FrasierCrane
Established Member
- Impact
- 40
There has been a lot of debate (rather one-sided debate, frankly) as to whether or not it's wise to "opt-in" to GoDaddy's new Afternic Boost program, where they squeeze an extra 5% of commission out of us in exchange for allowing them to include our domain names in their list of recommended domains to buyers. In this post, I'll break down the available options we have.
1) Keep listings on Afternic, with AN Nameservers, and opt-in to boost. Your commission will be 20% for every sale via godaddy/afternic, whether or not it results from the boost. Even if your buyer landed on your name via type-in, in which case the sale would have happened regardless of who's processing payment, you're committing to paying 20%.
2) Keep listings on Afternic, with AN Nameservers, and opt-OUT of boost. This is where things get tricky. If you opt out of boost, that means your domains will not show up in GoDaddy's list of recommended domains to the buyer. Exact-name search will still show up, in cases where the buyer is looking for your specific domain. Your will pay 15% commission.
Let's analyze this for a second: If GoDaddy removes your domains from the recommended list based on the domain/keyword the user typed in, despite it being a great match, GoDaddy is actually providing their customer with poorer, less relevant results, than if we opt in to Boost. In other words, GoDaddy will only provide THEIR customers with an optimal user experience if WE agree to pay them more money. So if we opt out, results are less relevant for the buyer. This is not beneficial to GoDaddy, and so it seems their action is strictly punitive towards domain sellers, as they are willing to make their own service worse just to punish us for opting out.
In other words, the ONLY way a buyer will find your domain name is if they A) navigate to yoursite.com or B) type yoursite.com into GoDaddy. In either case, it means they're looking for your site specifically, and will likely navigate to your site directly. If you had your own lander, you'd pay zero commission.
3) Remove listings from Afternic entirely. When a user searches GoDaddy for your specific domain, they will likely see one of those "Pay us $119 and we can try to get this domain for you" banners. Since Option 2 above will result in buyers only finding your domain if they type in the exact match directly, it doesn't make sense to pay afternic even 15%. And by the way, when a buyer pays that $119 and you get a call from a GoDaddy broker, *you pay zero commission*. And I find the conversion rate to be very high since the buyer already paid 119, demonstrating they're very serious.
Perhaps @GoDaddy can let me know if I'm factually incorrect about any of these points. Otherwise, it seems like a no-brainer - either remove my listings entirely from Afternic or agree to pay a minimum of 20% commission. After my analysis, I'm inclined to remove them completely.
1) Keep listings on Afternic, with AN Nameservers, and opt-in to boost. Your commission will be 20% for every sale via godaddy/afternic, whether or not it results from the boost. Even if your buyer landed on your name via type-in, in which case the sale would have happened regardless of who's processing payment, you're committing to paying 20%.
2) Keep listings on Afternic, with AN Nameservers, and opt-OUT of boost. This is where things get tricky. If you opt out of boost, that means your domains will not show up in GoDaddy's list of recommended domains to the buyer. Exact-name search will still show up, in cases where the buyer is looking for your specific domain. Your will pay 15% commission.
Let's analyze this for a second: If GoDaddy removes your domains from the recommended list based on the domain/keyword the user typed in, despite it being a great match, GoDaddy is actually providing their customer with poorer, less relevant results, than if we opt in to Boost. In other words, GoDaddy will only provide THEIR customers with an optimal user experience if WE agree to pay them more money. So if we opt out, results are less relevant for the buyer. This is not beneficial to GoDaddy, and so it seems their action is strictly punitive towards domain sellers, as they are willing to make their own service worse just to punish us for opting out.
In other words, the ONLY way a buyer will find your domain name is if they A) navigate to yoursite.com or B) type yoursite.com into GoDaddy. In either case, it means they're looking for your site specifically, and will likely navigate to your site directly. If you had your own lander, you'd pay zero commission.
3) Remove listings from Afternic entirely. When a user searches GoDaddy for your specific domain, they will likely see one of those "Pay us $119 and we can try to get this domain for you" banners. Since Option 2 above will result in buyers only finding your domain if they type in the exact match directly, it doesn't make sense to pay afternic even 15%. And by the way, when a buyer pays that $119 and you get a call from a GoDaddy broker, *you pay zero commission*. And I find the conversion rate to be very high since the buyer already paid 119, demonstrating they're very serious.
Perhaps @GoDaddy can let me know if I'm factually incorrect about any of these points. Otherwise, it seems like a no-brainer - either remove my listings entirely from Afternic or agree to pay a minimum of 20% commission. After my analysis, I'm inclined to remove them completely.
Last edited:
