The thing about domaining is there are always people in the know on certain topics but they don’t go mainstream. It takes a post on a blog or Namepros for the majority of domain owners to see the full picture.
DomainNameWire wrote about a topic today that has pissed me off for awhile and I think the same as we are demanding answers and changes from NameJet and GoDaddy, we need aftermarket sites like Sedo and Afternic to be held accountable. Sedo partners in their MLS have been doing this for a longer time frame than Afternic.
Andrew wrote about how at certain registrars, you are getting marked up by the registrar to for their benefit only.
I have the domain name Mibby.com listed at Afternic and the price is $5,000. When you check it at Name.com it’s $5,750, now this is not a broker saying, “Raymond I think I can get you a little more and my commission will be based of $5,750.” No these people want to take their commission based off $5,000 and keep the $750 as some kind of bonus.
Already.com is listed on Sedo at $200,000, but on Name.com you pay $230,000. $30,000 is kind of a big deal in my opinion.
Andrew got a comment from Afternic Chief Revenue Officer Bob Mountain:
Select partners are testing markups on Afternic domain names. There hasn’t been a fundamental shift, we’re just working with some of our partners at their request. If you would like to have your names removed from being listed at these markup resellers, please contact Afternic customer service.
Why should we your customer have to do this, when we did not authorize it? Not everyone in the domain industry will read Andrew’s post.
There should be another box that you need to check when you approve the MLS agreement.
When you add a domain to Afternic you get an email,
Thank you for choosing GoDaddy as your Afternic Premium Network registrar.
Before your domain name(s) can be listed for sale on GoDaddy and other Afternic resellers, you must authorize your participation in the Afternic program. Please click the button below to log in and authorize.
When you click that button to authorize they should make it known they are adding a markup and if you wish to participate.
What if a buyer has a $5,000 budget? $5,750 no thanks, on to the next name. That might not happen every day, but plenty of buyers do have budgets. The point is no Afternic or Sedo customer should miss out on a sale for a reason like this.
This is an industry that has long worried about the government getting involved in aftermarket activities like auctions and secondary market sales. If the bullshit doesn’t stop it’s going to come and then look out, you are never getting those horses back in the barn.
Thank you Michael, I had no idea about this. disgraceful truly.
I noticed this once while doing some research and testing. Was surprised to see it. Glad you don’t support what is being done out there.
Worth noting Raymond Hackney is the author of this post
We need to band togwther and threaten to delete our names off of therir sites. That is literally robbing the domain owner.
This is not a good practice if the domain owners don’t know what’s going on. What’s to stop one of these partner sites from jacking the prices up by 100% or 200% and keeping the difference? Are domain owners losing sales due to this? Lots of questions.
i believe there are 5 major threats in domaining :
1) random price increase without notification of ngtld renewals ( registrar – registry problem)
2) shill bidding
3) random price increase in distributed platforms.
4) questionable sales of ‘ premium’ ngtld names in auctions, one characters etc.. , these names remaining undeveloped.
5) whois privacy and transfer lock.
Adding a markup, which goes beyond any agreed commission or vig, is a betrayal of the trust of the seller by the agent, in my opinion. It should also be illegal without disclosure.
The straw bids and shill in the industry have been an issue ever since the “Halvarez” revelations in ’09 (or was it ’10?); it does blow my mind a company like NameJet would risk its reputation over such nonsense, given how easily they’ll trash a user account over a $50 purchase dispute. Pretty duplicitous, IMO, too.
The “domain industry” is little more than smoke ‘n mirrors and shady characters…reminds me of Las Vegas back in the 1950’s and we all know what happened soon-after that (the government stepped in and applied intense regulation to the casino industry while kicking out the bad guys).
Gotta disagree here Stryker. The domain industry may have some bad apples and shady characters, but to denigrate the ‘whole industry’ as scammers and such is misplaced. However if you truly believe so, I guess you just proudly(?) included yourself as one of those ‘shady characters’.
As for the subject at hand, this is great to let other domainers know and express their concerns on this, but unfortunately GD or Afternic more than likely won’t show up here to comment or address this, and it’ll just be another unattended to issue left out there.
I was referring to those who make their nut off of us- the unwashed mass of “domainers”.
You ever play poker in Vegas? In the big rooms (Bellagio, Venetian, Aria, & Wynn), the tables are 70% full of local pro’s who know each other well, who sit and wait for tourists to come and lose…that’s how these guys make their living, colluding and shearing the sheep who walk through the doors. In the domain-game, we all are the sheep (with a few obvious exceptions).
(Disclaimer: This comment/opinion is my own and should not reflect on any of my partners/clients/colleagues)
Full disclosure is certainly important. I would hope that it was merely an oversight by their development team and that it was supposed to be implemented, but was forgotten in a rush. The flip side of that coin is to have markups without notification, no transparency, with an added cost/tax/fee and done in a way to stay below the radar to increase repeat retention in service usage by avoiding an up-front sticker shock actual charges/inflations intentionally.
