information New Afternic & GoDaddy Commission and Pricing Structure

[Nitindomains]

Received the following mail just minutes back:-

Hello Member,

Good news! We’ve made it easier for you to list your domain in one place and reach a broader audience of buyers to increase your sales velocity and income.

How are we making things simpler?
• Reduce time spent in pending review, domains are listed immediately after passing the required integrity checks
• Reducing commissions on higher-priced sales to increase your earnings
• Lowering minimum sales price and minimum offer amounts so you can list more domains and earn more money

We’re also taking the guesswork out of promoting your domains. Domains with fast-transfer enabled are promoted through the Afternic Premium Network automatically. Domains without fast-transfer are placed in the Afternic Standard Network.

Know that you can always list a domain without fast-transfer and then enable fast-transfer later. When you do, it jumps from the Standard Network to the Premium Network, which includes 8 of the top 10 registrars, gives you the broadest reach, and exposes your domain to over 75 million monthly search queries.

We also want our fees to be simple and straightforward, so they’re now based on your domain sale price. The three commission tiers look like this:
Sale price of domain >>> Commission fees
$0-$5,000 >>> 20% ($15 minimum)
$5,000-$25,000 >>> $1,000 +15% of amount over $5k
$25,000+ >>> $4,000 + 10% of amount over $25k

To help you list and sell more domains inventory, we lowered our minimum sales prices. The buy now minimum is only $50 (versus $250), and the minimum offer amount decreases to only $20 (from $250).

These changes take place Early April new listings. In the next [3-4] weeks, we’re converting existing listings over.


In a Separate mail notifying the change in Pricing Structure @ GD Aftermarket, the mail states the following:-

Please note we're setting a minimum of $50 for Buy-It-Now Auctions and $100 for Premium listings. We're also setting a $20 minimum listing price for 7-Day Auctions and Offer/Counter-Offer domain listings.

Along with the changes to new listings moving forward, we'll be converting existing listings over to the new system over the next 3 to 4 weeks for an early April launch.

• If your domain is below the new minimum offer price, we'll bump the minimum offer up to $20 for 7-Day Auctions and Offer/Counter-Offer listings.
• If you have a Buy-It-Now Auction listing priced below $50, we'll switch it to an Offer/Counter-Offer listing with a minimum price of $20.
• If you have a domain that's listed as both a Premium Domain and a Buy-It-Now Auction, we'll consolidate it and use the higher of your two price points.

If you don't want us to change your listing prices automatically, simply update your domain pricing manually before March 31st, and it will default to the new listing rules when we roll out the new structure.

 

[N-A]

@David Walker -I also added the second paragraph, whilst you were replying. Apart from the difficulties of managing a large portfolio at fixed pricing, this migration is going to swamp the GoDaddy Premium Listings. I don't think GoDaddy has thought that through, at all.

Shouldn't be too hard to get new pricing for names in each tier. The only problem will be updating the prices to reflect with their UI.

If you could do it with a CSV, uploading the name and new BIN, all of this could be accomplished within mere minutes once you have the formula down.

 

[Name Trader]

The difficulty for me, is I have to sit down and decide a fair price for each and every domain, up front. As we know, we only sell a small portion of our portfolios every year. So we are going to waste a lot of time pricing domains which might never sell, and in say one year we need to review our prices, some up and some down, or the same. This is why I actually liked Make Offer pricing. You don't have to repeat the process for each and every domain, and review them each year. The price is set correctly at the response to the offer. The potential to undersell is increased with Fixed Prices. Fixed prices also crowds out you selling on other platforms.

 

[Name Trader]

And. As I have said before, GoDaddy needs to take the onus on themselves for domains which have changed hands or dropped. I can foresee a nightmare scenario where domains which are no longer owned being sold on their Premium Platform. ie: If it moves from the domain it is listed in, it is dropped from the Godaddy Auctions (for those domains registered at GoDaddy at least). If the registrant changes, it is removed from the GoDaddy Auctions (for those domains registered at other Registrars). If the domain expires, it should be removed from GoDaddy Auctions, either at expiry or 45 days after expiry. Not perfect, but much better than the current system.

