.CLUB launches new marketplace with a focus on domain name leasing

names-club

I had the chance to catch-up with Jeff Sass, one of the founders of .CLUB while I was at NamesCon a couple of weeks ago. We sat down and walked through a brand new domain marketplace they recently launched on Names.club and I thought it was a pretty cool concept, specifically how they’ve integrated domain leasing into the platform.

While I haven’t done many lease-to-own deals, I would like to do more because I think it could make some of my domains more accessible to buyers who don’t have the budget to buy them outright. Leasing is a core feature of Names.club so there isn’t a complicated process for you as the seller to go through to get things configured.

The new platform also has a handy little feature that generates logos for you to give a little extra pop to your domain listing. While the logos aren’t necessarily at the quality level of what you’d get from a site like 99 Designs, I do think they stand out more than just a long list of domains like you find on most marketplaces. That being said, and being completely honest here, I don’t think I’d use any of the logos I see on the site as the actual logo for my brand, but like I said, it does catch my eye more than a big list of names.

I originally thought the platform was just for .CLUB names but Jeff let me know that you can actually list any domain on the platform. After doing some searching I found that there are a lot of .CLUB and other new gTLDs on there but since it’s new my guess is we’ll start to see more and more .COMs as time goes on.

The leasing they offer is a 60-month term with a down payment of 15%, i.e. 85% is paid over 60 months. This is a long lease period which definitely keeps the monthly payments low. If someone couldn’t even think of buying your domain for $50,000 – breaking the payment into payments of less than $1,000 might be a lot more affordable, leading to a wider range of buyers.

The listing on Names.club is non-exclusive so you can still list it anywhere else you’d like. As with most marketplaces, they take a cut of the deal, but you can easily account for that by increasing the price of the domain to match. I’d expect that a buyer who is able to get a 60-month lease deal would know they’d end up paying more anyways, right?

If you want to learn more about listing a name on Names.club, they put together this handy video:

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton