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!

 

[DNGear]

same problem happening with me. i had park my domin last one month but not sell yet

 

[sputnik7]

Edit: Normally send such files only trhough a private message. After 30 mins it gets locked so you cannot edit anymore. And for issues of this kind, don't use a thread like this, you are off-topic. Start a thread for yourself and ask for help.

This post is for Afternic sales, not upload assistance. Thanks for your understanding and in the future post appropriately. However I took notice you are new.

Thank You.
I made a thread few minutes before I send you the comment on Buying and selling but there I did not get any answer so without Repy to you i will tapped in the dark who know for how longl as far as sales are concerned via the Afternic premium network because for half of my Inquires to them I did not even get the answer-any kind of answer. Without your help I could sell only thorugh Sedo and Dan. I understand what you mean and I agree with that completely, but here that I followed the "rules" Afternic, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Uniregistry and other sites form their Premium Networ would not show "my" domains for sale.
How to send private mesage?
Please tell me that because You have ability - brain to explan me clearly and simply unlike most of others.
Thanks in advance.
Happy New year and best wishes.

Aleksandar - sputnik7

 

[twiki]

Thank You.
I made a thread few minutes before I send you the comment on Buying and selling but there I did not get any answer so without Repy to you i will tapped in the dark who know for how longl as far as sales are concerned via the Afternic premium network because for half of my Inquires to them I did not even get the answer-any kind of answer. Without your help I could sell only thorugh Sedo and Dan. I understand what you mean and I agree with that completely, but here that I followed the "rules" Afternic, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Uniregistry and other sites form their Premium Networ would not show "my" domains for sale.
How to send private mesage?
Please tell me that because You have ability - brain to explan me clearly and simply unlike most of others.
Thanks in advance.
Happy New year and best wishes.

Aleksandar - sputnik7

Platforms don't accept adult names. Try Efty landers (paid), but before that send an email to [email protected] and ask them if allowed.

And please stay off this thread now, you're OFFTOPIC. Thank you for your undersanding.

 

[alcy]

so I wrote here recently how messed up afternic is.. example I uploaded my names like months ago..set bin 10k on each...just for fun testing price.. cause I got 1000 names and didn't wanna spend 10h going one by one... at 10k I'm okay as I dont really got names now I'd not be willing to part with for 10k...so I did this months ago... only logged in once few weeks ago then I saw like 500 names pending review.. which is ok cause I only expect messy impossible to understand things from afternic... then today out of blue I'm flooded with optin emails from em for all registrars.

honestly I deal with many markets ans registrars but afternic is like the only place where something always goes wrong.

 

[synecdoche]

On the original topic @twiki - Have you added your names to the GD Auctions (either as Buy Now or Make Offer) in addition to Afternic. Has there been any change in this variable?

Although I have a much smaller portfolio (~500 names) I had 3 sales through Afternic Fast Transfer in September and mid-October. All uploaded to Afternic in between May-August and all sold at BIN.

Then in mid October, I added all names as "Make Offer" to the Godaddy Auction portal. At the same time, they continued to remain at BIN at Afternic. From that point onwards, I have had 0 Afternic sales. Meanwhile, I have had 5-6 offers on Godaddy Auction portals in that two month period. I am currently putting the sudden lack any Afternic sales to the cyclical nature of the business, but I am not sure if my GD auction meddling has anything to do with it. Hence, checking with you as well.

 

[twiki]

On the original topic @twiki - Have you added your names to the GD Auctions (either as Buy Now or Make Offer) in addition to Afternic. Has there been any change in this variable?

Although I have a much smaller portfolio (~500 names) I had 3 sales through Afternic Fast Transfer in September and mid-October. All uploaded to Afternic in between May-August and all sold at BIN.

Then in mid October, I added all names as "Make Offer" to the Godaddy Auction portal. At the same time, they continued to remain at BIN at Afternic. From that point onwards, I have had 0 Afternic sales. Meanwhile, I have had 5-6 offers on Godaddy Auction portals in that two month period. I am currently putting the sudden lack any Afternic sales to the cyclical nature of the business, but I am not sure if my GD auction meddling has anything to do with it. Hence, checking with you as well.

Thanks for your response!

I have not added domains to the Godaddy Auctions. It is besides pointless to do so, since they get listed anyway once you list them on Afternic. The only drawback is that GD adds a 10=20 % premium on your domain name so it gets more expensive there. But I think this disables the Afternic network when you do it. (Edit: So I avoided that, some NP members said something is off when you have them listed in both places.)

