Domains on Afternic are not expired domains they are owned by people who are listing them for sale.
Sorry
@Joe Styler, I should have clarified more about what expireddomain.net is. Although their name is "expired domains" it's actually quite misleading, as they have grown into far more than that over the years. They not only show expired domains, but offer great filters for searching non-expiring domains listed by sellers at all major domain sales marketplaces, as it brings them a lot more sales. The current seller listed inventory (non-expired) of these marketplaces is listed with ExpiredDomains.net:
Sedo's inventory (the most comparable marketplace to Afternic)
Flippa Marketplace
DynaDot Marketplace
GoDaddy Buy Now and Make Offer listings
SnapNames Auctions (separate from SnapNames pre-release/expiring auctions).
NameSilo Marketplace
DomainMarket
Bido Marketplace
As you can see, these are not marketplaces for expired domains, they are owned by people who are listing them for sale, just like Afternic's inventory is. Furthermore, Afternic's inventory used to be searchable on expireddomains.net before, but for some reason this is no longer the case.
When Afternic names were shown on expireddomains.net, I used to buy 5-10 names at Afternic per month, and I know other domainers with deeper pockets than me that bought a lot more than that. Since Afternic's names were pulled from ExpiredDomains.net, I have bought 0 names from Afternic, and I've heard the same from others. I don't know any domainers who frequently buy from Afternic anymore.
Afternic currently has 12,330,386 domains listed for sale. However, there is almost no search functionality on afternic.com, so it's unfortunately not possible to find good domains listed for sale among those 12,330,386 listings. When domains are shown on expireddomains.net, it's possible to search by age/price/search volume/length/registration data for other extensions/vowels and consonants/search competition/languages, and dozens of other metrics. It makes it possible to effectively find value in a vast inventory, and gives people a way to find valuable domains in your inventory.
If Afternic started working with expireddomains.net again, you would unlock a massive non-targeted potential in your inventory of domains. Right now, Afternic sales mainly come from people who specifically search for (or type-in) a specific afternic listed domain. Because the Afternic website search is very limited, it's difficult to "discover" a good domain for sale there by using the filters. Right now there are a lot of domains listed with Afternic at what domainers would consider reasonable prices. But there is no way to find them. If you gave domain buyers a way to find them, a lot more domains would be "discovered" via filtered searches, and most reseller priced domains on Afternic.com would move right after being listed.
As I highlighted in another thread today, a lot of names expire and sell for MORE than their BIN price on Afternic prior to expiring. Other domain investors would definitively have picked those names up at Afternic prior to them expiring, if only they knew about them. But right now there is no way to search Afternic's inventory for such value, so the value of these names are not unlocked for their sellers. Showing Afternic's inventory on expireddomains.net would be a huge win-win for everyone, as sellers would sell more names, and buyers would have a way of searching Afternic's vast inventory. Please take this into consideration, as it would benefit both domain sellers and buyers and lead to more sales for Afternic.