Goodbye Dan.com

[jimmc]

Apologies for the delay, personal circumstances.

When I had a look I thought the backend looked streamlined and easy to follow, the lander looked good and I was looking into personalising it. Then I saw several posts about how Nameshift needs a lot of verification including ID, driver’s license and a mugshot.

While I didn’t experience any of that during the initial signup it was enough to put me off and not enter my bank details, other details, or domains until I could find out more.

If true I would be uncomfortable with that amount of info for what is basically a domain marketplace sales page (albeit a very nice one). Particularly when Sedo or GoDaddy/Afternic don’t ask for this?

COMMISSION
10% commission when other companies offer similar services for less. Atom 7.5%, Aftermarket free, DomainEasy free and Saw 9%. - Are there further charges if you don’t use Nameshift nameservers?

I hope to hear more as we need a new independent Undeveloped/Dan.

 

[nameshift]

I'm glad to hear that you liked the platform. We are working on new features that I'm sure you'll enjoy as well. More news soon! Let me try to answer your other concerns below.

Onboarding
The things that we require, are required by anti money laundering laws in the EU and are also based on the digital services act (DSA). It's not something we particularly enjoy, but the rules for marketplaces like ours have changed a bit in the last few years.

This is an area of law that is always changing, so I'll have a look again with our lawyers to see if there is something we can simplify, but I'm pretty sure that we already only do the bare minimum.

We require the following:

1) One of: id, passport, residence permit or driver's license (to verify your ID)
2) A selfie (to make sure you are the same person as in the document that. you provided)
3) For the bank account that you receive payouts on, we require a validation payment so that we can verify that the name that the bank account belongs to, is the same as the person from 1/2 above. A bank statement would also suffice.

If you are a company, we require your company information and the above information for it's ultimate beneficiary owners UBO's).

All of this you only have to do once, and shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes. For this we use an onboarding provider. We do not use or store the information ourselves.

These rules have been established by the EU to avoid money laundering and for the good of consumers (ironic, I know). Marketplaces like ours are required to implement these steps, also known as know your customer/know your business (KYC/KYB).

I'm not sure what Sedo/Godaddy etc do since they are US based companies, but afaik they should implement the same steps for any EU company they onboard. Might it be that you signed up for those companies a long time ago and therefore weren't met with the same requirements?

Commission
We charge 10% if you use our nameservers, 13% if you don't or 5% if you bring your own buyer. If you have a large portfolio (>20k domains), you can always contact us to talk about pricing.

We think our current commissions is something that we can sustain, without having to increase the percentage in a few months time. We also don't charge a minimum fee (so you can sell a domain for 50 GBP and only pay a 5 GBP fee).

The costs of providing this service are quite high (think: variable costs for each transaction including credit card costs, ~1.3%, tax costs ~ 0.5%, invoicing, ~0.5%) and obviously the fixed costs for the development, onboarding and other business related costs.

For payment plans (lease before own), we share the markup with you. The markup we charge the buyer is as follows:

2–12 months Lease ; 5% markup
13–24 months Lease ; 10% markup
25–36 months Lease ; 20% markup
37–60 months Lease ; 30% markup

What this means for you as a seller:

2–12 months Lease ; effective commission you pay: 7,5% (10%-2,5%)
13–24 months Lease ; effective commission you pay: 5% (10%-5%)
25–36 months Lease ; effective commission you pay: 0% (10%-10%)
37–60 months Lease ; we pay you : 5% (10%-15%)

All we can do is be transparent about our pricing and the way we work. You are of course free to not like it ;-).

 

[jimmc]

When I had a look I thought the backend looked streamlined, the lander looked good and I was looking into personalising it. Then I saw several posts about how Nameshift needs a lot of verification including ID, driver’s license and a mugshot.

While I didn’t experience any of that during the initial signup it was enough to put me off and not enter my bank details, other details, or domains until I could find out more.

If true I would be uncomfortable with that amount of info for what is basically a domain marketplace sales page (albeit a very nice one). Particularly when Sedo or GoDaddy/Afternic don’t ask for this?

COMMISSION
10% commission when other companies offer similar services for less. Atom 7.5%, Aftermarket free, DomainEasy free and Saw 9%. - Are there any other commission charges if you don’t use Nameshift nameservers?

I hope to hear more as there is definitely a space for a new independent Undeveloped/Dan.