advice Strange Afternic situation - had 0 sales in a month (7K names)

[twiki]

Now this is quite weird and I have seen nothing like it.

I'm getting offers and sales each other day at Dan where I park my domains. So things are good there.

But on the other hand, I had zero sales in the last 30 days at Afternic with arond 7K names listed. Nothing appears wrong technically, they also show up on GD, what on earth is going on? (scratching head)

My next step is to move to offer only at Afternic cause this is what I use at Dan and see what happens.

But anyway, 7 k names, out of which 4.5 K are coms and the rest a mix of .co, net and org. I know their pricing is alright, this is also reason why I get a lot of offers at Dan (got 5 today and accepted 3).

Any tips appreciated!

 

[johnn]

Pray. It always works.

 

[Ostrados]

Both and everywhere, including their partner network. Where you might go at bottom, OR won't even show up at all. The ones bringing the most moolah to them will.

This is a supposition of course; but it would make sense from the business perspective.

Oh this is very bad.. I have just tried searching on Godaddy and I confirm what you have noticed!

I searched for keyword VeryHighly and instead of showing the the exact match .com (my domain) on top Godaddy is showing domains in the following order:

1. veryhighly.co.uk
2. veryhigh.co.uk
3. veryhighly.club
4. trulyhighly.co.uk
5. veryhighly.tech
6. very-highly.com
7. veryhighly.live
8. veryhighly.com <-- Finally!

Really Godaddy?! instead of showing closest variations in .com GD put .tech .live & .club first! they even put the hyphenated .com version before my domain!

I don't understand why they are doing this, it seems they are more interested in selling domains for $0.9 than taking a 20% commission on 4 figure sales.

 

[DNGear]

Now this is quite weird and I have seen nothing like it.

I'm getting offers and sales each other day at Dan where I park my domains. So things are good there.

But on the other hand, I had zero sales in the last 30 days at Afternic with arond 7K names listed. Nothing appears wrong technically, they also show up on GD, what on earth is going on? (scratching head)

My next step is to move to offer only at Afternic cause this is what I use at Dan and see what happens.

But anyway, 7 k names, out of which 4.5 K are coms and the rest a mix of .co, net and org. I know their pricing is alright, this is also reason why I get a lot of offers at Dan (got 5 today and accepted 3).

Any tips appreciated!

I have around 15K names. No sales in Afternic since 60 days. Still a mystery.

 

[twiki]

I'm beginning to suspect something that is bad news for many of us.

This change has happened all too sudden. I mean I always had a stream of sales, well, after the first week of October it suddenly dried out. It didn't look and it doesn't look natural to me. And it reminds me of SEO and Google.

What I believe we have here is an algorithmic change. Most likely with the position of the domains in search results for term. Could be penalized if the overall sales are below a certain threshold.

I took a look in a niche where I have a ton of good names (same keyword, trending one). Very good names, tens of them.

Well, ALL my domains are at the bottom of the bottom, below some good and a ton of worthless junk. There is no reason to bury these domains there other than an penalizing new algo. Nobody scrolls that much unless they have a wish for a dire headache.

 

[DNGear]

It looks like they are promoting their own extensions.

 

[twiki]

I guess my question is, is that the primary way that sales have traditionally happened on afternic, just people doing searches for keywords on afternic.com? There are a few other possible explanations too, like people not having extra money to spend on startup ideas?

Nope. Dan.com is currently much higher in sales than it was, and this is proof to me people have money and buy domains daily. They buy from me on Dan, but not on Afternic.

Something is wrong with their sales channel. I think it's an algo thing.

 

[DNGear]

@johnn

 

[NickB]

I guess my question is, is that the primary way that sales have traditionally happened on afternic, just people doing searches for keywords on afternic.com? There are a few other possible explanations too, like people not having extra money to spend on startup ideas?

But isn't the point of fast transfer with Afternic that the domain is available/shown on multiple platforms?

So how would an algorithm change impact them all? They would all have different search algos in place surely?

I'm not that tech save so just asking...

 

[bmugford]

Correct and has been reported in this thread. I also see the same, but not for every term, only the lucrative ones.

I noticed this quite a while ago. I don't think it is a recent change.

It certainly is not good for domain owners to have, what many people would consider, inferior options listed first.

It is not really good for potential end users either. It is basically offering them options they don't want first, and burying an option they are more likely to be looking for.