If the domains need to be at GoDaddy for Premium Auctions, I shall not be listing my domains on Premium Auctions. If it's ok they are part of the Afternic System, I will.

 

[Shimmy]

I actually did raise my prices 20%. I obviously know the math, but for me the point is not to just go along with their greed. Before I just ate the 10% fee and was okay with it, it was fair. That is no longer the case. Now customers will be able to see the price is 20% lower if they visit one of my domains. I know I would get more money by raising my prices 20% if I had sales, but I don't expect sales through Godaddy because I raised my prices 20%. And good. Maybe if they get less revenue after their price change, they will revert.

 

[tonecas]

yes, the way to go is have you own sales page and don't leave money on the table for all these greedy bastards.

the service all theses guys give, SEDO, GoDaddy, etc, is not value 20% commission, not even 10%. they bring 0 value. the guys that make all transparent to you and go the extra mile are at DomainNameSales and 4.cn. Fair commissions for good service.

However, GoDaddy and SEDO have a sales channel funneled to clients when they try to register a domain that we have. this is where the only value is because many times buyers see the domain as unavailable and do not even visit the website and see that the domain is for sale. But in no way this is valued at 20%.

Another problem with this is that sellers are now obliged to raise their BINs and this can move the price above the sweet spot. A buyer can walk away if it sees that 10% extra above what he thinks is fair and not even contact the seller to negotiate the price. So, listing domains with these greedy bastards is not innocuous.

 

[tonecas]

another thing. Afternic is denying access to the information on which partner a domain sold. This is ludicrous. They say is confidential information. I say it's BS. They can sell a domain in their site with no third party involved and bill me with 20% commission.

 

[Name Trader]

The probability is quite high that it will be from GoDaddy.

 

[Joe Styler]

Shouldn't be too hard to get new pricing for names in each tier. The only problem will be updating the prices to reflect with their UI.

If you could do it with a CSV, uploading the name and new BIN, all of this could be accomplished within mere minutes once you have the formula down.

We do have a spreadsheet option for updating premium domain name pricing in bulk. This is available through your account rep (if you have a large amount of domains you likely have one already assigned to you). If you do not have an account rep and have enough names that updating in bulk via a spreadsheet upload makes sense reach out to me and I will have someone contact you with the spreadsheet you need and assist you in updating the pricing.
I know our bulk tools can use some work we are working on them. I also took notes on each suggestion from this thread and will look into getting some of them implemented for the community here who use our products. Thanks again for the feedback.

 

[newbie191]

Have they implemented the new fee structure? The fees look the same. Correct me if I am missing something.

Annual Membership: $4.99

Seller Fees: 10% ($5 minimum)

Buyer Fee: None*

Basic Listing: Free!

 

[Joe Styler]

Have they implemented the new fee structure? The fees look the same. Correct me if I am missing something.

The fees are changing in the next week or so on GoDaddy. The email we sent was to give everyone time to get ready for the change and adjust pricing etc to be ready to minimize impact on your portfolio.

 

[equity78]

another thing. Afternic is denying access to the information on which partner a domain sold. This is ludicrous. They say is confidential information. I say it's BS. They can sell a domain in their site with no third party involved and bill me with 20% commission.

That is bogus, if it is your name, then it should not be confidential.

 

[equity78]

In the next week ? Email I received today says "LIVE"





New Afternic Commission and Pricing Structure is now Live‏

New Afternic Commission and Pricing Structure is now Live

Hi Raymond,
Good news! Earlier today we made it easier to list your domain in one place and reach a broader audience of buyers to increase your sales velocity and income.

How did we do this?

• Domains that can be fast-transfer enabled will be automatically promoted through the Afternic Premium Network.
• Our Premium Network includes listings on 8 of the top 10 registrars and over 75 million monthly queries.
• Domains without fast-transfer will automatically be placed in our Afternic Standard Network which receives about 35 million monthly queries.

