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.

 

[FlippaDomains]

And I'm sure they're probably all those free ones you're giving out for appraisals. When it's no risk, free, it's what you attract. We just have a difference of opinion on that, we'll see how it turns out.

And the homepage is more paid for/upgrades right? They look like more premium type placements, hence me saying, you need to factor that into the price as well. Going thru them, Premium.

I'd say "Not necessarily" - on both accounts.

Plenty of sellers think their domains are worth $500k and thus would pay to list. You cannot simply blame appraisals, not even for 10% of the lower-end. I can get some stats, but we really don't give out THAT MANY free credits

Homepage is a mixture between Editors' Choice, Brokerage*, Exclusives, Premiums, Most Active sellers and listings...etc...

(*Brokerage is moving to its own section next week)

 

[morf13]

I like the Premium Auction listings that Flippa has, all the tweets, the hype you get for your listing, etc, but that $350 up front fee is hard to swallow unless you know you are selling a huge domain that will get you in the Thousands $

 

[Name Trader]

@morf13 - I think it's way too much of a gamble, imho. The domain needs to guarantee to sell for $4000+ to make it a 20% commission. 10% commission and 10% listing fee (approx). If it doesn't sell, well then you just wasted $350.

 

[Domainace]

The only alternative is to have your own sales/landing page, and keep it listed at GD/Afternic. For the latter, simply price in the commission. If buyers go to both pages, they have the option of buying direct from you or having the name of Godaddy to rely on at a 20% premium. Pretty much what JB suggested. Or you could direct to DomainNameSales and choose yourself as a broker. though they may use your potential buyer as a lead for their own domain names (everything comes with a price, as Rumpelstiltskin might say).

Flippa's costs entail unnecessary risk for most names, especially names that only have a few potential end users. You can list domains for free at Flippa, though, and I've made a few decent low-end sales that way.

 

[Name Trader]

@FlippaDomains - It would be interesting to know what %age of your Premium Listings actually sold.

 

[m0ss]

Most of our sales come from direct end user contact and we just used Godaddy since most people have heard of them and they trusted it was safe. From here on now we'll just use escrow.com

1500 domain is a $300 commission on GD, and if we use escrow its 48-95 bucks depending on how they pay.

 

[m0ss]

Another scenario I was thinking of is that you list all domains as offer / counter offer. And then you can have a dialogue with the person submitting a counter offer. Just giving them an email addy. Might work

 

[FlippaDomains]

I like the Premium Auction listings that Flippa has, all the tweets, the hype you get for your listing, etc, but that $350 up front fee is hard to swallow unless you know you are selling a huge domain that will get you in the Thousands $

Good feedback. The price is steep for many.

We
a/ are working on revisions to this, and

b/ offer subsidies, especially to those of you who begin dialogues with us via PM, email, etc.

We work with you to pick inventory we believe will do well. I've counted a good dozen or so 'satisfied' Namepros'ers who we've worked with recently. [Feel free to sound off here, don't leave me hangin'...]

@morf13 - I think it's way too much of a gamble, imho. The domain needs to guarantee to sell for $4000+ to make it a 20% commission. 10% commission and 10% listing fee (approx). If it doesn't sell, well then you just wasted $350.

Also true, commission-wise -- but again, see above. We cannot subsidize Ultra ($350) Premium upgrades, for reasons I won't get into here -- but we can work with you on regular premium listings.

We want to sell domains. So do you. We will work with you -- just tell us what you need to make a sale happen. If the domain is deemed to have unrealistic pricing or expectations for our *auction* platform, we will tell you so. Portfolio (free to list) section sales are picking up and we hope to cut through some of the recent clutter that was thrown our way today by our competitors...

 

[Domaingel]

You could always use FreeMarket.com LOL $30 upgrade to be featured in front of no one. All jokes aside, it's free to list and only 5% commission which includes their escrow service.

 

[sofiapartner]

We
a/ are working on revisions to this, and
b/ offer subsidies, especially to those of you who begin dialogues with us via PM, email, etc.
We work with you to pick inventory we believe will do well.

Well I am trying to do that for a couple of days now - to connect with your support - but no answer yet.

 

[tomcarl]

FreeMarket = Great concept but they've lacked promotion. They had to banner-up everywhere for at least 4 months since launch, they let themselves die out of the limelight. I did receive a couple of $xxx offers for some names there though so there's some activity.

 

[carob]

Afaik you don't need a GD auctions membership to list a domain as a Premium Listing at GD. It is really simple and worked for me - it presents the domain to someone just looking to register a new domain at Godaddy and they get the domain in their account as soon as they pay. I doubt the domains I sold that way would have sold otherwise - one sold for 1xxx ten days after registering it. So I am very happy this is now available for only 20%. The listing process is very easy.

Yes it was possible to get the same for only 20% by listing it via the Afternic pathway, but only after any 60 day Godaddy lock passed - including new registrations - and then you have to click around a bit to do it.

But the tiered structure is confusing - they should have presented it with a few examples and making explicit what the max/min commission % is on each tier. I think they are taking customers for granted here.

 

[tomcarl]

It's confusing because they wanted it to be.

No matter where the sale originates, Premium or Auction:

All sales less than $5000 = 20% commission while it was formerly 10%
Sales $5000+ 35% commission while it was formerly 10%
Sales $25,000+ 26% commission while it was formerly 10%

It's more attractive and easier to confuse by breaking it down like sales $5000+ commission = $1000 + 10%, so people focus on that 10% being the same.

 

[carob]

Just an example of how you can present this:


GD email says:

$5,000-$25,000 $1,000 +15% of amount over $5k

5000 = 1000 Commission + 0 amount over 5k = total 1k Com, effectively 20%
25000 = 1000 Commission + 3000 (ie .15 x 20,000) = total Com 4k, effectively 16%

So the 5k - 25k sales range has decreasing commissions in a range from 20% down to 16%.

Maybe they need a handy calculator on their site.

 

[DomainVP]

Just pulled every domain from GoDaddy. If someone wants to buy a domain, they will find you.

 

[Wisename]

The funny thing is why everyone still talking about flippa in this thread?
:p

 

[thekiller]

I have sold few domains there, mostly under $1000/domain. But this move will screw sellers like me. $200 commission out of $1000? No way!

 

[Jeffrey]

I was surprised with the email. I just increased my prices as well.

 

[RapidNames.com]

This awesome update forced me to stop renewing their marketplace. i don't want to list anything with them.

If buyer is serious about his domain requirement, surely he will dig more to get it (via whois, sedo etc.,).

 

[Nitindomains]

The funny thing is why everyone still talking about flippa in this thread?
:P

Discussions about flippa are uncalled for...perhaps that's some Marketing. :p