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.

 

[End User King]

The whole UX team should be fired if there is even a UX team. I'm pretty sure that Joe Styler is pissed right now. Good to who always had our backs but seems like even his hands are tied right now. We are paying additional money on each domain sold with an actual decrease in invisibility. Buyers can't buy domain names. Reported sales on Afternic seems to be nearly nonexistent if it's not a no brainer type in domain. Are used to average around 4 to 6 sales a week. Then down to two a week. Now I'm lucky to sell to a month. Even on Twitter, the sentiment is nearly nonexistent when it comes to Afternic. Somebody should be fired.

 

[br1ll1on]

So still no live support or self brokerage or bitpay option for the new afternic ? @GoDaddy @Joe Styler

 

[Maged Khatab]

A new day, a new problem! For the past few hours, I started to notice some domains were missing from my account. 3 domains were missing 4 hours ago, now +50 domains are missing from my account and all are displaying the "Request Price" landing page instead of the "Custom Lander" landing page.

Anyone here is experiencing the same problem?

 

[Peak.Domains]

I took a look, and yep, it’s amateur hour at GoDaddy once again.

Normally I'd suggest wearing a helmet but I think the damage is already done at GoDaddy.



(Not a slight at any individual employees pictured, and I wouldn't say this if anyone in the pics was identifiable.)

 

[Maged Khatab]

If you can give me an example of a domain this is happening with right now that we can see I will get it to the @GoDaddy handle to look over with the service team.

Hi @Joe Styler Thank you for your response. I sent you a PM.

Regards,

 

[JB Lions]

Not taking a chance on automatic migration so just finished up moving them manually from Dan to Afternic landers

Mass changed nameservers from Dan to Afternic

Mass deleted domains at Dan

A minute or two for that

Now, what took some time was going in and changing landing page, check to make sure prices were right, enabling lease to own, update camel casing. About 5 hours for about 600 domains. All done and all going to the right place after a Quick Look

For my adult domains (less than 2% of my portfolio) , they’re at Bodis with the sales lander page since there are no providers currently for ppc. You’ll get an error page if you choose the lander with the ppc ads:

From Bodis:
“Thank you for notifying us. Unfortunately our upstream ad provider recently discontinued their support for adult traffic, and we do not have a Tier2 ad provider for adult traffic at this time.

However, we are looking into implementing some alternative ad streams in the not too distant future, but if you intend to keep your adult domains with Bodis in the meantime, we would recommend enabling the 'Sales Lander Only' option to circumvent this error page.”

 

[Maged Khatab]

A new day, a new problem! For the past few hours, I started to notice some domains were missing from my account. 3 domains were missing 4 hours ago, now +50 domains are missing from my account and all are displaying the "Request Price" landing page instead of the "Custom Lander" landing page.

Anyone here is experiencing the same problem?

Well, I did my new daily job as a voluntary Website Tester at Afternic and I figured out that all the missing names from my Afternic account were listed on Dan!

I deleted all my listings from Dan last July after I had pointed all my portfolio to Afternic Nameservers and even though I don't have any listing on Dan I opted out today from the migration process.

I managed to figure out the cause of this issue by using my account on Domain.io to compare the missing domains from my Afternic account with all my domains that are listed on Dan in my Domain.io account "by other sellers" and turned out some of these sellers started the migration process on Dan today while having old listings "Mine now" in their portfolios and this resulted in moving domains from my account to theirs!

I wonder how many more domains will be missing from my account and others on the Afternic network and the amount of bugs during this migration process from Dan to Afternic.

It's funny how I thought I would be bug-free if I was opted out of the migration process on Dan and deleted all my listings there.

 

[Embrand]

@GoDaddy Could you please clarify where the majority of your domain sales come from? My rep says it is "definitely from the landers", while another high-ranking GoDaddy employee has said it is definitely from searching at the registrar... So which one is it?

 

[Jannes]

@GoDaddy Could you please clarify where the majority of your domain sales come from? My rep says it is "definitely from the landers", while another high-ranking GoDaddy employee has said it is definitely from searching at the registrar... So which one is it?

There's a reason why they might say different things. A relevant discussion on X:

 

[alcy]

The whole UX team should be fired if there is even a UX team. I'm pretty sure that Joe Styler is pissed right now. Good to who always had our backs but seems like even his hands are tied right now. We are paying additional money on each domain sold with an actual decrease in invisibility. Buyers can't buy domain names. Reported sales on Afternic seems to be nearly nonexistent if it's not a no brainer type in domain. Are used to average around 4 to 6 sales a week. Then down to two a week. Now I'm lucky to sell to a month. Even on Twitter, the sentiment is nearly nonexistent when it comes to Afternic. Somebody should be fired.

how about we all start considering what others before pointed out.. that gd aim is to eliminate domainers ... not help them and certainly not increase their sales.

it can also be the only explanation for drastic drop in sales ... exposures... fee hikes... worsening support.. doubled club prices.. etc

 

[Jannes]

A new day, a new problem! For the past few hours, I started to notice some domains were missing from my account. 3 domains were missing 4 hours ago, now +50 domains are missing from my account and all are displaying the "Request Price" landing page instead of the "Custom Lander" landing page.

