During the Internet Commerce Association event in Las Vegas this January, the question was raised to Paul Nicks, President of Domains at GoDaddy, about the possibility of having an option to import leads with long-term payment plans.



Dan.com currently offers the feature to import sales that are negotiated elsewhere, and they handle the payment and transfer process. They charge a 5% fee for this service, which is significantly lower than the current 15% commission rate.

Although Nicks expressed interest in such an option, he acknowledged that the overhead involved in handling long-term payment plans could present challenges. Long-term transactions often involve multiple inbound and outbound payments, along with managing the nameservers for the domains.

Today, Dan.com announced that they now allow the importation of leads for domains with payment plans. However, the commission for these domains will be set at 10%, slightly higher than the previous rate.

This adjustment makes sense for deals involving lower-value domains. For high-priced domains, it might be more beneficial to use Escrow.com. Escrow.com charges a monthly fee of $25, in addition to their regular fees. To illustrate, a $25,000 deal with monthly payments over two years would incur a monthly fee of $600 and an escrow fee of $214.50 at Escrow.com, while the same deal would cost $2,500 at Dan.com.

Additionally, Dan.com announced that all domains listed on their platform with a buy now price will automatically be included in Afternic. This is because the commission rates are the same whether the domain sells on Dan or Afternic, and the prices will also be synchronized. However, it is important to consider that if you stop pointing a domain to Dan and it sells on Afternic instead, there might be some complications. For instance, if you had previously pointed the domain to Dan but then redirected it to Efty, forgetting about the Dan listing altogether. In cases like these, it might be wise to choose the option to opt-out of such automatic inclusion.

It is interesting to see how domain platforms like Dan.com are continually evolving and introducing new features to cater to the needs of domain buyers and sellers. The ability to import leads and offer payment plans can potentially open up new opportunities for both parties involved in domain transactions.