88 Sales on AfternicDLS, 96.5% owned by Them!

[Yofie]

I did a little digging today and found this pretty interesting since I have a good deal of my domains listed on Afternic and have been wondering why I really never get any offers....

Some highlights

"42.5% of domains listed on Afternic are owned by them self, which I see fair. 57.5% are listed by members. Basically, it’s pretty equal right. Well….
This week, I took 88 reported domain sales that were reported on DnJournal.com for AfternicDLS. The sales ranged from $2K-$4K and the only reason I picked these domains, because they were all in a chart and were easy to read. So what did I find out by using DomainTools.com whois history? BuyDomains/Afternic OWNED 85 of the 88 reported domains sold. That is 96.5%."

"When 96.5% of your reported sales (ones I looked at) are your own domains and member domains outrank domains listed 57.5% to 42.5%, I would think the sales percentage would be a little closer then 96.5% to 3.5%. Is it quality of domains? I don’t think so. Are certain domains given more attention then others? I do not know the answer, but I do have nice domains listed on Afternic and I very rarely get offers on any of the domains unless I send the an interested party to it."

You can read my full post here, and I look forward to hear what others think on this.

[Reece]

Very interesting research Jamie and I must add that I've really enjoyed reading your well researched blog entries lately

I knew Afternic hadn't exactly had the best year, but this surprises me.

Just my personal opinion but I find it very misleading to advertise yourself as having 2M domains for sale when half of them are yours or reporting all those sales to DN Journal to make your service look more desirable to other domainers when in actuality 96.5% of the sales are your own...

[DomainMagnate]

Interesting.. I listed mine there as well, but never get any offers on afternic

[David G]

IMO, Afternic is way over-valued by domainers in general, and over-praised by the media. I would not be surprised if the majority of sales in DNJournal over time are owned by them. It's doubtful if they put in much work selling your domains even if you are paying 20% for enhanced promotion. Their cust serv and domain control panel also needs improvement. I have let my membership lapse.

[biggedon]

all BD did was buy/negotiate/merge in with an already established auction site.

i would expect that most of the names featured/sold would be theirs.

[QuantumBeam]

on a more positive note, I have had offers thru Afternic before which are legit.

[Yofie]

on a more positive note, I have had offers thru Afternic before which are legit.

I agree of that one! The offers that do come in, are real. It's amazing what $1 does.

I edited nearly all of my listed domains with Afternic as they suggested to see if offers improve.

[adamatnamemedia]

Adam from Afternic here. Glad to see our services discussed. I'd like to jump in with some information, too. This is posted in greater detail in the comments on Jamie's blog dotweekly.com:

The NameMedia sales team is compensated the same whether it is one of our names or an AfternicDLS members’ Expanded Promotion name. They have as much incentive to sell one of your names as one of NameMedia’s. NameMedia sales executives talk with over 100,000 buyers each year. They have deep networks. Listing your name with Expanded Promotion gets your domain into their hands. Then make sure you leverage your sales executive once you’ve signed up.

We consistently see higher ASPs on Expanded Promotion domains . Recently, expanded promotion ASPs have been 43% higher than Basic. And this success is translating into more listings : we also recently exceeded 3,000,000 names on Afternic, but our copy has not caught up. It will be in an upcoming site edit.

Key point in the conversations : most of NameMedia’s domains have Asking Prices. We always advise members to price their domains – it only increases the chances of sale. Many buyers do prefer domains with Asking Prices.

Our sales reporting to DNJournal, in which we do report all of our brands together. One point I neglected to make on Jamie's blog is that DNJournal highlights some of our sales, but they do NOT indiviudally list all of our sales. He usually does not list sales below $2000.

Also, in reference to DNJournal reporting, we have an obligation to our members to keep their sales private if they request. So, as a result, DNJournal does not include all member-listed sales. And a disproportionate number of brokered sales are kept private as compared to sales of our NameMedia owned domain sales.

Thanks for the healthy discussions! Do not hesitate to email or call me with questions
agross (a) namemedia.com 781-839-2822

[Yofie]

Our sales reporting to DNJournal, in which we do report all of our brands together. One point I neglected to make on Jamie's blog is that DNJournal highlights some of our sales, but they do NOT indiviudally list all of our sales. He usually does not list sales below $2000.

Also, in reference to DNJournal reporting, we have an obligation to our members to keep their sales private if they request. So, as a result, DNJournal does not include all member-listed sales. And a disproportionate number of brokered sales are kept private as compared to sales of our NameMedia owned domain sales.

Thanks Adam!

I think this is a fair question and I hope you can answer it. What are the %'s of sales for NameMedia/BuyDomains/Afternic etc compared to User submitted (member) domain sales?

I think that might clear somethings up. From what I did, I just grabbed the 88 domains that were listed in the chart on DNJ that were reported in the $2-$4K price range because they were easy to read. So no cherry picking was done etc.

[adamatnamemedia]

As many know, we filed to go public earlier this year, and there are certain points that we can and can not comment on. Unfortunately, this is a level of granularity we can't provide, which is why I didn't address it in my posts. Ownership of the domain is just one minor variable among many that controls whether a domain sells - pricing, quality, promotion, and timing are others. In fact, who owns the domain affects how quickly a domain sells less than the other conditions.