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 DAN, What do they do right and what do they do wrong?
Other Right/Wrong posts.
Good clean design
Bad–that damn VAT taxes…why do we have to pay ??
I didn’t know that, yes why should we pay VAT on our sales especially if you live outside of Europe. I guess that 9% Commission ends up being much more in the long run
I like the options of allowing leasing as well as providing traffic stats. I wish they offered the option to price domains in USD, Bitcoin and Ethereum as well as Euros.
Operational hours are asleep while North America is transacting. Create a sat. us office.
100% satisfied with Dan.com (so far).
I would suggest the following changes:
1. Pay US based sellers ACH/BankTransfer from US based DAN account so that the sellers don’t lose $25 (bank fee for wire transfer receiving for US sellers) everytime they get a payment from DAN. It is even a bigger problem especially when selling domain on payment plan because $25 loss every month is huge.
2. DAN should NOT take 50% commission from the mark-up in payment plans…..it is just too much.
3. DAN commission should be lower in I am using DAN’s servers on my domains because I am getting that customer directly when people opening my lander, the commission should be less than 5% in that case. I am ok with 9% commission if the buyer found my domain via DAN’s site search.
I am using UniRegistry DNS/Landers because they have commission structure as I explained above even let me do direct escrow transactions. I can use DAN landers if they do the above changes.
I’ve been using Dan since 2019. Have sold about 5 names outright and currently have about 5 on lease-to-own plans.
The automated, self-serve lease-to-own options has been a great innovation introduced by Dan.com to the marketplace. It’s a great way to increase cash flow of your portfolio when you otherwise would have not made a sale. Financing options are important to buyers cannot stomach a $24,000 one-time purchase but can easily swallow $800 per month over 36 months.
Improvement opportunities:
1) Enable sellers the power to pick and choose which domain names are on lease-to-own or payment plans or not, which domain names are BIN or make offer, etc. The carte blanche binary setting of ALL domain names in a portfolio listed on Dan.com on lease to own or not isn’t helpful to sellers who have different selling strategies for different domain names in their portfolios.
2) On the landing pages today, the seller is referred to as both “owner” and “seller”, which is confusing and not marketing optimized given that two terms for the same person are being used on the same page. Dan.com can help sellers by not referring to them as “seller” on the landing pages. Instead, only “owner” should be used. Using “owner” puts the seller in a better light and a stronger negotiating position using language alone. Using “seller” conveys an air of desperation and weakens negotiating position. The buyer viewing the landing page should feel as if they are approaching an owner of a digital asset who rightfully owns it and may be reluctant to let it go to a new owner; therefore, a higher offer will likely be needed to be successful. The buyer should not feel as if the domain name is eagerly being sold by an owner looking for a quick sale at a low price, if only the buyer were to offer that low price. Either way, Dan.com should pick one term, “owner” or “seller”, and use it uniformly on its landing pages.
All great ideas Logan — Dan should implement them.
I just listed all my names on their platform a few weeks ago and from what I can tell so far is:
PROS
– Easy smooth upload of names
– clean, easy to use Dashboard
NEGATIVES
– I had an offer via a DAN broker and replied that Id like to accept but there was no reply from the broker and nothing since. In any normal industry a brokers keeps his client up to date with info even if there isn’t any. The broker didn’t even have the common courtesy to say I’ll pass on your offer etc. to the buyer like Afternic does. Nothing at all, and I thought the Dutch were mannerly
– Ive just seen from BULLS’ post above that we have to pay VAT on all sales. Why is that. They should pay VAT as they are Europe based on any profIts THEY MAKE not on total sales revenue of someone elses product. So, I guess that industry low commission of 9% is gonna be more like 15%-29% which makes me want to move my domains somewhere else now
Being U.S. based, I won’t even consider listing any of my 100’s of .coms with Dan as long as they impose VAT.
VAT taxes!? Really? Everyone has to pay that? Is that correct? I’m in the US. and if I sell a name on Dan I have to pay VAT taxes?
I just moved my names to DAN a few weeks ago. If that is correct, I’ll have to reconsider.
No, in fact it is recommended you turn that off if live US
Live in the US? Then this VAT **** doesnt apply. Mine off
First of all you have the option to choose what currency to use for pricing for your domain name portfolio. You can choose between USD, Euro and GBP. Read this from OnlineDomain, written October 2019, but explains VAT perfectly well;
“You have some VAT options for domains:
Price excludes VAT
Price includes VAT
Do not show VAT at all
“The last option is useful for outside of Europe.”
https://onlinedomain.com/2019/10/10/domain-name-news/how-to-correctly-setup-domain-name-pricing-at-dan/
Thank you, Samer, for the clarification and the link. Appreciate it!
Anytime buddy!
Hi all
Best Platform for AfterMarket Domains in the Planet.
I sold few Domains via Dan but Customerz care and Sale process very clean and transparency.
Very Easy access Dashboard and International Money transfer bank fee also very low,
Quick payout.
I am small domain investor from 2010, using Sedo last 6years but last year switching my all domains to Dan
Thanks for your time.
Started using Dan recently here are few things
1) no domain verification, people can post any domain they like. They should work on this
2) Dan isn’t a marketplace like flippa, we have to drive customers by ourself. If we have to drive customers by ourself why do we have to pay them a certain percentage
3) Dan is a broker company, we could use services such as escrow to do the same as Dan is providing with a much lower fee.
4) high percentages – someone sold a domain for 12K+$ and after vat and their comissions he ended up with 10K$ that is around 20% loss