Additional Options for Expiring Domains

We are pleased to announce a new feature that would allow domain owners to transfer the ownership of their expiring domains to SH instead of dropping them.

This option is only beneficial if you are considering dropping some of your domains (because you do not wish to pay for the renewal fees). Instead of dropping those domains, you can request an “Ownership Transfer” to SH. if approved, your domain will continue to be listed at SH, and SH will begin paying for renewal fees. If the domain sells, you will receive the commission as per the SH registered domain rules (which is typically 25% during the first year).

As a recap, you have several alternatives while evaluating whether or not to transfer the ownership to SH. Let’s say you have a domain listed at $2500 with 30% SH Commission. Prior to the domain renewal, you have following options:

  • You can continue paying for renewals. If the domain sells, you will receive $1750 (70% of $2500). We recommend staying with this option for most of your domains.

  • You can sell the domain in wholesale marketplace. Expected selling price: about $25 to $40 (minus 3% transaction fee)

  • Transfer the ownership to SH. SH pays for renewal fees. If the domain sells within 12 months, your expected payout would be $625. For future years, your expected payout will be lower (typically 22.5% in second year, 20% in third year).

  • Drop the domain.

While we expect most sellers to continue using the first option (pay for their own renewals), the ability to transfer domains to SH offers one more alternative to sellers who are looking to rebalance their portfolio.

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Grant, I assume this is only for premiums, correct? (Not Basic Plus or Basic?)

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Yap! Could that be already premium accepted domains at SH?

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So @grant what if after transferring a domain to SH for renewal, will it be possible to request domain to be transferred back to me at the next renewal, so I can resume renewing it myself?

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Good option to have. Thanks.

How about the other way around: for SH-owned domains, give sellers the option to own their names by taking over renewal payments?

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At this point, this option is only available for premium listings. If you have basic or Basic plus listings that you would like to transfer, we recommend submitting them for premium review first. If they are approved as premium listings, you can then take advantage of this feature for those domains.

Once the domains have been transferred to SH, they follow the Terms of SH registered domains, which means they can not be transferred back to the creatives. Therefore, please only exercise this option in cases where you otherwise plan to drop them .

This option does not apply to SH registered domains. The SH registered option is primarily for those situations where the creative does not wish to take any financial risk (SH pays for initial registration and renewals).
If your goal is to eventually own those domains, we recommend registering them before submission to SH platform. This not only maximizes your payout potential, you also have the flexibility to list your domains elsewhere in future if they do not sell on SH platform.

In future, we may offer additional options to creatives in cases where SH is unable to cover the cost of ongoing renewals (typically after 2-3 years of renewals). We will make further announcements in the future as we finalize those options.

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LOL, Grant, you are too funny! There’s only one reason to have Basic or Basic Plus listings: because they were rejected for premium! :star_struck::star_struck::star_struck::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I hope that you and SH realize that a lot of us, especially the early adopters, were not submitting ideas for SH registration just because we didn’t want to take risk. If this is the way SH is primarily looking at SH registered domains, that would explain some of the lost in translation things that some of us argue for or against when it comes to these domain names that SH has registered. You’re seeing us asking you to register them because we don’t believe in them enough to take them on ourselves … which means SH is already seeing submissions as even riskier than what they really are. This also explains why some good names are probably being rejected.

I think SH may benefit from a different perspective and benefit from the agreeing to different possibilities and not just one. Allow me to offer some of these perspectives that may help EVERYONE from here forward.

  1. The possibility you listed is a valid possibility. Some names are submitted for SH registration because of the assumption of it being riskier for the creative if they were to register it themselves. However, this is not the ONLY possibility and I know for a fact (100%) it’s not even the only actual reason or the primary reason.

  2. Another possibility which I know is more than a possibility and is actually happening is that a lot of us don’t know everything about domaining but some of us know more than may be given credit for. But that’s not to say that it’s a risk thing. It’s more of a SH is a business and has access to a lot more brain power (many versus one in our individual cases), and also may understand a bit more in some cases. So some of us rather not do something were not complete masters of but that’s not to say we don’t know anything. So a lot of the time it’s just an ease thing and not a risk.

  3. Many of us are on SH to begin with because boosts to financial assets can’t hurt. This means some of us don’t have the kind of money to become domainers by buying for ourselves. It has nothing to do with not knowing what we’re doing, and it also has nothing to do with it being a risk. It just means…, “Hey here’s an idea that I think is really good, I can’t afford it, but I’m giving you my idea because this could be worth a lot and sh and I can now both benefit from it by SH registering it since I can’t afford it” – because allow me to say … It doesn’t matter how good an idea is or how much it could actually be worth. The fact you have an idea isn’t going to give you the resources to take that idea to fruition. Sometimes all we’re asking for is help and in many cases you’re more than being reimbursed for it or you wouldn’t still be continuing the marketplace or the SH registration option if neither were profitable. Maybe that’s how it is for us too. We wouldn’t suggest our ideas and allow them to be registered outside of our control unless we knew there was reason for it to be profitable too. So we’re not doing it because it’s a risk in a lot of cases. However, risk of the name or not, we’re both (us and sh) still taking on a risk as well.

  4. Some of us were early adopters and weren’t sure of the process, so did it just to try it and see if it would even work out. You have to think, many of us remember the discussion being brought up that sh should do this and also remember the reply that sh wasn’t interested in becoming a marketplace and such. Yet here we are. A lot of us, at the time of the announcement and even up til now still remember that conversation. We also know how many changes, issues, fixes, ideas, suggestions and such keep happening for better or worse so a lot of us still aren’t sure about things or where they may lead and if this will even stay permanent. So a lot of the time it’s not about risk of purchasing the name its, “hey they say this has potential and they are trying to make it fair and profitable so let’s try it.”

So, again, maybe it would benefit us all of SH stop seeing us asking SH to register it just because we’re worried to and rather not assume the risk. If you ask me, by having sh register them, were assuming more risk. After all, they’re our ideas, originated from our ideas, and even as you just said we can’t assume the payments again to reclaim our intellectual property. We give up more and more of our commission each renewal when industry standard of sale is 1-5 years and SH only supports 3 years. We also only get so much choice for what the domain sells at. So there is a lot of risk. Not saying that sh isn’t undertaking risk as well. However, those risks are different than us seeing purchasing the name as a risk so we just come to sh instead. No, if you go off that idea and set that as a standard of why we do such, it can make things a lot more difficult because yes it’s possible but so are many other things as well and the other things actually have higher probability of being the actual reason than the assumption of risk just being transferred to SH instead.

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ummmm sure, u may register 50 domains and only 10 accepted hahaha

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@grant about moving ownership of expiring creative owned domains to SH, I just noticed that this option is listed under some of my owned domains, while some do not have it. I have a name expiring that I wish to move it’s ownership to SH, but just found out that it doesn’t have this option attached to it.

Is there a special criteria SH uses to determine the names they are willing to take over, and those they would rather not touch with a long pole?

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As far as I remember, at least I think, has to do with age. SH has previously said they are only willing to renew for three years (which I think should be longer and most domainers would agree). So, maybe those that are older are the ones popping up with that option?