An Afternic revival?

[AdoptableDomains]

For at least 2005 and 2006, I had very little luck selling domains at Afternic with only a slight few offers and even less sales. In the same time, I got offers nearly weekly and a couple sales a month at sedo. However, just in the last couple weeks, I've noticed I'm getting almost as many offers from AN as I do with Sedo. I think maybe this merger with BuyDomains might have shaken things up a bit for the better. Anyone else seen an uptick in offers from their Afternic listings?

:tu:

Anyone tried the new "expanded" promotion option? It appears with that option the commission goes from 10% to 20%, but they may list the name at buydomains as well. I'm curious to hear if anyone has success at that.

 

[duceman]

I put about 250 of my names in the expanded promotion about 7 day's ago. So far I've noticed that my "views of offer" are up a bit and I've had 2 low ball offers.

The nice thing about the merger is that BD offers financing and has a full time sales/marketing staff. So even if you pay the extra 10% of commish you will probably be selling the domain for more than you expected anyway.

 

[SpareDomains]

curious to see how this works as it has the hint of more sales, just figure in the 20% into your asking prices and it doesn't cost you anything extra just makes your domain prices slightly higher, I think there is a lot of negative feelings towards afternic due to the adult & gambling restrictions from the past but I gotta think the extra publicity will probably work out well with buy domains behind it.

 

[TheBulldog]

Seen a few more views in the expanded afternic as well. Will see what happens.

 

[goodkarmaco]

Lets see how your odds stack up for selling your domain thru the auction. Some one should see how many domain names have sold at Afternic in any given week. Then divide the amount of domains listed in Afternic, (millions) by the ones sold. The number left is your odds of actually selling a domain there.

That way we would know for sure the approx. amount of domains the super fantastic sales team in Afternic has been selling. Don't forget some of those names will never be paid for as a good percentage of the buyers will flake out and not pay for the name won in the auction.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, when the figure of actual names for one week sold is discovered, don't forget to deduct the amount of names that buydomains reports sold, because you cannot really count those domain sales, since the owner of Afternic.com owns buydomains.

Let me know what the odds are for selling your domain in Afternic. I knew what they were before the super sales team came into existance, ( the new and best domain selling team in existance).

In the meantime I am going to roll around the floor for a while. Anyone want to buy my domain, thebestsellingbridgeinbrooklyn.not

 

[AdoptableDomains]

Lets see how your odds stack up for selling your domain thru the auction. Some one should see how many domain names have sold at Afternic in any given week. Then divide the amount of domains listed in Afternic, (millions) by the ones sold. The number left is your odds of actually selling a domain there.

Odds are slim anywhere, for several reasons. First, probably 90% of all registered names for sale are crap and non-sellable. Of the remaining 10%, probably 80% have unrealistic price expectations, and will turn down a profitable sale for their expected "lottery win" sale. That leaves maybe 2% of all names both sellable and with a buyer willing to sell at a reasonable price. This holds true for both afternic and sedo. My point is that I've received more offers on afternic this month than I did all last year. Most are lower than what I'll acceptat the minimum offer, but still it is an increase in activity. Here's my offers received this month at afternic:

coyote.info 03/19/07 200.00 Current
bayislands.org 03/22/07 200.00 Current
miles.info 03/23/07 200.00 Current
bankaccount.info 03/23/07 200.00 Current
CHARGECARDS.info 03/23/07 200.00 Current
savingsbond.info 03/23/07 300.00 Current

By the way, I also received my highest sale offer ever (high 5 figures) this month from Afternic. It's still in escrow for the buyer to accept the domain, but afternic has received payment.

I'm not promoting afternic in this thread, just reporting my own factual increase in activity and wondering if anyone else has seen the same thing or it it's just coincidence. I still get better offers from sedo and make about 1/3 of my sales there, but I think I see a glimmer of hope for afternic to show improvement and become a player.

 

[Ronald Regging]

I've never received a single offer on AN. I've received 2 offers on Sedo, both of which I accepted and both of which never paid. I don't have a ton of domains, so I don't expect offers every day, but I just seem to have had no luck at all selling via domain aftermarkets I think the extended listing is a good idea though, I'll have to switch my domains over to that and try it out. Cant hurt!

