Last week after DnJournal.com reported the sales for that week, I dug into who owned the domains that sold for AfternicDLS. Of the reported domains that I grabbed and decided to look into, I was pretty shocked to see that 96.5% of the domains I looked into were owned by Afternic/BuyDomains.

After writing that (The first posting is here), there was a good deal of interest in it and many people posted comments. Several valid points were made and idea’s were given. I think one of the best things is that your domains that are listed on Afternic should really have a Price. Now setting the price is important for more then one reason. It allows potential buyers to have an idea what you are looking for. It’s like shopping at any store, if you like the price of an item you buy it, if not, you move along. Secondly, it puts the domain into the brokers hands at Afternic when they are working with a customer and your domain matches the keyword and price range of the interested party. From what I can tell, a hot price range is $2K-$7K. If the majority of your domains are not listed with a buy it now in the price range you might want to reconsider.

Selecting a Category is also Key! If you are lazy and do not select a category, it is very likely your domain will simply get lost in the mix. When people search on Afternic, most choose to search By A Category!

Ok, now do I agree with Adam Gross totally on his post in the comment section in the first post? No. The part I do not totally agree on is:

"We have an obligation to our members to keep their sales private if they request. So, as a result, DNJournal does not include all member-listed sales. A disproportionate number of brokered sales are kept private as compared to sales of our NameMedia owned domain sales."

Now I understand this "could be" the case with some domains, but 9 times out 10 it’s really down to the BUYER that makes the call if the sale is private or not. This has nothing to do with if it’s an Afternic owned domain or a member listed domain.

Now again, I want to make it very clear that I like Afternic and I do suggest using them! I just want my domain and yours to have as fair of a chance selling compared to theirs and figure out the best system for users to use. Do you and I have as fair of a chance selling our domains? That’s up to you to decide, but I am taking Adam’s advice and have Priced all my domains and took several other measures to help increase my chance of selling and I am trying to help others by letting you know what I am doing.

So here’s a quick look at This Week’s reported domain sales for Afternic as reported on DnJournal.com . Again, I am not Cherry Picking. I will take the first 25 domains that were reported and see who owned the domain before it sold. If I post Afternic, that means NameMedia owned the domain ie BuyDomains/Rare Names/WebReg etc.

  1. MoneyRates.com  Afternic
  2. NR1.com  Afternic
  3. MyMoto.com Afternic
  4. LuxuryItems.com Afternic
  5. Teas.net Afternic
  6. CorporateEntertainment.com Afternic
  7. EarthPure.com Afternic
  8. OfRecord.com Afternic
  9. BetterSafe.com Member Listed
  10. MHSC.com Afternic
  11. VideoTour.com Afternic
  12. Red10.com Afternic
  13. GreenTips.com Afternic
  14. LifeChat.com Afternic
  15. Milpa.com Afternic
  16. UniqueSports.com Afternic
  17. CrimeTV.com Member Listed
  18. Viwa.com Afternic
  19. Fabia.com Afternic
  20. Sociologie.com Afternic
  21. ArtAdventure.com Afternic
  22. Woya.com Afternic
  23. RepublicOfMaldives.com Afternic
  24. HighRiskPregnancy.com Afternic
  25. Upax.com Afternic

So 2 of the 25 domains that I looked into today were listed by members. This put’s it at 92% of the domains were owned by Afternic that were reported sold. Last week I did a total of 88 domains and 96.5% of those were owned by Afternic.

I placed a call to the old owner of BetterSafe.com to find out how they had the domain listed with Afternic. As much as the member remembered, he answered my questions.

  • The domain was not on a parking page, but had a mini portal site on it.  
  • The domain was listed with the Expaned Promotion
  • The pricing structure was listed as follows (approx.) Starting Price $370, Reserve $7,133 (what is sold for), Floor Price was near asking price, Asking Price $14,000 ish
  • No contact came from the buyer, meaning the offer came directly from the buyer seeing the domain on Afternic or a broker promoting it to the buyer

I tried contacting the old owner of CrimeTV.com but the whois provided a disconnected number. I did notice the domain was parked with ActiveAudience.com when it sold. So the offer very well could of come from the For Sale Link in the upper left hand corner of Active Audience for sale page. It also appears the asking price for this domain was $10,540 according to a wayback page here. CrimeTV.com sold for $4,999.