I use Dan.com landing pages for a great deal of my portfolio. Many of these domain names, particularly at price points above a few thousand dollars, use the Buy It Now (BIN) + Make Offer + Lease to Own (LTO). I have been running in to a bit of friction with this setup.
The way it is suppose to work is that someone can either buy the domain name immediately for the list price in one payment, buy the domain name in monthly installments of their choosing, or submit an offer to buy the domain name. If a prospect submits an offer and the owner accepts it, the buyer is sent to a payment page to submit payment for the agreed upon amount.
On several occasions, I have had prospective buyers submit offers that I accepted only to ask the Dan.com support staff if they can pay in installments. Whether or not I allow this depends on the domain name and purchase price. Every time this happens, it is frustrating to me because I generally accept an offer with the expectation that the buyer will pay immediately.
I don’t really know how this can be resolved programatically. Dan probably shouldn’t give buyers the option to make a LTO offer since that would likely become the top choice for buyers. Adding another purchase option could muddy the water a bit.
When an offer is rejected, a seller has the ability to communicate directly with the buyer, so asking “when will you pay” is a good way to understand if the buyer is able to make a payment in full or expects a payment plan. The only issue, though, is that the offer needs to be rejected before you can communicate with the buyer to ask that question.
This isn’t a dealbreaker for me, but it is something I need to expect to when considering offers made via Dan. There seems to be a decent chance the buyer may want LTO terms when submitting an opening offer. Since I have a relatively small portfolio of fewer than 2,000 names, I have to assume this is also an issue for others who have large portfolios.
I’ve disabled the payment options. Accepted offers are only closing 50% of the time, which isn’t an issue for me anymore as my expectations have been adjusted. Dan recently added the ability to automatically have your names listed at Afternic once you list them at Dan, but I found a significant problem. If you list them yourself at Afternic and list the floor (reserve), it obviously allows the Afternic brokers to negotiate for you, and they know your low acceptable price. If you list them at Dan, there is no reserve, and a potential Buyer is not able to make an offer less than the list price at Afternic. Out of 850+++ names listed at Dan, I only listed 675 at Afternic, so I was happy that the remaining names would be listed. But when I checked it out, if a name is listed at $25,000 at Afternic, using the automated Dan system, the potential Buyer cannot offer anything less. I’ve alerted my my VIP account exec and he thanked me and is trying to fix it. Initially I was told they would alert me with any offers received at Afternic.
Just change the names afternic and Dan to GoDaddy
Nobody knows who or what afternic or Dan is
Elliot, I’m curious what percentage of your sales are LTO on Dan. I have a bunch of LTO sales on Brandbucket and I’ve recently started listing domains on Dan, I think it’s a great option. Just had an outside sale where the buyer requested to close through Dan’s LTO option. Thank you for pointing that out Fred, I just reached out to my Afternic rep to discuss this issue.