DomainAgents’ fresh system might accelerate your domain name sales
DomainAgents adds system for domain name sellers.
Domain sales platform DomainAgents has made a major upgrade with the hopes of helping domain name investors sell more inventory.
DomainAgents launched as a “certified offer” service in 2012. Domain buyers would pay to submit an offer on a domain and DomainAgents would track down the owner to present the offer. Negotiations would take place over email. The original concept was somewhat similar to Network Solutions’ Certified Offer service.
The latest upgrade allows domainers to upload their portfolios, drive traffic to domain offer pages on DomainAgents and handle negotiations through an online interface.
Domainers can add “for sale” links on parked domains at various domain parking services to drive traffic to their DomainAgents offer pages. They can also include a link to the sales page when responding to emailed purchase inquiries. When people click the link they’ll be taken to DomainAgents where they can submit an offer:
Domainers can choose to charge potential buyers for their offer submission or make submissions free. Charging money qualifies the buyer, resulting in fewer tire kickers. As an added benefit, domain sellers get to keep half the submission price even if they don’t consummate a sale.
Sellers don’t get any information regarding the buyer if they charge an upfront fee. If the domain owner doesn’t charge an upfront fee then they get some information regarding the buyer, counting a verified email address, name, and IP address.
Buyers pay a 10% fee plus Escrow.com charges when they make a purchase. Domain owners get at least half of this commission if they sent the referral. (DomainAgents also has registrar partners that send leads.)
The user interface is fairly simple, although some advanced features are under the hood. For example, domain owners can set up automated counter-offer rules based on how close the initial offer is to their asking price.
The negotiation interface is fairly simple and allows both sides to submit comments with their offers. DomainAgents doesn’t get involved in negotiations, but it will prompt the parties to continue discussions if they go stale.
I consider DomainAgents.com’s negotiation system similar to DomainNameSales.com (DNS), although both systems have their selling points.
DNS is fully integrated with parking which makes things simple and enables easy traffic data checks during negotiations. DNS also provides buyer information for all offers. Still, you have to park with DNS to use its sales system.
DomainAgents’ fee-for-offer idea isn’t fresh, and I know a lot of domainers like to do this to screen for offers. I personally don’t want to block any sort of offer submission unless the domain is worth a lot and frequently gets lowball offers. The free offer option is a good option for people like me.
Another big difference: DomainAgents charges a commission (albeit to the buyer) while DNS doesn’t unless it handles negotiations. I suspect this “buyer’s premium” won’t affect the final price much, but some buyers will take it into consideration during negotiations. Keep in mind that sellers get a cut of the commission if they referred the buyer through a link.
DomainAgent’s revamped system is worth checking out to see if it works for you. It works for a lot of big domainers; Adam Strong and Richard Lau are investors and the firm is lead by Phil McKegney.
