Selling at GoDaddy Marketplace

[Erdy]

Hi,

When you list a domain for sale at Godaddy, does any buyer need to first become a paid member of the marketplace in order to place a bid?

There was a $5 yearly fee for their marketplace if I remember correctly. Do buyers need to subscribe to this first?

Edit:
I just checked and indeed buyers need to buy yearly membership. This is the page I saw when I tried to make an offer:
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/1168/godaddy.gif
I think this is very off putting for potential buyers. It is also tricky. Godaddy will recharge unaware buyers $4.99 again after one year, won't they?

I had already listed some domains at Godaddy. Now I'm not sure what to do.

 

[13131jonny]

I think it is ridiculous that they charge $4.99 a year to buy domain names considering you can use flippa.com

 

[Name Trader]

C'mon. Your domains cannot be worth much if you think a buyer will be put off by an extra $5. They can at any time turn off auto renewal.

 

[Erdy]

A potential buyer needs to pay just to make an offer. Let's say I have listed the domain as "make offer with buy now price" and the buy now price is $900 but the buyer was thinking to offer $400. What do you think he will do after realising he needs to pay $5 to make an offer? I bet many potential buyers will just walk away.

Regarding auto renewal, they might turn it off but first they need to know that there is such a thing. Most people won't realise it before money is taken from their credit card one year later.

 

[vc]

I for one don't even look there. I don't understand why more people are not boycotting gocrappy.

Their tactics are not worth their coupon riddled savings :imho:

 

[Name Trader]

So you think a buyer would be put off by a $5 fee for the possibility to buy a $400 domain? That sounds like crazy to me (not you Erdinc). Completely wrong thinking, in my book. Giving up the domain you desire because of a $5 registration fee.

 

[GoQuickly]

I think it's perfectly fine to pay $5 for an auction membership.

The TDNAM.com site offers you the ability to grab expired domain names for a fraction of what Pool, Snapnames and Namejet offer.

Seeings that they register 1 domain a second, there are good odds that if you watch the expiring domains you can catch good keyword domains for ~$20 with registration.

To me I think it's nothing to whine about.

If you are concerned too much about buyers and the marketplace price of $5 - Leave your information public or make a splash page and index it.

 

[Fork]

A potential buyer needs to pay just to make an offer. Let's say I have listed the domain as "make offer with buy now price" and the buy now price is $900 but the buyer was thinking to offer $400. What do you think he will do after realising he needs to pay $5 to make an offer? I bet many potential buyers will just walk away.

Honestly, I think that's a good thing. It filters out most of the less-than-serious buyers, scammers, etc.

 

[Erdy]

I'm just concerned about the user experience. I don't want to leave behind unsatisfied customers.

I remember being extremely upset with them after they recharged my paypal for their marketplace membership. I even transferred out all my domains away from them and closed my account. It took me three years to calm down and start checking their auctions again. I was shocked to find out godaddy had added themselves to paypal's recurring payments inside my paypal account. I don't care about paying the $5 but they shouldn't auto charge. If you have used godaddy when you check your paypal you can find them listed somewhere your paypal along with ebay.

If I was a customer and bought a domain and was charged $5 USD membership for that site I wouldn't mind but I would be very annoyed if they charge me again after one year. Probably I wouldn't notice this in the first year and it could go on for couple of years.

I listed a few domains at Godaddy and didn't think much about the membership. But when I think about it now it is actually not cool. I might as well switch back to sedo. But then with sedo the transfer is a pain especially if they ask me for epp code. I don't want to hand over the epp code to the buyer. Sedo should take over the domain and push to the buyer themselves.

Anyway, it looks like both sedo and godaddy have their drawbacks.

---------- Post added at 02:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:43 AM ----------

When I first opened this thread I was thinking about the inconvenience a buyer would face by having to pay $5 just to make an offer for a domain he might not end up buying.

However, besides that, there is also the recurring membership fee.
Now, I remember that when you pay with paypal you do realise it after the first year because you receive an email after the payment. I'm wondering what happens with credit card payments.

 

[GoQuickly]

isaacboda.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/auto-renew.jpg - Auto renewal agreement before purchase

I love you namecatch, but I feel the auto-renew is in place for the returning users to the auctions who plan to buy more domains than just one.

Just so they don't miss out on the auctions they might be putting there domains into. :imho:

 

[Erdy]

I'm selling a domain at Godaddy now and I think their marketplace is rubbish.

The buyer made the payment and has a Godaddy account because this is needed to make a payment. Now you would assume Godaddy will automatically take the domain from my account and put into buyers Godaddy account but no. Everything is done manually.

