Afternic recently introduced the lease to own (LTO) purchase model for domain names bought via GoDaddy. Domain names listed for sale via Afternic with LTO enabled have been shown to US-based buyers with the LTO options next to the BIN price.
This morning, the company announced two changes to its LTO offering that should benefit sellers:
I list nearly all of my inventory quality domain names with BIN prices on Dan.com and/or Afternic. The majority of these domain names utilize the Dan.com BIN landing page. I want to share my thought process behind why I choose the Dan.com landing page and why I prefer to list names separately on both platforms.
When I list a domain name for sale on Dan.com with a BIN price, it syndicates to GoDaddy and its sales network. A prospective buyer searching for a domain name on GoDaddy’s website – or a partner like Namecheap – will see my domain name sale listing whether it is listed on Dan.com or Afternic.
If the domain name is not listed directly on Afternic with the LTO option enabled, the prospective buyer won’t have the option to buy it with a payment plan even if that option is available via the Dan.com landing page.
Here’s how the registration path looks without LTO enabled at Afternic:
I won a domain name at GoDaddy Auctions on April 18, and it was delivered to my GoDaddy account this morning at around 4am. A few hours later, I went into my GoDaddy account, changed the nameservers to point to Afternic, and attempted to add it to my Afternic account so I could list it for sale.
For some reason, the domain name couldn’t be added to my account without verification via the addition of a third nameserver. The error message can be seen here for those who aren’t aware of what it looks like:
I just learned the valuable TP.com domain name was sold in February of this year. TP.com was listed for sale via Afternic with an asking price of $1.4 million. The domain name was sold for $1,200,000 via Afternic. The sale was reported to me by the seller, an industry colleague I have known for many years who wishes to not be named.
Although the Whois record for TP.com is private, the buyer of TP.com appears to be a company called Teleperformance. This company is publicly traded on the Paris Stock Exchange under the TEP ticker symbol. Teleperformance has a market capitalization approaching 5.7 Billion EUR. At the time of publication, TP.com is forwarding to the Teleperformance.com website.
Now that April Fool’s Day has passed, I will skip to the end – this was an April Fool’s Day joke.
Following its payout policy change involving LTO deals at Dan.com and Afternic, GoDaddy is making another change to LTO payments.
First, some background. From inception at Dan.com, if a lease to own deal was started on the 2nd of the month, subsequent payouts would be made to sellers on the 2nd or 3rd of each month during the lease term. Once the money from the buyer was received, it was sent to the seller like clockwork. Following the payout change, payment plan distributions were moved to the 7th, 14th, 21st, or 28th of each month. If a payment plan was started on the 2nd of the month, subsequent payments would be sent days later on the 7th. If made on the 7th, payment would be sent on the 14th.
I keep my portfolio of domain names at GoDaddy, and I have DTVS security enabled on my account. Domain Sherpa wrote about DTVS, but in short, when I push a domain name to another GoDaddy account or someone starts a transfer of my domain name to another domain registrar, I have to approve the change via phone call.
With Afternic’s Fast Transfer service enabled, GoDaddy’s DTVS is overridden. When someone buys a Fast Transfer-authorized domain name through the Afternic network, the domain name is automatically pushed or transferred without the DTVS phone call since the Fast Transfer was previously authorized by the seller.
In light of the ongoing issue with the Fast Transfer authorization emails, I think GoDaddy should allow customers with DTVS to have that override Fast Transfer approval.
