I was attempting to place bid on an auction at GoDaddy Auctions this morning when I was shown this message on the bid confirmation page.
My proxy bid amount was just above $100, and the GoDaddy Estimated Value was just shy of $2,000.
Dan.com Being Retired by GoDaddy
GoDaddy acquired Dan.com in 2022. The company reportedly spent north of $71 million USD to acquire the domain name sales platform. This morning, GoDaddy announced it is “merging” the Dan.com platform with Afternic. The announcement was made in a blog post, and the company provided answers to numerous questions domain investors and Dan customers will likely have in the wake of this news.
This news isn’t surprising as the company has hinted at this outcome for a while. It comes after GoDaddy acquired Uniregistry, another competitor it shut down following an acquisition of its assets. Two well-liked platforms have now been acquired and retired.
No Negotiation Box with GoDaddy Offers
Afternic recently began offering Dan.com-lookalike landing pages with GoDaddy branding. I liked them enough to move inventory to them away from Dan.com. Afternic followed this up with the ability to allow prospects to make an offer to buy a domain name in addition to the BIN and LTO options.
Unlike how the Make Offer process works on Dan.com, there is no negotiation box for sellers to communicate with buyers directly. Instead, when a buyer submits an offer via the landing page, the negotiation is handled by a GoDaddy broker.
Get The Buyer to Pay the Commission
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
Afternic Boost – TBD for Me
Yesterday, Afternic announced its new “Boost” feature. Afternic sellers are automatically opted into this program and must opt-out if they don’t wish to participate. The features and potential benefit of Afternic Boost were shared in a thread yesterday:
Introducing Boost, our new program that can contribute up to a 10% increase in sales performance for your portfolio* with:
🚀 Higher visibility at GoDaddy
👀 Boost badges to support conversions
📨 Email marketing to potential buyersLaunches September 4! https://t.co/l2t7NnWyzV
— Afternic (@afternic) August 7, 2024
My read on the news is the commission rate is reverting back to 20% for people using their nameservers in exchange for some features and enhancements.
How I Deal with GoDaddy one-time-use support PIN
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.