Afternic - Official Thread

[GoDaddy]

Hello NamePros!
By popular demand, we have launched a dedicated feedback thread for Afternic, the GoDaddy-owned domain name marketplace.

We have created this thread as a way for you to tell us what works, what doesn't work, and what features you'd like to see at Afternic (please be constructive with your feedback). We're looking forward to hearing from the domain investment community to help us shape the future of Afternic.

We will also be sharing Afternic product updates in this thread.

Please note that this thread is not meant for support. Please email our support team at [email protected] for assistance.

 

[Kyle Tully]

GD messaged me when I had 83 names in review and sent it off to AN product manager as an example of the issue… I’m now up to 105 names in review

Topped out at 110 in review which GD cleared after a couple of days, now just 2 in review for the time being.

Email response time from TA on my last email was 9 days... 5 days after the domain payment was sent and too late to do anything about the specific question/issue I had.

GD really needs to throw some bodies at all these problems. Devs, support, spin doctors etc.

 

[Future Sensors]

Topped out at 110 in review which GD cleared after a couple of days, now just 2 in review for the time being.

Email response time from TA on my last email was 9 days... 5 days after the domain payment was sent and too late to do anything about the specific question/issue I had.

GD really needs to throw some bodies at all these problems. Devs, support, spin doctors etc.

Are you in some kind of A/B test where Afternic developers are running experiments with you?

 

[Kyle Tully]

Are you in some kind of A/B test where Afternic developers are running experiments with you?

Aren't we all

 

[love4ever]

Domain views at afternic reduced almost half compare to what it was on Dan !
I am sure afternic will claim that their views are real and DAN views mostly bots !
But watching this numbers reducing is depressing .
We really need tools to Analise this views by ourselves, without this we are like a blind !

.

 

[Kyle Tully]

Domain views at afternic reduced almost half compare to what it was on Dan !
I am sure afternic will claim that their views are real and DAN views mostly bots !
But watching this numbers reducing is depressing .
We really need tools to Analise this views by ourselves, without this we are like a blind !

I think views on Afternic might be having some issues lately. I don't see any views on names I've added since 25th Oct. Even ones I know I've personally visited.

I don't really put any weight in views -- other than at the extreme end where cash parking is worth testing -- but adding Analytics integration is sorely needed.

 

[DomainRecap]

Okay, I went through the Afternic BIN listings (that I used as a test set) that I set up yesterday.

This morning when I click on the "Next" button they are all getting a "403 Forbidden" error. The BIN links only seem to work if you have an active GoDaddy account and you are already logged in. Once I click "Next" from an active browser (logged into GD on another tab) the transition works properly, but not otherwise.

I have no idea what the hell is going on here as a potential customer should be able to click a BIN and be sent to GD without an active and logged in GD account.

@GoDaddy

 

[Altetra]

I not want to speculate, but what if Godaddy's purpose is not to kill the marketplaces but the exposure of our domains!? We have seen that their search is more to promote AI generated crap and hand regs to end users and not to promote our domains in the top.
One would have to do an in depth investigation to see the differences, in the long run.
edit: the only purpose I see in doing this is, bring thousands of domainers, together with their portfolios, kill the exposure, so no body sees their domains, then push the crap of hand regs to end users, think how much money they make from renewals, twice from Verisign/ICANN price!

 

[DomainRecap]

the only purpose I see in doing this is, bring thousands of domainers, together with their portfolios, kill the exposure, so no body sees their domains, then push the crap of hand regs to end users

This is pretty well what GoDaddy is doing - using our type-in traffic to sell their products and services, while providing us with an archaic marketplace that barely functions. They are not trying to kill the aftermarket, they are attempting to have their cake and eat it too, all while saving lots of money.

And they're not even disguising what's really going on.

 

[NameGroove]

I not want to speculate, but what if Godaddy's purpose is not to kill the marketplaces but the exposure of our domains!? We have seen that their search is more to promote AI generated crap and hand regs to end users and not to promote our domains in the top.
One would have to do an in depth investigation to see the differences, in the long run.
edit: the only purpose I see in doing this is, bring thousands of domainers, together with their portfolios, kill the exposure, so no body sees their domains, then push the crap of hand regs to end users, think how much money they make from renewals, twice from Verisign/ICANN price!

GoDaddy has revenue of >$100,000,000 per quarter on aftermarket. It is not intentionally trying to reduce or remove this business. Some of the people running the aftermarket division are incompetent making poor business decisions. Their recent earnings release showed an earnings miss due to these decisions. It's only a matter of time before the CEO takes notice of earnings misses and takes a harder look at the personnel running that division

 

[Lox]

I think views on Afternic might be having some issues

some issues ... + letting bots crawl around (aka pump up the numbers?)

 

[carob]

GoDaddy has revenue of >$100,000,000 per quarter on aftermarket.

Interesting to know what % of that is sales from their own large portfolio, which may compete with domainers, and what % is expired domain auctions, and how much is fees and commissions from their service that offers to try to buy already-registered domains when people search for them on Godaddy.

 

[Optinom]

What would you like to see us implement to help you see Fast Transfer as less "risky"?

Currently anyone is able to list my domains on their Afternic account, if I haven't listed them yet. Stringent verification is required only in case of listings by two accounts.

Right now, when a FT authorization is sent to registrar partners only the domain name & list price are available. We don't know if the FT authorization was sent from my Afternic account or someone else's. Very often I notice, others add my domain to their Afternic account, and I get a FT authorization request.