 

[goodkarmaco]

"we pay out more than any other parking service", lol

Adoptable,

that is great news for you and congrats are in order on the large sale too. Of course I agree you seem to be getting a whole lot of action. Did you do everything normally?. Or have you been promoting those names thru Name pros or some other forum?

I think it is a good post. Although I don't hold my breath for any improvements around there, it may happen so this is a good post to see. My experience is the management likes to state "we are the best Parking provider" or what ever they state and in my opinion they are so many words as I see them as one of the worst parking providers. Then like I say a lot of the names selling are owned by the new owners of Afternic, "buydomains"

But, we will see. In my opinion the new program is just more of a publicity splash to try to recap lost members. Really if a auction house wanted to make more money they would get a great sales team and they would start activily promoting the top names in their auction house.

I don't think they would need to sign up folks so they have to pay a 20% of sales. The auction house would just get off their butts and promote the names that have a realistic chance of a large sale.

They have a poor record of doing that and this big splash of news is probably not going to change anything. Why? Because change requires a lot of dedication and hard work form the sales team. I have not really been impressed with that in the past, so until I am proved wrong about that I will remain optimistc and hopeful, but skeptical. BtW, I had over three hundred names for sale with them for over two years and have never received a single offer thru Afternic. Whats really pitiful was my income form parking them all. Maybe $1.00 per month total! I would laugh about the poor parking except that was two years of my life.

Since closing my account with them and moving all my domains to different parking programs I have been doing great. Yesterday alone I made $19.00. Same names, different parking (away from Afternic) much more money! Words are cheap, treating members good is priceless.

Sold many names elsewhere too.

Good luck with the sales going thru, that is very encouraging.

Roderick

 

[proproject]

Some one should see how many domain names have sold at Afternic in any given week. Then divide the amount of domains listed in Afternic, (millions) by the ones sold. The number left is your odds of actually selling a domain there.

The above type study would be even more interesting if you could see what the probability of a sale is for sellers who do the following:

1. Have high quality domains
2. Set reasonable prices
3. Park them with their broker
4. Respond quickly and professionally to all offers.

If it were possible to study the group of sellers who do all the above, I think we'd find their results would be dramatically better than average.

Thanks for giving us a try and good luck with your domaining business no matter your goals or strategy.

Adoptable,

Congrats on your offers and the high sale.

Elaborating on my list in the last post, consider sending a polite thank you for each of the offers you recieved. Something like this:

"thank you for your interest in example.info. I've reviewed my pricing on this domain and lowered the asking price from $1000 to $800. I'm also willing to set the reserve to $500 - that means if you offer $500 and no one else bids higher than that on the closing soon auction in 7 days, the domain would be yours for that price. Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck on your domain search."

You can also discuss comparable sales or an appraisal to support your pricing.

Its time consuming I admit, but effective. People like to do business with friendly people and this type of note can go a long way to getting bidders more interested in offering true market value for your domain. This is part of what our sales force does for you when you elect Expanded Promotion for you domains on Afternic.

Best wishes with your domains.

Roger

 

[tricolorro]

An Afternic revival? Reply to Thread

"... probably 80% have unrealistic price expectations, and will turn down a profitable sale for their expected "lottery win" sale."

Hi,

You may be interested in today's DomainNameWire report entitled:
Median Domain Selling Price: $600-$750

Link:
http://www.domainnamewire.com/

Patrick

 

[AdoptableDomains]

I know a lot of people complained when afternic cut out adult and many gambling names. If in that sector of the market, it no doubt hurt you. However, I think the cleaning up of the database of names probably helped those who's goal is to sell to business developers. One, it likely cleaned out some dead, expired, or domains who's sellers disappeared. Two, it made the list look a bit more appealing to those who don't want to look through controversial names to find the ones they want. Three, it presents a more professional standard for the mainstream business buyer. Society in general puts their gamling casinos and strip clubs away from the mainstream business and this should probably be no different. If anything, it leave an opening for someone to start a specialized domain red light district and corner that market.

