Paul Nicks is the VP & GM, Aftermarket at GoDaddy. I interviewed Paul back in 2012 and it generated a lot of interest and comments. Paul is in charge of one of the most important aftermarket sites for domain investors.
In this interview Paul answers questions about Huge Domains, Api access, Afternic fast transfer and more…
Q1) 2020 was a trying year around the world due to Covid-19. How did it affect your day to day work life?
GoDaddy, like most companies, shut down our offices around the world. I got off lucky since I don’t have any direct reports where I live in Iowa anyway, so talking with my teammates via zoom was already something I had grown used to. I miss travelling, though. In any given year I’d make several trips to Cambridge, Phoenix, China and the Caymans for face to face time with my teams; it’s been over a year since I’ve been on a plane and it’s driving me crazy.
Q2) Afternic fast transfer is a popular feature, any chance of more extensions getting approved to participate?
Fast xfer is the key tech behind Afternic, so we’re always looking at ways to improve it. While most dev these days is centered around security and stability we are trying to find the right TLDs to allow in so we can grow the network. There has to be the perfect mix of customer demand for a TLD along with ease of integration, i.e., no residency or transfer quirks and right now I can’t say that we’ve found a next good candidate to add.
Q3) Many believe that Huge Domains has an unfair advantage when participating in expired auctions. Can you comment on the validity of the belief and are you concerned so many think this to be true?
Of course I’m concerned that people believe it to be true. The simple fact is that in an auction setting the highest bidder will always win. For every domain that HD wins, they pay more than what the second highest bidder was willing to pay. That isn’t unfair, it’s just a matter of them valuing the domain more than other bidders.
Q4) How many different registrars are now sending their expired inventory to GoDaddy auctions?
Nine, if you include GoDaddy
Q5) You started releasing some sales data in 2020, any chance of a weekly report like Sedo reports in 2021?
I’d like us to get there, but the restrictions around being a public company and disclosing any sort of numbers like that will always get in the way. I know the community wants data so I’m doing my best to give as much as I can.
Q6) API access for bidding on auctions, is it open to anyone? I have read conflicting reports on Namepros and would love to know if you can clarify?
It’s not open to everyone right now because we’re rebuilding it as part of an overarching Auctions re-build. Once we have it available then it’ll be live for anyone with an Auctions acct to sign up and use. The existing one is very limited and isn’t able to handle the load of many users.
Q7) A reader asked me to ask, what is the min portfolio size to be considered for a buyout by GoDaddy? I would imagine certain quality requirements need to be met. Can you give any insight into that?
We’ve only looked at very large portfolios so far, I think we’ve told people >20k names or >50k names depending on our appetite at any given moment. I’ve recently opened a position that’ll be responsible for operating the portfolio, and I can see us getting better about automating the purchase process in the future.
Thank you for your time Paul
Happy to answer followups in the comments
Hello,
I would like to congratulate both Raymond Hackney and Paul Nicks for the interview.
As Raymond Hackney mentioned on NamePros forums that you can ask “anything you like”, have you noticed this topic?
https://www.namepros.com/threads/40k-domain-names-are-in-risk-in-turkey-teknoclouds-com-microsoft-azure-wild-west-domains-godaddy.1245097/
Microsoft Azure should be contacted with you to work together, but we need more updated information.
Best Regards.
The azure issue is a bit out of my realm, but to my knowledge there are ongoing discussions between GD and MS about how best to handle.
Thanks for your kind and response.
Is it possible if any other upper tier GoDaddy directors related with this topic give some opinion via NamePros at least?
As i heard from Microsoft Azure App Service Team that they’re working for an official announcement about this issue, but it’s not clear yet.
People still have an expectation for domain names that’re not on pending delete status yet.
Best Regards.
Raymond, thanks for the interview and Paul, thanks for giving it and opening the comments up for additional questions/comments. I have a few:
1. Transactions generally take a very long time at Godaddy/Afternic. New marketplaces like Dan.com are able to complete transactions very quickly, often within a day or two. Why is Godaddy/Afternic so slow, especially when it comes to distributing funds, and do you see a future where transactions will conclude quickly, both for buyers and sellers?
