Since I started investing in domain names 4.5 years ago I paid more than $25,000 in marketplace commission and fees.
- in 2013 I paid $2,818 in commission on $9,369 in sales
- in 2014 I paid $4,464 in commission on $49,646 in sales*
- in 2015 I paid $11,102 in commissions on $49,325 in sales
- in 2016 I paid $6,616 in commissions on $53,660 in sales
*I made one commission-free, private sale of $25,000 in 2014 so the commission paid during this year is over the remaining $24,646 in sales.
As you can see the commission I was paying gradually increased year over year as I grew my sales until 2016 when the commission I paid dropped and I started to take more profit on each sale. What caused this significant decrease was the launch of our For-Sale landing page theme gallery in January that year and my decision to move my entire portfolio to Efty’s For-Sale landing pages over the cause of that year.
As expected, moving my inventory away from parked pages and brandable marketplaces to my own For-Sale landing pages did not affect my sell-through rate but it did result in paying about half the amount of commission as I did the previous year on pretty much the same sales volume. For those of you interested, you can read all the nitty-gritty sales details from those two years (15/16) in a detailed post here.
Today I want to dive a bit deeper into the commission the various marketplaces take on your sales by using real examples of five sales I’ve made trough my own For-Sale landing pages during 2016:
- Stagr.com $ 3,750 – For-Sale Landing page used: North
- Gozer.com $4,250 – For-Sale Landing page used: Kiffer
- SneakerHero.com $3,450 – For-Sale landing page used: North
- BeerCocktails.com $3,350 – For-Sale landing page used: North
- NoteNinja.com $2,275 – For-Sale Landing page used: Silk
These five sales totaled $17,075 in revenue. This is how much you would pay at each of the platforms as a commission and how much you would put in your pocket.
| 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 |
*Uniregistry offers commission-free self-brokerage service for “Make Offer” domains.
As you can see in the example above you can save thousands of dollars by harnessing the power of the type-in traffic on your domain name portfolio using your own For-Sale landing pages. An added bonus (and highly recommended) is that you can still list your inventory on any non-exclusive marketplace such as Afternic, Uniregistry, GoDaddy, Sedo, or Flippa to maximize reach and increase your portfolio’s exposure but you will prevent paying an absolutely unnecessary 10, 20 or even 30% in sales commission when your domain name sells trough direct navigation.
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Thanks for the info. Efty has helped me with keeping all my domains organized so I know where and at what site I have my domains listed. Like you said “An added bonus (and highly recommended) is that you can still list your inventory on any non-exclusive marketplace such as Afternic, Uniregistry, GoDaddy, Sedo, or Flippa to maximize reach and increase your portfolio’s exposure”
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Thanks for sharing the info Doron. I believe Efty most likely has the best landing pages to get sales for domains, especially for high quality domains which also get type in traffic. I also like the payment feature you have integrated to allow a choice between Escrow.com and PayoneerEscrow as well as Paypal. I really like all the landing pages. I do have one question/request though, will you ever introduce the feature to allow a custom background for each individual domain? I know for now you do allow one custom background for all domains, but there are so many niches for domain names that one custom background sometimes does not fit all niches.
Allowing a custom background for each domain will help everyone use a custom background for the individual niche domains, e.g the domains could be in these niches such as exotic car , maids, private jets, dental and many more. I believe having a custom background for each domain will also help increase sales even more. Thank you for providing an amazing platform to sell domains. Efty definitely helps non techy domainers who can not build a custom marketplace and landing pages to sell domains.
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Hi MK, thank you for the kind words. We actually already allow you to upload a custom background image for each domain name individually. When you will do this it will “overwrite” the default custom background that you have uploaded but only for that specific domain name. Here is a step by step guide on how to do this:
https://blog.efty.com/customer-support/upload-a-custom-background-image-for-your-for-sale-landing-pages/
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Hi Doron, wow I am really impressed at such a fast response. I didn’t realize that it could be done for each individual domain. For some reason I thought it was only one custom background for all domains, because when I tried to do it for different domains it didn’t work. That just shows how technical savvy I am lol.. This is awesome news. Thank you so much.
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