By: Raymond Hackney
BrandBucket.com has become one of the hot new darlings to the domainosphere. They specialize in selling brandables and claim to be very picky with what names they will allow to be listed on their site. They also get paid to list your domain on their site. $10 per listing for an approved domain. You may also choose to feature your domain on the home page or within a
category for an extra fee. BrandBucket also requires domain owners to
redirect their domain URLs to their domain sales page, which verifies
ownership and ensures that customers will see an up-to-date list of
names for sale.
They get a 30 % commission for all sales and claim to do a fair bit of advertising and marketing to bring traffic to the site. You also get a logo designed for each domain that is accepted.
Recently Brand Bucket has changed their terms for sellers, demanding exclusivity and an NDA.
Here are the new updated rules for sellers from the website:
The following practices are not permitted by BrandBucket:
Non-selling seller
If your domain is sold, you must complete
the transaction with a ready, willing, and able buyer. Sellers who
refuse to complete an accepted transaction risk having their BrandBucket
accounts cancelled.
Modification of listings during negotiation
If you are made aware of an offer on your
domain name, any change to your listing, including an increase in price
or reduction of add-ons included with the sale within the following two weeks,
will be considered a violation of BrandBucket's rules. Sellers
refusing to return their listing to the previous state risk having their
BrandBucket accounts cancelled.
Violation of sales exclusivity agreement
By submitting your name for listing at
BrandBucket you are agreeing to have BrandBucket as the exclusive seller
for duration that a domain name is listed, and transacting a sale
outside of the BrandBucket marketplace for the purpose of circumventing
fees that would otherwise be due to BrandBucket is strictly prohibited.
At any time you may request to have your domains removed from
BrandBucket, and they will continue to be listed for 30 days from the
time of your notification. Sellers transacting a sale outside of the
BrandBucket marketplace will be required to pay the BrandBucket
commission amount, which is 30% of the listed sale price on
BrandBucket.com. BrandBucket reserves the right to cancel the account of
a seller with repeated offsite sales.
Solicitation of an offsite sale
Soliciting domain sales outside of the BrandBucket marketplace is strictly prohibited. This includes listing domains that are published for sale on BrandBucket on other domain marketplaces and personal websites, using
user contact information obtained from BrandBucket or using any of
BrandBucket's services or features to offer to sell any listed domains
outside of the BrandBucket marketplace, or sending unsolicited
commercial email offers to buyers that have inquired about your domains,
or any domains listed on the BrandBucket marketplace. Domain names
found to be listed on external websites will be removed by BrandBucket,
and sellers found intentionally or repeatedly violating these
anti-solicitation rules risk having their BrandBucket accounts
cancelled.
Publication of sales information on external websites
Information on any domain name sold at
BrandBucket, including the name, price and/or logo design may not be
listed on your personal website or other marketplace. BrandBucket
retains the right to be the sole publisher of sales information in order
to comply with customers' needs to make this information private at any
time. Sellers publishing BrandBucket domain sales information risk
having their BrandBucket accounts cancelled.
Listing trademark protected domains
When you list a domain for sale in
BrandBucket's domain database you are representing that you are the
legal owner of the domain and that the domain is free of any legal
proceedings challenging your right to use the domain. This includes
domains which infringe upon the rights of international trademark
owners. Before listing a domain for sale in the domain database, it is
your responsibility to perform the necessary research to ensure that
your domain does not infringe the intellectual property rights of a
third party. Often, sellers only become aware of potential trademark
issues after listing their domains for sale in the domain database. When
this occurs, sellers must remove such domains until legal clarification
has been made. BrandBucket reserves the right to remove domains from
our domain database which, in BrandBucket's sole discretion, may
infringe or violate the proprietary rights of any third party.
Failure to keep Account up-to-date
When listing a domain for sale, sellers
agree to keep any data which they have added to the domain database
up-to-date. If a domain has expired, the seller must request to have it
removed from the database. Furthermore, sellers must remove domains from
the domain database immediately if a warning has been issued, or as
soon as any knowledge has been received that the rights of a third party
or existing laws could be violated by the listing. This shall apply
until legal clarification of the situation has been made.
