New Premium promotion option utilizes instant transfer technology.
Over the weekend Afternic rolled out a number of changes, including a new “Premium” promotion level.
I caught up with NameMedia Senior Vice President and General Manager Peter Lamson, as well as members of the product and customer service teams, to learn more about this new level of promotion. (NameMedia owns Afternic.)
Premium promotion improves on the existing “Enhanced” promotion level. Domain names listed at the Premium level are shown in the results of customer searches on a growing roster of domain registrars, including Network Solutions and directNIC.
These registrar partners have specific requirements. “Most registrars will want to have their site visitors be able to buy a secondary market domain the same way they would register a regular domain,” said Lamson.
The key is being able to instantly transfer a domain name. With Premium promotion, domain names must be transferred to NameMedia partner Network Solutions, which has instant transfer functionality. Although NameMedia is happy with its Network Solutions partnership, it is working on other registrar partnerships so that names don’t have to be transferred to Network Solutions.
NameMedia runs a number of checks on domains that are submitted for Premium promotion. It does a basic valuation to make sure bad domains aren’t listed for a million dollars, then it performs the standard compliance and trademark check. Domains are also screened for baseline quality and ownership is verified. Through its partnership with Network Solutions, domains are constantly monitored for whois changes. If you sell a domain outside of Afternic, the system will be quickly alerted to remove it from Afternic’s inventory.
Afternic’s latest release has a bug that prevents you from changing promotion levels right now, but this should be fixed soon. The big question for most domainers is if it will be worth transferring domains to Network Solutions to take advantage of this sales opportunity. Network Solutions is offering $9.99 transfer pricing, but I suspect many people will hold off until other registrars come on board.
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