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

I do not list some of my higher value domain names on Afternic. Honeydew.com, for example, is not list for sale via Afternic. I use my own landing page, which leads to an Embrace.com inquiry form.

If a buyer visits GoDaddy and searches for Honeydew.com, he is given the option to pay for GoDaddy’s Domain Brokerage Service (DBS). The prospective buyer pays GoDaddy $119.99, and GoDaddy reaches out to me on the buyer’s behalf to try and buy a domain name. If the buyer offers enough money to entice me to sell my domain name, the buyer is on the hook for the commission.

If a buyer searches for Honeydew.com on an Afternic partner’s website, they may be given a similar option. Namecheap, for example, has a “Make offer” button and that will lead them them to a Domain Agents popup. Like at GoDaddy, the buyer will pay to use this service and pay a commission for a successful deal.

There are some things sellers need to consider before removing domain names from Afternic. The first is most obvious – the fees charged to submit offers can be a deterrent to some buyers. This is especially the case on lower value domain names. I wouldn’t de-list my portfolio as a solution to the commission problem since it wouldn’t make sense for a buyer to pay $120 just to make an offer for a great deal of my lower value inventory-quality domain names.

In addition, some registrars do not offer the ability to make an offer. Buyers will likely be shown alternative domain names and/or alternative TLDs. This is also a reason why having public Whois data may be helpful since buyers may opt to come directly to the seller via Whois or landing page if they don’t see their coveted domain name available to buy or inquiry about.

At the end of the day, sellers need to understand they are still receiving less money than what the buyer is paying. On a $500,000 sale, the seller will get his $500,000 asking price but the buyer is actually paying $600,000 to buy the domain name if they use DBS. From my POV though, it feels a bit better to get my asking price and have the buyer pay the commission on top of that even though it’s virtually the same thing.