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Afternic Should Better Explain Broker Communication Process

My Afternic Lead Center is full of Stalled, Qualifying, Confused, and Unknown leads. As a domain investor, this is pretty confusing and slightly frustrating. I don’t blame Afternic brokers for this because I have become familiar with how their platform works, but I do think Afternic and GoDaddy should better educate its sellers on the brokerage process.

When a prospective buyer submits an offer or inquiry, I am pretty certain they quickly receive an automated email with information about the domain name and a broker contact. The Afternic broker will follow up various times via email and a phone call if they have the correct phone number. Afternic brokers earn a living on commissions, so they have a vested interest in selling domain names.

Small Hurdle for Prospects When Afternic Self-Brokerage is Enabled

I enabled Afternic’s self-brokerage option as soon as I heard it went live. I immediately tested it out with one of my own domain names so I could see how the platform works as a buyer and as a seller. Before I got started, I ran into an issue, and I couldn’t tell if it was a feature or a bug. James Iles confirmed to me that it this difference is intentional.

When sellers have the self-brokerage option disabled, prospective buyers will be shown a form to submit an offer. On the form, they need to provide their name, email address, and phone number. There are also a few pop-up questions that appear after submitting the form. When sellers have self-brokerage enabled, prospective buyers who wish to submit an offer will need to sign-in to a GoDaddy account to proceed or create a new GoDaddy account. You can have a look at the difference here:

Self-Brokerage Available to 100k GoDaddy Customers


I am sure one of the most popular requests of GoDaddy is the ability to manage inbound purchase inquiries and offers for domain names listed for sale via Afternic. This is no surprise considering this was a major selling point of two companies GoDaddy acquired – Dan.com and Uniregistry.

Afternic just announced self-brokerage capabilities have been enabled for approximately 100,000 people who are members of GoDaddy’s Discount Domain Club’s top tier. I can see this has been enabled in my account, and I am going to test the platform to see how it works for a buyer and seller to get a feel for how it works, how it looks, and the timing of inquiries and responses.

Notably, the sale commission for a successful transaction is the same percentage as it would be if a GoDaddy/Afternic broker were negotiating on behalf of the owner. The advantage (or disadvantage depending on your perspective) is the domain registrant can respond and negotiate in their own style and at their own pace.

3 Hour Afternic Masterclass Session on February 21 and 26

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Afternic will be hosting a free three hour “Masterclass” for members of its Domain Discount Club on February 21 and again on February 26. The live program will be led by GoDaddy’s Joe Styler and other members of the Afternic team.

Afternic published a blog post offering details about this event. In addition, GoDaddy’s James Iles discussed the Masterclass with Joe Styler in a video interview to give people an understanding of what they can expect from the program:

A Good Afternic Broker Negotiation (Updated)

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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.

Human Errors Happen

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Last year, I won a non-.com auction at Dynadot. The domain name may be considered a typo of another word word, but this “typo” has 100+/- TLDs registered, which is what caught my attention. In fact, at least 15 of those TLDs are developed, so there’s quite a bit of usage around this brandable term.

Shortly after buying the domain name for less than $20, I listed it for sale on Afternic. Somehow, I mistyped the domain name and listed the correctly spelled non -.com domain name. Apparently, when I later searched my Afternic account for the domain name and didn’t see it, I added it a second time – this time with the actual domain name I bought and own.

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