I don't know if it's the merger, the name cleanup, or something else, but it does seem I'm getting more interest from afternic end user buyers than I was a few months ago.

goodkarmaco, I have actually done less personal promoting in the last three months than in the previous year. I currently mostly park with sedopro parking, becuase it's worked best for my domains. Therefore, I can't comment on the new or old afternic parking. My domains are generally registered as generic developable domains, and typically not high traffic. Only about 30% of my domains are .com. That's another reason I am pleasantly surprised at the increased offers is that my names are not parked at AN. This means there must be people actively searching through the AN listings to find them listed there.

Also, I agree with Roger's (proproject) 4 pointers to successful sales. That is good advice.

 

[DomainBuyerBroker]

Afternic expanded promo gets your domains listed in buydomains and godaddy's TDNAM and across BD affiliate network of sites.

New afternic is a complete upgrade from old afternic with power of name media behind it. They want to go public so they are running a tight ship and want as much revenue from as many sources as possible so afternic needs your domains and wants to sell them for you. They are not making their money off your membership fee.

I just had an offer last night and moved it to auction.

 

[Ronald Regging]

One, it likely cleaned out some dead, expired, or domains who's sellers disappeared.

You know what else would accomplish this? If their site actually worked and let you delete your domains from your account I recently encountered a problem where I couldn't post new listings. Took a few days and straightening out some confusion to fix. Now I found out that I can't delete the domains I've recently sold

 

[AdoptableDomains]

You know what else would accomplish this? If their site actually worked and let you delete your domains from your account I recently encountered a problem where I couldn't post new listings. Took a few days and straightening out some confusion to fix. Now I found out that I can't delete the domains I've recently sold

I've said for years that sales sites should update their software. How hard could it be to write a program to compare the public whois to a registered sellers whois template(s) on a weekly or monthly basis. Then use that data to automatically delete a name from active sales to an inactive listing when the registrant name changes to one not on file at the broker site, or the expiration date goes to expired or is deleted. It would also serve as a valuable reminder service to the seller to notify them when a listing is deactivated due to expiration or name change. If they still owned it but changed names or something, they could update the whois template on file and reactivate it without total reentry.

It's also too hard to remove a bulk list of names. sedo and afternic make it pretty simple to upload a list, but not as easy to remove a list without a direct support request. Therefore, many put of the removal task and never get to it. I know I have.

Nothing more discouraging to a buyer than to make an offer to purchase and then find out the listing is invalid or the person who listed no longer owns it with authority to sell.

 

[fonzie_007]

Just remember what company you are dealing with here folks. The same company that now owns Afternic offered $25 for people's LLL.coms. If a company has tried to rip you off in the past, chances are they may do so again in the future.

 

[PLamson]

Adoptable:

Great feedback - please keep it coming. Your constructive criticisms insure we stay close to what you need and how we can improve our products and services.

I am going to look into this type of upgrade immediately - as in today.

The Afternic Active Exchange objective is very simple. We are aiming to provide sellers with the highest probability of sale, at the highest possible selling price.

At the same time, we want to make your life as easy a possible with world class yet simple and effective tools.

We are going to move on your suggestion now - give us a bit of time to build - and keep the feedback coming.

You can also reach me anytime at 781 839 2812 (direct dial) or [email protected].

Best Regard,

Pete

 

[Ronald Regging]

After thinking about the expanded promotion, I've decided that I really think it's a rip-off.

While I think the idea of actively marketing the domain on partner sites is a good approach, I can't help but feel that the increased commission is a rip-off. Consider the following. We join an after-market in a mutual partnership with that company in order so that we both can benefit. We hope to sell our domains and in return the company hopes to gain a commission. You only get a commission IF our domains sell. So it would seem that it would be in the company's best interest to actively market ALL domains to begin with.

This is equivalent to going to an injury lawyer who says that he will try your case for 30% of the money awarded if you win. But then he comes back and says that if you give him 60% of the money, he'll actually try... Here's a novel concept.. If you want more money, sell more domains! Why should we pay higher commissions just so you'll actually try? You wouldn't hire a salesperson who wanted 10% commission to do a crap job, but if you give him 20% he'll really start to sell... No... The more he sells, the more he gets paid, simple as that.

The expanded promotion really does nothing other than to shine a true light on what little these companies actually offer to begin with. "We'll list your domain on our site, if it sells, we'll take 10% commission." Wow, thats a hell of a service. Not to mention AN charges a $20 membership fee just to be able to list domains in the first place.