I have a few clearance domains listed as auctions, different thing. But these are removed from Afternic.

Your moment of lack of sales coincides with mine and with other folks here (start -mid October). It's already too much to be a coincidence.

Afternic sales are still missing except a small $199 sale for a downpriced domain. Whatever is there, is still ongoing.

 

[DomainNature]

I personally don't like Godaddy because of Hosting issues i had with them in the past, plus too expensive domain renewals, not sure why domainers still stay with them.

Here is an idea, maybe after they joined Afternic, Godaddy decided to rule over them for the purpose to bring it down and to keep itself at the top.
In my opinion Godaddy links with too many Domain businesses possible for that purpose, to bring them down.

 

[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!

 

[ecomslice]

Good thread, lots of ASS U ME theories though, assuming is valid but no certainty, lets look at the longer term data. I truly hope your sales continue and ill be appreciating your future data as it is all valuable for learning from others mistakes or avoiding certain platform strategies.

 

[twiki]

Good thread, lots of ASS U ME theories though, assuming is valid but no certainty, lets look at the longer term data. I truly hope your sales continue and ill be appreciating your future data as it is all valuable for learning from others mistakes or avoiding certain platform strategies.

True, but in many cases all we have are assumptions, hopefully right ones. Thanks! Will always post when there is more stuff worth taking a look at.

 

[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.

 

[Ryan3]

I live in the UK so I get the UK version of GoDaddy and I have just searched several of my domains exactly without the .com and they did not show up at all! Not a single search I made without the .com showed the .com anywhere in the results.
.co.uk was at the top and most of the results were other extensions and auto-generated variations. Some of them like .info, .me and .tech said “ad”.
I then searched with the .com and they are showing as “taken” instead of available/premium.
Most of mine are at Uniregistry. Uni recently said if your domains are on the Uni market they’re automatically on Afternic and I asked if that means I could delete them from my Afternic account and they’d still be listed on Afternic through my Uniregistry account and I’d then be able to just manage the listings through the Uni Market and they said yes so I did that last week.
I also tried searching on GoDaddy for some registered at Epik without the .com and those also didn’t show up at all but this time when I tried searching with the .com some of them showed as available/premium and some of them showed as taken even though all are listed on Afternic.

 

[WebAddy.co]

We are also based in the UK. Listed a number of domains at Afternic at the beginning of December. These started to show up in the search results on GD, but then after a day or so were removed. I contacted GD and they said its an Afternic issue, I then contacted Afternic and they said that GD was removing the domains when they were sent a feed from Afternic. I told them that surely since they are the same company now effectively they could get their systems playing nicely together.

I emailed the service team at Afternic, repeatedly phoned - and no joy. They all blame the other party.

I eventually had to resort to putting the domains up directly on GD auctions, although all of them are now Make an offer on there rather than BIN.

We have some reasonably high profile domains and absolutely no sales through GD or Afternic at all. I thought that this was just us - but seemingly industry wide. Seems like GD are prioritising alternative domain extensions and not actually showing the .COM as available.

If anyone has had any joy with actually getting listings to play nicely and be found - I am all ears!

 

[twiki]

We are also based in the UK. Listed a number of domains at Afternic at the beginning of December. These started to show up in the search results on GD, but then after a day or so were removed. I contacted GD and they said its an Afternic issue, I then contacted Afternic and they said that GD was removing the domains when they were sent a feed from Afternic. I told them that surely since they are the same company now effectively they could get their systems playing nicely together.

I emailed the service team at Afternic, repeatedly phoned - and no joy. They all blame the other party.

I eventually had to resort to putting the domains up directly on GD auctions, although all of them are now Make an offer on there rather than BIN.

We have some reasonably high profile domains and absolutely no sales through GD or Afternic at all. I thought that this was just us - but seemingly industry wide. Seems like GD are prioritising alternative domain extensions and not actually showing the .COM as available.

If anyone has had any joy with actually getting listings to play nicely and be found - I am all ears!

From my experience, the errors tend to always happen at GD, not at Afternic.

