advice Why you should use an A record instead of a NS for Dan landing page, and why you should NOT!

[postscripter]

I have my domain names (except the ones accepted on SquadHelp premium) listed on Dan.com and with landing pages there.
To do that, as you probably know I had to change the Name Server at my registrar for the domains I wanted to have landing pages on DAN.
When you change the name server on your registrar for a domain name, you can no longer access its DNS records there and instead you expect to have that access in the new name server.
The surprise here is that DAN don't give you access to the records, despite it being your domain new name server.
You start understanding the problem when you want to access the dns records to list your domain in other marketplaces.
For example, the ownership verification of Sedo relies mainly on adding a TXT record to the DNS records of the domain.

How can you add that record, if your name server is pointing to Dan and Dan is not giving you access to that record!
Ofcourse this can be solved by going to your registrar and changing the Name Server back to your original registarar one, then there you can add the TXT record then wait maybe for a full day until it gets verified at SEDO. then back again to your registrar and reupdate NS to Dan to have the landing page work again.
But this is a headache to do and will cause your landing page to no longer appear for visitors for sometime while you make sure you have your domain verified and then set it back again to DAN.

So I thought the ideal scenario would be to have the landing page on DAN working and appearing to visitors of of domains, without pointing DAN as my Name Server, because why they should be my name server if they dont have basic controls of a name server, a name server should give me access to the DNS records!

So I've decided to give back control to my registrar, I reset the NS to be of my registrar address. and I only changed the A record of DNS on my registrar and it worked! the A record should refer to the IP address of DAN which is: 3.70.113.20 . Dan support provdied me with another IP 52.58.78.16 (I think both will work)
now whenever I have control of DNS records on registrar, while having the landing page openning at Dan, and now I can add the TXT record required for Sedo verification without having to spend time on changing NS twice and monitoring the situation between them.
All good, right? We need to tell everyone to do that A record instead of the NS...

Wrong.

Unfortunately, dan.com will take 25% of sale instead of 15% if your domain's NS record does not point to them.

as per their documentation:

How much commission do you charge?​

Commission Updates as of Feb 1, 2023:
By default, domain sales are charged a standard commission rate of 25% of the Sale Price.
Domains with primary nameservers pointed to GoDaddy aftermarket nameservers at the time of the initial purchase hold and sale receive a reduced commission rate of 15% of the Sale Price.
As a matter of clarity, nameservers ending in one of the following domains are considered GoDaddy aftermarket nameservers:

• afternic.com
• smartname.com
• uniregistrymarket.link
• dan.com
• undeveloped.com
• internettraffic.com
• Cashparking.com

So unfortunately we will always have to use their Name Server which don't give us access to records that we may need altered.

What do you think? Is it the same situation with other marketplaces when we use their landing page? also need to point to them at NS level and they don't give us control over the records? Or is it only Dan.com ? Do they really need to be our NS for some other reasons I don't know? Can they in the future give us access to records like TXT through their interface? or you don't see this happening?

 

[john888]

I am out of Dan and moving my domains out of Godaddy. I point my buy now links to Sedo. This is a deal breaker that I can't live with. So maybe I won't sell as much but using Escrow I don't lose 2.5K in commission or I can price them lower. I use google cloud hosting, Wordpress, with free Kadence block builder template, buy now links to Sedo sale page, approx. cost $16US per month for hosting. If someone starts a low cost sales platform with ecommerce, wire transfer and Escrow type service I will point to them (hint to some good programmers out there).

 

[john888]

If Sedo was smart they would create a listings plugin for Wordpress.

 

[john888]

I would even let Sedo throw a few of their auction domains into the listings on my website. Anything to get rid of the Godaddy stranglehold.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

So I've decided to give back control to my registrar, I reset the NS to be of my registrar address. and I only changed the A record of DNS on my registrar and it worked! the A record should refer to the IP address of DAN which is: 3.70.113.20 . Dan support provdied me with another IP 52.58.78.16 (I think both will work)
now whenever I have control of DNS records on registrar, while having the landing page openning at Dan, and now I can add the TXT record required for Sedo verification without having to spend time on changing NS twice and monitoring the situation between them.
All good, right? We need to tell everyone to do that A record instead of the NS...

Wrong.

Unfortunately, dan.com will take 25% of sale instead of 15% if your domain's NS record does not point to them.

Your point is a good one. There are ways of having a domain directed to another marketplace, without having to yield full control of the DNS. Why not allow your alternative? Why would it need to cost you an extra 10% commission?

I would even let Sedo throw a few of their auction domains into the listings on my website. Anything to get rid of the Godaddy stranglehold.

Well, ideally here there would be flexibility with GoDaddy, so it doesn't have to feel constrained.

Are there other things that are done to the DNS by these marketplaces, that would help explain why they prefer complete control of it when we use their landers?

 

[Surya Giri Kurniawan]

I think it makes sense that all marketplace need you to use their Name Server, to make sure you only use 1 marketplace. You can imagine you list your domain in 2 marketplace, and DAN pays networks to sell your domain. When some one interested in the domain, sometime end user tries to browsing your domain. In many occasion before, alot of buyers find the domain in DAN but they prefer to close the deal at Afternic, Godaddy and Sedo. Sometime they have to pay much more at Afternic, Godaddy or Sedo, but still prefer to close the deal outside DAN. Even now Afternic and Godaddy are 1 party with DAN, it is still a chance buyer close the transaction at Sedo. That's why DAN obligate you to only use DAN as marketplace.

