Put up a for-sale lander

What a for-sale lander is

A for-sale lander is a single page on your domain whose only job is to tell a visitor the name is available and give them a route to buy it or make an offer. Unlike a parked page it does not try to earn advertising revenue; unlike a real site it has no content. Its only measure of success is inbound inquiries and completed sales.

Until 2025 the lander competed with parking for the same traffic, and on a name with real type-in visitors parking often won on paper. That trade is gone. Google removed advertisers from parked-domain placements through 2025, so the visitor who used to be worth a fraction of a cent in clicks is now worth whatever a lead is worth to you.

The page itself is the small part. What you are really choosing when you pick a provider is a commission structure and a distribution network, and those vary by an order of magnitude between venues.

How it works mechanically

1. You point the domain at the provider, usually by changing nameservers — Efty uses ns1.eftydns.com and ns2.eftydns.com; GoDaddy-brand aftermarket nameservers end in afternic.com, dan.com and several others — or by adding an A or CNAME record.
2. The provider serves one page showing the domain, optionally a Buy It Now price or a make-an-offer form, trust signals, and a checkout or lead capture.
3. Leads route to you or to the marketplace's brokerage. Buy It Now flows complete through the provider's checkout; offers open a negotiation thread.
4. Payment and transfer run through the provider's escrow or payments layer — the part a self-built page cannot replicate.
5. Distribution. Afternic and Sedo syndicate listings to reseller networks, so the domain appears as a premium result at hundreds of registrar storefronts. That distribution, not the page, is often the real product you are buying.

Step one carries a financial consequence most sellers miss, covered below.

What the venues actually charge in 2026

Afternic (GoDaddy)

GoDaddy's own help documentation sets out the structure: a 15 percent reduced flat rate when the domain uses GoDaddy-brand aftermarket nameservers (those ending in afternic.com, smartname.com, uniregistrymarket.link, dan.com, undeveloped.com, internettraffic.com or cashparking.com), and a 25 percent standard flat rate when it does not. A US$15 minimum commission applies regardless of tier, and accounts with an active Afternic Boost program at the time of sale pay an additional 5 percent. Source: GoDaddy, "What is List for Sale".

The naming causes confusion, so two clarifications. The tiers with a commission consequence are the standard listing and Afternic Boost; there is no separately documented "Premium Select" rate. Afternic's Standard Network and Premium Network are distribution tiers — the Fast Transfer page states that "Standard Afternic commission rates apply for names sold through both the Standard and Premium Network." Fast Transfer is likewise a distribution mechanism, configuring the domain for instant automated transfer at a fixed Buy It Now price, not a pricing tier.

Also: Dan.com no longer exists as an independent marketplace. GoDaddy acquired it and announced the migration timeline in September 2024. Its nameservers survive in the aftermarket list for commission purposes only.

Efty

Efty works differently: you pay a subscription for the software and pay commission only if you use Efty Pay to process the sale. The Efty Investor tiers listed on efty.com/pricing, as fetched in August 2026, scale by portfolio size:

Every tier includes for-sale landing pages, a Domain Shop, DNS management, payment integrations and financial reporting. Growth and above add live chat, Mailchimp and Zapier; Professional and above add Stripe and white labelling.

Efty Pay commission is a two-rate structure, effective 1 March 2025: 5 percent when "the nameservers of the sold domain are pointed to the Efty nameservers (ns1.eftydns.com and ns2.eftydns.com) at the time of purchase," and 12.5 percent when they are not. A flat 5 percent applies to the "Bring Your Lead" feature regardless of nameserver configuration. Source: Efty support documentation.

Efty launched Lease-to-Own on 9 February 2026: seller-chosen terms of 2 to 48 months, no maximum transaction price, an optional down payment the buyer can adjust, and the same 5 or 12.5 percent split. For terms longer than 12 months Efty charges the buyer a premium and shares half with the seller. For balance: a commenter on the Domain Name Wire report argued it is an installment plan rather than true lease-to-own, since the buyer does not control the domain until it is paid in full.

Sedo, Spaceship, Sav and Atom

• Sedo, per its published price list: 10 percent for Buy Now or parked domains sold through the marketplace, 15 percent for other marketplace sales, 20 percent through the SedoMLS distribution network, and 20 percent for brokerage plus applicable minimums. Category 2 TLDs carry a minimum fee of USD/EUR 200. Note the quirk — the cheapest tier requires the domain to be parked with Sedo or listed Buy Now. Sedo is also in flux: Q3 2025 revenue fell 66 percent and IONOS is reported to be selling the business.
• Spaceship SellerHub launched at 5 percent and raised it to 10 percent in February 2026, with buyers and sellers able to negotiate who pays.
• Sav documents 4 percent: "Sav collects a 4% commission on every domain sold at our marketplace, which means you get 96% of the gross sale price," with free listing. Treat that as a rate that may not persist — Domain Name Wire published "Five percent domain commissions aren't sustainable" in February 2026.
• Atom runs multiple listing levels with different commission rates and exposure, which DomainInvesting has publicly called confusing. Its Commission Match program, introduced in August 2024, pays 10 percent of the Atom list price, capped at USD 300, if a domain parked with Atom sells on Afternic — subject to Silver tier (50 or more active Premium listings) and partial-exclusivity pricing rules. Atom's base per-tier percentages are not published; do not assume one.

