Afternic sent out an email to members today along with one from Go Daddy
Afternic said the following:
Good news! We’ve made it easier for you to list your domain in one place and reach a broader audience of buyers to increase your sales velocity and income.
How are we making things simpler?
• Reduce time spent in pending review, domains are listed immediately after passing the required integrity checks
• Reducing commissions on higher-priced sales to increase your earnings
• Lowering minimum sales price and minimum offer amounts so you can list more domains and earn more moneyWe’re also taking the guesswork out of promoting your domains. Domains with fast-transfer enabled are promoted through the Afternic Premium Network automatically. Domains without fast-transfer are placed in the Afternic Standard Network.
Know that you can always list a domain without fast-transfer and then enable fast-transfer later. When you do, it jumps from the Standard Network to the Premium Network, which includes 8 of the top 10 registrars, gives you the broadest reach, and exposes your domain to over 75 million monthly search queries.
We also want our fees to be simple and straightforward, so they’re now based on your domain sale price. The three commission tiers look like this:
Sale price of domain Commission fees
$0-$5,000 20% ($15 minimum)
$5,000-$25,000 $1,000 +15% of amount over $5k
$25,000+ $4,000 + 10% of amount over $25k
The most important part about this change besides the pricing, is the fact that now you will have your domains automatically go into the premium network, I have had names that qualified take weeks to get approved, and sometimes the email for me to approve never came. I have spoken to some who gave up trying to put their names in premium. IMO the Go Daddy registrar path is the most valuable space where you want your names seen. Now hopefully things will be more streamlined and approval will happen faster as you already have qualifying names listed at the premium level.
Joe Styler says
March 10, 2015 at 5:37 pmThanks for the mention. To be clear Afternic will push your name to the fast transfer premium network if it qualifies, but you will still need to ok this with the registrar your name is registered at. Typically this is done by clicking a link in an email from your registrar.
There are some other enhancements coming to help make the opt in process easier. Another exciting thing about this change is that while you are in the process of opting in to the premium promotion your name will still be listed for sale as a non fast transfer option in the Afternic Network until you complete the opt in which will result in additional exposure for your names during the listing process.
Raymond Hackney says
March 10, 2015 at 6:14 pmThanks Joe, well you guys need to make sure those emails work better, I still have a name listed two weeks ago where the email has not come.
Why would you still need to do this step ?
Joe Styler says
March 10, 2015 at 6:29 pmThere are certain rules around transfers, fast or slow, that are in place and any registrar would have to follow. One is having the registrant acknowledge the transfer out via his registrar.
We have a project we are working on to clean up the interface in the Afternic account so you can more easily see where the issue is on any names that you are opting in. The current situation is not ideal and we are working to change it to make it easier and more clear. In the meantime, I apologize and am happy to personally help get this resolved. You should have my address in the comments. jstyler at godaddy.
Jen says
March 10, 2015 at 8:45 pmIf every listing is a premium, then it means nothing, except for higher commissions.
Great for Go Daddy and Afternic, not so good for sellers.
Thanks, but no thanks.
My domain prices just went higher.
Joe Styler says
March 10, 2015 at 10:16 pmWe use premium to denote fast transfer eligible. Meaning it looks and acts to an end user like a new domain registration in that it can move into their account for them to use very quickly. In Godaddy’s case it shows up differently in the search results on the front of site and we have a higher conversion rate on those names. We currently charge 30% for that service so when this launches it will be a lower fee.
The flattening of the commissions is being done in an effort to help domain sellers more efficiently and effectively sell their domain assets.
For example, let’s say you have 25 names related to bit coin for sale. Some news comes out making bit coin more valuable and widely accepted. You want to reprice your domains as a result. You currently have to go to auctions at GoDaddy, GoDaddy premium listings, and Afternic to adjust the pricing to net the same amount as all have different price points and feed your names to potentially different buyers. That’s 75 adjustments instead of 25 and three places to adjust the names, and three disparate prices to calculate, etc.
Also there may be names you have listed for sale which for several reasons may not be getting the widest exposure possible. We are making changes to help make sure your names get in front of the most people who want to buy them as automatically as we can and in many cases charging less than we currently are if it results in a sale.