When a domain name is listed for sale on Afternic, there are many ways a prospective buyer can become a “Lead.” A lead is a prospective buyer of a domain name who, instead of buying the domain name immediately via BIN options, has engaged with an GoDaddy or Afternic broker.
Sometimes a lead is a person who wants to buy a domain name, and other times, it is someone who is confused and ends up calling GoDaddy or submitting an inquiry form in confusion.
For many years, Afternic and GoDaddy did not share much information about leads. As far as I am aware, one of my domain names could have strong interest from buyers, but if nobody submitted an offer at or above the minimum offer amount, I would not have been notified.
More recently, Afternic introduced the “Lead Center” control panel, which provided information about leads and the status of negotiations. It also offered a streamlined way for sellers to communicate with brokers.
In the Afternic Lead Center control panel, there is a column for “Status” to keep the domain owner informed of the current status of a negotiation. There are several terms that can be used in this column, including Sold, Qualifying, Confused, Negotiation, Stalled, and Unknown. Over the last year or so, I have come to learn what each status means, but they aren’t totally clear, and I don’t see these terms defined anywhere.
Yesterday in response to a question on X, Afternic shared what each status means (except for Unknown) to give a better understand to customers:
I am pretty sure the Unknown status is for leads created prior to the Lead Center. Because Afternic has not been able to make contact with the prospective buyer to understand the status, it is listed as “Unknown.”
If you see another status term and are curious about what it means, feel free to ask in the comment section.
