Landing Pages for Education and For-SaleHow to Reduce Domain Name Sales Commissions |174
I’ve spent over $25,000 in marketplace commissions and fees since I began investing in domain names 4.5 years ago.
I paid $2,818 in commission on $9,369 in sales in 2013.
In 2014, I paid $4,464 in commission on sales of $49,646*.
I paid $11,102 in commissions on $49,325 in sales in 2015.
In 2016, I paid $6,616 in commissions on sales of $53,660.
*In 2014, I made one commission-free, private transaction of $25,000, therefore the commission paid this year exceeds the remaining $24,646 in sales.
As you can see, the commission I was paying gradually climbed year after year as my sales soared until 2016, when it reached its peak. Pay reduced, and I began to make more money on each transaction. The debut of our For-Sale landing page theme gallery in January of that year, as well as my choice to migrate my complete portfolio to Efty’s For-Sale landing pages during the course of that year, were the causes of this dramatic decline.
Moving my inventory from parked sites and brandable marketplaces to my own For-Sale landing pages had no effect on my sell-through rate, but it did result in my paying around half the fee I paid the prior year on roughly the same sales volume. For those who are interested, you can read all of the sales information from those two years (15/16) in a thorough post here.
Today, I want to go into more detail about the percentage of your sales that different marketplaces charge as a commission by utilizing five actual sales that I generated using my own “For Sale” landing pages in 2016:
$3,750 Stagr.com – For Sale utilized landing page: North
Gozer.com For sale at $4,250 Used landing page: Kiffer
SneakerHero.com $3,450 – North utilized as the for-sale landing page
BeerCocktails.com $3,350 – North utilized as the for-sale landing page
NoteNinja.com For sale at $2,275 Used landing page: Silk
The sum of the five sales was $17,075 dollars. This is the commission you would pay at each of the platforms and the amount you would keep for yourself.
| Platform | % | Commission | Take Home |
| Efty | None | None | $17,075 |
| Afternic | 20% | $3,415 | $13,660 |
| Uniregistry BIN or Brokered* | 15% | $2,561 | $14,514 |
| GoDaddy | 20% | $3,415 | $13,660 |
| Sedo parked + BIN | 10% | $1,707 | $15,368 |
| Sedo | 15% | $2,561 | $14,514 |
| BrandBucket | 30% | $5,122 | $11,953 |
| Flippa Classified | 15% | $2,561 | $14,514 |
For “Make Offer” domains, Uniregistry provides commission-free self-brokerage service.
By leveraging your own For-Sale landing pages to leverage the strength of the type-in traffic on your domain name portfolio, as demonstrated in the example above, you may save thousands of dollars. To maximize exposure for your portfolio, you can still list your inventory on non-exclusive marketplaces like Afternic, Uniregistry, GoDaddy, Sedo, or Flippa, but you will avoid paying an utterly pointless 10, 20, or even 30% in sales commission when your domain name sells through direct navigation.