Go Daddy Marketplace offers lifetime membership fee and cuts commissions

The Go Daddy Group Inc., an Internet domain registrar and web hosting company that also provides e-commerce services and technology, has simplified its pricing structure in a bid to draw more merchants into the virtual marketplace it launched in January, the company says.

With the price change, online sellers can now list products in GoDaddy’s Marketplace, a marketplace resembling eBay’s, for a flat fee of $19.99 for lifetime membership plus a 9% commission on every sale. Under the former pricing structure, sellers paid $5 monthly for listing products plus a 10% commission on each sale.

For the membership fee, sellers get basic technology such as shopping cart functionality. A proprietary tool called the Import Wizard also allows online sellers who use the company’s Quick Shopping Cart functionality on their own sites to import products from their sites directly into Go Daddy’s Marketplace.

The Marketplace expands exposure for the products of sole-proprietor sellers, its target, the company says.

“There are always concerns from a seller perspective about delivering an ROI that is higher than that monthly fee you are paying,” says Jonathan Cottrell, general manager of marketing solutions. “So we wanted to simplify things and make this a no-brainer way to distribute your products online.”

Because the new pricing structure was instituted earlier this month, Cottrell says the company doesn’t have results to share yet. However, he says sellers are “very happy” with the change, and that the company has seen an increase in the number of sellers interested in listing products.
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