Afternic. In this case Afnic fully deserved their 20% commission since they actually got the buyers via the registrar army.

 

[DomainFQ.com]

Congrats @AbdulBasit.com

 

[domeen]

True that and I actually upped my Afnic prices but that's not the point.

The point is that Afnic landers offers nothing extra than any others and charges double the fees.

In terms of branding Afnic is on the same foot as Dan, they're both unknown to a potential buyer. Is not that Afnic is a super brand (like GoDaddy) known all over the world, so nothing to gain here.

In terms of design quality Dan's landing pages are far superior imo.

Dan also offers the chance to sell names by installments, Afnic not so much. A startup might not afford let's say Abdul's $20k price in one go but they might be happy to pay this over 6 or 12 months, so you might get some extra recurring sales.

Dan also pays very fast, you don't need to wait a week to get your money.

As far as I understand, there are brokers who deal with the buyers via phone etc.. Salespersons who too it daily. So I do not agree, that 20% is off. I think its fair the amount of work involved.

I mean I have never called via phone any buyer. I do not want to.

And most of those end-users want that someone holds they're hand during the process.

And I still think that DAN would make a lot more sales if they had phone support.

 

[loredan]

As far as I understand, there are brokers who deal with the buyers via phone etc.. Salespersons who too it daily. So I do not agree, that 20% is off. I think its fair the amount of work involved.

I mean I have never called via phone any buyer. I do not want to.

And most of those end-users want that someone holds they're hand during the process.

And I still think that DAN would make a lot more sales if they had phone support.

I'm not going to argue with you, you're right they have sales people, I wouldn't call them brokers though. Those people are just middlemen forwarding offers and emails left or right.
"Hello, we have an interested person, add a price to your name!" or "Someone offered $5K do you accept it?"

I personally think that if someone is in domaining for at least 1-2 years and is not able to manage / self broker a negotiation then he's probably in the wrong game. There might be extreme cases when you really need a broker but these are few and far between.

From what I understand all other marketplaces have brokers as well...

 

[domeen]

I'm not going to argue with you, you're right they have sales people, I wouldn't call them brokers though. Those people are just middlemen forwarding offers and emails left or right.
"Hello, we have an interested person, add a price to your name!" or "Someone offered $5K do you accept it?"

I personally think that if someone is in domaining for at least 1-2 years and is not able to manage / self broker a negotiation then he's probably in the wrong game. There might be extreme cases when you really need a broker but these are few and far between.

From what I understand all other marketplaces have brokers as well...

Did you read my post? I wrote, "I do not want to do that!"
And you speak from the seller's side, they write you "Hello, we have an interested person, add a price to your name!" or "Someone offered $5K do you accept it?"

But do you know how many hours they have to be on the phone to sell one domain?

I always say you can`t get rich if you live like a cheapskate. You have to give money out in order to make it.

 

[loredan]

Did you read my post? I wrote, "I do not want to do that!"
And you speak from the seller's side, they write you "Hello, we have an interested person, add a price to your name!" or "Someone offered $5K do you accept it?"

But do you know how many hours they have to be on the phone to sell one domain?

I always say you can`t get rich if you live like a cheapskate. You have to give money out in order to make it.

As I said I don't want to argue with you, everyone has their own ways to conduct their business.

The point I was trying to make is that Sedo has brokers too and they work for 15%, Epik and Dan as well and they work for 9% . They also spend many hours on the phone trying to close deals, you know?

Anyway, let's not get this thread on a different direction. @AbdulBasit.com thanks for sharing this, please keep us posted on how your experiment works out!

 

[domeen]

Yes, ok!
I wanted to say to @AbdulBasit.com that I changed from afternic to dan landers. I have had sales. But no sale via the so-called Lease to own model. 20+ sales, zero from the "lease to own".

So I think it's overrated. But you never know.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Yes, ok!
I wanted to say to @AbdulBasit.com that I changed from afternic to dan landers. I have had sales. But no sale via the so-called Lease to own model. 20+ sales, zero from the "lease to own".

So I think it's overrated. But you never know.

May I know the reason for you to change from Afternic to Dan landers? Wasn't your experience good enough to keep using their landers?

 

[domeen]

May I know the reason for you to change from Afternic to Dan landers? Wasn't your experience good enough to keep using their landers?

They say you have to try out new things
I was happy. I didn't have to deal with those leads etc.. myself.
Now Dan landers I have also BIN price and no negotiations. I can deal with that. I have maybe noticed, that more buyers from EUROPE, I have not made any statistics, but it looks that way.

I will test it for some months more than see, I want to make at least one of those lease to own model.s

 

[boker]

The fact is very obvious to everyone as Afternic distribution network is super strong and incomparable to any other marketplace. Although I don't defend their commission rate which is pretty high IMO. I made sales into 6 figures last year and half of the sales amount was generated via Afternic and the entire period I didn't use their landers. At the same time, my domains are added at Dan.com and they made zero sales.

Hope that clarifies now.

I could be wrong, but checking last available revenue data for all the top players, Godaddy had something like 28 millions from domain sales, sedo 26 million, uniregistry 19(but that was the revenue for everything, including as registrar, ngtlds and own domains) dan had around 15 million and afternic 1.3 millions( way too low). So either something is not right, either afternic doesn't sell as much as everybody will like. Probably because of the high commissions, some big players are using dan, epik or own landing pages instead of using afternic.

