I am sure just about everyone is familiar with the sales commission changes coming across all GoDaddy properties, (GoDaddy.com, Afternic, DAN.com and Uniregistry).
For those not familiar,
To simplify commissions, effective Feb. 1, 2023, each marketplace is moving to a 15% commission rate for domain names pointed to Afternic, Dan, or Uniregistry nameservers at the time of the sale. If your domain name does not point to Afternic, Dan or Uniregistry nameservers, the commission charged will be 25%.
To receive the 15% commission rate, you must have your DNS pointed to one of the following nameservers:
- afternic.com
- smartname.com
- uniregistrymarket.link
- dan.com
- undeveloped.com
- internettraffic.com
- cashparking.com
Bob Hawkes wrote a fantastic article over at Namepros, it covers the entire sales commission universe. It’s worth reading and bookmarking.
So now the question comes down to this. What is a fair commission? Domain investors are in partnership whether they like it or not, with aftermarket and escrow websites. We count on them to collect payment, deal with any potential chargebacks and fraud issues.
They are making money off of us trusting our domain name sales with them. But there is a lot of anger regarding the upcoming GoDaddy changes. There are those for years who felt that commissions were just too high if all someone did was click a link on your website and you get 20% of their sale. The notion has always been, “My domain name would have sold no matter what, you just got lucky they landed on your website.”
There are of course cheap options you can deal with Escrow.com. You can use Sedo for just 3% to process an external domain transfer.
From Sedo:
The applicant is charged a fee of 3% of the gross selling price, with a minimum fee of $60 for category 1 domains, and $200 for category 2 domains. (See price list) Upon request, we will also assist you in dividing the fee between the buyer and seller.
Please note: The standard marketplace commission will still apply to external transactions, if the parties involved have carried out negotiations over the Sedo marketplace for the same domain. Also, please be aware that additional fees may be applied by your registrar or bank. There is an additional 3% express processing fee applied to payments over $500 made using Alipay, PayPal or via Credit Card.
So please give your opinion in the comments, what is a fair commission for a domain name sale?
