SquadHelp.com rebrands as Atom.com (1 Viewing)

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43.75% for 48 months - wow!

Even 21.1% for 12 months seems like a high number.

Through Afternic, I had a 60-month lease of a domain that sold for US $6199.

Buyer paid the first installment then defaulted.

After Godaddy commission I received $92.99.

lotsofcoffee said:

Through Afternic, I had a 60-month lease of a domain that sold for US $6199.

Buyer paid the first installment then defaulted.

After Godaddy commission I received $92.99.

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Lol, that sucks... what a joke.

I've had MUCH better experience with my own payment plans, I've only ever had 2 defaults.

The first one I didn't really expect to complete it, he was a high school kid and a crappy domain so I told him he could make payments at $25/mo (a price even a high school student should be able to afford). He built a shockingly nice website for a web design business - then never made a second payment and ghosted me. That's what I get for being nice.

The second was the one payment plan that went through Dan - but she bailed after making 10 of 60 monthly payments. That was enough to at least collect $1K. Since I had a buy-now price on it and I didn't even have to negotiate, I guess it was worth my time, haha.

But for sure, if you are skeptical about the buyer (not already an established company), then requiring a down payment is key, make them feel committed - and make it worth your time up front so if they do bail, you still get something that made it worthwhile.

Another alternative to a down payment is to make them pay the first 6 months up front (or some reasonable chunk that makes it worth your time). I don't mind that idea because at least I get enough up front that it was worth my time. It's sort of a last resort for me to offer that, but it gives them a bit of time to get the website/business up and running before they have to start making payments again.

I was very lenient once with a guy for a rare first name, he started missing payments, so I could've simply taken the name back, but I figured my chances of ever selling that domain for the $5K price I sold it to him were pretty slim. So even though it's taken a couple years longer than it should have, he's down to one last instalment.

I had an SEO guy recently want a domain, and he said that the risk with SEO made it not worth my price. So I offered it to him for free for 6 months to allow him to get started bringing in traffic but that he'd have to pay my price after, or at least start making monthly payments. He seemed super excited about that idea, was very thankful for it. 2 months later and he still hasn't touched the domain. So its a good example that without a commitment up front, its not likely to work out. My thought process was that if that worked out, I could continue to sell him more domains on the same model, so it would be a win-win. So much for that idea....

Anyways, always take the cash if you can get it, but when they try to negotiate my price, I use the payment plan to divert the conversation away from lowering the price to giving them terms. I had one guy recently tell me that he didn't need a payment plan. I replied with "Great! Well the payment plan is designed to help the people who can't afford the price. So if you don't need a payment plan, then I guess the price really isn't an issue." I think he realized at that point that he just lost the negotiation and so he paid my price, haha.

Great insight from Darpan:

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I have a minimum offer set on a small test set of domains at Atom. Today I received an offer of just 15% of my minimum offer requirement - from a user on Atom. WTF? What's the point of setting a minimum offer if you're going to nag me with it anyways?

The interested party also decided to email me directly, presumably from whois details. So I quote:

I do not believe the current minimum bid on atom.com is a fair market price at 10K

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This wasn't even the price, just the minimum offer. So he then offers $1500.

I courteously replied and invited him to call me or reply. I sure hope to found out about this magical marketplace where end-users can buy popular one-word .ca domain names for a fair market price of $1500. I'm gonna clean house!

You're listing .CA's on Atom? On the premium marketplace or your own white-label?

just the standard service