Does their ToS cover this? Maybe that’s the loophole? Might want to check the ToS to see if it clarifies the added cost. If it does, it can’t be seen as an intentional strategy, since there would be documentation outlining it. The irony is that not many people read ToS’s and just check the box and click submit. However, if it’s not covered in the ToS, then I think you may have a legitimate argument/debate.
Maybe it is in their ToS; however, if they’re conducting business in such a way that the vast majority of their customer’s deem them to be “shady”, then they will lose business.
I’m closing my afternic account tonight and will never list with them again. See how easy it is?
the T.O.S Issue was already addressed yesterday in the original thread…
see Berkens’ comment.
Thank you for bringing it up to the light at NP.
Domo this is about Afternic and registrars not NameJet. It was not brought up on NameJet, Andrew wrote about it on DNW and I gave my thoughts and problem with the whole scenario.
@Eric I don’t see it in the membership agreement.
oops
Come on man this type of stuff has been going on for a long time. Last two auctions I participated in:
(1) Circa 2015 I was high bidder at $19.5K and then last minute new guy comes in and bidders 2 & 3 take the domain up to $34K. It was no reserve. The domain never sold or exchanged hands, oddly enough.
(2) Circa 2011 I was high bidder at around $25K and a new bidder emerges and pushes domain to $33K (my high bid was $32K). Im contacted by auction house saying the bidder backed out and the domain is mine for $32K. I said what? What about $25K because this other bidder raised the price $7K and couldnt pay? The answer was “sorry thats our policy”.
It is what it is. An unregulated, global industry. Lot of good long term assets out there so you deal with what you deal with. Not saying its acceptable, its not, thats why I dont buy and sell domains. Just buy and hold.
Yup…this same type of thing happened to me at Traffic Auction and GoDaddy auction.
again, stop the press!!
ToS? LOL…
NameJet for instance had been selling domains from private owners without publicly confirming that for years. They all were being sold as expired, they were not an auction house. Then there was the minimum bid thing that was not on their ToS again. And the list goes on.
Does anyone care also about registrars taking domains for themselves by moving them to shell/side companies? Or placing them for sale as expired domains with minimum bids set arbitrarily like if they owned them? No conflict of interests here? Are registrars also registrants and domainers?
No. no one cares.
so why would you care for them marking your price up?
or asking for 15% or 20% commission for doing NOTHING?
anyone cares?
No. no one cares.
everybody knows this is a shady business from top to bottom. we are all playing with the pigs in the swamp. and if the fat pigs don’t care why should we care?
move along, nothing to see here.
I hope you get the help you need. God bless.
Thanks for speaking about this Raymond. Guys like you, giving your time, make the domain space a better place. This really sucks. There are certain people I have grown to trust and you are one of them. Knowledge is power and I can feel a growing discontent. Things are going to change.
Sounds corny in a way but if domain investing survives it would be nice to leave the next generation of investors a more reputable and safe area to invest in.
All of these problems can be remedied with where you choose to spend your money. The power of the almighty dollar changes things fast when it starts to disappear.
I am the one 9Or one of) that brought up this issue at DNW, I noticed the disparity between my pricing and the registrars’ partner with Afternic MLS.
When I called After the first 2 reps said they had no clue, the 3rd rep said: “yes it’s ok.. is part of our contract with the registrars.” I asked if it was in the T.O.S and his answer was “I don’t know, but I will bring it up to on our next staff meeting” (team of 8)…
I read on their T.O.S something vague along the lines of “their price” in regards to the MLS partners…
When I commented the same with a Godaddy rep he literally said: “That doesn’t sound right”.
The internet is still very young and we are still in the wild west …..welcome to CowboyTown
Ray,
As everyone here has said, Thank you for bringing this up. Unfortunately this is something I have only checked on w/GoDaddy. I usually add my domains to Afternic and then after a bulk upload I will double check at GoDaddy to see if they are listed. Seems many times they are all not listed and I have to contact Afternic for help on trying to list my domains that did not add during bulk upload for one reason or another. That is time consuming itself right there. Matter of fact I had about 10 domains that happened to this week and spent more time w/Afternic getting them into platform. I know there are a ton more Markets that Afternic has given my domains exposure to, but I really never checked those other Markets Registrars. I dont even know where they all are. Maybe it is my laziness, Or maybe it is my blind trust. I just figured they were at all the places they said they were adding them to along w/the CORRECT pricing. Either way, It is not up to them on our pricing since we already agreed to their commission. You are 100% right. They should not be re-pricing our domains at all. We already know the commission we are paying and we are good with that if we list at Afternic. Here is more time involved… It takes me a lot of time to price my domains. Sometimes I go over them twice or even 3x as I am pricing them. That is with a lot of homework that I come up with my own pricing most of the time. I do not want anyone else F-ing up a potential sale of mine because they are adding another 15-20% to a price I most likely put a lot of time into. Spending so much time listing, pricing, submitting, then double checking that all were listed, is already tons of time put into domain management. I cant imagine having to double check that the correct price was put on there at each and every location they are using. Forget it. I already don’t have enough time to do as much as I have been doing for domain management to now double that time confirming pricing everywhere. Insane. Thanks for shedding some light on this Ray. I hope it gets changed because it seems like most others agree here. This is not cool at all.
have you closed sales with any of these services in the past 45 days ??
