GoDaddy and Afternic are two parts of the same company. GoDaddy is a domain registrar, the company where you register a domain name and keep it renewed. Afternic is a domain marketplace, where owners list domains for sale and buyers find them. GoDaddy bought Afternic in 2013, and Afternic now describes itself as part of GoDaddy.
That’s why selling a domain on GoDaddy works the way it does. You start in your GoDaddy account, but Afternic runs the sale. Its listings show up at other registrars too, including Namecheap, Network Solutions, and IONOS, so a buyer doesn’t have to be a GoDaddy customer to find your name.
The short version: open your Domain Portfolio, tick the domain, choose List for Sale, set a price, and publish. Afternic then shows the name for sale on more than 100 registrar and reseller sites. Listing is free, and you pay a commission only when the domain sells.
I list my own names on Afternic, so here’s the process, what it costs, and the part GoDaddy’s screens don’t explain well: what Afternic does behind the scenes, and the settings that change how much you keep.
How to list a domain for sale on GoDaddy
The whole thing takes a couple of minutes per domain. These are the steps from GoDaddy’s own help page:
- Sign in and go to your Domain Portfolio.
- Tick the box next to each domain you want to sell. You can list several at once.
- Open the action menu and choose List for Sale. On a small screen, it may be under More.
- Click Get Started.
- Type your own price, or click Use Est. Value to take GoDaddy’s estimate.
- Optionally, tick the box to replace the current website with a For Sale landing page.
- Click Next. If the domain has Domain Protection, GoDaddy asks you to verify your identity with a code first.
- Finish on Afternic. If you don’t have an Afternic account, choose Create Account & Publish Listing. If you do, sign in and publish.
Two limits are worth knowing before you start. Domains in a bundle can’t be listed, and a domain with Domain Protection has to have that protection downgraded after it sells. Afternic also reviews new listings within 48 hours before they go live, so don’t expect a name to show up everywhere the minute you click publish.
Don’t take the estimated value at face value
The Use Est. Value button is the easiest part of the flow and the one I’d be most careful with. An automated estimate can’t know who might want your specific name or what they’d pay for it. Price it too high and nobody bites. Price it too low and a buyer can pay it instantly, because the price you set is binding.
I wrote up the framework I use to value a domain, and I’d run a name through something like it before accepting a number from a button.
The three prices Afternic asks for
Once the listing is on Afternic, you’ll see three price fields. They do different jobs, and two of them commit you to a sale:
- Buy Now: the price buyers see on Afternic’s partner sites. It’s binding. If someone pays it, the domain is sold.
- Floor: the lowest price an Afternic sales rep can accept without checking with you. Buyers never see it, and it’s binding, too. GoDaddy suggests setting it 20% to 30% below Buy Now.
- Minimum: the lowest offer anyone can submit. It isn’t binding, and Afternic sets it automatically at 65% of Buy Now. You have seven days to respond to an offer before it expires.
The floor is the one people forget. Set it, and a sale can close below your Buy Now price without you hearing about it first.
What Afternic does behind the scenes
Afternic’s network is the reason a GoDaddy listing reaches so many buyers. Your listing doesn’t just sit on Afternic’s own site. It goes out to a network of registrars and resellers, so when someone searches for your exact name at one of those registrars, they see it offered for sale at your price.
That network has two levels:
- Standard Network: every listing gets this. Afternic says these listings get less exposure, but still show up in millions of domain searches a month.
- Premium Network: this needs Fast Transfer. Afternic says Fast Transfer domains reach 125 million searches by prospective buyers a month, show on additional premium registrars, and generate the highest average sale prices.
Fast Transfer is what makes the Premium Network work. A Fast Transfer domain can be bought and moved to the buyer automatically, without you unlocking it, sending an auth code, or coordinating the handover. According to GoDaddy, eligible listings are opted into Fast Transfer automatically once any transfer lock has ended. If your name isn’t on Fast Transfer when it sells, Afternic’s Transaction Assurance team contacts you with instructions for delivering it.
Afternic says the commission is the same on both networks, so there’s no reason to stay on Standard if your domain qualifies for Fast Transfer.
What it costs to sell
Listing costs nothing. When the domain sells, the commission depends on one thing that has nothing to do with the sale itself: where your domain’s nameservers point at the time of sale.
