I sold 3 of my 11 Featured Listings on Afternic. Wait a minute…just 1?
A month ago I listed 11 of my domain names in the Featured Listings section of Afternic. These domains get great exposure because they rotate through the home page and show up in bold in all category and search results (each of my Featured Listings received 200+ visits). Within a couple weeks I received offers high enough to meet the reserve price on three of the domains. I was pumped.
But then excitement turned to dissapointment. Of the three domains I sold, two of the bidders turned out to be deadbeats. The only sale that went through was Decay.com for $2,900. The first domain I “sold”, YouSubmit.com, attracted many bids and ended at $180, but the bidder never paid. This was a slap in the face for a couple reasons. First, this is the same domain I had a deadbeat on a year ago. Second, with so many bidders I wasn’t able to offer the domain to the second highest bidder. The second highest bidder isn’t even aware this domain is now available again. The other domain that sold was eDropShippers.com which received a bid for $950. The bidder is nowhere to be found.
I hope that my experience with deadbeats was just a fluke. There’s not much Afternic can do about this, short of requiring buyers to prepay. But this is almost impossible because most transactions aren’t done via credit card.
Despite my misfortune with deadbeat bidders, I still think Afternic’s Featured Listings can be worth the money. I was able to sell a four figure domain that hadn’t received any offers prior to my upgraded listing. Furthermore, another one of my domains received a four figure offer, although not enough to trigger the reserve. Additionally, I had much more success getting offers and selling with Afternic’s Featured Listings compared to Sedo’s upgrade options.
Bottom line: you can sell your domains quickly if you place a compelling price on your domains and make them stand out in front of the right audience.
deepak says
Thanks for this wonderful information. Actually I was in a dilemma on whether to upgrade or not for featured listing. I hav a domain name http://www.SellFarmhouses.com which I believe is very valuable in Real Estate industry and yesterday I planned to HomePage Featured. But when i went to upgrade, there they say that, to make it home page featured, I needto get their appraisal which is valued at $20. Come on yaar, I dont want your appraisal, only the featured listing. But it is not possible.
Anyway will wait for a week and see how it turns out…
regards,
Deepak.c
Editor says
I would look at the appraisal as just part of the expense of doing a featured listing.
In the good news department, Afternic contacted the second highest bidder on YouSubmit.com, who subsequently made an offer on the domain. It is in “closing soon” right now.
Derek says
I’ve had a few featured listings on Afternic too, the only one I received an offer high enough to trigger reserve on also turned out to be a deadbeat. When this happened to you, did Afternic at least offer to put the listings back up for the 30 days for you?
Rich says
Buyers on these sites are not committed. Most of the domains listed on these sites will never be sold. One way that we at http://www.domainrebirth.com, a new site that launched yesterday, hope to change this is by only promoting premium domains names on our site. And also require that both buyers and seller pay annual membership fee. Sellers are required to pay a domain listing fee also. This will help to weed out the phony buyers and sellers. Look lets face it, when have you received anything of value for free. Domainrebirth.com will provide superb services to serious domain buyers and sellers.
Strong says
Im sure Andrew appreciates this spam above. Premium domains? umm . . . you might want to work a little harder on finding those. I see none listed yet.
Editor says
Valid point, Strong 🙂
Afternic charges both buyers and sellers a nominal fee to become a member, which helps cut down fraud and dead beats.
Derek,I responded to the escrow cancellation messages and asked for the domain to be put back into the featured section but didn’t hear back. However, I think if you submit a support request for it they’ll do it for you. In my case, Afternic’s Amber ended up contacting the second highest bidder on YouSubmit.com and the domain is in closing again. There was only one bidder for eDropShippers.com.
Editor says
Derek, Afternic relisted eDropShippers.com in the Featured Section for the remaining period. You just need to submit a support ticket.
I also updated my initial post to note that each domain received at least 200 sales page views during the month, and some topped 300.