analysis Parking with Afternic ns3/ns4, Dan/Epik or another platform? Tough call - but just figured this out.

[twiki]

This post comes after about an year of testing and thought spending.

It is a post of personal choice, but I am pretty sure some other domainers will make use of this information.

Parking kept coming back into my mind all the time as I had that nagging feeling of leaving a lot of money on the table. I needed to untangle what is the best platform to park my domains to. There is also a lot of discussion lately about the ns3/ns4 Afternic parking, that I needed to figure out as well. While your decisions will be yours and not necessarily like mine, you probably need to read below.

So I finally had an epiphany yesterday. Just like everything else in life, the right answer is "depends".

We need to enter the mind of our buyer, even before he has ever reached us to buy a domain. He/she doesn't yet know, but we have already entered their future approaching mind, and worked hard already to prepare the path for them to reach that domain and buy it, right there, depending on who they are.

OK. So in order to do this, we have to figure out first who we are as domainers, and who our buyers are. There are market sellers, retail sellers and also liquid/high value sellers. This comes (obviously) by the price. If your bulk of sales is in the $100... $300 range, you're a market seller. If you sell mostly in the 1-5K range, you're a retail seller. And if you sell mostly in 5-fig, you're a liquid/high value seller. (edit: not everyone knows this, obviously)

It has to become clear by now already that your decisions will differ by A LOT depending on what kind of seller you are.

So to cut this short, I have decided to park my market (lower priced) domains at Dan (or Epik... etc) but to park my top tier at Afternic ns3/ns4. And there are important reasons for this kind of parking segmentation.

Just like the sellers, buyers are also segmented. There are market buyers, retail buyers, and liquid/top buyers or domain investors.

A market buyer is usually prepared to spend say $200...$300 for a domain. These are all impulse buys, and not well thought ones. This is why the less friction you can have with them, the better. Lately with the pandemic, this became even more apparent as buyers tend to be less patient and go away at the first sign of friction.

They also have less cash now due to pandemic. So if you keep raising the price and negotiating on a low to mid $$$ domain sale, chances are the market buyer's impulse will go cold, they will just have woken up to a longer thought process - and you've just lost the sale.

I've calculated that I lost far more by negotiating domains under 1K than straight off accepting that offer if within the acceptable range. Especially after the pandemic started.

But this also depends a lot on your domain supply. If you have a lot of supply (I do), then yes - straight accepting the offer if it is in an acceptable range might be your best option. (edit: you'll also spend less on upcoming renewals, which is also important, as you can focus next on your best ones.)

This is also why ns3/ns4 Afternic parking is best for high profile sales, or retail sales. Such a retail buyer is prepared to spend thousands on a domain, knows the value and needs to be properly managed. Negotiations are likely involved.

The ns3/ns4 form is ideal for this, the biggest asset there being is the 24/7 phone calls (and multi-language forms AFAIK). But also is the GD logo, a needed trust mark that will weight in a lot in a higher value sale. Furthermore the form will not deter any retail buyer landing, but I believe will likely weed off most market buyers due to high friction, an important thing to consider.

No wonder @AbdulBasit recommends ns3/ns4 - this is perfect for his well-picked, high-value domains.

Now I always keep BINs at Afternic and everything else on make offer.

You might chose another way, BUT this prevents double sale first off (been there) and also gives you more information over time via offers received and personal negotiations. But I believe you definitely need BIN at Afternic, especially on your high value domains - to educate buyers of your retail price first of all, before any negotiation would even begin.

Finally, what do we do with sales between $300 or $1K? Well these are definitely NOT retail sales, so by the interaction I had I can definitely tell these are still market sales, with a stretch - as in buyer having/willing to spend a few hundreds more on that domain, but still somewhat similar to market buyers. You might start with a $300 offer here and then up him/her to $500 or $700 for that domain, but not more / above 1K.

