Over the last few years we have published a series The good, the bad and the ugly. Readers have been able to leave their feedback and some companies have reached out over the years and let me know they took the posts to heart.
This year I want to try to change it up a bit and, What they do right and what they do wrong. Focusing in a little deeper to give better feedback to industry participants.
When posting what they do wrong, please give your suggestions on how they could improve upon what they are doing wrong.
Do not take ad hominem or personal cheap shots. Speak about the company and give some background on how long you have been a customer.
Do not use the post as an opportunity to promote your company or a competitor.
Today we focus on Afternic, What do they do right and what do they do wrong?
Other Right/Wrong posts.
-Good distribution especially because of Godaddy
-Very poor system of adding names, usually result in many “pending” names and fast transfer inclusion rarely works properly without staff intervention.
Domains at Afternic also go pending when the domain owner transfers from one registrar to another.
The bad : auto remove domain names from afternic premium network when the domain expired (they should give maybe at least 7-14 days period before listing removal)
The good: they have good network exposure. I had a domain that got an offer for around $299 in the past which i declined. Then later i decided to accept the offer but no response from the prospect.
Suddenly last month, the domain sold for $1,299 thru Afternic premium network.
What They Do Right
Great exposure, good sales, good inquiries, decent landing pages. I like ns3 and ns4.
Good sales team. Seems they work hard to close the deals.
Pretty fast payment
What They Do Wrong
Dashboard is never accurate
No filter for Domains In Review
No traffic stats for ns3 and ns4
dashboard not user friendly and the name afternic should be changed to GODADDY for more high profile name branding.
So many domains there in wrong accounts with bins, what a nightmare.
@Mike, I experienced the same.
I have also seen domains available to be hand registered are listed at Afternic for sale, how is this possible?
Several months ago, I searched (at Godaddy, not Afternic though) several 4 letters and all taken except Gyms.com available . I was surprised the name was available at $8 +. But then when I added the name to cart, suddenly it showed taken. When I did whois, it was registered many years ago. Wondering why the search result showed it was available 😉
What they do right is:
1. Selling more domains to end users than any other platform I use. That’s why I’ll continue to list on Afternic
2. They have 24 hour support if needed and incredible customer service. Other companies have difficult hours to speak with reps.
3. Fast transfer is super easy and there’s not a lot of work involved.
Ways they can improve:
1. If a domain name is registered at GoDaddy it should be automatically be able to be added to an Afternic account. Most of the domains I win at TDNam auctions or buy from an investor I need to wait for it to be manually removed by them for me to add it to Afternic. It’s already in my GoDaddy account. They should know that.
2. The 20% commission is high for today. They could lose more of the market share if they don’t lower to a more competitive commission rate.
3. Last but not least, their lander which has the GoDaddy logo doesn’t allow you to put buy it now prices. I took the landers down for this exact reason. I’m still not sure why this is not allowed, but until it’s fixed using the lander doesn’t make much sense to me. Also, when I used the lander and domains went to the call center, there was no report of the call unless it was a strong enough offer to hear about it. Even if I may not want to sell it at the inquirer’s asking price, those who list the domain name have the right to know when inquiries are made.
What they do right: list your names everywhere automatically when they fit their criteria.
what they do wrong: bad management platform, tslow and old style website for searching names, slow customer support for names already listed, slow payouts on sales, disconnect between them and GD customer service, old and ugly landing pages, useless price requests from non serious buyers, no transparency where sales came from or who the buyers are, no sales or data analytics
What they do right is ,get major exposure across all platforms people typing in the domain at a smaller register will see the domain for sale ,but the nam3 may be marked up.A domain for sale at godaddy or afternic at 10k may show up for sale at a company like epic for 12 or 13k ,so they can profit too.I think godaddy should compensate these companies so a potential buyer won’t be price out of the market.
What they do wrong is,the salesman are swamped and most of them are liars or at least like the bend the truth,there is absolutely no proactivity on selling your domain,the reason is they are swamped and are just dealing with low hanging fruit and easy deals that don’t require too much attention. 90 percent of my initial offers from responses never get a call back ,when question about this they almost always will tell you that the bid way far away from my offer,godaddy salesmanMAKE this desision which is BS.
Also their is a lot of fraud going on in the domain buy service I once got an offer for 3500 from one of their clients ,I was away for the long weekend I then finally reached the salesman and he said he’s having trouble reaching the guy ,but th3 guy owes him sonth3 deal will most likely happen,when I asked him how’s he own you he quoted. “Well I’ve been giving him a lot of drop suggestions that he was able” to hand reg ,I told him why the hell is he going to buy my name now if your giving him comparables for free. This guy paid 69 bucks to contact me I accepted his offer and than walks ,reason godaddy salesman making side deals.
If your going to use any of their services I suggest ALWAYS use buy it now on good domains ,on super good domains leave a window open for a possible small fortune deal. Mark up for example a 1000 domain 10% to 1100 to net you 880 as an example,this allows you to mark up to compensate for commission without overpricing the domain too much