 

[twiki]

I have the following.

- my own nameserver with sedo TXT record.

- all registrars defaults are set to this nameserver.

Any new domains will therefore have this setting.

First I submit them to Sedo, and if there are no verification errors (in most cases there aren't), then I update nameservers for this domain set to Afternic NS (or Dan NS).

So basically there's only one operation to perform, a bulk nameserver update once they have been accepted by Sedo.

Edit: You can configure this on any $3 VPS.

 

[dr manos]

I have my domain names (except the ones accepted on SquadHelp premium) listed on Dan.com and with landing pages there.
To do that, as you probably know I had to change the Name Server at my registrar for the domains I wanted to have landing pages on DAN.
When you change the name server on your registrar for a domain name, you can no longer access its DNS records there and instead you expect to have that access in the new name server.
The surprise here is that DAN don't give you access to the records, despite it being your domain new name server.
You start understanding the problem when you want to access the dns records to list your domain in other marketplaces.
For example, the ownership verification of Sedo relies mainly on adding a TXT record to the DNS records of the domain.

How can you add that record, if your name server is pointing to Dan and Dan is not giving you access to that record!
Ofcourse this can be solved by going to your registrar and changing the Name Server back to your original registarar one, then there you can add the TXT record then wait maybe for a full day until it gets verified at SEDO. then back again to your registrar and reupdate NS to Dan to have the landing page work again.
But this is a headache to do and will cause your landing page to no longer appear for visitors for sometime while you make sure you have your domain verified and then set it back again to DAN.

So I thought the ideal scenario would be to have the landing page on DAN working and appearing to visitors of of domains, without pointing DAN as my Name Server, because why they should be my name server if they dont have basic controls of a name server, a name server should give me access to the DNS records!

So I've decided to give back control to my registrar, I reset the NS to be of my registrar address. and I only changed the A record of DNS on my registrar and it worked! the A record should refer to the IP address of DAN which is: 3.70.113.20 . Dan support provdied me with another IP 52.58.78.16 (I think both will work)
now whenever I have control of DNS records on registrar, while having the landing page openning at Dan, and now I can add the TXT record required for Sedo verification without having to spend time on changing NS twice and monitoring the situation between them.
All good, right? We need to tell everyone to do that A record instead of the NS...

Wrong.

Unfortunately, dan.com will take 25% of sale instead of 15% if your domain's NS record does not point to them.

as per their documentation:





So unfortunately we will always have to use their Name Server which don't give us access to records that we may need altered.

What do you think? Is it the same situation with other marketplaces when we use their landing page? also need to point to them at NS level and they don't give us control over the records? Or is it only Dan.com ? Do they really need to be our NS for some other reasons I don't know? Can they in the future give us access to records like TXT through their interface? or you don't see this happening?

Marketplaces lock the NS records via the whois at the moment of agreement and obviously do a string compare after it to calculate the commission. So if you will use custom nameservers (i use custom as well as want to use a landing with links to all marketplaces) even if pointing to their ip, commission will be the high one

 

[postscripter]

Marketplaces lock the NS records via the whois at the moment of agreement and obviously do a string compare after it to calculate the commission. So if you will use custom nameservers (i use custom as well as want to use a landing with links to all marketplaces) even if pointing to their ip, commission will be the high one

Thanks for info about string comparison with who is info.

But is it really worth it? Losing that much commission just to give the user options of marketplaces.

 

[dr manos]

Thanks for info about string comparison with who is info.

But is it really worth it? Losing that much commission just to give the user options of marketplaces.

Actually with new rules generally does not worth. but as my 70-80% of sales are via Sedo MLS where fee is 20% regardless of nameservers did not change so far. Seems best option in market is 10% via Sedo nameservers (for sales outside MLS).

 

[Acroplex]

You realize now why GD changed the fee to 25% and it's claiming that it's the face value of its services, which are supposedly "discounted" when using a list of approved DNS servers.

 

[itssri]

The moment one sees consolidation of competitors under one umbrella is the time to get out of all of them, as very soon they will increase the cut they want out of a txn. No surprise when commission update emails from Afternic, GoDaddy and DAN landed in our inboxes within days of each other in the past month.

I really abhor monopoly resulting from consolidation. Where's the great American choice?

FWIW, moved almost all my domains out from all of them. Surprise, surprise! Few of them are getting several times more organic traffic on Sedo. Now, it would be interesting to see how much of that is from Sedo and how much from SedoMLS. Anyone from Sedo here? Could you take this as a suggestion to give us a split of the traffic - inhouse v/s MLS?

 

[Netbrands]

We all can hope that GoDaddy will somehow be punished for this Monopoly

 

[vckc8618]

I am also using Dan at this moment but i may point back to my current hosting's DNS, and redirect the domain names back to my own website's lander page ( listing all the domain names for sale ).

Dislike the hefty comm imposed by Dan too..sigh.