What does this mean for commissions with GoDaddy's acquisition of Dan.com?

GoDaddy acquired the domain sales platform Dan.com for approximately $70 million in 2022. The first question on people's minds is what this means for commissions.

Dan charges only a 9% fee to handle payments and escrow for domain names. GoDaddy's Afternic, in comparison, has higher fees, but they scale down for larger transactions: 20% for sales under $5,000, 15% for amounts between $5,000 and $25,000, and 10% for amounts exceeding these sales figures.

GoDaddy has stated that it is undergoing a "commission adjustment" for its aftermarket brand, which also includes the formerly closed Uniregistry.

Most anticipate this ratio to increase from 9% to Afternic's 20% or higher.

Contrary to expectations, GoDaddy dropped a bombshell in January 2023. The company announced that it would increase the commission rate to 25%, but without a reduction in sales.

However, there's a carrot-and-stick approach: parking your domain names on GoDaddy affiliate services incurs only a 15% fee.

As a result, those willing to utilize various landing page services from GoDaddy end up paying less in fees for Afternic sales, at least for lower-priced domains.

This, however, poses a challenge to the competition, hitting many smaller domain sales companies like Squadhelp and Efty. Domain owners using these companies as landers but selling on the Afternic network face penalties.

Afternic is gradually diminishing the ability for self-brokered domain names. Uni is already gone; it can be speculated that this feature will also vanish on Dan.com.

However, it's not all bad news. GoDaddy introduced checkout links for Afternic listings, allowing a 5% commission payment when a buyer is found, similar to Dan's plan. Afternic now offers everything from leasing to owned transactions.