Delete Stale Dan.com Listings

When I read that all Dan.com BIN listings will be added to GoDaddy’s Afternic network, I didn’t see much of a downside for domain sellers. It means there’s more exposure for domain names for sale than what is received now. At second glance, this listing migration could pose an issue for many sellers, and at the least for me, will be a bit of a time suck.

I have never been great at deleting stale (old and no longer valid) listings from marketplaces. Up until last year, I didn’t use Sedo much, so Afternic and Dan.com were the only marketplaces where I had domain names listed with BIN prices. When I sold a name at Dan.com or in private, I would immediately delete the listing from Afternic.

When I sold a name at Afternic, I would remove it from Dan.com when I could remember to do that. My thinking was that nobody would find the Dan.com listing since the nameservers would change after it sold and it would redirect elsewhere. Since people generally find my Dan.com landing pages via direct nav, it wouldn’t be likely that anyone would see the names I had sold.

The same thing could be said for domain names that expire. The nameservers would change or the domain name wouldn’t resolve because they’re unregistered. Afternic does a pretty good job of deleting my GoDaddy-registered domain names that expire, and the Dan.com listing wouldn’t really matter if nobody was going to navigate directly to it.

With the forthcoming change, that is no longer the case. Domain names that expired but that I still have listed in my Dan.com account with BIN prices will be listed for sale on Afternic. Domain names I sold on Afternic will likely get re-listed for sale. Not only would this be an issue for sellers who are list domain names they no longer own, but it could become a customer service issue for buyers whose purchases can not be fulfilled.

This is not unlike the issue I faced when GoDaddy began listing domain names in Uniregistry marketplace accounts, even when customers like me were only using it for PPC parking and not for sales.

I am going to spend some time in the coming days to try and delete stale listings from Dan.com to avoid them being added to Afternic with BIN prices. I will do my best to compare my Dan.com listings with my inventory using Excel. I will also search my Dan.com listings by nameservers, paying closer attention to the names that do not forward to Dan.com landing pages.

I think GoDaddy needs to analyze all domain names that are going to be automatically added to Dan.com to, at the very least, ensure they are registered. That should eliminate a fair amount of stale listings of expired domain names that can be hand registered.

Update:

I posted a short thread on Twitter describing how I reviewed my listings on Dan.com in advance of this:

Short thread on how I reviewed listings on Dan using Excel.

1) Downloaded a file of my names listed on Dan. Under "Options," on the upper right, there's a link to Export domains.

2) I copied the full and regularly updated list of my current domain name inventory.

1/3 https://t.co/X4fL5tOruI

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) July 7, 2023

3) I pasted the Dan list in column 1 of an Excel file and my inventory list in column 2. I highlighted both columns.

4) On the Home section of Excel, I selected Conditional Formatting, clicked Highlight Cells Rules, and selected Duplicate Values.

2/3

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) July 7, 2023

5) I looked into all of the domain names that were not highlighted on the Dan list. This meant the name was listed in my Dan account but was not in my inventory file.

3/3

— Elliot Silver (@DInvesting) July 7, 2023