Daily Poll: Will New GoDaddy Landers Perform Better?

Elliot Silver
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Andrew Allemann reported that GoDaddy has (finally) added its logo to domain name inquiry landing pages on a subset of domain names in its NameFind portfolio. You can look at the screenshot Andrew provided or you can visit Cuisine.com to see how the new landing page looks. To compare to the old landing page – and the one still used by most of its domain names – you can visit Tornado.com.

I believe the thinking is the GoDaddy logo will enhance trust over the Afternic logo since more people are familiar with GoDaddy than Afternic. If trust is established at the outset, people may be more inclined to submit offers. On the other hand, people may not even notice the difference or care that it’s GoDaddy vs. Afternic.

Do you think the new / revised GoDaddy landing page will perform better?


GoDaddy Acquires Another Portfolio from Tucows

Elliot Silver
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2

In my DomainTools registrant monitor email this morning, I noticed quite a few generic domain names moved into GoDaddy’s NameFind portfolio. Prior to the transfer, the domain names had their registration information blocked due to GDPR, but the DomainTools Whois History tool showed me the registrant details prior to GDPR.

With this information, I was able to see that GoDaddy acquired another domain name portfolio from Yummy Names, a business operated by Tucows. GoDaddy Aftermarket VP and GM Paul Nicks confirmed the acquisition to me in an email.

I am sure additional domain names will continue to transfer from Tucows to GoDaddy over the coming days, but so far, it looks like Tool.com could be the gem of the acquired domain names.

Paul was

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How to Resolve 2 Afternic Errors Within GoDaddy Account

Elliot Silver
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The integration between Afternic and GoDaddy makes it easier for me to list my GoDaddy-registered domain names for sale via Afternic. It’s also simple to update prices for active listings. I have regularly come across a couple of bugs and finally learned what was causing them. I want to share the root cause of the problem as well as a solution until the issue is resolved by GoDaddy engineers.

On occasion when trying to list domain names for sale on Afternic from within my GoDaddy account, I received this error message:

“Domain listing were not created. Due to some backend error we are not able to create the domain listings.”

Another issue I have come across is on the page where I can edit prices of Afternic-listed domain names. When I click the update button, everything below the header

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Stages of an Afternic Fast Transfer DLS Sale

Elliot Silver
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After selling a name via Afternic Fast Transfer, I was kiddingly chatting with a friend about the stages I go through each time I get an email with this subject: “Congrats [Domain Name] has sold via Afternic Fast Transfer DLS.” I thought I would share with you:

Stage 1 – Excitement – I am happy and excited that I sold a domain name via Afternic Fast Transfer. These emails don’t happen daily, so it’s always a nice bit of excitement to see one in my inbox. It can also take a moment to process the name in my brain, especially on mobile, so it is always exciting to see if it’s going to be a nice sale.

Stage 2 – Anticipation – Much to my chagrin (and despite a few nudges to GoDaddy), the sale price is not included in the notification email. To find out the sale price, I need to either log in to my Afternic account, email my account manager, or use DomainTools. I usually have a general idea of the sale price, but sometimes it’s been a while since I set or changed the price, so I keep my fingers crossed that it was a decent deal.

Stage 3 – Regret – Shoot

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Wanted: GoDaddy Aftermarket Data Newsletter

Elliot Silver
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Over the past few years, GoDaddy has built one of the top domain name portfolios. The company doesn’t report internal sales publicly, but I would imagine it sells a higher volume of domain names than almost any other portfolio owner. The company also sells domain names on behalf of domain investor clients via Afternic and GoDaddy Auctions.

Put simply, GoDaddy has the most and perhaps the best domain name sale data that could be helpful to others, including investors who sell via Afternic and GoDaddy. Reportedly because GoDaddy is a publicly traded entity, the company does not publicly share domain name sales data or information about its sales.

With that being said, I think it would be beneficial to domain investors and GoDaddy customers if the company would be willing to share some of its data, even if it does not reveal information that could be used to infer anything about earnings.

Here is some of the information I would find helpful and why:

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ICA Fires Back at Verisign

Elliot Silver
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10

Verisign and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently reached a deal that will allow Verisign to raise the price on .com domain name registrations (and renewals). The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) which represents the interests of domain investors and domain industry companies, had previously organized a campaign in opposition of the price increase. The campaign included a Change.org petition, which achieved over 2,300 signatures of support.

Shortly after the agreement between Verisign and the NTIA was announced, Verisign published a concerning article, which, in my view, seemed to mischaracterize domain investors and domain investing. The blog post referred to domain speculation as “domain scalping.” The company seems to have called out industry leaders GoDaddy and HugeDomains in the article. The sentence I found most concerning was this one that called into question the business of domain investing:

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