 

[equity78]

Hello everyone,

Last month I did an experiment with my entire portfolio by moving from Uniregistry sales lander to Afternic and today I would like to share some data with everyone to understand what happened last month.

As I keep sharing the number of domains in my portfolio which has now grown little over 3,500 to keep in mind.

I was contacted by many fellow domain investors for knowing how the new experiment worked out for me and I’m thankful to each of those for asking me.

My Afternic manager shared the reports from which I would like to disclose some key stats for better understanding.

1. There were inquiries on little over 500 domains in the entire month of January 2020.
2. Had couple of sales, one of which was DKAM.com which sold via BIN for $15,888. My first sale of 2020 and that too of 5 figures!
3. One of the sale happened via GoDaddy cart and the other via Reseller cart which I think means via partner registrar of Afternic.
4. None of those sales happened via sales lander which to me doesn’t mean the change hasn’t worked out. Sometimes the leads are in progress/negotiations going on with brokers and you never know when the domain gets sold.

Overall, I’m happy with the change even though there isn’t a sale made yet via the change I made last month. Also to note, the change I made was after a week was passed. However, I’ll stick to my plan of giving this change a time of at least 6 months and see how it works out.

Feel free to give your feedback or share your experience if you're using Afternic landers.

Thank you!

500 Inquiries nice

 

[GoWebnames.com]

Nice experiment Abdul, thx for sharing. Which nameserver pair you are using at (ns3/ns4 or ns1/ns2)?
Of all these inquiries you stated, they were generated via the form submissions or via calls placed to the number given on the landers?

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Nice experiment Abdul, thx for sharing. Which nameserver pair you are using at (ns3/ns4 or ns1/ns2)?
Of all these inquiries you stated, they were generated via the form submissions or via calls placed to the number given on the landers?

I'm using ns3/ns4.
I think ns1/ns2 are for parking.

I think those inquiries were generated via both form submissions and calls. Don't have the exact data for this that's why I think...

 

[Name Trader]

Congrats Abdul. I only use my own landers (on my own website), 100% redirect to my website. The only other place I list is at Afternic. Approx 75% of my sales last year were from Afternic, almost all from unpriced domains. Any priced domains on Afternic are at my expected price + 25% to pay for their 20% commission. I have approx 3600 .com domains and about 700 of everything else. I have never sold any non-com domains to an end-user. So I must be doing something wrong there. I have close to zero sales from my website. So I think I'm doing something wrong there also. My main question for you is how do you evaluate and price all those domains? That's probably my biggest headache.

 

[alcy]

Congrats Abdul. I only use my own landers (on my own website), 100% redirect to my website. The only other place I list is at Afternic. Approx 75% of my sales last year were from Afternic, almost all from unpriced domains. Any priced domains on Afternic are at my expected price + 25% to pay for their 20% commission. I have approx 3600 .com domains and about 700 of everything else. I have never sold any non-com domains to an end-user. So I must be doing something wrong there. I have close to zero sales from my website. So I think I'm doing something wrong there also. My main question for you is how do you evaluate and price all those domains? That's probably my biggest headache.

if we donot price our afternic names they do not go on their extended network...which defies the purpose...most who make aftrnic sales have bins.... but on larger folios bins are a headache.

 

[xeroox]

@AbdulBasit.com Thanks for the update! Do you have only .com in your portfolio?

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Congrats Abdul. I only use my own landers (on my own website), 100% redirect to my website. The only other place I list is at Afternic. Approx 75% of my sales last year were from Afternic, almost all from unpriced domains. Any priced domains on Afternic are at my expected price + 25% to pay for their 20% commission. I have approx 3600 .com domains and about 700 of everything else. I have never sold any non-com domains to an end-user. So I must be doing something wrong there. I have close to zero sales from my website. So I think I'm doing something wrong there also. My main question for you is how do you evaluate and price all those domains? That's probably my biggest headache.

Thanks!

I haven't made any sale from my website where 30% of my portfolio is showcased.
About your non-com sales which has never happened, I think that and other sales which aren't happening at the desired speed is the issue what @alcy mentioned. You must price your domains at Afternic. Also setting up BIN at Afternic brings in more sales.

Regarding valuating your own domains, I'm not sure if you've gone through this but I would like you to check this if you didn't got a chance to read in past - https://www.namepros.com/threads/how-do-i-valuate-domains-and-set-an-asking-price.951601/

Feel free to give your feedback

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

@AbdulBasit.com Thanks for the update! Do you have only .com in your portfolio?

I calculated last year and found that approx 90% of my domains are .com. Rest are mostly .net and .org and few .cc/.im.io

 

[Winfluence]

Thank you for sharing. I also use Afternic, because your listings show up in godaddy search and in godaddy auctions, where I have gotten 3 price requests in the last 2 weeks. I don't use their landers though.

My only issue with Afternic is that they are having trouble changing my email notifications to be sent to the updated email in my account... Kind of buggy and I'm still waiting after 7 - 10 days for them to fix this.

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

I'm using ns3/ns4.
I think ns1/ns2 are for parking.

I think those inquiries were generated via both form submissions and calls. Don't have the exact data for this that's why I think...

So do you recommend the n3 n4 ? I have small sample to do. Like 150 names.