Is GoDaddy adding 5% on top of its Afternic 15% commission?

[Recons.Com]

I was up for very unpleasant surprise today.

The names that I, for example, have priced for $2499 are showing as $2724.11 at Godaddy. Apparently, this change might be experimental for now as it is not showing the same for all, but it will have very adverse effect on all domain investment community. And it is grossly unfair too.

GD announced with lots of fanfare that it is reducing the Afternic commission from 20% to 15% to justify raising Dan commission from 9% to 15%. Apparently, there have been plans to recoup that and more, as 5% on the gross is more than 5% on the original price.

So what will be the impact on all of us? If GD does go ahead with it (and for the period and scope of the experiment) we will lose at least 5% of our sales if the price elasticity is straight line. But, we all know that it is not and there are psychological thresholds. E.g. 2499 to 2724, from my experience, will result in 10-20% loss for two reasons: a) again, it crosses 2500$ limit; b) the "magic" endings like 00, 99, 88, 50 are ruined for someing like 24.11 ending. GD itself in its blog had published an experiment involving namefind names that showed 8% increase in sales from going to 2499 from 2500, so this changes are meaningful.

See also the attached slide by Darpan (SH founder) showing how important those thresholds can be. Crossing $5k barrier, e.g., can result in 35% loss in sales numbers.

Now couple this with the upcoming 7%-10% increase in .com pricing, and loss of 10%-20% in sales so that GD can make extra 5% can be devastating to all of us.

If GD does go ahead with this, we should all look for an alternative to both Afternic and Godaddy, as they will eventually squeeze us all out of the business. If Godaddy does implement this, I will look into moving my 34000 .com domains out of Godaddy and will stop using Afternic landers.

This is just getting ridiculous. Godaddy, decide already, if we are your partners in the business or the competition.

 

[Recons.Com]

My godaddy auctions page today:

My Afternic landers today:

The name is listed at $2488 and this is how many USA visitors sees this and other names when they go there.

The same name if searched at Godaddy.com (registrar path):

The inability of this company to fix simple bugs is astounding

 

[Recons.Com]

I was Singapore-free for about 2 weeks and was happy about it. Today, though, I am seeing the GD auctions in SG currency and the locale is SG. It happened after it took over a minute to load the auction page for me, which proves my hypothesis that the issue is related to the DB timeout, when the site cannot get the location info from it within limited time, GD software automatically allocates it to the "default" country. And, for some reason, some genius has set that to Singapore.

@GoDaddy

 

[Recons.Com]

So new GD commission is going to be 1 minus 2124 (net to seller) / 2724 (gross paid by the client) = 22% and in case of no lander it will become about 1/3.

 

[fardomai]

Maybe this is a glitch in the GoDaddy reg path.
Which language/region you're using?

For example in the Australian version with $USD and not the $AUD.
It shows a higher price, but when I add the domain to the cart it shows just the original price listed on Afternic.

Noticed the same thing with closeouts

 

[BaileyUK]

Actually, when you think about it, I'm surprised there isn't more of this about. They certainly aren't the first company to implement what is basically 'front-running' your sales listings. Since the Godaddy take-over of Dan I have moved all my listings to Sedo only. Then surprised to see all my domains appear on 123-Reg (The largest UK based registration service) with a 10% premium to my Sedo pricing. There may well be a relationship between Sedo and 123-reg that I'm not aware of.

My first thoughts were this must be the work of one individual, but no, this is through the 123-reg purchase platform and it is a consistent 10% across all domains of mine. Been going on there for some while

When you think about it, it does make for a tempting business model. I just wondered how the contractual obligations stack-up. Could get rather messy for the buyer unless there was a real-time link into the Sedo platform. Then of course there's the ethical issue of my relationship with Sedo.

 

[equity78]

I just checked a domain name I listed for sale and parked via Dan.com for $4,995 (CrushTheShorts.com). I did not separately add the domain name to my Afternic account, so it is exclusively listed at Dan and syndicated through the Afternic network. When I searched for the domain name on GoDaddy, it shows up in the registration path with the $4,995 listed price.

I also looked up a name I have parked at Dan and listed in my Afternic account at the same $1,988 price point (HogRoasts.com). That, too, shows up in the registration path for $1,988. I tested this on different browsers - one of which is logged in to my GoDaddy account and the other is not.

Maybe @James Iles can offer some insight since I did not detect anything abnormal. You can also check these two names to see if they're showing up at different prices for you.

James is out til March 25.

 

[forge]

Just few weeks ago every time I visited GD auctions, it would put me into GD Ireland. I would switch back to US and in few minutes I was back in "Ireland".

This happened to me just last week after browsing GD auctions, having set me for US currency but South Africa location. Instead of 2,000 for example I would see 2 000.

Actually I think it was language default (English, S.A.) instead of (English, US) so it didn't affect the numbers.

 

[Recons.Com]

We appreciate the community’s patience as we thoroughly looked into this.

To be clear, GoDaddy/Afternic are not quietly adding commission to these purchases. In territories where we are required to collect VAT or local taxes, they are added to the displayed price in the search result automatically.

A final validation is performed in the cart at the time of purchase and these fees are paid in full to the relevant authority.

This can be made clearer to the purchaser, and it is something we will look into doing. We’ll also continue to closely monitor our sale landers, search results, and cart, where premium domains are displayed in local currencies, for areas to adjust and improve.

Thanks, James.