It'd be helpful if the FT authorization request sent to the registrar carries the "Afternic account id", from which it was sent. So we know that the authorization request is coming from my own Afternic account.

Within the registrar (Registrar might implement this) we could also perhaps whitelist requests from my Afternic account, while auto-rejecting requests from other accounts.

 

[DomainRecap]

I added almost 100 new domains to Afternic earlier today, and 3 of them went into review and only display the "This domain is registered, but may still be available." notice, but...

There seems to be more in "unofficial review" as when I tested them out, another 10 domains display the same "This domain is registered, but may still be available." screen. And another one doesn't resolve at all (NS are right and it's in my account) and gives a "This site can’t be reached / The connection was reset." error.

This is very depressing when over 14% of my domains go "In Review" or error out and who knows when these might emerge as for sale listings.

I miss Dan already, as it was sooooo easy to list domains, and if this keeps up, my stay at Afternic just might be temporary.

 

[love4ever]

Today received alert email from godaddy premier as a reminder for the increase price of .COM that will take effect on august 31st 2024 ! And they call it advance notice Lol

The most funny part is highlighted with yellow ! Lol .. Chris Bublitz was drunk or what !?

We can imagine where afternic is heading when godaddy in such situation !!

.

 

[Name2go]

Today received alert email from godaddy premier as a reminder for the increase price of .COM that will take effect on august 31st 2024 ! And they call it advance notice Lol

The most funny part is highlighted with yellow ! Lol .. Chris Bublitz was drunk or what !?

We can imagine where afternic is heading when godaddy in such situation !!


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I received the same email. I was too scared to decide whether or how to post this. Actually, it's too embarrassing for me.

 

[Mikeyboy]

I received an email that payment for a domain sold had been sent that day and should see in 1-2 biz days.
This was approx 2 weeks after I had already received payment. Unnfortunately, I was not paid twice. lol

 

[Altetra]

Today received alert email from godaddy premier as a reminder for the increase price of .COM that will take effect on august 31st 2024 ! And they call it advance notice Lol

The most funny part is highlighted with yellow ! Lol .. Chris Bublitz was drunk or what !?

We can imagine where afternic is heading when godaddy in such situation !!


Show attachment 265621
Show attachment 265618


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Don't forget that Godaddy lives on a globe where time flies differently!

 

[Jannes]

I received the same email. I was too scared to decide whether or how to post this. Actually, it's too embarrassing for me.

Yep, SlowDaddy causes second-hand embarrassment.

 

[Acroplex]

Never used Afternic intentionally before. It was always due to GoDaddy acquiring Uniregistry and Dan that I got to experience the woes of being on the Afternic platform as a seller. As a buyer, I was less concerned about the lack of bells and whistles and I did use Afternic for that purpose without any issues.

That being said, after deciding to give Afternic a test run for 30 days, I have to say I am not yet disappointed. The transfer of domains from Dan went through without any major issues, although I had to hand-verify with DNS settings a dozen domains.

In the two weeks or so since, I've had approximately 10 leads and one sale. The latter is important because it came from the now defunct Dan.com! I will address this fun incident separately but for now I have to say a couple of things about Afternic support.

Emailing support is a slow process; the first reply email will affirm what my issue is. It's like telling your parents "I have a toothache" and instead of taking you to the dentist they reply "from my understanding your tooth hurts, am I correct?" Past that point, ticket resolution might take 3-4 days.

In the case of a recent incident that involved 3 issues one of which was an ongoing sale, I decided to use the online chat at Afternic. After punching in my info and a brief "hello" I waited the better part of an hour before a reply came. Humorously, I said that perhaps I caught them on a lunch break. Once back, the customer rep was able to address my issues, after I verified myself - which is important. Vivi addressed my issues in real time and offered solutions and feedback. I did not feel that I was just a customer in line, as she spent a good 20 minutes resolving the issues on the spot for me. I highly commend her for the way she interacted with me and it wasn't hand-holding or patronizing. Of course, I let her do her job and at the end things were resolved faster than via an email.

Regarding Transaction Assurance they have improved a lot as well and it seems that a Dan "bot" runs in the background checking for domain transfer completion. Either that, or someone was working at 10pm confirming my actions to transfer out a domain!

Overall, I am going to display more patience and from my interactions with domain brokers at GoDaddy I am hopeful that the platform will improve more. E.g. where are the Dan filters to nail down different TLDs in one's portfolio?

Good work, Afternic.

 

[DomainRecap]

I think I understand what's going on with the domains in "unofficial review" - these seem to be the same domains I had to authorize via DNS TXT (because they were already listed) but getting them actually listed now seems to be a MANUAL process, where someone live (on 9 to 5) still needs to click and okay it.

In the meantime, the fully-authorized domain listing greets viewers with "Sorry, domain.com is unavailable".



This defeats the entire purpose of installing a DNS authorization system - if that's not "secure enough" to actually approve the domain, then design something better, but forcing a DNS TXT code lookup in order to list at Afternic, and then not even listing the domains that pass the authorization, is nuts.

On Dan, these DNS TXT authorized domains would immediately be listed and ready for buyers, the same with Sedo and the same with GoDaddy Auctions, and with any other domain marketplace that I've used that features a similar DNS authorization system.

But not Afternic. As usual.

@GoDaddy