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Domain Marketplace 3% commission?

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Sirbigman

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Hi NP,

Me and my team are thinking of getting a new domain marketplace (ie. Undeveloped, Brandbucket, Brandpa) which would work in the favour of the seller and buyer by charging a small fee of 3% per sale with escrow fees included. The marketplace would be very simple but effective, user account for buyers and sellers, auctions and websites for sale. To keep the scammers away we would verify each seller and a monthly fee of $30 would be required. My company would use those money to advertise the website in Google AdWords.

The golden question is, would you sign up for something like that?
 
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Headline : 3% commission
Inside : $ 30 / month

I will not signup
 
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Yes I apologise for being abrupt, but a $30 dollar a month charge could easily be seen as just a Income generator for the builder, Verification doesn't take long for any domain, You'd have to clear what your paying for, and besides there's too many choices out there already with No up front costs
 
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Headline : 3% commission
Inside : $ 30 / month

I will not signup
I understand, it really sounds like hidden costs. In my defence, it does say commission next to the 3%. I apologise. As much as I would like to give everything for free, the costs of advertising can be quite high, I'm thinking 100 members per month, $3k in advertising budget, it would really help with exposure.
 
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Yes I apologise for being abrupt, but a $30 dollar a month charge could easily be seen as just a Income generator for the builder, Verification doesn't take long for any domain, You'd have to clear what your paying for, and besides there's too many choices out there already with No up front costs
The problem is, they all charge so much, I sold a website on Flippa recently and It left me with a bad taste in my mouth after paying 15%.
 
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Thank you, any feedback is good. Maybe you can elaborate a little.
Your approach is not how it should be. If you are going to start a Domain Marketplace, start it, lay a plan and come here to advertise. If you ask fellow domainers, to signup once done, most will say no, since they already are all over the place and finding it hard to crack a sale.

What makes your marketplace unique? What section of buyers are you targeting?

Asking to join vs proposing a business plan with opportunities and offers for both sellers and buyers are 2 different things.
 
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The problem is, they all charge so much, I sold a website on Flippa recently and It left me with a bad taste in my mouth after paying 15%.

well I'm guessing you haven't sold many domains then. otherwise you'd be quite familiar with the commission structure of all the resellers. What are you going to bring that's going to be more effective,
 
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well I'm guessing you haven't sold many domains then. otherwise you'd be quite familiar with the commission structure of all the resellers. What a you going to bring that's going to be more effective,
Not much of a domainer myself, amateur at best, I only sold 5 domains so far, I do read this forum a lot but I'm more passionate about creating solutions where there's a need. The main thing that I would like to focus on is low commission and maximum exposure through SEO and advertising. I'm not trying to earn money on someone else's work, more like trying to help and also be transparent. In the 3% I also calculated transaction fees, 1.4 % for EU and 2.9 % for international so in the end, the margin is very slim but still enough to cover the running costs and development. The best part is that a lot of people would benefit from it.
 
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You seem to have missed the bit out about the $360 yearly membership cost
 
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It has to do with results and traffic. Places like undeveloped.com offer all these services but have about zero traffic as far as people actually going to the site to search for domains, versus places like domainagents, sedo and afternic that gets tons of searches and traffic.

If you have traffic, people will pay you, if not - no.
 
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You would to sell high priced domains, otherwise you will end up with a platform running thousands of transaction and a mere 3%, you won't have the resources to process all those domain sales. You probably need a structured payment plan.

That being said, I would never subscribe to any service that charges me $30 per month without any type of return. Either provide data, stats, something, anything...
 
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Your approach is not how it should be. If you are going to start a Domain Marketplace, start it, lay a plan and come here to advertise. If you ask fellow domainers, to signup once done, most will say no, since they already are all over the place and finding it hard to crack a sale.

What makes your marketplace unique? What section of buyers are you targeting?

