During the gold rush, it is most profitable to sell shovels.

It's not about links this time. It's about drops. Crazy market, where a domain without a site and income, once taken for $10, can suddenly cost $30,000, and all this margin will go directly to the registrar.

Can you imagine the level of net profit?

Have you played GoDaddy domain auctions?

Did you know that up to half of the profit (2024 revenue: $4.573 billion; normalized net profit ≈ $669.5 million) of this entire huge company is brought to them by dropships. Not registration, not hosting, not other services. At 10 % of total revenue, the after-market vertical brings them ≈ 41 % / $274 million for 2024 and ≈ 42 % / $77 million for Q1 2025 of net income.

How was it counted?
1. Annual after-market revenue 2024: $457 million.
2. The segment's marginal EBITDA margin, according to the CFO, is in the range of 55-65 %; take mid-point 60 %.
3. ⇒ EBITDA after-market = 457 × 0.60 = $274 million.
4. GoDaddy's normalized net income for 2024 (GAAP $936.9 million - one-time tax $267.4 million) = $669.5 million.
5. Share: 274 / 669.5 ≈ 41 %.
Similarly Q1-25: 128 × 0.60 = 77 million profit for a normalized profit of 184.9 million ⇒ 42 %

Then they take that money and have a buyback for the sake of top management who have bonuses directly from the stock price.

(GoDaddy launched its current buyback program in January 2022 for $3 billion and already in July 2023 bought back 10.2 million shares for $746 million; in June 2023, the board added another $1 billion. From the end of 2021 to May 2025, the share price rose c ≈ $77 to $188 (+145 %) - growth much faster than the S&P 500).

They even say themselves that it's a pure cash cow for margin:
«Our aftermarket is our highest-margin transactional business» - Mark McCaffrey, CFO, on the Q1-25 results breakdown

The number of domain transactions fell over the year, but the average price rose.
*In 2023 - 437 million $ / 217 $ ≈ 2.0 million transactions.
In 2024, 457 million $ / 261 $ ≈ 1.75 million (-13 %),

In 2025, the average price has already increased further 261 → 321 $ in Q1-25). Source: annual presentation, slide “Annual Aftermarket Revenue & ATV”.

As one of the team leaders on my team says: they make money out of thin air. And it's true, it's like renting out a space, where in addition to the monthly payment, you also get a share of the business of the tenant who moved out, and when the tenant closes down, you sell off the rest of his assets and take it all for yourself.

How good it is that we have our own, local Godaddy. And maybe the scale is not the same, but with a soul and non-Hindu support and advice. And this, believe me, is not unimportant. Otherwise there would not be up to 60% bought domains just not poured, because to get a fat domain is not equal to make a profit.