The nameserver setting is the most expensive detail

Two of the largest venues price the same way: cheaper when the domain's nameservers point at them, more expensive when they do not. Afternic charges 15 percent versus 25 percent. Efty Pay charges 5 percent versus 12.5 percent. The logic is that the nameserver delegation proves the sale came through their channel.

The arithmetic is worth stating plainly. On a USD 3,000 sale, the gap between Afternic's 15 percent and 25 percent tiers is USD 300 — for a nameserver change that takes two minutes. On the same sale, the gap between Efty's two rates is USD 225. Across a portfolio that sells a few names a year, this single setting is worth more than most sellers' entire optimisation effort.

The catch is that you can only point nameservers at one provider at a time, so taking Afternic's cheap tier means paying the higher tier elsewhere. Atom's Commission Match exists precisely because, as the reporting on its launch noted, Afternic charges an additional 10 percent when sellers park their domains on other platforms. Decide where most of your sales actually close, and delegate there.

What it costs, what it earns, and what nobody can tell you

Costs. Marketplace landers at Afternic, Sedo, Atom, Spaceship and the Efty marketplace are free to list; you pay only on a sale. Efty's own product is a subscription by portfolio size plus Efty Pay commission on sales it processes. A self-built lander costs only hosting — but you get no distribution, no escrow and no buyer trust signals, which is usually a bad trade for the money saved.

Earnings. There is no reliable published sell-through rate for domain portfolios. The figures that circulate — commonly around 1 to 2 percent of a portfolio selling per year — are rules of thumb, not measured data, and they vary enormously with portfolio quality. What is verifiable is the cost side, which is why the commission structures above deserve more attention than the projections.

Effort, skill and the pricing problem

The mechanical effort is low: changing nameservers and setting a price is roughly a ten-minute job per domain, and marketplace landers cost nothing to list. Nothing here is technically difficult.

The skill that matters is pricing, and it is genuinely hard. Setting a Buy It Now number requires knowing comparable sales in the category, the extension and the length band. Too high and you generate no inquiries and no data; too low and you hand the name to a reseller who lists it again the same week. Most sellers underestimate how much of the outcome sits in that one number rather than in the page.

What it does to inquiries and resale

Strongly positive on inquiries — that is the entire point. A lander converts a visitor who typed the domain into a lead, where a parked page usually does not, and a professionally presented listing signals the name is actively held rather than abandoned.

Two honest caveats.

• A visible price anchors the negotiation. A published Buy It Now converts more visitors and enables instant automated sales through reseller networks, but it caps your upside on that name permanently. Make-an-offer preserves upside, converts fewer visitors and attracts more low-balls. High-value and hard-to-price names usually go make-offer.
• A lander tells competitors and trademark holders that the name is available. In the narrow case of trademark-adjacent domains, advertising availability strengthens a bad-faith argument in a UDRP proceeding, because offering the domain for sale to the mark owner is an enumerated bad-faith indicator.

When it is the right call, and when it is not

Right call for:

• Any domain you would sell at some price — which is most domains most investors hold.
• Any domain with inbound traffic, since parking no longer monetizes it meaningfully.
• A domain you are still deciding about. A marketplace lander costs nothing and can be replaced by a real site the day you build one.
• A domain you tried to develop and abandoned.

Wrong call for, bluntly:

• A domain you will never sell — your live brand. A for-sale page on your company's primary domain is a brand and security problem, not a strategy.
• A trademark-infringing name. A for-sale page on an obviously infringing domain is evidence against you in a dispute, not a business model.
• A domain with a working site and revenue. Replacing an earning site with a lander destroys the thing that made the domain valuable in the first place.
• Paying an Efty subscription for three domains. The subscription earns its keep at portfolio scale; below that, a free marketplace lander does the same job for nothing.

Common mistakes

• Leaving nameservers pointed elsewhere and paying the higher tier. 25 percent instead of 15 at Afternic; 12.5 percent instead of 5 at Efty. This is the most expensive routine error in the category.
• No price and no offer form. A page that announces the domain is for sale but gives no route to act converts nobody.
• Wildly overpricing. A six-figure Buy It Now on a four-figure name generates zero inquiries and, worse, zero information about what the name is actually worth.
• Listing in exactly one place and losing the reseller-network distribution that drives most volume.
• Ignoring the minimum commission. Afternic's US$15 floor makes very cheap sales uneconomic there.
• Using a personal email address on the lander. Buyers read it as an individual reseller and discount their opening offer accordingly.
• Forgetting to remove the lander after selling or developing the name. An old for-sale page on a live business domain looks like the business folded.

Frequently asked questions