A commission free domain marketplace?

[ben]

Why has nobody thought about this?

Over the last few days I've been thinking about developing a platform marketplace for domainers to sell and park their domains. Everyone these days tries to be so complex and overdoes everything. But what do we really want out of a platform like that? We want our domain names to be bought easily. We want the transfers to be safe, easy and most of all we want to keep our money.

So why do platforms charge commissions that are out of this world? DAN.com charged 9% when it launched, now it's nearly 20%. If you sell a domain for £1000, you are only getting £800 of that. If you are VAT registered, it's even less.

Imagine a platform where you could sell via Escrow, and have a managed experience, at the same time as having beautiful, but simple landers. No ad revenue, no over the top metrics. Just connecting buyers to sellers.

No overly done UI, no logins, no restrictions. A directory where buyers can come, search for a domain they like (or simply land on a domain that is on the platform), send an offer, or see contact information. And sellers buy into a simple subscription per month depending on how many domains they want to list:

Monthly Tiered Pricing Plans

1. Basic Tier
   
   • Price: £49.99 per month
   • Includes: Up to 50 domains listed
   • Additional Domains: £10 per domain per month
2. Standard Tier
   
   • Price: £99.99 per month
   • Includes: Up to 200 domains listed
   • Additional Domains: £7 per domain per month
3. Premium Tier
   
   • Price: £199.99 per month
   • Includes: Up to 500 domains listed
   • Additional Domains: £5 per domain per month
4. Enterprise Tier
   
   • Price: £399.99 per month
   • Includes: Up to 1000 domains listed
   • Additional Domains: £3 per domain per month
   • Custom Pricing: For domains beyond 1000, bespoke pricing available.

Setup Fee for Account Opening, which deters spammy sellers and encourages a better quality of vendor

• Fee: £99
  • Covers the cost of listing and initial setup.
  • Applies regardless of the tier.

Example Scenarios

• Small Business (30 domains): Basic Tier at £49.99/month.
• Medium-Sized Portfolio (150 domains): Standard Tier at £99.99/month + £30 (20 additional domains) = £129.99/month.
• Large Portfolio (600 domains): Premium Tier at £199.99/month + £500 (100 additional domains) = £699.99/month.

The whole process would be manual, vetted by real people who will decide which domains come onto the platform and are categorised as premium, ultra premium etc. the seller would have total control over their domain until the point of Escrow, at which stage the domain would be transferred into the platform tag and funds would change hands before being released to the buyer.

Nobody has done this yet, why not? Well, if i'm going to play devils advocate, let me ask the community what they think of a model like this? How often do you sell domain names, and would this kind of model be worthwhile. The prices are just examples, but could be higher or lower depending on the market research.

Let me hear your views.

 

[Cav]

Is not just having your own website with landers the most cost effective? This also has the benefit of total control.

 

[baldidiot]

Nobody has done this yet, why not? Well, if i'm going to play devils advocate, let me ask the community what they think of a model like this? How often do you sell domain names, and would this kind of model be worthwhile. The prices are just examples, but could be higher or lower depending on the market research.

It's a totally different business model - you're talking about an upfront cost, and one that may not result in anything. It actually could end up being more expensive for people who have a lot of domains that don't sell a high enough proportion of them each year.

For example, I have around 1100 domains on dan at the moment. Based on your numbers that would be an upfront cost of £500 a month or £6k a year. It just wouldn't be worth it to us, especially because we're paying that regardless of any sale - ie: it's a cashflow drain.

If we were using the Dan landers at 15%, then the break even point for us would be £40k in domain sales through the platform. Domains aren't our main business, so we probably wouldn't hit that on a regular basis.

I guess we could slim it down to the better domains and cut out a load of the cheaper crap, but we do get sales on that cheap crap sometimes.

So I personally wouldn't do it based on the kinds of numbers you're talking about, just wouldn't be worth it. Plus it's front loading the risk, which would put a lot of people off.

What could be interesting is something similar with a fixed escrow cost + transaction fees, that would really save money on the bigger value domains. But I'm assuming part of the % cost is because of the chargeback risk that the escrow company is taking on?

 

[baldidiot]

DAN.com charged 9% when it launched, now it's nearly 20%. If you sell a domain for £1000, you are only getting £800 of that. If you are VAT registered, it's even less.

Dan act as the MoR, as far as I'm aware there's no VAT on domain sale prices for someone in the UK any more.

Also before they implemented this the VAT was added on to the domain price, you didn't have to eat it if you're VAT registered.