Some markup your prices while others don’t.
Yesterday, I wrote about how you price your domains and how these prices might impact buyers psychologically.
One reader pointed out that, even if you like to price your domains to end in 111, 99, or 88, each registrar partner can choose to change the price, so this might not be what the buyer sees.
Afternic and Sedo allow aftermarket partners to add additional margin to domains, but how many do it?
I looked through the top 10 registrars by .com domains under management and checked how they priced domains listed on Afternic. Of the ones that partner with Afternic, this is what I found:
GoDaddy – 0% markup. Since GoDaddy owns Afternic, it keeps the full commission and doesn’t have to split it with another company.
Newfold Digital – 0% markup at Network Solutions
Tucows – 15% markup at Hover
Namecheap – 0% markup. For a while, they were offering a slight discount to the list price.
Google – This one is the most interesting. Google rounds prices up to the next $50. A domain priced at $1,499 shows up as $1,500. A domain priced at $3,488 shows up as $3,500. Also, Google doesn’t use a real-time pricing feed. I changed prices on some domains at Afternic yesterday and they still show their old prices (rounded up) at Google today. But you get an error message when you try to check out with one of the mispriced domains in your cart. Google also limits Premium domain sales to those $5,000 and below.
CentralNic – 10% markup at Internet.bs
By transaction volume, most users will see the price you set in Afternic. But some large registrars add a markup.