Reporting a Violation of BrandBucket's Rules for Sellers
If a domain seller has failed to follow any of the rules above, you
may report the seller to BrandBucket by submitting an email through our contact page.
While it is your right as a buyer to seek judicial enforcement of your
sales agreement, BrandBucket may choose to issue a formal warning, a
temporary suspension of the seller’s account, or canceling their
account. When filing a complaint against a seller it is important to
include any documentation of the seller's violation of the above rules
with the full message text and complete email headers. Our Privacy Policy prevents BrandBucket from discussing the result of an investigation.
There is an active thread on Namepros about Brandbucket which you can follow here.
Margot B joined Namepros today with the following first post:
Hi all,
I wanted to reply to a particular point that has come up several times
in this forum this past week — about how we ask that details about
sales on BrandBucket are kept off of other sites.
This policy is serving two purposes:
1) For the protection of our customers. About 75% of the time, after
one of our buyers has launched their company, they ask for any and all
information about their domain purchase to be removed from our site. We
are trying to change the industry to be where people are not ashamed of
buying a domain name for more than reg fee, but in the meantime we
cannot make people feel a certain way about how they acquired their
name. Our buyers love our service, but if they want their information
private, we are obligated to keep it private. We can easily remove it
from our site, but if details about their name are posted elsewhere, the
customer will have to track it down and get it removed, and so we
decided to try and help them out a little.
2) This one we are incredibly serious about. It is no secret that there
are tons of BrandBucket copycat sites out there. However, some of these
sites (run by domain owners that are long-time sellers on BrandBucket)
are converting into marketplaces (selling names owned by other domain
owners, not just their own). These marketplaces are listing names and
logos in a "Sold on this site" section that were actually sold on
BrandBucket. Not only are they misleading customers, but they are
misleading domain owners like you about how successful they actually
are. This is fraudulent and illegal, and we will be actively pursuing
the removal of this information.
Up until now we haven't been very active in forums, although we do keep
an eye on the general feeling about our service. I'm making it a mission
to change that. From now on our business will be much more transparent,
and you'll get honest answers to any questions you have. Please feel
free to reach out to me directly anytime.
Margot B., Founder of BrandBucket
So will you list your names exclusively on a website and pay 30 % commission plus a listing fee ? Do you think the exclusivity is asking too much ?
You Funny says
I am going to give them $10,exclusivity and 30 % plus agree to an NDA. You Funny
picas says
too much fee, too many rules ..as a new comer of domainosphere …who do they think they are ? new Sedo ..or new DNS …
You are joking says
Agree with ‘You Funny’ above ! They are asking too much.
dhana says
Crazy People pretending to be big guys. Even big guys don’t charge this much commission. Free listing is what every seller expects and 10-15% is normal commission amount.
Khan says
I don’t have a problem with their rules 🙂
Name Perfection says
I got started selling domain names on brandbucket. Honestly for what they deliver I think it’s reasonable. Of course get enough inventory you can start your own site for a minimal amount which I’ve done and then I don’t have to go through the submission process.
chandan says
do they market for submitted domains ?
Tommy Coffee says
Well the prices seem like to be an industry norm (brandable industry that is). Brandroot also charges the $10 fee and takes a 30% commission. If you’re successful on either of the sites you make well enough money to forfeit the 30% commission. Brandable domains are not expensive and there are few places to actually sale them and get them in front of the right people to make the sale. Sedo and other auctions will only get you very low prices or non at all because primarily it’s domainers looking in these places, not business owners looking for names, which is the primary target of places like BB and Brandroot. The brandable industry is very niche and not a lot of names sell in the arena. The only way for a companies like BB and Brandroot to make money and stay operating is by charging the $10 listing and collecting the 30%. In my opinion I think taking any less would cause the business to suffer.