Brad

 

[twiki]

For whoever didn't read the whole thread (just been asked in private about it), here's a repeat:

When you add / update your domains in Afternic, they get to the bottom of the list in GD Auctions under the default search. There is a 45-day cycle of gradual climb, until they get to the top. After those 45 days the cycle restarts. As you know, GD Auctions is a major channel for Afternic sales but obviously not the only one (partner network is larger as far as I know).

If you update the price or upload a new list of domains, same thing happens for those domains that are changed.

This is more important for retail (higher price like 4-figs and more) cause low priced domains will still be reached easily via a price-limited search in such cases.

Best approach I see is to set your domain prices correctly and then not touching them very often. And there should be some fluctuation in sales over 2 months time or so. Since the list is also distributed among Afternic's partners, there is a chance positioning will be also reset in those networks.

And everyone I asked said that it is a bad idea to have both GD Auctions and Afternic listing at the same time as it appears to hinder Afternic sales. Just list at Afternic with BIN as this will distribute your domain in GD auctions and partner network as well.

 

[Pairadice]

the position of the domains in search results for term.

I guess my question is, is that the primary way that sales have traditionally happened on afternic, just people doing searches for keywords on afternic.com? There are a few other possible explanations too, like people not having extra money to spend on startup ideas?

 

[twiki]

I just realized why my listings are at the bottom of the barrel, and it's not what you think.

Quite a "duh..." moment.

The reason is time left, which is the default sorting at GD.

When you list your domains, they show up in GD platform based on time left, with the quicker expiring ones at the top. The new ones are set at 45 days, and these are at the bottom and make their way up as the time goes. So you get good days and bad days depending on where you currently are. I assume once that expires you are re-set for another 45 days cycle.

Unfortunately, lately I kept tweaking my prices and uploading the list... with the sole result of getting my domains back at the bottom of the barrel each time.

My advice to you is, don't touch your prices. Set them, fire and forget. Each time you edit you reset your 45-day counter and get to the bottom again.

This is good insight for myself at least. Hope it helps others as well!

 

[Ostrados]

I assume they are registries paying GoDaddy a premium for that placement or something.

Yes they do:

3 of top domains have "Ad" tag.

 

[Michael M]

Just to throw my $0.02 in since I just read through this thread.

From my personal experience the stream of Afternic sales we have been receiving for years generally had nothing to do with Afternic/GD Auctions - but their partner registrars and mainly Godaddy's registrar path.

With the recent shift at GD to promote the new extensions and their adoption (over defaulting to .com as king) - your domain will not be found unless the end user does an exact type in of your domain. They no longer see many similar domains in .com, but a list of that search phrase in multiple extensions.

With GD having such far reach with end users - it is similar to "type in" traffic you receive on your landing page, except people default to going to Godaddy and typing it in to see if it is available. They see the option to buy the domain from the aftermarket and some make the purchase.

I personally do not believe the auction cycle has anything to do with when you make a sale. 99% of users aren't going to GD auctions to search, but as I said typing your domain in their domain registration input box.

So can we buy an ad for our domains too.

Not to my knowledge. These are new extensions that Godaddy is selling from the registry.

 

[UmerK]

Interesting thread, I looked up my portfolio and here are some find prints of what I found;

This does not happen on every sub site of Godaddy - I tried my home country (Pakistan) dot com did show up in search. It happened on UK/CAN, I did not try on others.

Interesting enough, names for which I have GD Auctions listing showed far better in searches than ones that were just on Afternic. GD Auctions listing showed on Canadian site right after .ca and on UK showed up. Some of my names that are not GD Auctions listing do not show up at all for UK sub site even with exact keywords.

Probably it is time to add GD Auctions listing for all names I own.

This thread certainly has me question my choice of using Afternic landing pages.

 

[twiki]

Update: Sales have resumed, and I figured out what happened.

The funny thing is, at least in my case, Afternic has nothing to do with the issue, although sales from Afternic are the ones that have dried out. But anyway this has stirred a great discussion and a lot of information did flow back and forth in this thread, so it was really nice to see and tap into that.

About what happened. Three words:

1) Price
2) Election
3) End of stimulus checks

So no technical or positioning issue.

