There have been a number of times where I received a direct inquiry or offer on a domain name, and instead of doing a deal directly with my company, the buyer will purchase the domain name via GoDaddy, where I also have it listed for sale. Sometimes the deal is done at a higher (or substantially higher) price than I would have offered had the deal been closed directly with me. Some buyers simply trust the GoDaddy brand name and are willing to pay a premium price to close a deal via GoDaddy.
Pierluigi Buccioli kicked off a discussion on Twitter yesterday, and I commented in response to him:
Buyer offers $1800 for a domain with a $2495 BIN price
me: $2395
buyer: $2000
me: $2200
Buyer goes to GoDaddy where he buys the domain for full BIN price
Moral of the story: buyers are perfectly happy to pay full price to expedite a transaction— Pierluigi Buccioli (@pier0) July 9, 2020
Shortly thereafter, Hiren Patel also shared one of his experiences with a buyer purchasing a domain name directly via GoDaddy after negotiating with him elsewhere:
Last week I had little similar experience.
Someone knock the door on Dan with $500 offer
My counter : $9750
His counter : $1000
My counter: $9588
His counter : $2000
My last counter : $9288
2 days silence
He bought from Afternic Fast Transfer $9999
— QualityNames.com (@QualityNames_) July 10, 2020
In my opinion, many GoDaddy customers trust the brand name and would prefer to transact directly via GoDaddy. They don’t have to worry about coordinating with the domain seller or signing up for an account at Escrow.com, DAN.com, or other platform. They can use their preferred payment method, and the domain name will automatically be delivered to their GoDaddy account without having to deal with the technical aspect of a domain deal. To some people, this is worth a premium price.
I would prefer not to do a deal I negotiate through GoDaddy because of the extra commission and extra time it takes to get paid. However, I would not prevent a prospect from closing a deal via GoDaddy by taking down a listing. I would consider raising the price at GoDaddy to offset a higher commission and possibly dissuade a buyer from purchasing via GoDaddy after negotiating to buy the domain name directly with me or on a different platform.
I have sold quite a few domain names using GoDaddy, and other than the extra time it takes to get paid for transactions, I can’t really complain about getting deals done there. If a buyer prefers to purchase a domain name at GoDaddy, I am happy to allow them to do that.
Elliot, can you, do you, list names at Afternic and GD?
Yes, the majority.
I don’t list some of my highest value names and I don’t usually list names I just acquired via pending delete since the transfer gets more complicated with those.
This seems cromulent which is good for domaning.
I got an email from the Afternic broker that someone is interested in buying “BullS’ and I quoted $5million USD. He said that too high and I told him..how do you know it is too high?
Told him that only you have the knowledge of the buyer which can be you.
That what I don’t like about afternic,you don’t know who the buyer.
The broker could have marked up the price of your domain and pocket the extra $$$
NO transparency.
Regards,
BullS
MBA,PhD
Magna cum laude
Graduate of DKAcademy.com
Domain King Academy
MBA-My Big Ass(all of you have one)
PHD-people having dickheads
I listed a domain for sale at $500 and got sold at afternic.
How come it is not listed at $500 on the landing page?
How do I know it was sold for $500 and maybe it was sold for $3000 and the broker pocketed the rest?
How come they can’t give me who the interested buyer is like Sedo?
No Transparency!!