How to Reduce Commissions on Domain Name Sales

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.

*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.