GoDaddy has two distinct brokerage teams that work exclusively on behalf of buyers or sellers. The Afternic team represents sellers who have listings on the platform. If an offer is made by a buyer for a domain name listed on Afternic, the Afternic broker’s role is to get the most money for the domain name on behalf of the seller. If an offer is made through GoDaddy’s Domain Brokerage Service (DBS), the DBS broker works to get the buyer the lowest price.

Tom McCarthy is a broker on GoDaddy’s DBS team. I understand he is one of the top performing brokers on the team. When I receive inbound offers for domain names I don’t have listed on Afternic, and Tom is representing the buyer, I know the buyer is serious and educated about domain name values.

Tom recently began posting more regularly on X, and he posted a thread identifying the differences between the DBS and Afternic teams, and the role he plays as a buyer’s broker. I think it’s a good read for people to get an idea of what the DBS team does and who they represent.

There’s a major AWS outage that is causing problems for websites and web-based services around the world. GoDaddy is one of those businesses that is impacted by the outage, I learned this afternoon.

When I visited one of my Afternic-listed domain names that resolves to a GoDaddy landing page, the incorrect landing page was shown. Instead of the newer “custom” landing page with BIN, Make Offer, and Lease to Own options shown, the older BIN landing page was displayed. This particular landing page doesn’t include camel casing.

A couple of weeks ago, Afternic hinted that it would soon be launching a new domain name marketplace on the ultra generic DomainNames.com domain name. The launch was today, and the DomainNames.com platform marketplace was introduced for the first time:

Introducing DomainNames․com — the invite-only showroom for ultra-premium domains!

We’re combining GoDaddy’s unmatched global reach with powerful marketing, AI prediction models and expert brokers to maximize the sale of your domains.https://t.co/kWo2WutglU

— Afternic (@afternic) October 15, 2025

At a quick glance, the marketplace appears to be stocked with some top quality inventory from the start. Domain names like Harmony.com, Natural.com, FL.com, Invitation.com, Encourage.com, Bankroll.com, and others are exceptional and must be in high demand. Each listing has its own logo, and there is an informational landing page with some suggested uses for each domain name.