2. One of the most frustrating things about Godaddy for me as a user is that some departments are totally unreachable for a customer and can only be contacted via email or via one of your support team contacting them directly. They’re totally isolated from customers. General customer support is given via chat or phone, but then whenever a real problem arises- often an email has to be sent to a department that takes up to 72 hours to reply and from then on it’s a long and tiresome email exchange. Why does Godaddy shield some departments in that way so they can’t be reached and is this something that might change in the future?
3. The push system of domain between Godaddy accounts has become very troublesome in the past two years and it got to the point where other marketplaces have to instruct people not to push domains at Godaddy while changing contact details during the push because when it’s done that way- the domain can get stuck in limbo where it’s in one account but there’s no way for both accounts to approve the contact details change. Other registrars usually require using an email or a username of the new account and the push is done. No problems. Can Godaddy look into simplifying things and/or fixing the push system?
4. Besides the issues mentioned, Godaddy has tons of bugs- I’ll just give two as an example. When I visit Godaddy.com- for the past year or so my browser usually shows an error page for a second and only then the site loads up. Another issue- Godaddy often mistakes the country I’m in (even though I don’t use a VPN so there’s no reason for it to do that). I’ve had the site load using all sorts of languages and currencies from around the world. Different pages give random errors. Overall, things are very buggy. I’m just wondering if you guys are aware of all of these issues and trying to fix them.
I think I’ll stop here and let some other people chime in too. Thanks.
fantastic questions, I do appreciate the time spent. I’ll do my best to answer what I can now, some of them I’ll have to send to others teams to answer.
1) Speed and security are tradeoffs, we try to thread the needle between a fast transaction and a completely secure one. Most of the time when a transaction slows down, it’s due to either the buyer or seller being non-responsive, that’s why I push Afternic Fast Transfer whenever possible because it takes people mostly out of the equation. Fast Transfer sales typically payout in 5-7 days depending on which reseller it goes to. We are actively looking at both FT and slow xfer payouts to see how we can improve the timing.
2) I can only speak for Aftermarket support on this one. We recently restructured and added headcount to the AM support team within the past 2 months and have seen dramatic declines in email response time as a result.
3) I’ll followup with the appropriate PM on this, pushes were re-worked last year and the process was said to be much easier. I’ll see if we’re experiencing many errors.
4) This is another one I’ll have to punt to a different team, but I have heard this from other investors and am quite keen on getting it looked at.
Thanks for the replies and for looking into the issues you couldn’t answer about. I’ll just add few more issues that I think are important:
1. As a domainer, I don’t renew domains at Godaddy. I buy a lot from the aftermarket and I occasionally transfer in domains since $7.99 (+$0.18) can sometimes be a good price point if there are no promotions out there but as a principle, I see no reason to pay for a domain discount club when even if I’d pay for the discount club, it would give me a renewal price that’s more expensive than renewals at other very good registrars, who also offer promotions throughout the year (Dynadot, Namecheap to name a couple). My average renewal price has been around $7-$7.5 per domain and for a big portfolio that saves money. Had I used Godaddy my renewal cost would have skyrocketed. Honestly, I would like to keep domains at Godaddy because bouncing them around creates issues with Afternic and it would also help managing them but instead of making renewal more appealing to domainers, Godaddy went the other way and doubled the price of the discount club and still offers renewal prices that are more expensive than other registrars even with the club. Can Godaddy rethink their renewal strategy and put out an offer that would make renewing at Godaddy make sense financially for domainers?
2. Installments. As I’m sure you know, many registrars and marketplaces are now offering them and they help both buyers and sellers get more deals done. Is that something Godaddy/Afternic will introduce at some point?
3. Some of the automatic emails Godaddy sends to customers don’t contain the names of the domain names the emails are referring to. The one I remember for sure is that when a domain is transferred out, Godaddy just sends out the ‘sorry to see you go’ email, but the domain that was transferred out isn’t mentioned in it, so when multiple domains are being transferred out this email isn’t helpful at all for tracking purposes or any other purpose. Please make sure that all emails regarding all domains contain the relevant domains in them, otherwise why send them?
Thanks again for your time and consideration.
1) DDC renewal price of $8.29 for .com is as cheap as it gets for standard pricing of renewal domains. I’m amazed that you can average $7-$7.50 per renewal elsewhere, that’s below cost and the equivalent of companies paying you to stay with them. I can’t promise that we would go below cost on renewals consistently.