 

[WebAddy.co]

Yeah possibly. But GD has now bought Uniregistry and Afternic. Meaning that they can pick and choose how they want to do things. Seems like they want to sell their expired domains and make the money off their own bat - perhaps algorithmic changes or something along those lines has left all domainers with the inability to sell through these platforms going forward. Might be an idea to put my development hat back on and create some new MLS based marketing platforms that will never be bought out by the big guns.

 

[twiki]

CONFIRMED - In my case the issue was not caused by Afternic at all, but by my own pricing.

I have reduced the prices overall and since then I'm getting a real flood of sales, see reported sales here.

Edit: And there must also be some boost in purchases at the new year start (new trend) but anyway I am pretty sure it is pricing as I had been over that threshold in the past and the effect was the same, no sales. It just didn't click for me while opening this thread, until now.

 

[WebAddy.co]

CONFIRMED - In my case the issue was not caused by Afternic at all, but by my own pricing.

I have reduced the prices overall and since then I'm getting a real flood of sales, see reported sales here.

Edit: And there must also be some boost in purchases at the new year start (new trend) but anyway I am pretty sure it is pricing as I had been over that threshold in the past and the effect was the same, no sales. It just didn't click for me while opening this thread, until now.

Great! Well done on getting the sales started again. What did you do differently to your pricing? I tend to have BIN on Afternic with Make Offer everywhere else. At the moment am trialling really low Make Offers to see if any actually come through - with the BIN as full retail.

Well done again!

 

[twiki]

Great! Well done on getting the sales started again. What did you do differently to your pricing? I tend to have BIN on Afternic with Make Offer everywhere else. At the moment am trialling really low Make Offers to see if any actually come through - with the BIN as full retail.

Well done again!

I switched to BIN everywhere and no offers.

Min offer price the same as BIN price. Roughly 30% lower price which brings them below that non-sale threshold.

Edit: You have to be very precise in your pricing though, which now I am fully confident in.

 

[WebAddy.co]

I switched to BIN everywhere and no offers.

Min offer price the same as BIN price. Roughly 30% lower price which brings them below that non-sale threshold.

Edit: You have to be very precise in your pricing though, which now I am fully confident in.

Isn't having a BIN strategy everywhere a little risky due to people being able to buy a particularly good domain name from two markets simultaneously? When you say 30% lower price - lower than what?

Out of interest, how many domains in your portfolio?

 

[twiki]

Isn't having a BIN strategy everywhere a little risky due to people being able to buy a particularly good domain name from two markets simultaneously? When you say 30% lower price - lower than what?

Out of interest, how many domains in your portfolio?

Yes it is, but as you know - no risk no gain. 30% lower than previous prices that were causing non-sales.

The number of domains is irrelevant to the questions.

 

[WebAddy.co]

Yes it is, but as you know - no risk no gain. 30% lower than previous prices that were causing non-sales.

The number of domains is irrelevant to the questions.

Thanks for your answer. Glad the sales have resumed.

I should have just reminded myself of the thread name - 7k domains. I do think the number of domains does make a difference, as a person with 7k domains is going to / should get a lot more traction than a person with 700. Or 70.

Anyways, hoping the sales keep going for you!

 

[twiki]

Thanks for your answer. Glad the sales have resumed.

I should have just reminded myself of the thread name - 7k domains. I do think the number of domains does make a difference, as a person with 7k domains is going to / should get a lot more traction than a person with 700. Or 70.

Anyways, hoping the sales keep going for you!

Thank you! Well I currently own 13 K so they were going up gradually. But even at 3k I had steady sales all through the year. Until they dropped and reason was pricing.

Edit: Good luck to you as well!

 

[WebAddy.co]

Thank you! Well I currently own 13 K so they were going up gradually. But even at 3k I had steady sales all through the year. Until they dropped and reason was pricing.

Edit: Good luck to you as well!

Thanks! Great community this. Should have joined years ago!

 

[Nikhil Jain]

Thank you! Well I currently own 13 K so they were going up gradually. But even at 3k I had steady sales all through the year. Until they dropped and reason was pricing.

Edit: Good luck to you as well!

Hi. Would it be possible to give a rough price range in which you currently started selling? Or the range to which you had increased your prices which led to slow sales?

 

[twiki]

Hi. Would it be possible to give a rough price range in which you currently started selling? Or the range to which you had increased your prices which led to slow sales?

Unfortunately no. Each domain is distinct and price is different for each, obviously. And I have domains from low 3-fig to mid 5-fig range.

But for example a domain that now sold for 750 was 1k before that.