Efty founder brings up an important topic for Domain Investors – Sales Commission

Sales Commission

Doron Vermaat, the founder of Efty.com shared an article on their blog today that I think should probably be required reading for new domain investors. Heck, I’d say it’s good for experienced investors to read as well since it’s a topic that should really be top of mind. In the article Doron shares some of his past domain sales history and the commission that he paid on these deals.

Commissions on domain sales can vary quite a bit from service to service but it’s no secret that domain listing services tend to charge a fairly hefty fee. Popular brandable domain marketplace Brandbucket for example charges a $10 listing fee, a $100 – $500 logo design fee, and a 30% commission which can mean that a pretty meaningful chunk of change can disappear if you make a sale through the service.

That being said, in many cases services like Brandbucket enable a sale that you might not have made without them so it’s hard to complain. Also domain investors can solve for this pretty easily by listing domains on services like Brandbucket for 30% – 40% more than what they actually want to sell for…but the question is, does this limit sales velocity?

In his article Doron recommended using For Sale Landing pages to take advantage of type-in traffic coming to the domain, which could be a potential buyer.

As you can see in the example above you can save thousands of dollars by harnessing the power of the type-in traffic on your domain name portfolio using your own For-Sale landing pages. An added bonus (and highly recommended) is that you can still list your inventory on any non-exclusive marketplace such as Afternic, Uniregistry, GoDaddy, Sedo, or Flippa to maximize reach and increase your portfolio’s exposure but you will prevent paying an absolutely unnecessary 10, 20 or even 30% in sales commission when your domain name sells trough direct navigation. (Source – Efty blog)

For me personally I definitely sell more domains through landing pages than through domain sales services. That being said, I do think that some of the names of sold through domain sales services would have likely never sold if they weren’t listed there.

What do you think? Comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton