With the news that DAN.com is joining forces with GoDaddy, the dominance of one company in the domain industry grows deeper. I got a phone call this morning from a friend who was like this is one of the worst days in domaining. I had not read the announcement yet and was not sure what they were talking about.
DAN is a great group of people in my opinion, they changed the industry for the better. It’s no surprise that investors want a payday. Reza has always been a stand up guy in my dealings with him and I am happy for him.
This is still a small industry and it’s hard to gain traction, when a new solution comes along people get excited. When they sell out to GoDaddy it’s only natural some will get upset.
Hopefully the heart of DAN stays in tact and customers will be happy. 9% commission is very attractive. Will that change?
Paul Nicks told Andrew at DNW:
Nicks: We are still in the early stages and do not have a plan around commission alignment. Once we have updates to share, we’ll share proactively.
So it’s early and we will see what changes for the better and what is a negative. Lack of competition is never good and maybe someone else will step up to the plate.
I think they are highly likely to raise the fees to 20%, and say something like “they want to standardize the fees on all platforms”.
I will not be handling the leads, negotiation, and paying 20%.
I hope GoDaddy is happy with Dan.com largely the way it is, but if they mess with it in a major way they are likely to see an exodus in business.
I am highly skeptical this offers many benefits to domain investors.
Brad
Lets pray that Efty.com is not next!,
Always had my own landers until dan.com came around. No way will I EVER pay more than 10% commission so my decision here is pretty easy. Mess with the commission structure and my domains move back to my lander, simple as that.
For anyone who wants to know how simple it is just point your domain to:
MyLander.com/?buy/mydomain.com
Anything after the question mark is ignored by the browser so you have a great selling URL’s on a single lander. Now put up a simple inquiry form and negotiate your own payment. Simple as that and 0% commission.
I like that dan handles everything and I am willing to part with the 9% for that but over 10% and it is much more profitable to keep it in house which I did for 20 years.
Will dan/godaddy retain my business?
The answer is simply measured in percentage points
They all end up selling out to Godaddy. Sad.
Really disappointed at Reza’s sellout. He raised all of our expectations for a better and more dynamic marketplace platform – but money almost always trumps personal values and aspirations.
A few years ago they were publicly “flirting” with Epik about a possible sale, making it obvious they are this kind of founders (nothing wrong with that, obviously). Why would you have different expectations?
Knowing how bad GoDaddy is, how rarely they update their tools, the provision and hidden costs that they take, the amount of feedback that they listen too, so on and so on, this is indeed one of the darkest day in domaining. What’s left? Sav, Efty?
I am not surprised Dan sold out to GoDaddy, especially when there are investors involved.
Go to hell GD
Paul Nicks responded to Andrew DWN in the same way he did with the news with Uniregistry, and we’ve all known for a long time how it ended.
Dan was an opportunity for the vast majority of domain companies, sellers…
Godaddy cannot reconsider such a strong change from 20% to 9% because its floating keel would give a very big turnaround in the stock market.
Godaddy will buy everything to have no competition and this is greed.
Godaddy has 21 Million customers, answered the CEO of Dan.com, if it’s true, but at least 75% are Free Domain, Hosting, Website and they all come from incessant advertising on social networks during the two years of the pandemic Godaddy has gained millions of new customer accounts, but they have not been domain investors.