I decided it is best to park this middle tier also with a lander at Dan/Epik, and to control the negotiation myself. I prefer Dan currently, but will also be testing Epik more at some point. Anyway - for a top tier sale, it is likely that an experienced agent (who is also a third party) would be better to have between you and the client, taking phone calls, and to smooth the sale process and make it trustworthy for the buyer.

Hopefully this helps. Oh and you can use whatever you prefer for market landers, Dan, Epik and perhaps Uniregistry etc. Just test and see what works best for your type of portfolio and your own choices.

Good luck parking and selling, and let me know what you think.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

I've parked all my domains for more years than I've used without it. In my personal experience, parking domains in current times will be a wrong decision mainly due to 2 reasons.

1) It increases the risk of getting hit with UDRP with ads displayed and there is chance of showing some TM ads unintentionally which can put you in trouble.

2) Parking the domain decreases the number of inquiries... again this I'm saying per my experience.
I would suggest you try one platform for all your domains to see clear results and not divide with 2-3 platforms.

Having BIN at multiple platform can cause double sales but the chances are very slim. I've never had such thing happen. Whenever a domain is sold, I remove from all other places wherever it's listed.

I prefer to keep BIN at all marketplaces which increase the chance of selling the domain.

Thanks!

 

[TauseefKhan]

@twiki good read. thanks for sharing.

 

[twiki]

I've parked all my domains for more years than I've used without it. In my personal experience, parking domains in current times will be a wrong decision mainly due to 2 reasons.

1) It increases the risk of getting hit with UDRP with ads displayed and there is chance of showing some TM ads unintentionally which can put you in trouble.

2) Parking the domain decreases the number of inquiries... again this I'm saying per my experience.
I would suggest you try one platform for all your domains to see clear results and not divide with 2-3 platforms.

Having BIN at multiple platform can cause double sales but the chances are very slim. I've never had such thing happen. Whenever a domain is sold, I remove from all other places wherever it's listed.

I prefer to keep BIN at all marketplaces which increase the chance of selling the domain.

Thanks!

Great comment - but I beg to differ about doubled sales. Happened to me right from the beginning - hard lessons learned - so I will never use two BINs for the same domain at once.

This happened while I was sleeping so when I woke up, I had a situation. I live in Europe and these were US buyers, time difference noted, no chance to react in time.

I must also observe that double sale is much more likely on market value domains. Yours are high value mostly, well for that it's very unlikely as there is likely only one customer at a time going for it.

But if you have for example a lower value "cash" domain that is not worth more than $200 but caters to a large number of users, the chances of double sale skyrocket.

This is why you never had this (and probably never will), and I had it right off the bat, and so did others. Hopefully I've explained it correctly. I believe now that the domainer portfolio makes a ton of difference in such decisions and that we need to be very careful with details.

Edit: So in the end it's again a "depends" situation, high value domains can probably have BIN everywhere, while lower value but larger market ones should probably not have. Not worth the risk for a lower tier sale.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Great comment - but I beg to differ about doubled sales. Happened to me right from the beginning - hard lessons learned - so I will never use two BINs for the same domain at once.

This happened while I was sleeping so when I woke up, I had a situation. I live in Europe and these were US buyers, time difference noted, no chance to react in time.

I must also observe that double sale is much more likely on market value domains. Yours are high value mostly, well for that it's very unlikely as there is likely only one customer at a time going for it.

But if you have for example a lower value "cash" domain that is not worth more than $200 but caters to a large number of users, the chances of double sale skyrocket.

This is why you never had this (and probably never will), and I had it right off the bat, and so did others. Hopefully I've explained it correctly. I believe now that the domainer portfolio makes a ton of difference in such decisions and that we need to be very careful with details.

Edit: So in the end it's again a "depends" situation, high value domains can probably have BIN everywhere, while lower value but larger market ones should probably not have. Not worth the risk for a lower tier sale.

I totally agree with you. Didn't consider 3 figure amount of domains where the chance increases of double sale. Rightly said.