2) I’m not a huge fan of domain leasing, as the lessee has the ability to tarnish the reputation and value of a domain in a pretty short period of time (fwding to malware etc). I am in constant contact with our cart and payments team though trying to make sure that we have as wide array as possible of payment options. Pay over time is something I’d like to see as it should greatly increase sales velocity, the trick is finding the right solution for it.
3) I’ll fwd this feedback to our email mktg team
Thanks, Paul. I appreciate it. Regarding renewals: Namecheap has had multiple $6.98 transfer promos throughout the year for up to 100 domains and one $5.98 transfer promo for up to 50 domains and Epik for example has a $6.99 transfer promo for the entire month of July. Dynadot has had some transfer promos too for $6.99 and $7.99. At least up till now there’s always been a way to keep renewals at around $7.
The thing is, with the domain discount club it isn’t really $8.29. It’s paying $19.99 X 12 in order to get the $8.29 price (and I’m presuming also $0.18 on top of that for ICANN) so it’s basically paying GD $240 in order to get a price that isn’t even lower than what other big registrars are offering. If Godaddy continues with the concept of the DC, I hope it can at least consider offering a real competitive discount per renewal to justify the club’s cost, otherwise the whole concept just feels like a money grab. As it is, the new pricing model for closeouts has been tough for many domainers. I think it was a couple of years ago that Godaddy’s CEO said that Godaddy values domainers and wants to listen to them and work together with them. The price hikes since then don’t resonate with that. Thanks.
Great interview, thank you Paul.
Can you list the other 8 registrars sending expiring names?
Thank you
hi, no I won’t be able to disclose our partners
Hi Paul,
1.) Why does GoDaddy auctions still use Escrow.com to process payments over $5,000. At that point the transactions often fall apart by introducing a third party. As far as I know every other sale from Afternic, Buy Service, etc. is handled in house. Why does GoDaddy not handle these in house as well?
2.) Why does GoDaddy not offer some service where you bring your own lead for a lower fee? Back when GD Auctions were 10% I would often just send leads there to purchase the domain. For 20% I am not going to do that.
I don’t really have a problem paying it when GD brings the lead, but having an option where you bring the lead for about 10% would be nice. It is higher than other escrow services, but more convenient. It would lead to extra revenue that GD is not getting a chunk of now.
Thanks,
Brad
Good questions.
1) Good callout, escrow over $5k is currently only used in Member to Member sales (not handled via DLS network, or an Afternic broker) which is not our primary sales channel. I’ve asked the team to see what it would take to use our internal Transaction Assurance process to handle these.
2) We don’t have a mechanism for just processing a sale, that’s more in the escrow.com world. There has been some interest in the past from other investors but it’s not an area we’ve chosen to focus on.
#1 please! We have escrow.com for #2 but Godaddy does have a bigger name but I never had any one not trust escrow.com, just need #1 please. less hurdles
Paul don’t people already know most of them? Tucows, Uniregistry, Domain.com
In the wake of launching/marketing GoDaddy appraisals, Does GoDaddy plan to add any investment disclaimers, or provide any common investor education?
Domain addiction is a real thing. And for GoDaddy to be playing favorites as to which rules apply to whom, eg which customers get to renew a expired domain after a bid has been placed, seems unethical at best, on absent of investment disclaimers, seems like GoDaddy is abusing the position as market leader to create an unfair investing platform.
Example Case: ChicagoPizza.com https://www.namepros.com/threads/chicagopizza-com-sold-for-9-400-usd-whats-your-thoughts.1231873/page-2#post-8208689
Thank you Raymond and Paul for conducting this interview and giving us the opportunity to ask follow up questions.
For my domaining needs I find Godaddy to be very useful and I specifically like the fact that I can hand register a new domain for around $8.5 dollars and seamlessly add to my Afternic portfolio with a sales lander all in less than 5 minutes.
I really like the new Afternic sales landers with the Buy Now option, but I was wondering if you could mention somewhere in there that offers are going to be accepted too.
Paul I would also like to know if you are going to provide any stats for the landers anytime soon that shows the number of real visitors and inquiries for the landers.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
That is the plan, yes. We’re building a new Afternic site (currently the management piece is in live Beta) where we plan on pulling in as much data as we can. No current timing available, we’ll be iterating quite a bit throughout this year and next adding pieces as we go.
That’s great Paul, the sooner that we can have some stats about our Landers the better.
I also would like to see a Professional Outbounding Service provided by Godaddy in the near future.