Anyone here is experiencing the same problem?

My current number of missing domains is 26.

For all I care, they can all go missing.

 

[DN_Hunter]

I finally got the "Filters" function in my account. There seems to be a delay between performing an operation on filtered names, and it actually happening.

Example: I filtered on a BIN price that gave me 50 names. I selected all 50 and turned OFF Lease-to-Own. The operation said successful, but when I went back to view my portfolio they all said LEASE was still ON. About 3 minutes later they finally changed to OFF (so a little bit of a delay -- but alot better than uploading a BULK CSV file and waiting for them to process the Bulk file).

Overall, I like this FILTER option -- it will make bulk changes alot easier vs the Bulk CSV files method

 

[davidc1]

I finally got the "Filters" function in my account. There seems to be a delay between performing an operation on filtered names, and it actually happening.

Example: I filtered on a BIN price that gave me 50 names. I selected all 50 and turned OFF Lease-to-Own. The operation said successful, but when I went back to view my portfolio they all said LEASE was still ON. About 3 minutes later they finally changed to OFF (so a little bit of a delay -- but alot better than uploading a BULK CSV file and waiting for them to process the Bulk file).

Overall, I like this FILTER option -- it will make bulk changes alot easier vs the Bulk CSV files method

With the CSV method you can specify LTO ?

 

[DN_Hunter]

With the CSV method you can specify LTO ?

You are right -- I don't think the csv file can modify the LTO. I meant in general needing to use a CSV file to do other types of bulk updates (BIN, MIN, FLOOR, etc.) But yea, the LTO was always a pain -- with the FILTERS option, I think it becomes alot easier now

 

[davidc1]

You are right -- I don't think the csv file can modify the LTO. I meant in general needing to use a CSV file to do other types of bulk updates (BIN, MIN, FLOOR, etc.) But yea, the LTO was always a pain -- with the FILTERS option, I think it becomes alot easier now

it's not when you have a lot of domains, i would prefer using a CSV.

 

[DN_Hunter]

it's not when you have a lot of domains, i would prefer using a CSV.

My biggest problem with the CSV is the long delay in processing the updates. And up until recently, whenever I used a CSV file to update names already in my account, almost always some would revert to "In Review" Status -- but I think they did something to fix that because my last few CSV files (about 6 bulk files with about 500 to 1,000 names in each) all went through fine -- nothing changed to "In Review" (knock on wood).

 

[Name2go]

Trying to delete four expired names from my AN portfolio for about ten minutes.
I haven't experienced that for a long time.

Edit: Reloaded the site, had to log in again and deletion worked after another selection process. No big thing.

 

[DomainRecap]

Just when you thought the brokers at Afternic couldn't get any slower....

I have multiple negotiations from last week that have just been sitting there with no activity at all. It looks like Afternic brokers are either inundated with more work or due to the Dan migrations, everyone is too busy dousing fires to take part in active negotiations.

Either way, this total lack of control is the major reason I do not like Afternic. Sellers are fully at the mercy of brokers and right now the chance of potential of buyers dying of old age before a broker contacts them is rising on the Vegas odds board.

 

[lennco]

Just when you thought the brokers at Afternic couldn't get any slower....

I have multiple negotiations from last week that have just been sitting there with no activity at all. It looks like Afternic brokers are either inundated with more work or due to the Dan migrations, everyone is too busy dousing fires to take part in active negotiations.

Either way, this total lack of control is the major reason I do not like Afternic. Sellers are fully at the mercy of brokers and right now the chance of potential of buyers dying of old age before a broker contacts them is rising on the Vegas odds board.

After all these years I don't understand why AN still does not allow us sellers to be in contact with the buyers.
Even the old Godaddy auctions allowed us to send messages to the buyers,
Dan had the very best instant messaging for the buyers/sellers there ever was.

Most of us have been doing this for year and years so we know what we are doing, we don't need a mouthpiece to speak on out behalf. We know how to negotiate.

 

[DomainRecap]

After all these years I don't understand why AN still does not allow us sellers to be in contact with the buyers.

My theory is that they want the customer leads all to themselves, possibly to upsell secondary items like hosting or business services, or if the buyer decides your domain is too expensive, the broker will surely have lower-cost options to offer them.

If any of this is even remotely true, then that spells bad new for domain sellers using Afternic.