Recently, I closed my first sale on the Dan.com platform. In recent months I’ve been transferring in bulk my domain names away from the Uni Market, simply because the platform’s association with GoDaddy creates a slew of problems.
Don’t get me wrong; the platform created by Frank Schilling’s excellent team in 2012 still performs great a decade later. What doesn’t work well is how these listings are forcibly added to Afternic and the GoDaddy DLS.
This time around, I sold for a little under $20k a single word, .org domain I registered almost two decades ago. The inquiry arrived at Dan.com with an offer at half as much, and a note that it was four times the amount related .org domains had sold for.
The other party represented a financial institution eager to rebrand to a single word .org domain, adding prestige to its two word .com domain name.
I explained to them that random .org sales unrelated to the specific keyword cannot be used as a price gauge. I defended my asking price only to receive a follow-up message that GoDaddy’s appraisal tool maxes out at half their offer!
How did he get that number?
As this domain was also added on Afternic via the forced inclusion of Uni Market inventory, I had to double check. Sure enough, although looking up a domain via GoDaddy.com marked the domain as premium with a note to inquire privately, it didn’t list a price. Meanwhile, the GoDaddy appraisal tool displayed the exact number that the potential buyer had quoted.
GoDaddy ranks as the top organic result for “domain appraisals” and they also pay Google to top whatever ranking fluctuations might occur due to the searcher’s locale. So when someone searches for “domain appraisals,” the top results are occupied by GoDaddy’s appraisal tool link.
This is a huge issue for domain name investors and here’s why:
The downside isn’t that the tool maxes out at $25,000 dollars, giving a “more than $25,000” response for everything of higher value; it’s that existing listings with an asking price on Afternic/Uni Market don’t override that valuation.
In other words, even if a seller’s inventory is already priced at the Uni Market and Afternic, GoDaddy can and will display a lesser, arbitrary number, creating a serious issue for the seller.
In this case, I had to simply tell my buyer that GoDaddy appraisals mean nothing to experienced domain sellers. It’s quite sad that I have to fight extra to overcome an artificial obstacle created by GoDaddy that will challenge domain investors when they engage with potential buyers.
The rest of the transaction went incredibly smoothly. The checkout process at Dan.com is fast and I received payment the same day that it was sent. The buyer is already using the domain and they have acquired a fresh lesson about what “domain appraisals” mean via the GoDaddy tool: Nothing.
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