1)
I have several domain tiers, one of which is a market price tier ( $199...$499 mostly). What I did at the beginning of October was to somewhat increase the prices to a large number of these domains. Although I believed they are still in the acceptable range, it appears they were not anymore. At least not considering the other 2 factors.

Positioning (resetting listing at the bottom when uploading price list) can be important, but it is less important for market price tiers. Because these are primarily filtered and sorted by price first of all. This puts your domain in the visible range anyway if market-range priced.

2) and 3) Market range tier caters to small businesses, independent professionals and wannabe entrepreneurs mostly, in my opinion.

Well that particular segment was affected at that precise time by a) unknowns about what happens after the election, and 2) no more stimulus checks, and this combined into a situation where the near future was impossible to predict.

They simply postponed their buys or looked for a very cheap price. But taking into the account my price increase: It was definitely the wrong move at the wrong time.

Why did they start now: Simple, I have reverted the pricing to the original ones before the adjustment, and also 2) and 3) are solved. So all conditions are back to where they were before the whole thing started.

Check your situation and see if there are similarities, maybe that's the answer.

And I was thinking it has to do something with promotion, frequent list uploads and such. No such thing it appears.

Duh!

 

[Ostrados]

This is no joke NP community must be aware about this algorithm change!
This means heavy drop in sales for everyone

 

[Future Sensors]

After arriving at the local PH.godaddy.com site by accident today (via a Google search result), I get redirected to PH.godaddy.com all day long (too lazy to change it in the footer) for Auctions and other parts on the Godaddy site.

Now reading this discussion on NamePros, I also checked some really popular keywords in the Godaddy Domain Search. The premium domain names used to be listed on top with premium prices, and now suddenly <keyword>.ph was listed on top, available for new registration (visiting from the Netherlands).

Don't know the algo, but I can imagine things will show up very differently depending on the country, and perhaps even postal code / area you live. Or some metrics about income? Interesting.

 

[griff]

I see the same, many .co.uk are top. Which country are you browsing from?

I’m from the UK so it makes sense to see .co.uk plus a couple of .com’s. I guess the reason that the EM .com doesn’t show at all is that the majority will register a cheaper handreg even over an exact premium more times than not?

As a side, I’m sure many more sales come from entering the full name + extension, rather than seeing the similar names, so it can’t just be this issue I guess

 

[blogspotter]

I really don't understand this. It takes me a fraction of a second to upload my updated list at Dan. Don't see where the pain in the neck is.

Furthermore, my buyers are 95% US-based so I care little about localization. Everyone else is generally a non-payer in my case (including China, Israel etc). Germans are alright but they understand English.

Third, Sedo has only sold ONE domain for me valued 80EUR. Waste of time.

I appreciate your comment though.

I have a very small portfolio. Maybe about 200.
Now I have about 800 other junk domains that I got from promos, like .realty and 99 cent .co but have only about 200 some good domains.

I sold 2 names in November for a little over 7000 and already sold one in December for 4000
All on SEDO.
Credit where credit is due.

 

[wwwweb]

Same situation here, afteric has a constant sell stream for me, something has changed in past 30 days or so, it's a ghost town thru afternic. Other channels are selling thru at similar %, but afternic has stalled.

Uni integration?

 

[Pairadice]

Theories:
1) A lower sell thru rate at GD and higher at DAN could indicate that people are seeing your domain on GD but then they go to your landing page and make an offer, probably to save money. If they make a deal w/you on DAN, then theres no reason to buy the same domain through afternic, so that would decrease your sell thru rate on there.

2) Don't expect GD to be the main advertising for your domains.. they are just one avenue.. most important thing I would think is whether fast transfer is enabled.. end users and investors can do keyword searches to find domains, but there's no way to control how your results are showing on there. Are you expecting them to single out one person's domains and highlight only those every day, then everyone else would have the same concern about their results not showing. There's too many sellers for one person's domains to show at the top every day for every keyword.

 

[bmugford]

This could also open the door for preferential treatment for certain people as far as their domains showing up on top of the results.

I have had the same concerns since GoDaddy entered the domainer business by buying large domain portfolios.

I have brought this concern up to various people at GoDaddy in the past and been told they don't receive preferential treatment. I don't have any info that proves different.

Brad

 

[bonin]

I’m in UK and TBH I’m very disappointed... I typed eMotorbike without extension and this is what I get ... the .com is ....