Here’s a way to segment your DNS account to handle low-priced sales by yourself.
This weekend Frank Schilling’s domain name brokerage service, DomainNameSales.com, sent a notice to its customers that it is setting a minimum charge of $175 per sale when it brokers the sale.
DomainNameSales (DNS) is a unique platform in that you can select any broker to handle your sales, but many have opted in to having DNS handle this. It charges just 12.5%. But with the new minimum pricing, the commission rate is effectively higher for any sale below $1,400.
For people that sell a lot of domains below this price, you can set buy now pricing or handle the lower priced sales yourself.
The easiest way to segment your domains between ones you handle yourself and ones you want DNS to handle is to set up portfolios. You can move domains between portfolios and then select to self broker the lower priced ones and assign DNS to broker the more expensive ones. If you already have multiple portfolios set up, click the “Portfolio Broker Mapping” link on the settings page to see how your portfolios are assigned to brokers:
There are benefits to having DNS broker your sales instead of doing it yourself. Two key ones: they can act as a frontline to screen for low ball offers, and they take live calls over the phone.
Although DNS’ minimum commission is higher than those of Afternic and Sedo, most of the sales that happen on those platforms involve little human interaction compared to DNS.
One other thing that I learned about DNS recently: If you opt-in to syndicating sales through GoDaddy, you won’t received your payment on these sales until the end of the month along with your parking payment. This is the same as if DNS acts as escrow rather than Escrow.com. DNS Vice President of Sales Jeff Gabriel told me this is part of its lean operating structure to pass along as much money as possible to customers. There’s only one person who handles payments, and sending these payments once a month helps keep costs down.
Acro says
Here’s an idea: don’t sell domains cheap, and don’t sell cheap domains.