GoDaddy’s recent launch of Afternic “Boost” has led to growing frustration over the commission fee charged for a successful domain name sale within the Afternic network. There is a way domain sellers can shift the burden for these commission payments from the seller to the buyer.

Tony alluded to this on X:

Testing some zero lander sales 🙂

5K sale pic.twitter.com/RuFyahjkNC

— Tony (@TonyNames) August 13, 2024

There are few things more disconcerting than knowing someone is attempting to do something with one of my domain names without permission. That’s how I feel when I receive an unexpected email from GoDaddy with the subject, “Here’s your one-time-use support PIN.”

Someone (privately) on X mentioned this feeling when receiving this email, and I can relate. I receive these emails once or twice a year. From what I understand, these emails are generated when someone calls GoDaddy support about a particular domain name and can’t get access to the account / domain name management. GoDaddy will send a pin code to the email address on file. I have been told it’s generally people who call in and are mistaken about a domain name they think they own which I actually own. Perhaps they have a different extension or previously owned the domain name.

I’ve done quite a bit of business with Dan.com. In fact, I probably have more deal revenue on Dan.com than anywhere else other than private sales. The platform has been easy to use as a seller and as a buyer. The only real knock I’ve ever had with Dan.com is their brand wasn’t well-known, and it may not have had a trust factor when doing large deals or long-term deals. GoDaddy’s acquisition of Dan.com helped rectify that issue, and it’s been relatively smooth sailing since then.

This morning, Afternic made an announcement that has been in the works for a while. The sales platform launched a GoDaddy-branded landing page that is very similar to Dan.com landing pages, without the Dan.com branding.