We've changed the fee structure so it's based on the domain sale price. This should make more sense and will provide discounts for higher-valued sales. At no time will you be charged more than 20% (other than when being charged the min commission).
Here are the three price tiers:
Cost of domain Commission fees
$50-$5,000 20% ($15 minimum)
$5,000-$25,000 $1,000 +15% of amount over $5k
$25,000+ $4,000 + 10% of amount over $25k

For example:
$25 domain = $15 fee (minimum)
$200 domain = $40 fee (20%)
$8,000 domain = $1,450 fee ($1,000 + 15% of $3,000)
$40,000 domain = $5,500 fee ($4,000 + 10% of $15,000)
You can calculate your commission in real time here.

A couple final things to note:

• To help you list and sell more domains inventory, we lowered our minimum sales prices. The buy now minimum is only $50 (from $250), and the minimum offer amount decreases to only $20 (from $250).
• If you have domain names listed in the Network Promotion, they’ll remain as-is, but the commission rate will be change to reflect the rates in the table above.

Sincerely,
The Afternic Team
[email protected]
Toll Free: 1-866-351-9586
International: 1-781-839-7990

 

[equity78]

The one thing I hope Go Daddy does not do is say we listened to our customers, that would be untrue, this change was announced and there was a ton of feedback on many sites, the line was we will review suggestions and thanks so much for the feedback. Nothing changed.

The $1,000 + % is an absolute joke. Flippa is doing a good job of saying we keep things simple and are kind of the Anti Go Daddy. If they getting bidder ids,cheaper promotion package and cut out the shill bidding more than Kevin Fink already is, the auction business will belong to Flippa imo.

Go Daddy registrar path still has value imo, and I have no problem paying 20% for that, but the auction side needs to be overhauled imo, make Afternic a complete auction site, and leave Go Daddy for the registrar path, premium listing sales.

 

[NPer]

Afternic support is not what it was in the past. Give them a call in 2015, and you'll realize you are talking to people with very little knowledge of what's actually going on over there. That reflects poorly of the service. They changed the support team-which was a bad idea.

 

[NinoMNE]

The $1,000 + % is an absolute joke. Flippa is doing a good job of saying we keep things simple and are kind of the Anti Go Daddy. If they getting bidder ids,cheaper promotion package and cut out the shill bidding more than Kevin Fink already is, the auction business will belong to Flippa imo.

$8,000 domain = $1,450 fee ($1,000 + 15% of $3,000)

Total fee for this example will be 1450$ or about 18%, if I understood good ?

Last night I try to list domain without Buy Now , but they didnt let me do that. I must put a price.

And what means fast transfer exactly ?

 

[nomen]

So great. I was about to activate AN premium on one of my domains, but in addition to all the other crap, I'm no longer able to do that from my dashboard. Instead, I should contact their support.

 

[Joe Styler]

In the next week ? Email I received today says "LIVE"

Raymond,

Sorry for any confusion around the dates. Afternic indeed did change last night. The pricing question from newbie191 is from the GoDaddy website. The Godaddy price changes will happen in the next week or so.

We also added some changes in the dashboard view to give more visibility into what state your domain name is in, such as if it is listed on the Premium Network so it can fast transfer or if it is not, and if not, why it isn't. None of this was available before without contacting support directly. This was done as a direct result of customer feedback and we hope that it helps people manage their portfolios better. Changes will happen in the near future as well to make bulk management easier.

nomen,

The names that have a price on them will automatically try and list as fast transfer/Premium Network. There are reasons why they may not be able to list which should also be noted in the dashboard view of your domains for sale on Afternic. Reasons include the tld cannot use fast transfer or the name has a registry lock on it not allowing transfer, etc. You should only have to contact support if there is an issue with the domain such as the registrar of record for the domain opted you out of fast transfer. (reasons could be expiration of the domain, registry/registrar lock on transfers were added, etc).