Asking to join vs proposing a business plan with opportunities and offers for both sellers and buyers are 2 different things.
This is market research basically but in a friendly way not in an annoying survey filling way. How would this be unique? It wouldn't be based on greed, first of all, you would already support the project by paying your monthly fee, the development would go on, we would advertise to right audience by conducting an extensive keyword research. Everyone would reach the front page at random, it would be easy to use and friendly.
 
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It has to do with results and traffic. Places like undeveloped.com offer all these services but have about zero traffic as far as people actually going to the site to search for domains, versus places like domainagents, sedo and afternic that gets tons of searches and traffic.

If you have traffic, people will pay you, if not - no.
That's where your monthly fee will come in, think about it as pool money for advertising.
 
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That's where your monthly fee will come in, think about it as pool money for advertising.

and paying you an income....
Your really 15 to 20 years to late to be trying to offer this kind of service from scratch
 
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Well, the way franchisers do it is they commit a certain % of your (the franchisee's) fee to advertising, I understand where you are coming from. But franchisers have already spent time and money building their presence - they seek your fees to expand beyond an already tested presence (i.e. they already have one or two successful locations ("presences") and seek to expand via franchising).

Whether an entirely new business with no presence yet may command a fee beyond straight commission remains to be seen.
 
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You seem to have missed the bit out about the $360 yearly membership cost
That's purely for advertising costs to solve the traffic problem.
Screen Shot 2018-04-03 at 19.19.08.png


Quite a few people are searching for this keyword alone.
 
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Well, the way franchisers do it is they commit a certain % of your (the franchisee's) fee to advertising, I understand where you are coming from. But franchisers have already spent time and money building their presence - they seek your fees to expand beyond an already tested presence (i.e. they already have one or two successful locations ("presences") and seek to expand via franchising).

Whether an entirely new business with no presence yet may command a fee beyond straight commission remains to be seen.
It can be done without the monthly fee as well but it would take much longer to develop. This is a Kickstarter style project.
 
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Guessing, I believe that afternic domainagents sedo (and also, buydomains) put their advertising towards people looking for domains for sale, not for any specific keywords tied to any specific domains being offered for sale. And this is what undeveloped is probably not doing, spending to direct people to their databases to look for domains.

Google "domains for sale" - undeveloped does not appear on the 1st page, the 2nd page, the 3rd page, the 4th page, the 5th page, the 6th page, the 7th page, the 8th page, the 9th page, the 10th page, the 11th page...I stopped looking at 11.

Point being that with a site like undeveloped that people here think is so great, it has nonexistent traffic for people actually looking for domains for sale in their database, so imagine how hard it will be for you to crack into that market with appreciable traffic.
 
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It can be done without the monthly fee as well but it would take much longer to develop. This is a Kickstarter style project.

and your previous successful projects are ???
 
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I don't know in the end, it sounded like a good idea but after seeing the feedback, it might just be a waste of my time. All I was thinking about was low fees, that was the main purpose of this. I guess there are trust issues here and I completely understand why, who I'm I to come up with this? I appreciate all the feedback.
 
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Guessing, I believe that afternic domainagents sedo (and also, buydomains) put their advertising towards people looking for domains for sale, not for any specific keywords tied to any specific domains being offered for sale. And this is what undeveloped is probably not doing, spending to direct people to their databases to look for domains.

Google "domains for sale" - undeveloped does not appear on the 1st page, the 2nd page, the 3rd page, the 4th page, the 5th page, the 6th page, the 7th page, the 8th page, the 9th page, the 10th page, the 11th page...I stopped looking at 11.

Point being that with a site like undeveloped that people here think is so great, it has nonexistent traffic for people actually looking for domains for sale in their database, so imagine how hard it will be for you to crack into that market with appreciable traffic.
I know exactly how much traffic they are getting, 3k unique on a good month. I don't know how much email and direct traffic but the organic traffic is around 3k.
 
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I'm guessing a thousand+ people have had your idea. But you aren't going to compete against the big boys in a co-op type build
 
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