 

[F21VM]

Interesting post. Thanks

 

[Shaan Chopra]

thanks for sharing

 

[Ostrados]

Very bright thinking.
It does make sense to put high value domains on ns3/ns4.

What about putting your retail domains on your own website rather than Dan? Currently strongest options for that are Efty & SH whitelabel matket. I am thinking about using SH WLM instead of Dan, but I am not confident about it I am worried that buyers may not like buying from an unkown brand.

 

[NameBuyer.com]

This post comes after about an year of testing and thought spending.

It is a post of personal choice, but I am pretty sure some other domainers will make use of this information.

Parking kept coming back into my mind all the time as I had that nagging feeling of leaving a lot of money on the table. I needed to untangle what is the best platform to park my domains to. There is also a lot of discussion lately about the ns3/ns4 Afternic parking, that I needed to figure out as well. While your decisions will be yours and not necessarily like mine, you probably need to read below.

So I finally had an epiphany yesterday. Just like everything else in life, the right answer is "depends".

We need to enter the mind of our buyer, even before he has ever reached us to buy a domain. He/she doesn't yet know, but we have already entered their future approaching mind, and worked hard already to prepare the path for them to reach that domain and buy it, right there, depending on who they are.

OK. So in order to do this, we have to figure out first who we are as domainers, and who our buyers are. There are market sellers, retail sellers and also liquid/high value sellers. This comes (obviously) by the price. If your bulk of sales is in the $100... $300 range, you're a market seller. If you sell mostly in the 1-5K range, you're a retail seller. And if you sell mostly in 5-fig, you're a liquid/high value seller. (edit: not everyone knows this, obviously)

It has to become clear by now already that your decisions will differ by A LOT depending on what kind of seller you are.

So to cut this short, I have decided to park my market (lower priced) domains at Dan (or Epik... etc) but to park my top tier at Afternic ns3/ns4. And there are important reasons for this kind of parking segmentation.

Just like the sellers, buyers are also segmented. There are market buyers, retail buyers, and liquid/top buyers or domain investors.

A market buyer is usually prepared to spend say $200...$300 for a domain. These are all impulse buys, and not well thought ones. This is why the less friction you can have with them, the better. Lately with the pandemic, this became even more apparent as buyers tend to be less patient and go away at the first sign of friction.

They also have less cash now due to pandemic. So if you keep raising the price and negotiating on a low to mid $$$ domain sale, chances are the market buyer's impulse will go cold, they will just have woken up to a longer thought process - and you've just lost the sale.

I've calculated that I lost far more by negotiating domains under 1K than straight off accepting that offer if within the acceptable range. Especially after the pandemic started.

But this also depends a lot on your domain supply. If you have a lot of supply (I do), then yes - straight accepting the offer if it is in an acceptable range might be your best option. (edit: you'll also spend less on upcoming renewals, which is also important, as you can focus next on your best ones.)

This is also why ns3/ns4 Afternic parking is best for high profile sales, or retail sales. Such a retail buyer is prepared to spend thousands on a domain, knows the value and needs to be properly managed. Negotiations are likely involved.

The ns3/ns4 form is ideal for this, the biggest asset there being is the 24/7 phone calls (and multi-language forms AFAIK). But also is the GD logo, a needed trust mark that will weight in a lot in a higher value sale. Furthermore the form will not deter any retail buyer landing, but I believe will likely weed off most market buyers due to high friction, an important thing to consider.

No wonder @AbdulBasit recommends ns3/ns4 - this is perfect for his well-picked, high-value domains.

Now I always keep BINs at Afternic and everything else on make offer.

You might chose another way, BUT this prevents double sale first off (been there) and also gives you more information over time via offers received and personal negotiations. But I believe you definitely need BIN at Afternic, especially on your high value domains - to educate buyers of your retail price first of all, before any negotiation would even begin.

