I read the following exchange in the
comment section of this post at domaininvesting.com, where one commenter observed a number of issues with the Afternic platform, many of which have been highlighted in this thread too, which was followed up by GoDaddy's Paul Nicks. I thought their exchange might be of interest to people who follow this thread, because it really puts into context why the Afternic.com platform is so outdated, and also explains where GoDaddy have focused their resources and aftermarket development instead (into the Afternic network of registrars). Personally I'm not sure why these seem to be treated as mutually exclusive areas of development, where there are only resources to focus on one and not the other. The Afternic network works GREAT so it does make sense to develop and expand this network, but why not grow Afternic's registrar network while ALSO developing (or at least keeping up to date) the Afternic.com platform? While their registrar network captures registrar path leads, type-in is another valuable source of leads (that can only come in via type-in when people send their traffic to afternic.com landing pages), that seem to be neglected in Afternic's current strategy. See below for the exchange:
Somebody made this comment about Afternic (this is the main part of the comment that deals with Afternic):
GoDaddy bumblers have made a mockery of Afternic through deprioritizing growth and even the most basic of attention to this platform. They have run it into the ground, compounded by mixed messages on the new extensions that undermine their own base future value proposition. No advertising, no staffing enhancements, no intelligent direction, no efforts to reach new buyers, no new market share. A company that would rather use a history ranging from elephant shooting, to telling congress they will shut down any name instantly on request, to using SuperBowl money to trivialize puppy farms โ with not one mention of Afternic and itโs premium showcase capabilities (or even the new GTLDs for that matter!). An industry leader just showed me last week using Wayback that their management hasnโt had the sense, attention or care to even update their featured home page listings on Afternic for THREE YEARS. Most of their listings have been there since before the acquisition, and they have the singular most worst business category sorting ever seen from a domaining company online. So looking within their own performance and network as a tool to guide value perceptions for others is flatly insane. They donโt have the character, market understanding, ethical brand positioning, or experience ever producing one true dollar of profit to take this role. Feel free to share. The watered down recent Pros and Cons of GoDaddy was exactly that.
Paul Nicks response:
I would like to openly discuss a few items that you called out so that you can greater understand why weโve made some of the decisions we have with regards to Afternic.
First off, you are absolutely correct that our featured listings are laughably stale, and that our categorization algorithm could stand to be updated. Let me elaborate on why that is and why we have anything but deprioritized growth.
When GoDaddy acquired Afternic a little over three years ago, our thesis was that small businesses would almost always start the search for a domain name at their favorite registrar. Afternicโs DLS platform is a perfect way to distribute our customersโ inventory right to the registrar channel. So, instead of a heavy marketing expense to try and prop up a marketplace as the best search option, we made a bet that it would be easier for us -and more profitable for our customers- if we focused all of our energy on selling domains via our reseller network. So instead of investing money and resources into trying to get small businesses to visit Afternic, we are investing in expanding our reach at registrars, where customers already are. Every dollar we would have spent, during Super Bowl or otherwise, to prop up Afternic.com as a destination for domain search would have been taking customers away from searching for domains at the more natural registrar channel.
Our bet is paying off. In the three years since we acquired Afternic, we have added more than 20 new registrars to our already 100+ reseller channel, including new players like Google and international companies like eName, and RegRU. We have also more than tripled the size of our sales team to better serve customers who have Afternic โfor saleโ links on their parked pages. Last year we also added a new product for our registrar resellers that allows them to monetize their expiring inventory on GoDaddy Auctions, which is producing great results.
The Afternic.com website is, for all intents and purposes, a portal for domain owners to list their names into the most active aftermarket in the world, not a destination for SMBs to search for inventory. We believe that not only do we sell more domains than any other marketplace, we are growing at a pace that surpasses the market as a whole. This is a direct result of all of the effort we have put into the Aftermarket that doesnโt always show up in advertisements or blog articles.
Lastly, if an โindustry leaderโ is really trying to win your business by showing you how our homepage content is stale, I would be cautious. Most likely, theyโre trying to distract from the one thing that truly matters, the ability to sell your names. No one brings more visibility to your domains than Afternic, and no-one sells more domains.
----
Any thoughts?