NinoMNE,

If you do not put a Buy It Now price on the domain name it will still be listed on the standard network at Afternic. It would not be eligible for the premium network which is for priced names that can fast transfer (transfer ownership to the new buyer as soon as they pay without you having to unlock the name and deal with the transfer codes).

 

[CDM]

It seems every 6-12 months there is some major change or announcement concerning how listing types, fees or structure is organized between the big marketplaces and their partnerships. The last I remember I had decided to stop bothering to list my domains on GoDaddy Auctions, I don't even remember at this point how long ago that was or what the specific reason was, but that at some point there was a clear redundancy in listing on both GoDaddy Premium and GoDaddy Auctions to make doing both not worthwhile. Now through reading about these new changes, I am just discovering that for the past however long GoDaddy Auction domains have been offered in the registrar path for a 10% commission whereas GoDaddy Premium was for 30%. The funny thing is, had I been aware of that I would have gone back to listing at GoDaddy Auctions and probably pulled all of my names out of Premium Listing (reversing whatever reasoning was behind my previous decision to do the opposite). And now of course with this latest change I would be put to yet another decision that would necessitate innumerable hours of portfolio administration, retooling my domains pricing, to fit the latest motif. And when it happens again in 2016, if not sooner, I will be able to come back and quote this post. I'm not averse to extra work, whatever it takes, but if domainers liked to do this type of administrative work we would probably all be accountants instead of domainers. My job in this field is to make sales. To do that I have to be sensitive to the changing market and pricing factors, but it is much harder to do when I also have to account for the ever fluctuating rise and fall of commissions at the various venues where I am listing. I understand these venues are in business too, and are also trying to figure out how to maximize their own revenue, but to that end they should also be sensitive and take care that they are making the jobs of their sellers easier and not harder with the constant remodels and then a lack appropriate tools or processes to enable making changes efficiently across hundreds or thousands of domains.. Help me help you. Or help me help you help me.

Now I have said this for years, but if there were a service that offered one central interface that could "hook in" with all the various venues and allow me to add and remove domains, adjust pricing, and other features, across all the big aftermarket venues from one place (and hey maybe some of the smaller ones too), that would be a service worth paying for, because it would solve what for me is the biggest headache of domaining.

 

[Name Trader]

1) GoDaddy for selling, ParkingCrew & Voodoo for parking
2) .COM is the 800lb Gorilla
3) No. But they are the same market places.
4) Price will always vary by what any one buyer is prepared to pay. Check out NameBio for sales of similar domains. Intuition.

 

[Lakshay Arora]

1) GoDaddy for selling, ParkingCrew & Voodoo for parking
2) .COM is the 800lb Gorilla
3) No. But they are the same market places.
4) Price will always vary by what any one buyer is prepared to pay. Check out NameBio for sales of similar domains. Intuition.

But, does auction increase the chance of domain selling?
Is it worth!?

 

[forge]

Sorry for any confusion around the dates.

Joe,
Can you please confirm that GoDaddy 7-day auctions that are started BEFORE this new pricing structure goes into effect will be charged the current 10% ($5 minimum) commission fee?

thank you

 

[Joe Styler]

Yes that is the plan. We plan on allowing any 7 day auction that started before the commission change to continue through to competition and be charged at the existing (older) commission rate. That being said, this is a big release so if something sneaks through incorrectly for anyone please reach out to me directly and I will rectify the situation for you.

 

[Jen-Sin]

@Joe, is the fee for Godaddy Premium listing still 30%?

https://godaddy.com/help/what-are-the-commission-rates-for-premium-listings-3501

If your Premium Listing domain name sells on GoDaddy.com, our commission rate is 30 percent.

 

[Joe Styler]

@Jen-Sin It is no longer 30%. Thank you very much for pointing this out. I don't know how we missed it or how no one else pointed it out yet. Here is the correct commission https://www.godaddy.com/help/getting-paid-for-premium-listings-3494 and I will get the article you have above updated to reflect the correct commission.

 

[DNGear]

Joe, In Reports of Premium Listings its showing 30%. Please check. Thanks