- 15% if the nameservers point to one of GoDaddy’s aftermarket nameservers, such as Afternic’s, Dan’s, or GoDaddy’s CashParking.
- 25% if they point anywhere else, like your own hosting or another parking service.
- An extra 5% if your account has Afternic Boost active when the domain sells.
There’s a US$15 minimum commission on any sale. On a $2,000 sale, the nameserver setting alone is the difference between paying $300 and paying $500.
This is the setting I’d check first. If the domain isn’t running a site, point it to Afternic’s nameservers. You also get Afternic’s For Sale landing page that way, which helps when someone types the name straight into a browser.
I recheck this with every lease-to-own deal. When a leased domain comes back to you after a buyer stops paying, it can still be pointed at the old lessee’s nameservers. If you don’t repoint it, your next sale is charged at the higher rate. I covered that in my post on domain leasing.
What happens when the domain sells
When a buyer pays, Afternic’s Transaction Assurance process handles the transfer. With Fast Transfer, it happens as soon as the buyer pays. Afternic says the domain is transferred to the buyer instantly, from your account to theirs, whichever registrar they use, with nothing for you to do. Without Fast Transfer, Afternic contacts you with instructions, and the sale waits until you’ve delivered the domain.
You get paid, minus the commission, once the domain has been delivered. Depending on where you live, Afternic can pay by ACH, check, eCheck, PayPal, or wire. There’s a minimum payout amount, and payment fees apply.
I take my payouts through PayPal, then move the money to my bank account. Since January 2026, there’s also Good as Gold, which pays into a wallet in your GoDaddy account. Afternic says it’s typically faster than a wire, but the money is meant for GoDaddy and Afternic purchases, like renewals, auctions, transfers, and new registrations. That suits sellers who are also buying, and above US$2,000 GoDaddy has to verify your identity before you can spend it.
How long it takes isn’t published. In 2023, Afternic started paying earlier on sales made through its own sites and through GoDaddy: you’re paid once the domain reaches Afternic’s Transaction Assurance team, before the buyer receives it. Fast Transfer sales through partner registrars, and sales through the Standard Network, kept the regular schedule, which Afternic says involves extra fraud checks.
In my experience, a Fast Transfer sale usually pays out within a week. One name I sold this year went on September 21, and the money arrived on September 28. Other sellers report longer waits, though. Elliot Silver of DomainInvesting.com has described a few days to verify a GoDaddy sale, 7 to 10 days to get a payment date, and 1 to 3 more days to receive the money, so upwards of two weeks on many deals.
Either way, fill in your payee profile on Afternic when you list, not after a sale. GoDaddy says a complete profile avoids delays in paying you.
What can hold up a sale
A domain can’t be transferred within 60 days of its registration or of a previous transfer. The same applies if it’s under a 60-day lock after a change of registrant, meaning a change to the owner’s name, organization, or email address, unless that lock was opted out of. So a name you registered last week, or one you just moved to GoDaddy, can be listed, but it can’t be delivered until that window ends.
Fast Transfer has its own rules, too. Afternic says it’s available for .com, .co, .net, .org, .de, .biz, .pw, .io, .xyz, and .info names with a Buy Now price under $100,000. The domain must have been registered for at least 60 days with a registrar that supports Fast Transfer, and it can’t be within 30 days of expiring or under a 60-day lock.
And if you’re not sure who owns a name you want to sell to, or buy, I wrote about how to find who owns a domain, even when WHOIS is private.
Is it worth listing on GoDaddy?
For most people with a spare domain, yes. It’s free, it takes minutes, and Afternic’s network puts the name in front of people who are already searching for it at the registrars they use. That’s exposure you can’t get from a For Sale sign on the domain alone.
Just set the price yourself, point the nameservers to Afternic before anything sells, and think about the floor price before you fill it in. Those three choices decide most of what you keep.
Top photo: Jimi Filipovski / Wikimedia Commons (CC0).
Sources
- GoDaddy Help: Sell my domain with GoDaddy’s List for Sale, What is List for Sale?
- Afternic: Home page, Fast Transfer, Sales landers, blog posts on expedited payout (2023) and Good as Gold payouts (2026)
- ICANN: Transfer Policy
- DomainInvesting.com: Suggestions to improve GoDaddy / Afternic sale process
- GoDaddy’s purchase of Afternic, 2013: TechCrunch, Domain Name Wire