Anyone ??
How about registars -misleading-allowing multiple pre-registrations-new gtlds without you having a clue!
If there is a name in pre-order or in EAP by you, then there should either be a notice that someone else already pre-registered it within your system cautioning the person about it, or not have the name available by you once it was pre-registered by someone in your system. Oterwise it is very shady
There has to be transparency!
If you do not inform people that there is another order in your system prior to their order, you are basically misleading them. It is simple as that.
Not to mention that by having the availability and no transparency-it allows you to delegate the name once you get it- to whomever you want for whatever price you want.
Shill bidding on NameJet, confirmed, is only the tip of the iceberg.
Godaddy Auctions-Afternic-Sedo, Google complicate birds of a feather, lining their pockets at the expense of an honest, open market place.
Conflict of Interest wrought registrar/auctioneers.
ICANN
New gTLD program with massive swaths of protected names and laughably exorbitant premiums
and renewal fees.
Chinese manipulation of domain industry via criminal protectionism.
Protectionist, greedy group of 3 dozen of so domain name portfolio super portfolio holders
that manipulate the domain name market and revel in holding NameJet-Sedo-Godaddy etc. as
private business partners to the extent of excluding any and all new comers.
Google monopoly, with its’ algorithms and SEO scam.
Search Engine Optimization is a scam and Google is complicit.
Google Adsense scam and theft.
GOOGLE MONOPOLY !!
I agree. How did ICANN come to the conclusion that registries could charge whatever they wanted for (premium)domains? A registry is a monopoly. Allowing unregulated pricing by a monopoly is outrageous.
No one ever proposed that the administrator of .com could charge whatever the market would pay. Everyone understood that allowing such monopoly rent seeking would slow the development and adoption of the Internet in commerce. It would make a few people wealthy and harm the growth and use of the internet.
I don’t suppose the $ 175,000 (?) application fee influenced ICANN one bit in making sure new registries were granted license to extract monopoly profits. Look at the excessive number of gTLD’s applied for.
I once had a domain on sale for $2,000 on Uniregistry. I had brokerage selection on, I don’t have it on for all but this one was selected. One day I looked under brokerage and seen that someone offered $1,800 for the name but the broker tried to sell for $8,200 without consulting me. The person declined and disappeared. ? happens I guess.
I just sold a domain yesterday thru Afternic for $1,595. Checked on Name.com and they show it listed for sale at $1,834. WTF??? Now I have to ask them if they sold it on Afternic main or one of their partners. If sold on a partner site, I most likely lost out on $239.
Thank you Raymond for bringing this unknown issue to the forefront. I hope you keep covereing this topic. The more I think about it, the more shocked and angry I feel.
I got a sale for a 5Char (3 words) name for $100 through afternic last week, I do not remember listing it so low but went through with it anyway. Now I am pondering what they actually got for it 🙁
Shady. I’m leaving GoDaddy/Afternic for other reasons, but this is enough in itself.
Really guys? They bring the buyers…. If you think you can sell the domain by yourself, go for it. All the attitude here seems quite naive. This is how commerce works.
If this is how you feel, you should be mad at pretty much every entity you spend money with, they all broker raw material and service for profit. Get with it and stop acting like children who don’t know how the world works.
The person who sounds naive is you. Their commission is their pay andthey dont have the right to markup without the owner knowing.
Like Elliot Silver said on Twitter:
I don’t really think this is fair for domain owners. Higher price could cause buyer to pick something else, or owner loses out on extra $.
Adding further confusion to this is the scenario when a buyer makes an below asking price offer through a partner site.
I have a name listed at Afternic for $1,000. IMO it’s worth more, but I use an aggressive pricing policy and I move a lot of names. I received an email from Afternic informing me that they received an offer of $800 ($640 net) through one of our partner networks. I declined.
I’m left wondering, what did the buyer actually offer? I have the name listed for $1,000 at various marketplaces as well as on my corporate website. Did the buyer make a $1,000 offer through their registrar after seeing it listed at that price elsewhere? Did I just decline a full price offer?
There are three words which lie at the core of the fiduciary obligation which real estate brokers are bound by… Disclosure, disclosure, disclosure. The major brokerage houses should hold themselves to the same standards.
When in doubt, it’s a scam
They are so wrong to do this! A well priced domain is priced perfectly! This mark-up is making our domains look overpriced! We didn’t ask to have our domain liquidity drop off a cliff so some idiot can make 15% commission! Failure to move inventory due to registrar greed. If you can’t sell for “my” price, don’t try selling it at all = leave afternic, make your own website!