After someone wrote in the thread and I also started getting a version of lander in another currency, I noticed on the index page that my location is being reset to Singapore every time. Before March, that default GD location was Ireland, but that wasn't causing sales problems, except being forced to change it every day or sometimes few times a day.

The Singapore one has huge implications:

The USA buyers often get this, and possibly other countries as well. It shows USA number, it is in $ and it is 9% higher price. There is no location change option or anything that makes it explicit that there is surcharge. So, as a result, if I am priced my name $2499, it shows 2724.11$. Which could hurt my sales by 20%-40% because

a) according to your blog post, changing price from $2500 to $2499 increased sales by 8%. 99, 88, 50, 95 are often used because, not without ground, everyone assumes those endings help. And, 2500, along with 3000, 5000, 10000 are proven to be psychological thresholds crossing which have major implications. So, you go from 2499 to even 2501$ and you can have 10-15% sales lost.

b) at this price levels, the price elasticity is not a straight line, so adding 9%, on top of the issues from the paragraph above, can lead to additional losses.

And, now, add % lost because people see this (as I mentioned, sometimes, it also changes the currency, while still displaying USA phone):

 

[Recons.Com]

Here is what a free web tool ip2location.com/demo says about my location:

 

[Dane]

Go in the browser settings and delete all GoDaddy cookies. Restart the browser, see if it gets fixed.

But even if that works, it only helps me. I didn't do anything to get this Singapore cookie, it just appeared. Which means the same thing is happening to potential buyers, and they are seeing the wrong price (and the wrong phone number). GoDaddy should do something to fix this problem.

 

[Recons.Com]

It just gets more and more ridiculous by day.

Yesterday, e.g., it switched me to Singapore after just couple of hours of switching to USA.

Today, the switch occured DURING my work with the GD auctions. I was buying names from my watchlist and after some purchases clicked on page 2 there and ... all prices went to SG currency (((((

 

[korganian]

It just gets more and more ridiculous by day.

Yesterday, e.g., it switched me to Singapore after just couple of hours of switching to USA.

Today, the switch occured DURING my work with the GD auctions. I was buying names from my watchlist and after some purchases clicked on page 2 there and ... all prices went to SG currency (((((

You're only fix is to move to Singapore. They say the women there are the most loyal in the World.

 

[Recons.Com]

You're only fix is to move to Singapore. They say the women there are the most loyal in the World.

The only fix is to move all my buyers to Singapore... If it was the nuisance part for me, I wouldn't bother posting here. Just would keep switching and hope they will fix it within a decade, probably by accident, while being pushed out by another more severe bug. The problem is that most of us are losing sales because of a) confusion if a customer sees another currency b) and if it still shows USD, then it is 9% higher resulting in 20-40% less conversion. I am bound to lose 6 figures in sales in 2024 if they don't fix it. So I will keep bugging them daily and will keep emailing Paul with the latest status. GD is bound to lose 7 figures, but, I guess their KPIs for bonuses and promotions are not based on such peanuts.

 

[GoDaddy]

Thanks for your report @Recons.Com. Our team is currently investigating what you're experiencing.

 

[draco]

Did they announce this anywhere?

 

[Recons.Com]

Did they announce this anywhere?

haven't seen announcement. Moreover, some don't see it as added yet, so it is experiment...

And here is another screw up:

bin landers show price in CNY (Chinese yuans) for a US visitor. And, judging by the phone to call, it is not simply geolocation mistake.

 

[Jannes]

It's as if there happens a conversion from euros to dollars.

 

[Recons.Com]

It's as if there happens a conversion from euros to dollars.

nope, just usd... Also, conversion from USD to Euro would result in smaller number.

 

[Jannes]

nope, just usd... Also, conversion from USD to Euro would result in smaller number.

read again (as if & from euros to dollars)

 

[Jannes]

Yeah I really hope it's a glitch, whatever the cause may be.

 

[Armageddon]

It still doesn't make sense, as my prices are listed as USD, not Euro and there is no option in my afternic to list them at different currency. So, listed USD, showing on GD in USD, not sure where you see conversion creeping in.

There are two scenarios that I am hoping for though.

: a) it is just purely scientific experiment for them to understand implications of price differences and is done on a small scope; b) they have screwed up the geolocation and have identified me as some country that requires 9% sales tax on top (then, again, why US number?).

If you access random a domain listed on Afternic & show in GBP , must go to Godaddy.com & on up right corner is a message say " you or your currency is GBP or what ever" you change it & when come back to that random domain will show currency you set prev.

 

[BaileyUK]

Ps. I meant to add, I don't allow syndication of my domain listings through Sedo, in order to keep the flat commission rate, I just don't like the fact that commission could be anywhere from 15 to 25% instead of a flat 10%.

But, I guess that doesn't stop Sedo doing their own syndication and putting the additional lost commission onto the buyer. Somewhat similar to what seems to be going on with the OP's example.

 

[zomainhacks]

Other times I've seen such prices discrepacies VAT was the reason but a 8% doesn't sound like a VAT rate.

Have you checked the domain from a VAT country?

 

[D Haynes]

I assumed this was common knowledge? It's always been my understanding that different members of the AN network were free to list names with whatever mark up they wanted. I've certainly heard this being mention multiple times over the years. It's quite possible you'll find your names listed for different prices at different network members. I certainly don't agree with it (it's essentially front running) but I'm surprised people are surprised. It's definitely not something new.

 

[silentg]

Any updates on this?

Checked my names and the price is the same and no markups.