Things domainers should do in light of GoDaddy’s new commission structure

A couple of things you should do in light of the commission change.

GoDaddy’s new aftermarket commission structure went into effect on February 1. There are a few housekeeping things domainers should consider doing in light of the changes.

The new system rewards you with a 40% discount off the 25% commission when a domain is parked with a GoDaddy platform. Here are some things you should do to take advantage of the discount and update your Dan.com account.

Make sure you’re pointing by nameservers, not A records

I recently sold a domain name that was parked at Uniregistry but didn’t point to Uni’s nameservers. Instead, it pointed to GoDaddy’s domaincontrol.com nameserver, and I used an A record to point it to Uni’s system. I set many of my domains up like this so I could point the MX records to Mailbox Park.

Given that Uniregistry will probably sunset this year and I don’t use Mailbox Park anymore, it was time to change the nameservers. I took care of that today.

I should note that currently, domaincontrol.com is NOT set up to get the reduced commission. (I no longer point domains to Afternic’s landers; I set them to domaincontrol and use List for Sale in my GoDaddy account to add the for sale pages. It’s much easier than logging into Afternic.) This means some sales will trigger the 25% commission when it should be 15%. GoDaddy is aware of this issue. For now, you’ll need to email your Afternic or GoDaddy account manager to correct any incorrect commissions.

Reprice your Dan listings

If you’re like me, you probably priced your Dan.com listings a bit lower than Afternic because of the commission savings. I was willing to give up 5% or so on the Dan listing to incentivize people to buy it there rather than through Afternic.

That incentive is no longer there. With Dan commissions increasing to 15%, it probably makes sense to increase your Dan prices. In fact, I’d argue that Dan prices should be higher than Afternic’s because I’d like to incentivize people to use Fast Transfer. After all, it’s easier for me. (Of course, this ignores Afternic’s new rule that landing page prices should match Afternic prices.)

Eventually, you’ll price your domains in one place and not have to worry about it. But until GoDaddy adds Dan’s payment plans to its landers, you’ll need to use Dan if you want to offer them.

Select your landers

As a reminder, here are the options for pointing your domains to Afternic landers:

Parking landers – These show PPC links and a banner at the top mentioning the domain is for sale. Point to ns1.afternic.com and ns2.afternic.com.

Lead landers – These have a lead form for people to fill out if they want to get a price for the domain. It also includes a phone number. Point to ns3.afternic.com and ns4.afternic.com.

Buy Now landers – Customers will see the asking price and are able to click a button to buy the domain. Point to ns5.afternic.com and ns6.afternic.com.