All I have to say is that some day a company will come along that actually wants to earn their commissions, they'll actively market domains as well as market their own company in a mainstream way that will bring end-users in. And they'll do this all for a standard flat commission and put Sedo and AN out of business. Because lets be honest... Most of us have felt like we're getting shafted by these companies for a long time now. They're content with just sitting back, doing nothing and making lots of money, while doing absolutely NOTHING to actually promote the domain industry.

I might be willing to pay 20% commission for a company that has the steel to actually enforce sales contracts and eliminate dead-beat buyers, but even this should be standard. I just think that while the domain industry should be forging ahead into the mainstream, the major players in the industry are doing everything possible to regress the industry for a short-term extra buck.

 

[shockie]

...So it would seem that it would be in the company's best interest to actively market ALL domains to begin with....

...Why should we pay higher commissions just so you'll actually try?...The more he sells, the more he gets paid, simple as that...

exactly :tu:

 

[tricolorro]

You know what else would accomplish this? If their site actually worked and let you delete your domains from your account ...Now I found out that I can't delete the domains I've recently sold

Hi,

I just want to be sure you realize that you don't "delete" your domains,
you "close" them.

• select your domain(s)

• go to the Status box and select "Closed"

• then "Save"

.

I just closed a couple of domains a few minutes ago.

Patrick

After thinking about the expanded promotion, I've decided that I really think it's a rip-off.

Hi slipxaway,

Think about this.

The expanded program is new.

Some of the forum members that have tried the program are reporting increased activity and sales.

For the same $19.95 you pay for Basic membership, you are getting a much bigger "reach" for your domains.

You get a Sales Support team to help in sales negotiations.

You can get pricing help if you want it.

You will never get an offer below $240 so you eliminate the real lowball offers that often come in.

IMHO just getting hooked up with BuyDomains is worth it.

If you look at the sales reports at DNJournal every week you'll see
BuyDomains is heavily represented.

Give this service a chance and some of those sales reported could be yours.

Regarding the 20% commission, you could just price your domains accordingly.

Or you may make up for the higher commission in more sales activity.

I haven't listed my domains yet but will.

I have been waiting for the RegFly situation to resolve.

Patrick

 

[goodkarmaco]

Slipxaway,

You make the best reasons this is all hype. I fully believe what you are saying.

These companies spin so much hype that its easy for newbies, etc to get excited.

History says it all. The sales team at Afternic has been sitting on their butts forever. So what if buydomains gets good amount of sales reported in Dnj.

Those are more often domains owned by them. Its really not many sold either, when considering the amount of domains they have for sale. It would be like the odds of one person who lives in a city of four million people and lottery tickets were sold to each of those four million people. A half dozen win a thousand dollars. Whoopee! Are we dumb enough to believe the hype from the lottery officals that we can win?

Please, if a few domains sell out of what, millions listed in Afternic and millions in buydomains. Whoppee, a few sale a month. Don't expect that the domains in your portfolio will be selling like hotcakes. When you think about the amount of domains for sale in Afternic and Buydomains the percentage sold is a joke. Proves the sales team is too. Don't take it personal Afternic, most of the big auction houses are big talkers too.

If I owned a hamburger resturant chain and I had eight million burger patties and buns for sale and ten or twelve sold daily I would be not be doing a very good job marketing would I?. The auction house has not been selling big percentages of domains for a very long time, and now the sales will not be much better.

The past has shown Afternic ( and most other auction houses) have been concentrating on parking revenue and have not been activily promoting domain sales to the end users for a very long time. Now that Afternic sees most domainers want real payouts in parking and that they do not provide the best parking sevices they are starting to go after sales. Nice theory, but results need to be proven. Since big results are determined by a large effort, that will remain to be seen if they can produce. So far it is a bunch of hype to me.

But what they do want is when a sale does come in to take 20%.

If eight or ten years ago they had trained a super sales team and I saw HISTORY of sales soaring at Afternic from that effort, I would say the program is legit. I have seen a whole lot of hype with that company and I don't believe a speck of it.

Bottom line, treatment for members in Afternic from the last shakeout and the low sales numbers over the past years is not a good endorsement for domainers to jump on board to pay out TWENTY percent of the sales price.

That my opinion anyway.