DAN.com review without nameservers - Almost dead (2.Viewing)

I did a little experiment by adding domains to dan.com without nameservers and looking to see if dan actually drives any traffic.

I did the same for Afternic.com (without nameservers) to see if they performed better.



I made sure to add the same domains to both platforms with some of my best .com and .ca domains.



The results were predicable...


1. On hundreds of domains dan took a total of 2 views in over a month

2. By comparison Afternic took hundreds of views probably driven by godaddy.


In my opinion Dan is virtually obsolete at this point, nobody goes there to search for domains, Unless your nameservers point there and you get punch in traffic it is almost pointless to use the system, especially since afternic is borrowing all their most popular features. Traffic is pretty well non existent and the only leg up they have on afternic is the advanced search feature which is sorely lacking at afternic.

So yes I still go to dan once in a while if I want to target search some .ca's. I'm hoping they display all the ones from Godaddy/Afternic but once they get advanced search for everyone dan is pretty well dead in the water.

What do you think?

It's hard to say, I have sold 4 domains on Dan.com this year, I have not had a price inquiry for well over a year on Afternic.

My running conspiracy was that Afternic would start sending out "Price Request" as someone was looking at your domain.... weeks before the domain would expire, enticing you to renew the domain.

The only marketplace with any level of inherent traffic is GoDaddy.com.

You will get nothing at DAN, nothing at Afternic, nothing at Sedo. nothing at anything else except GoDaddy.

So no matter where you send your traffic, make sure your domains are on GoDaddy (or at least Afternic which duplicates the listing on GD if they are not already there).

If someone is interested in acquiring a domain don't they usually just type it in and see what's there? so it wouldn't matter as long as they end up on a landing page.

I'm not sure how many sales happen with blind searching, with someone buying a domain they hadn't thought of because it was related to a search they did and showed up. At least for a significant price. Did any of the hundreds of views from Afternic result in any sales during that period? I wonder what counts as a view, just the domain showing up in a search result, or actually clicking through to the domain page to find out more?

There are two primary avenues to getting buyers to find your aftermarket domains.

1) Type-in traffic.

2) Registrar (and registrar partner network) traffic. GoDaddy is one of the largest registrars so there is already inherent traffic from their domain registrar, hosting and aftermarket domain activities.

That is why Dan, Sedo, etc. are so poor for inherent buyer traffic, as the only reason to go there is to buy aftermarket domains. A large registrar/hosting company like GoDaddy or Namecheap already has tons of potential customers buying all kinds of products, and that not only gives you more potential eyes, but also builds buyer trust.