I am a fan of Afternic even though I am often critical of it’s service. They have so many things going well for them but often people who list domain names with the service see little action (offers/sales).

I do get offers and sales using Afternic, but very few. I have used their advice in the past and make sure all my domain names are priced (and fairly IMO), each has a category and I offer up the 20% commission via the Expanded Promotion.

One problem that I see is when you get an offer on a domain name you have listed, you as the seller are very limited to your options after you get an offer. 9 times out of 10, the offer that comes in will not be exactly what you want to sell for. This either forces you to counter offer, not reply at all or send it to auction and risk the chance of the domain selling for the price you send it to auction for or potentially go up due to some bids.

The biggest problem that I see sending the domain to auction on the offer is that Afternic has such poor inventory at auction that I do not think many people ever visit the closing soon section of the site! For example, today only 1 domain name is currently at auction. This is good and bad. Good because that domain does not get "lost in the crowd" and gets max exposure but bad because the lack of inventory likely draws a very light crowd of buyers.

I have had several times that I would of sent the domain name to auction on an offer similar to what many people do at the similar service Sedo.com but I never like sending a domain to auction on Afternic simply due to lack of inventory at auction, which IMO results in little traffic to that specific page on Afternic.

So what could Afternic do about it?

I know Afternic partners with Sedo as they list and sell there domains on Sedo.com from time to time. What if you had the option as a seller to send a domain to auction at Sedo based on an offer that came from Afternic? Sedo has a greater inventory of current auction domains which draws in buyers. A lot more eyes raises the chances of your domain raising in price as well.

I’m sure a partnership could be worked out and I think Afternic sellers would welcome the option.

Afternic has ties with Godaddy as well. That could be another option to send the domain to auction on an offer from Afternic to Godaddy Auctions.

Afternic has ties with Network Solutions who is also part of NameJet.com . This could be an option as well to be able to send your domain name to auction on an offer at Afternic to NameJet! This option I like the most out of the other two I mentioned!

I think an auction is an important option needed for sellers if they are not 100% happy with the offer but fell it may do better at auction but if you send it to auction as a seller, you want as many eyes on your auction as you can and currently Afternic does not provide that IMO with the closing soon section on their site.

Sharing a commission is better than no commission at all. Doing something is better than just leaving something that doesn’t currently work!

Just some ideas!