They wanted me to manually push to Godaddy account. Somebody from Godaddy manually accepted the domain push. Then Godaddy pushed the domain to buyer and now they are waiting for the buyer to accept the push. Then you have to wait two weeks for the payment. This is so messed up.

In comparison, think about how namecheap marketplace works. Buyer makes a payment, the domain is taken from your account and pushed to buyer's account automatically. Then you get paid. Many times I sold domains at namecheap marketplace and didn't do anything at any stage. I even complained to namecheap for putting the money into my account without telling me about the domain sale. I wouldn't even notice I sold a domain at namecheap because at no stage you do anything.

I think Godaddy marketplace is totally rubbish.

 

[GoQuickly]

You don't have to use it. I think it's the most secure around. Definitely the biggest marketplace out there though.

 

[cache]

agree, you have to use escrow.com independently.

I'm selling a domain at Godaddy now and I think their marketplace is rubbish.

The buyer made the payment and has a Godaddy account because this is needed to make a payment. Now you would assume Godaddy will automatically take the domain from my account and put into buyers Godaddy account but no. Everything is done manually.

They wanted me to manually push to Godaddy account. Somebody from Godaddy manually accepted the domain push. Then Godaddy pushed the domain to buyer and now they are waiting for the buyer to accept the push. Then you have to wait two weeks for the payment. This is so messed up.

In comparison, think about how namecheap marketplace works. Buyer makes a payment, the domain is taken from your account and pushed to buyer's account automatically. Then you get paid. Many times I sold domains at namecheap marketplace and didn't do anything at any stage. I even complained to namecheap for putting the money into my account without telling me about the domain sale. I wouldn't even notice I sold a domain at namecheap because at no stage you do anything.

I think Godaddy marketplace is totally rubbish.

 

[Erdy]

I sold a second domain at Godaddy. This time I didn't need to fill any forms. I just clicked one link to push to buyer. I checked why that happened last time. It turns out last time the offer came through Godaddy's Buy Domain Service which is different then listing and getting offers.

My only complaint now is the time it takes to get paid.

This month so far I made two sales at Godaddy and no sale at sedo. But I still hate Godaddy. I buy most of my domains from Godaddy expired domain marketplace too. But still no matter what they do I don't like them.

 

[Erdy]

Hi,

I received this letter from godaddy:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your participation in the Go Daddy® Domain Buy Service process. The funds for the sale of domain name ***.com are scheduled to be released to you on 10/12/2010, to the Paypal address, ****, you provided at the beginning of negotiations. Note: it may take a few additional days for your account to reflect deposit of these funds depending on the policies of your financial institution.

I sold the domain a few days ago. Today is 18th October. What does that date 10/12/2010 in the email mean? Is it 12th October or 10th December?

If it is 12th October how come it is 6 days before today?
If it is 10th December why do they keep me waiting for 60 days after the buyer paid?

Edit:
I gave them a call. Now they are saying, they made a mistake and that's the day the buyer paid them. I have to wait 20 more days.

 

[matrigaldo]

Just a question: why did they send me a cheque (with mispelled name), if my payment choice was PayPal?

It's a mistery. And now the cheque is useless, because my name is mispelled, and they still don't reply to me about this problem.

 

[Erdy]

Just a question: why did they send me a cheque (with mispelled name), if my payment choice was PayPal?

Wow, that's terrible. I sold two domains and I'm already annoyed with them for keeping me waiting for weeks. I need to pay money to my programmer. I hope they don't screw up.

 

[stankovic]

5 dollar for year auction membership is cheap i think.

 

[Erdy]

5 dollar for year auction membership is cheap i think.

The price is not the point. A buyer doesn't want to sign up for yearly membership just to buy one domain.

It is no problem for godaddy to require membership for sellers. I wouldn't mind if they charge 50 USD a year. However for buyers they shouldn't do this.

You don't read the threads before writing an answer, do you? How is $5 a year cheap for something that you are not going to use? The buyers are not going to use the marketplace. All they want is to buy one blood domain.

If you want to go to a night club for one time, and they require you to buy yearly membership that renews automatically every year, would you be happy about this?

 

[Name Trader]

$5 is cheap for anything, imho. It's certainly cheap for a 1 year membership to the 1st or 2nd biggest domain sales house in the world. Look. If they don't buy your domain, they have now an opportunity to bid on any other domain, for free. They might find a better domain, cheaper. I really cannot see what the big deal is. I wouldn't have any reservation in paying the fee. A wasted $5 for a $400 which they didn't buy is nothing. And it's not as if they have to pay another $5 next time they want to bid on another domain.