I like many others am not very good at Outbounding and would most likely use such a service if you all decide to provide it at Godaddy.
There are many people who spam hundreds or even thousands of end users all day long through email and phone calls which only makes the domain Industry look bad, but I believe that if the Outbounding is done in a more professional and central way to a hanful of end users for highly targeted domains that relate directly to the products and services that their company provides then such a service would be of great value to both end users and domainers.
Godaddy can also conduct auctions if multiple end users show interest in the same domain name.
HI Paul..Thank you for yout answers and i have a specific question regarding the new sale landers introduced NS5 & NS6.
Q.When we add a domain in afternic and pointed the DNS to NS5 & NS6 with BIN,domain resolves beautifully with a BIN landing page and it is nice..But when a buyer adds this domain to cart,it goes to GD cart and asking for additional amount of $7.99 renewal fee or $18.99 transfer fee along with the domain BIN price..If the buyer remove this additional price,entire domain purchase is getting cancelled.Even domain which are registered in GD very recently also,these additional amounts are showing..But if the buyer directly purchase from afternic,there is only BIN price to pay..If i put a domain in afternic for $1995 for sale,buyer has to pay only that amount..But he clicks the NS5 & NS6 lander BIN,he has pay additional amounts..please look into it as this may distract some buyers thinking off additional payments like Taxes extra..
Likely not something we’ll change. When a domain is purchased through Afternic, it goes through our “slow transfer” process that requires authcodes to be sent between owner and buyer and allows the buyer to choose which registrar they want to initiate the xfer through. Although slow xfer does allow cases where only a push is required (thus no extra fee) the whole process adds friction.
Our Fast Transfer process is used for the BIN lander and greatly speeds up the sale and xfer of a domain with less friction in the process. We found with our namefind portfolio that fast xfer listings performed 3-5X better than non-FT.
One other area of concern with removing the xfer fee, along with the extra 1 year of registration, is that a customer buying the domain may not understand that they need to renew in less than a year. With the current process, they get 1yr + whatever time was left on the registration term which I feel is a better user experience.
Thank you Paul for the explanation and hope that the new BIN landers are ofcourse boosting sales..As a test,I also moved all domains to the BIN landers and results awaiting..Once again thank you for your time and prompt answers for all Questions from everybody.
Hi Paul, Thanks for your Q&A. I have one question regardng Aftermarket. GoDaddy has own some extensions. As a seller we list other extensions like .xyz. Does afternic gives same preference to all the extensions? Or it gives GD owned extensions first preference?
Thanks for your time.
Each registrar has the ability to weigh TLDs however they like, but generally speaking it is the SLD that determines what is shown to a potential buyer. I know we’ve had some good XYZ sales recently and haven’t made any changes that would impact that TLD specifically.
Thank you for answering our questions, Paul. My question is about the aftermarket, specifically the fact that more and more domain BIN listings seem to be unreliable or even fraudulent. I also posted the same comment over at Morgan Linton’s blog, but it’s more likely you’ll see it here.
In the last month I found 2 1-keyword .com’s that were for sale via auction with a BIN price of low $x,xxx and mid $x,xxx, I bought them and after a few weeks I received a refund because in one case the domain was no longer owned by the original lister and in another the domain was listed fraudulently.
While a low $x,xxx BIN for a 1-keyword .com should certainly raise a red flag, an investor can’t simply ignore a great listing and let someone else test its validity. Furthemore, everytime, I hate waiting 1 or 2 weeks during which you wonder whether the purchase is genuine or not. And, as all domainers have experienced, it’s frustrating to eventually find out it isn’t and realize you have waisted time and have locked a good chunk of your liquidity, which maybe made you lose a great buying opportunity somewhere else in the meantime.
Why can’t GoDaddy simply end all this once and for all? As a customer, when I make a purchase and submit payment, I just want to be confindent that I’ll get it soon in my account.
Hey Joe, we’re investing quite a bit this year in domain listing integrity. I don’t think we’ll ever get to “once and for all” stage, but we can make steps to doing it better. We’ve looked at several options including DNS txt records and working with partner registrars to validate ownership, but challenges exist with every implementation. Our plan currently is to continue to add layers of validation until we get coverage that we’re happy with. This won’t happen at once, but instead over a series of releases starting this year.
Paul, I was wondering if Godaddy could put a link in the Whois to go to the Afternic listing for the domains that are for sale.