Many domain name sellers, including myself depend on the two most popular domain listing services Sedo.com and Afternic.com while listing domain names for sale. When an offer does come in using these services, the seller is at a large disadvantage not knowing who the buyer is!

No seller ever want’s to "leave some on the table" when making a sale! Not knowing who the buyer is, can lead to leaving some on the table or simply a lost sale as the domain seller shoot’s to high of a price assuming it’s the perfect end user.

I have expressed many times that I think most real interested buyers will visit a domain name directly in order to contact a domain name owner. They also simply may visit to see if the domain name is marked for sale.

Many domain sellers will list a domain name on Sedo and then many times use Sedo’s parking service, marking the domain name for sale and that is how an interested party will make contact via an offer.

If or when an offer does come in, the seller is near 100% blind to who the buyer is because of the system Sedo has in place currently. Afternic at least allows you to see a "User Name", which can allow a seller to dig up some info but it’s not normally enough to be exactly sure.

Afternic and Sedo are the middle man and want to please both the Buyer and Seller. I can understand this. In one way, they want to offer a service for the buyer that is secure and to stay anonymous if they so choose. Then on the other hand, they want to help the seller out as much as they can because they make a commission on each sale! The more the domain sells for, the more money they make.

The way that both Afternic and Sedo’s systems are set up, I think that the Sellers are getting the short end of the deal! We sellers need more info about the buyers contacting us to maximize profits!

The system that I have in place for when I get an offer, will include the persons name (if they put in the real one), email address and IP address.

Having these three things will normally reveal a good idea of who your interested party is simply by doing a Google search and using IP2Location.com.

I think the only way that we as domain name sellers can get Sedo and Afternic to DO SOMETHING to help us as sellers and get more info on the buyer, is if we all voice that we want more info on the interested party contacting us.

Please feel free to Contact Afternic and or Contact Sedo.com and let them know if you would like to see this. Just click the link and add your name, or adjust the content as you wish. It will help if you point them to this posting as well.

UPDATE: Sedo replied to my email right away and stated the following:

Hello Jamie,

Thank you for contacting us at Sedo. Sedo maintains a secure and confidential marketplace for negotiating. Personal contact details are disclosed only after a sale’s agreement is reached. However, we do offer certain information regarding a Buyer and Seller’s activity at Sedo.

When you receive an offer as a seller, clicking on a specific domain in the Offers Received section will bring the seller to the Bid Thread Details for that domain. The top of the page will display “Bid Thread for (domain)”.

Below the domain’s negotiation history, a seller can view “Information about the Buyer” link. A pop-up window will appear.

The “Meet the Buyer” window displays the Buyer’s Country of origin, VAT status, when the buyer joined Sedo (member since), and the buyer’s activity index (activity as a buyer).

Sedo, Meet The Buyer

I’m not so sure anything but Country Origin really helps the seller and by the reply, Sedo is more interested in helping the buyer, then the seller IMO.

Another option is to set yourself up with a domain selling system that allows interested parties to contact you directly that I have, but I still like to provide 3rd party services links like Afternic and Sedo so the buyer can have added trust if needed. Since I have stats :) , I can still see the people who visited the domain directly if I get an offer does come in via a 3rd party service. Again this is not rock solid as I can only assume based last visits to who the offer may have came from.