Finally, what do we do with sales between $300 or $1K? Well these are definitely NOT retail sales, so by the interaction I had I can definitely tell these are still market sales, with a stretch - as in buyer having/willing to spend a few hundreds more on that domain, but still somewhat similar to market buyers. You might start with a $300 offer here and then up him/her to $500 or $700 for that domain, but not more / above 1K.

I decided it is best to park this middle tier also with a lander at Dan/Epik, and to control the negotiation myself. I prefer Dan currently, but will also be testing Epik more at some point. Anyway - for a top tier sale, it is likely that an experienced agent (who is also a third party) would be better to have between you and the client, taking phone calls, and to smooth the sale process and make it trustworthy for the buyer.

Hopefully this helps. Oh and you can use whatever you prefer for market landers, Dan, Epik and perhaps Uniregistry etc. Just test and see what works best for your type of portfolio and your own choices.

Good luck parking and selling, and let me know what you think.

Well said! Over the years I've noticed that sometimes there are widely differing opinions on where to sell, how to sell, as well as techniques on negotiation & promoting domains.

Then I came to the same conclusion that you did and determined that at times we're talking apples and oranges, because one person's successful strategy may be totally different than another person's successful strategy. I think it's important that we give context to our answers, and that's the main reason I've tried to be open about my sales. Then people can better filter what makes sense for them, or what might not work so well for their strategy.

Thanks!

 

[blogspotter]

I have some sales experience, both offline and online, so here is my thought. I am a domaining noob so take it a pinch of salt. These are just things I have been using to develop a strategy for my own.

I am used to thinking in terms of Buyer Persona. Who am I selling to? It is very important develop a buyer persona in mind when you are selling anything.

But unless you are selling to a wholesale domain investor, every domain will have only a handful of buyers. So if you are doing outbound, all this becomes important. The sales process. The whole Shebang. The AIDA. So in that context, your lander becomes a part of the "Outbound Process", a part of sales funnel, and for outbounds, I would rather have a lander that reinforces some benefits of ownership of the domain, some sort of scarcity, some sort of trust, and a good call to action.


But consider a Normal Inbound query. Now Nobody is the promoting the domain. We are waiting for months or even years for some buyer who is typing in the domain name with intention to buy who is also willing the spend the money. You don't need to sell to him. He already wants it. What you want is to convince him that he is getting a good deal by paying what you expect. I think that is simply negotiation. I don't think a Lander will do anything for such a buyer. For such a case what you want is a lander that will make him make a call from where an exert negotiator will take over. A successful lander is where you get the most inbound calls. After that your pricing expectation and the skills of the negotiator comes into play.

But for the BIN type Sales, I think a Lander makes a lot of importance and I feel we do a lot better if we have more control over the Lander. If there are impulse buyers who are clicking the Bin on "a certain type of domains" that you have some sort of a repeatable pattern, I think it would make more sense to put more thought into each lander rather than a simple Domain Name Text and the price. Something to push the fench sitters.

Outbounds will need a whole different strategy

 

[twiki]

I have some sales experience, both offline and online, so here is my thought. I am a domaining noob so take it a pinch of salt. These are just things I have been using to develop a strategy for my own.

I am used to thinking in terms of Buyer Persona. Who am I selling to? It is very important develop a buyer persona in mind when you are selling anything.

But unless you are selling to a wholesale domain investor, every domain will have only a handful of buyers. So if you are doing outbound, all this becomes important. The sales process. The whole Shebang. The AIDA. So in that context, your lander becomes a part of the "Outbound Process", a part of sales funnel, and for outbounds, I would rather have a lander that reinforces some benefits of ownership of the domain, some sort of scarcity, some sort of trust, and a good call to action.


But consider a Normal Inbound query. Now Nobody is the promoting the domain. We are waiting for months or even years for some buyer who is typing in the domain name with intention to buy who is also willing the spend the money. You don't need to sell to him. He already wants it. What you want is to convince him that he is getting a good deal by paying what you expect. I think that is simply negotiation. I don't think a Lander will do anything for such a buyer. For such a case what you want is a lander that will make him make a call from where an exert negotiator will take over. A successful lander is where you get the most inbound calls. After that your pricing expectation and the skills of the negotiator comes into play.

