If you use Afternic and its landing pages for your domain names, chances are good that you have a Lead Center filled with leads that look similar to this:
If you’re lucky, you have one or two sold domain names amongst many Stalled and Confused leads. This can be frustrating, particularly since sellers don’t get much of an inside look at the progression of their leads.
My experience tells me most leads aren’t qualified buyers at all and many are confused. They either don’t have the budget – even if they indicated they do by submitting a minimum offer – or they don’t realize they’re submitting a purchase inquiry for a domain name. This would mirror my experience managing my own landing pages and leads.
I want to highlight what I think is a very good Afternic negotiation. Mind you, this negotiation is still in progress and a deal has not yet been reached. I am impressed with the engagement and follow-ups the Afternic broker (Shane F.) has had with the prospective buyer. The updates provided in the thread also provide a helpful look into where the negotiation currently stands.
This 2 word .com domain name has a BIN price of $9,999 USD. The minimum offer is $4,750, which is the offer that was originally submitted on Saturday evening. After seeing the offer and knowing what I want/need for the domain name, I added a floor price of $6,300. This means the broker has permission from me to sell the domain name for $6,300 if he doesn’t think he can get the buyer any higher. So far, the buyer’s offer stands at $6,000, so it is close to a deal but not quite there.
I appreciate the updates provided by the broker, and it looks like he has been engaging quite a bit in an effort to get a deal done. I wish all of my Afternic leads looked like this one.
Update: The buyer agreed to the $6,300 floor price and the domain name was sold. In addition, I learned the broker’s full name is Shane Fraser. Thank you, Shane!
Congrats on the sale! You mentioned confused leads a couple of times in the article, and I wanted to throw some light onto a great article that Alan Shiflett wrote last year, which explains the post-inquiry system and why leads move into the “confused” state: https://blog.afternic.com/balancing-lead-quality-and-quantity/
In the post-inquiry flow, if someone answers “No” to the question “do you want to buy this domain name?” then they’re automatically segmented as a confused lead, so these aren’t worked. Confused lead count can be a useful metric though, as I shared here: https://blog.afternic.com/renewal-decisions/
I hope the extra insight helps!
So the inquirers are met with “do you want to buy this domain name?” outright?
This seems like a lot of pressure. Pretty much every experienced sales person would recommend against such an approach.
I get that Afternic brokers must be overloaded and that most of the inquirers are not there to buy, but still there could be a significant percentage of valuable leads lost to this policy.
Even among those from digital industries (even moreso for people with other backgrounds), many are absolutely not familiar with the economic aspects of domain name trade – and they would need friendly education about the concept of “owning” and “buying” domain names prior to even raising questions of whether they “want to buy”…
Idk but I feel that even a little change from “do you want to buy” to something like “do you want it to be yours” could unlock some fruitful inquiries which are currently bound to be lost if the things are the way I understood it.
i’ve sold many mediocre domain names on afternic where i’ve just set a price and somebody bought it. I’ve never even got action on a top domain name. I just get an email from a broker that someone may be interested and I never hear from them again. once GoDaddy owns all the sales platforms and their commissions Is over 50% then I expect the service to be much much better. 😮
When afternic enables owners of domains to negotiate with the “buyers”, sales should go up substantially.
I assume the leads will be qualified before they enable negotiations between sellers (“owners”) and potential “buyers”.
My sales on afternic almost always occur via BIN.
Hey Elliot, I was wondering what type of lander you’re using.
Do you have a specific strategy that’s working well for you?
Thanks
This one is an Afternic lander with M/O. I believe it is one of a smallish % of my names priced above $5k on Afternic right now.
With Afternic the sales lander impacts the number of false/confused leads.
Request Price lander receives the most false leads from my experience.
It makes sense because the buyer is not aware of the BIN or Minimum.
And confused visitors are often seeking customer support for a service for a brand using another extension.
If you are concerned about false leads to high traffic domains use the Custom lander add BIN and minimum.
Almost instantly, the false leads go disappear.