Results from One Month with Afternic Boost

Afternic began charging for its upgraded “Boost” features on September 4th. Instead of paying 15% commission for selling a domain name via Afternic with their nameservers enabled, sellers now pay 20% commission. Sellers could opt out of Boost if they preferred, and the commission fee would remain at 15%. They would not have some of the search and result page features discussed by Afternic if they opted out.

I have a portfolio hovering around 2,000 domain names. When Boost went into effect, I kept all of my domain names priced below $2,000 opted-in to Boost. Those 1,000+ domain names all have Afternic nameservers, and I think nearly all of them have the new “custom” landing page design. Some have make offer enabled and others are just BIN or BIN + LTO.

For nearly all of the other domain names priced above $2k (with the exception of 100+/-), I am using my own landing pages on Embrace.com or Efty landing pages created with their Smart Lander design.

My feeling is that if someone is willing and able to pay above $2k and only knows the GoDaddy search channel, they can pay $119.99 + 20% commission to try and buy my domain name via the GoDaddy DBS. Other registrars, like Namecheap, offer a similar service or link to a service like DomainAgents. Most others will visit the domain name to see if they can buy try and buy it.

With that being said, I thought I would share some results from the first month with the additional commission fee due to Boost.

• 2 BIN sales of $997
• 1 BIN sale of $999
• 1 BIN sale of $1,999
• 1 LTO sale of $997 over 10 months

This amounts to $5,092 in revenue with a commission fee of $1,018, netting me about $4,073. Had the Boost fee not have been added, I would have netted $4,328, so a difference of a little more than $250. All of these sales have been paid out.

In addition to these five sales, I have two domain names that have gone “On Hold” at Afternic within the last 24 hours. One is priced at $1,999 and the other is priced at $997. Hopefully both sales close.

Five sales at Afternic in a single month is more than average for me and would impute a 3% annual STR for my Afternic listings. Although the revenue number doesn’t move the needle, it’s still nice to profitably move inventory.

I don’t believe the higher number of sales was because of the Boost program since its features have been active for months. Based on the number of inquiries for my higher value domain names, I think there was a bit of repressed demand over the Summer months, and companies are beginning to make more domain name acquisitions as we hit Q4. I could be wrong, but that’s the trouble with trying to observe macro trends with a relatively small portfolio.

In addition to the 5 Afternic sales and two pending sales, I also closed a $16,000 deal via the DBS team. I can say with certainty that I earned more on the deal as a result of the Boost program.

Prior to Boost, this domain name was priced at $14,999 on Afternic. Around the time I moved my higher priced domain names to Efty, I increased the price of this domain name to $25,000. A buyer made a $2k offer via GoDaddy DBS. The broker was able to get the offer increased to $5k. I countered at $18k (net to me). A couple of days later, the broker brought a $16k offer net to me and I approved. The funds will probably be sent today.

Had this domain name sold in August via Afternic with the 15% commission fee, I would have made $12,750. Had it sold via Afternic with Boost enabled, I would have made $12,000. As a result of the strategic decision to remove higher value names from Afternic, I earned several thousand more from this sale. Not too shabby for a $12 auction win from 2022.

All in all, I am content with Boost so far. With a portfolio as small as mine, some months are better than others. Private offers are up for my portfolio in general, so it could just be the overall market that is impacting my business. I don’t plan to make additional changes to my portfolio on Afternic.