But for the BIN type Sales, I think a Lander makes a lot of importance and I feel we do a lot better if we have more control over the Lander. If there are impulse buyers who are clicking the Bin on "a certain type of domains" that you have some sort of a repeatable pattern, I think it would make more sense to put more thought into each lander rather than a simple Domain Name Text and the price. Something to push the fench sitters.

Outbounds will need a whole different strategy

Many things are as you said, but there are differences. The normal sales process doesn't necessarily apply to all domains. This is why you need to segment them as I suggested.

Many of the domains I sell are with make offer via a lander driven by domain traffic (e.g. Dan). The thing is, most buyers hate to negotiate, and for certain reasons I don't use BIN (in fact I had better results with make offer, but the primary reason is avoiding double sales which is a situation Ive faced). There's also feedback; with make offer you get more information via the offers you receive which helps you have a better understanding of your portfolio. BIN removes all that discussion. So there are other reasons to do it.

What you get wrong here is that these people won't call someone to negotiate. You loose them at that, for market range priced domains.

That's an impulse buy, they either buy or not. They are undecided mostly, often fickle, and many are facing absolute terror at the prospect of negotiation. Make offer works as they expect a message telling them yes or no, but NOT someone calling them and taking them through that terror.

This is why the BIN work this well at Afternic: 99% of the buyers for an average priced domain will hit the BIN instead of making an offer; thus losing the chance of getting the domain, perhaps, at half price. Why don't they make a offer? Why do they pass on that? Do you think everyone doesnt know you can make an offer instead of paying full price? No - its "fear of getting rejected", fear of negotiation, etc etc - they just hit the bin, done, simple, no more negotiation, big sigh of relief. Only one of my domains has sold on Afternic at a lower price in the last year, all others have been sold at BIN price despite having a half price min offer (or sometimes even much less) on each domain.

But this is for market and low 4-fig domains (low retail price region).

When you get into low-to-mid 4-fig and higher, then yes the negotiation is always there and you need that call and that experienced person to convey domain value and trust to the customer.

So - it all goes back to what my initial post describes, and for a lot of sane reasons.

 

[spikedo]

I am trying the Afternic NS3/4 experiment thanks to Abdul. Afternic/GoDaddy moves more domains for me than any other platform. I have accepted paying more commission to move more domains at this time. Don't like it but I prefer to spend more time on the acquisition part of domaining (finding/buying the domain) rather than the sales part.

 

[twiki]

I am trying the Afternic NS3/4 experiment thanks to Abdul. Afternic/GoDaddy moves more domains for me than any other platform. I have accepted paying more commission to move more domains at this time. Don't like it but I prefer to spend more time on the acquisition part of domaining (finding/buying the domain) rather than the sales part.

For your lower tier, if you have any clearance etc, may I suggest an option with a visible BIN instead of ns3/ns4 which is suitable for 1k+ value domains.

Such as redirecting to: https://www.afternic.com/domain/chineseassets(.com) (random example, make sure you edit the link at end so it works).

I use this for a certain segment of domains. It's an in-between approach, it has BIN price/offer but also phone numbers.

The only drawback is redirection, it's needed in this case and might be difficult if you have too many domains. I have several thousands, so I've setup a VPS with a catch-all redirector and can redirect any number of domains through it.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

I am trying the Afternic NS3/4 experiment thanks to Abdul. Afternic/GoDaddy moves more domains for me than any other platform. I have accepted paying more commission to move more domains at this time. Don't like it but I prefer to spend more time on the acquisition part of domaining (finding/buying the domain) rather than the sales part.

I'm happy to see you're having better results going over with Afternic NS3/4 experiment and thanks for sharing

Good luck!