Hello everyone,

I received an inquiry from Lumis.com co-founder Slade for one of my domains AaronWhite.com in April 2021 with an opening offer of $1,000. I quoted $15,888.

Before I go into more detail, let me share something interesting. I repriced this domain in March 2021 from $3,988 (according to my Afternic lead report) to $15,888. It was just a month of difference between this inquiry to be received and that too privately.

There was a possibility of selling through Afternic or Sedo and I had to pay 15-20% commission depending on the platform.

Anyhow, the next counter offer was $3,000 for which I showed slight flexibility of selling the domain if the offer of 5 figures is presented. The buyer then came up to $8,000 in April itself. I slowly lowered my asking price in our long negotiations process but things got standstill for several months. Eventually I had to accept their one last revised offer of $9,000. I acquired this domain in 2015 for $xxx.

In this case, we used Sedo external escrow service where the buyer paid the escrow fee and the transaction was completed very smoothly.

I wanted to thank Slade for being very nice, responded quickly and handled things very professionally. Also thanks to Sedo for concluding the deal swiftly and sending payment quickly. The only issue with Sedo is that while using external escrow service, we need to send them details manually whereas they should offer any buyer/seller to initiate the transaction without any manual interference which takes them days to start the transaction!

It was an interesting sale so I thought it was worth sharing it 🙂

Feel free to give your feedback no matter how good or good it is 😉

Hello everyone,

Some might think I always show the positive sides of Afternic which is not the case because I try to share whatever I experience, no matter good or bad.

And today is something I wanted to share. I experienced this month which wasn’t good until I was clarified by my Afternic manager.

So what happened was that I sold a domain for which the transfer was completed to Afternic from my end. The release of the payment took 16 days. During this period, I sent a couple of reminders to the transfer agent as well.

Another sale this month for which I’m still waiting for the funds to be received and it’s already been 13 days since the domain transfer is completed from my end.

I wanted to share what my manager informed me in detail and I believe this will clear the doubts of everyone who thinks why there has been delays and inconsistencies in the disbursement of funds from Afternic. Below is the response:

With non Fast Transfer sales, it is our policy to not release payments to sellers until the domain has been delivered to the buyer. This is why some payments are released the same day as the transaction and others are delayed.

In both referenced cases, the payouts were delayed because the buyer was unresponsive after purchasing the domain. After a domain is purchased directly through Afternic, the buyer is prompted to provide us with their registrar account information so that we can provide them with instructions on how to take ownership of the domain. In both these cases, the buyers did not provide us with their registrar account information and were unresponsive to our broker and Transaction Assurance agent reach out attempts. Without know what registrar/account to move the domain to, we were unable to deliver the domain. As a worst case scenario, if the buyer does not take ownership of the domain within 10 business days (two weeks), the transaction will get escalated and we will create an account at the registrar to move the domain to. We then release the funds to the seller. This scenario is rare, as most buyers do not hesitate in gaining access to the asset they just purchased, but it does happen. Our brokers educate the buyer on the post purchase process when selling the name, so I am always surprised when buyers drag their feet/go unresponsive after purchasing a name. It is unfortunate that this happened with two of your buyers in such a short period of time, but this is not a new trend that is happening uniformly on our platform.

I checked on xxxxxxxx.com and we will begin the process of creating an account for the buyer if they do not respond today, so we can release your funds.

And for Fast Transfers:

“Fast Transfer payout timeline, a Fast Transfer payout is paid out between the 7th and 10th day from the sale. A manual transfer sale can be paid out as soon as the owner takes possession of the name.“

Although I pointed out that I’m not impressed with such a long time for disbursing the funds both for manual as well as fast transfers. Especially when the sale has happened via Fast Transfer, it doesn’t make much sense to hold funds for a week or more. The reason is the domain gets transferred out of the seller’s account in minutes the sold email is received and the buyer gets the domain in their account pretty quickly unlike with the manual transfers.

One thing which can be improved is to reduce the number of days from 10 business days (2 weeks) to some 3 business days if the buyer goes unresponsive and Afternic creates an account and transfers to their own account.

I hope this clarifies for many Afternic users and I would love to hear your feedback and let your voice be heard.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been asked by several fellow friends about the new Afternic NS5/NS6 BIN lander. I thought to share it with everyone else as well if more people are interested to hear my thoughts.

One thing is common with both the BIN (ns5/ns6) and contact form landers (ns3/ns4) and that is having a contact number to call the Afternic brokers.

The main point why I’m reluctant in trying out the BIN lander is in some cases I’m willing to accept the lower price than the BIN depending on the domain, offer, need of cash flow, etc. Due to this reason, there are chances where the buyer won’t even bother contacting because of the BIN option only.

Another reason for which I’m not sure but I would still like to share it. When someone inquires about a domain via contact form, I’m fully aware that Afternic brokers do follow-ups with any serious buyer but for the BIN landers where the buyer only has the option to contact via phone number, I’m not too sure if the brokers do follow-up with them as well.

Another reason is that for U.S buyers, there is a toll free number which is easier for anyone in the U.S to contact but when it comes to some other part of the world from which the U.S calling charges are not cheap like from any Arab countries and many more. So only having the contact number and no other option to reach out to the broker/buyer may lead the potential buyer to walk away?

Feel free to give your feedback if someone has tried the BIN landers and how’s your experience compared to the contact form landers.

Also if anyone would like to add some more reasons of why the contact form lander or the BIN lander is better, you’re welcome to do so.

Hello everyone,

Today I wanted to share the secret or the reasoning behind my pricing especially at Afternic. Although I keep the same pricing at every platform whether the inquiry comes via Afternic, Sedo, direct or elsewhere.

There is a calculator for calculating Afternic commission and I know many of our sales are in the range of below $5,000. Actually it matters when your price is $5,001 and especially $25,000 and above that level.

So whenever you’ve a sale of $5,000 or below that level at Afternic, you tend up to pay a fixed commission of 20%. However, for instance a domain you sell for $24,888 then you’ll end up paying up a commission of $3,983 which is exactly 16% commission of the sale price.

Now the interesting part is when you sell a domain just for $1,000 more which means $25,888 then you’ll end up paying a commission of $4,088 which is almost 15.8% commission of the sale price. I know for some domain sellers, the 0.2% commission is not a big deal but you’ve to think that when a buyer is willing to pay $24,888 then of course they can pay $25,888 as well.

And you know what… as the sale amount increases, the commission drops significantly. For example, if you remember I sold AutoFun.com for $50,000 via Afternic BIN, so I ended up paying exactly 13% commission if you calculate through their calculator.

Yeah I know the big sales don’t come that often but I’ve seen many investors selling their domains for $24,888 or $24,000 so this post is especially for them to understand and revise their prices.

In short, if you see their sales commission structure and study it, you’ll know that as the amount increases, their overall commission decreases. So keep their commission structure in mind when pricing your domains.

Feel free to give your feedback no matter how good or good it is 😉