I’ve known about Efty for a few years, since the company has been advertising on my blog. I decided to give the platform a test with around 500 of my domain names. I am using the account option that will allow me to have up to 1,500 domain names in my account at a monthly cost of $36.
The domain names I chose for this test are priced between $1,500 – $90,000. They aren’t my top tier domain names, but it’s a mix of inventory-quality and higher quality assets that have buy it now prices. Most of the names are priced under $10,000.
I utilized Efty’s Smart Lander tool to create two fairly simple landing page designs. One is a buy it now landing page that will allow buyers to purchase a domain name immediately via Escrow.com. The other landing page is a price request form, which will allow me to generate leads that I can convert on my own. Both landing pages are pretty clean, assuming these domain names will sell themselves since prospects found the domain names on their own.
With the BIN landing page, prospective buyers will also have the option to “Ask a Question,” which may be useful if someone can’t afford the BIN price but wants to submit an offer instead. I don’t want to encourage offers with a “Make Offer” field since that intuitively suggests making an offer while discouraging BIN deals.
You can visit AthleticDirector.com to see what my BIN landing page looks like. You can visit BeerMaking.com to see how my price request landing page looks.
I plan to rotate these landing page designs throughout the portfolio I have listed on Efty.
I chose Efty over my own Embrace.com landing pages because it’s easier and more cost effective to customize something out of the box than to create something on my own. With my own inquiry forms, I was having issues related to spam, and people couldn’t immediately open a transaction to buy a domain name like they can with the Efty BIN landing pages.
The other big advantage of using Efty over other platforms is that I won’t have to pay a commission when/if these domain names are sold.
Ultimately, I would like to move these domain name inquiry pages to a sub-folder on Embrace.com to help build the branding of my own marketplace. I think it will be helpful to someone who wants to know the seller of the domain name. I have numerous text pages on Embrace.com, so I can’t simply create a marketplace within the Efty confines without losing those pages and search rankings. You can see I added an Embrace.com logo to the bottom of the landing pages so people can see who they are buying the domain name from if that is of interest to them, but that’s pretty obscure.
With this test, I know I am not making the most of Efty’s offering. For instance, I did not add my acquisition costs or dates because I track that information elsewhere. For the time being, I am utilizing Efty solely for its landing pages and inquiry tracking tools. That may change in the future.
These for sale landing platforms are great, now a dime dozen but does that really drive more sales to your bottom line?. Low ball offers, time wasters and every once in a while a dreamer with hopes of snagging it for cheap.. When everyone takes the same model you will get same results and sure you might increase sales by a couple % with better, cleaner transaction flow but that does not drive up the value or help in the positioning your URL and portfolio to max value the assets..Playing defense all the time with no offense is not a good game strategy. VNOC.com has over 40 landers now, alot with AI components and is the most powerful URL platform on the market by far.. While the platform is still in private beta, they are opening up it up slowly for a select few to test, etc… Everyone just wants to sell off the domains at 1-2% yearly, you won’t live that long to see it liquidated or scaled to make impact. Time to start trying new paths to portfolio value creation, time to look at VNOC.
Do you have a time frame in mind for this test?
Also, it would be great if you could provide an update on this test down the road.
So one thing I am seeing that’s an issue with the Escrow.com integration (which is great overall) is that it doesn’t break down the actual COST of the Escrow service.
So when I click on “Buy with Escrow.com” it takes me to an escrow lander, and it says its 50/50% split on the escrow fees but does not state the fees.
Are the fees $50? $500? The uncertainty of the fees can scare buyers off.
I ended up having to create an account on Escrow and then I was able to see that the ecrow fee is only $81. Not bad on a $5k domain, but it should be disclosed instead of the 50/50% which can mean anything as far as actual cost. Sorry if you saw me as a buyer Elliot 🙂 I was just testing it out.
why doesn’t etfy give a free trial subscription for 3 mths for us to do a trial run?
Is it possible for sellers to pay 100% of the Escrow.com fee?
Yeah, seller can choose.
Hi Elliot, do you still keep the 500 names at Afternic with a higher price, or you delete them from Afternic?
There were cases where people add names they don’t own at Afternic if you don’t add them to your account, so is it ok to just remove names from Afternic?
Thanks.
I moved them to the not for sale category.
I was involved with Efty during its early launch, navigating the initial challenges and providing continuous feedback to enhance the platform. Our pricing was grandfathered, and we received occasional inquiries and scattered sales.
However, things shifted when the marketplace was introduced, and our inquiries and sales dropped significantly as other domain options from the marketplace became more visible.
When Efty 2.0 was launched, our grandfathered pricing was discontinued, and we were charged the new rates. This change prompted us to leave the platform, realizing that Efty was more focused on maximizing revenue than supporting long-standing domainers.
Since then, I’ve transitioned to the Sudos domain platform, which offers more robust sales and domain management options without a marketplace that diverts buyers. I’m pleased with the switch and the results so far.