Alter.com Marketplace

[Deven Patel]

Hi all,

I wanted to introduce a new premium domain marketplace we just launched called Alter. I would love to hear your thoughts! As the world’s largest community of domainers, your feedback would be invaluable.

Let me introduce myself. Although I’m new to NamePros, I’ve been around the block. I’ve been buying and selling domains for my own startup ideas for over 20 years. As a serial entrepreneur, I founded a number of startups across various industries like marketing, web hosting, social networking, blogging, and SaaS. This experience has helped me understand how indispensable a brand name is to a business.

Most new entrepreneurs don’t think twice about their company name. Our goal is to change that! A brand name literally has the power to make or break their business. This is more true today than ever before now that there are countless alternatives to every product or service imaginable. Sure, every business may have their own world-changing differentiator but from the outside they all look the same at which point the main differentiator ends up becoming their brand name. In a world full of distractions, we no longer have the attention span to thoroughly research what we buy so we rely on our emotions. This is why large businesses like Apple and Amazon spend billions on their “brand” alone because they understand that customer perception is everything.

Anyway, I noticed that most marketplaces that exist today are focused more on the seller rather than the buyer. Our goal is to reverse the equation and prioritize buyers because I think they are the key to success in any industry. The domain industry is no exception. Without buyers, there’s no money. This is why we’ve made it our mission to help entrepreneurs succeed!

And what’s with the 30-35% commission rate most of these marketplaces are charging? Unless they’re doing more work than a human broker, I don’t think anything over the industry average of 15-20% is warranted. We’re changing that. Alter has one of the lowest rates in the industry, an all-inclusive 10% commission fee when a name sells. There are no other fees or restrictions.

What do you think? Are we on the right track or barking up the wrong tree?

Deven

This was a promoted post.​

 

[wwwulff]

sellers are willing to pay to have their names reviewed

I would like to pay $1 to get a review and a valuation ala BB so maybe you should consider it as an option? so people can decide for themselves if they want to pay for a prereview or just list them as you propose - My strategy is not to sell $499 brandable and I doubt it's a win situation for you in the long run with a commission of 10% - It's your marketplace, so of course you can take the direction you want and good luck with it

 

[NameWell]

That's not a bug, it's a feature. As I mentioned above, premium names will appear higher in search results. It's exactly how we plan on keeping low quality names from impacting high quality ones.

Since premium listings will naturally be high quality, undecided buyers with high budgets won't bother searching through thousands of standard listings. On the other hand, undecided buyers with low budgets and more time on their hands will have the option to find a needle in the haystack. Either way, we'll be able to capture the sale rather than losing that buyer altogether.

That said, we're always monitoring buyer feedback so if we discover that low budget buyers aren't able to find the right names and leaving our marketplace then we'll start tweaking our algorithm to show the low quality ones based on the likelihood of the buyer bouncing (pepper in some AI).

Thanks for the reply! I see your point. Maybe adding a price range filter could help low-budget buyers find the names they can afford? And in general, since your portfolio will rapidly grow, I think it would be a good idea to add more filters like "starts with", "ends with", "contains", "does not contain", a checkmark to include synonyms of the keyword that is being searched, name length slider etc.

 

[Future Sensors]

Hi @Deven Patel

Congrats on the new direction.

I'm trying to change the capitalization for an accepted premium listing in my portfolio. When saving, I get a warning about the number of entries in the fields 'keywords', 'ideas', and 'categories'. However, these fields were previously populated by Alter and I didn't touch them. I want to keep those entries unchanged. Could you please have a look and fix?

Thank you.

 

[tomcarl]

IMHO This is a game-changer and right now a future superhero platform for our industry.

Once those Alter mentions start ringing in the 'Reported Sales' thread, the rest will get it

A boutique-style marketplace open-to-all, landing pages that pitch well, professionally presenting domains with a pre-rendered imagery and descriptions, customizable categories and fonts, attractive layout, all up-to-par with what you get in the 30% commission marketplaces, and all with full control over when, where, and how you list your own properties and no fees/upsells for doing so.

The glass isn't half empty for me on this one, the glass is overflowing.

Good work and exciting new direction, Deven. Cheers

 

[Deven Patel]

I would like to pay $1 to get a review and a valuation ala BB so maybe you should consider it as an option? so people can decide for themselves if they want to pay for a prereview or just list them as you propose - My strategy is not to sell $499 brandable and I doubt it's a win situation for you in the long run with a commission of 10% - It's your marketplace, so of course you can take the direction you want and good luck with it

Thanks for the feedback! It's always appreciated.

We'll certainly consider an option where sellers can pay to have names reviewed if there's enough demand in the future. For now we felt like we could better use that time and energy to market domains instead especially since as I mentioned, a lot of the submissions we were getting lately were very low quality anyway.

So far out of all our sellers we only heard from about 3-4 who want to pay to have their names reviewed which tells me there isn't much interest.

Also, wouldn't that end up being super expensive if a lot of your names are declined? Last month around 3% of the submissions were listed. Even if that increases to say 5-10% due to the pay wall, it would cost around $10-$20 to have a name listed if we charged $1 per review.

 

[Deven Patel]

Thanks for the reply! I see your point. Maybe adding a price range filter could help low-budget buyers find the names they can afford? And in general, since your portfolio will rapidly grow, I think it would be a good idea to add more filters like "starts with", "ends with", "contains", "does not contain", a checkmark to include synonyms of the keyword that is being searched, name length slider etc.

Great minds think alike! We already have this on our roadmap for when the inventory is large enough for it to make sense.

In the meantime, keep in mind that buyers can still narrow down the results by searching for specific keywords. For example, if you search for a broad keyword like "tech" you won't see a standard result until page 35. However, if you search for a more specific keyword like "webinar" you'll see a standard listing right away.

 

[Deven Patel]

Hi @Deven Patel

Congrats on the new direction.

I'm trying to change the capitalization for an accepted premium listing in my portfolio. When saving, I get a warning about the number of entries in the fields 'keywords', 'ideas', and 'categories'. However, these fields were previously populated by Alter and I didn't touch them. I want to keep those entries unchanged. Could you please have a look and fix?

Thank you.

Show attachment 190906

Thanks! Please reach out to support and we'll take care of it for you.

We only allow a limited number of keywords/ideas/categories to prevent keyword stuffing. This restriction will help keep the listing quality high because it'll force us to think hard about the keywords/ideas/categories that accurately describe the name.

 

[private123]

IMHO This is a game-changer and right now a future superhero platform for our industry.

Previous br*ndpa same track follow, currently br*ndpa market place almost dead....

 

[Deven Patel]

IMHO This is a game-changer and right now a future superhero platform for our industry.

Once those Alter mentions start ringing in the 'Reported Sales' thread, the rest will get it

A boutique-style marketplace open-to-all, landing pages that pitch well, professionally presenting domains with a pre-rendered imagery and descriptions, customizable categories and fonts, attractive layout, all up-to-par with what you get in the 30% commission marketplaces, and all with full control over when, where, and how you list your own properties and no fees/upsells for doing so.

The glass isn't half empty for me on this one, the glass is overflowing.

Good work and exciting new direction, Deven. Cheers

Thanks a lot for your feedback! You read our mind.

 

[Deven Patel]

Previous brandpa same track follow, currently brandpa market place almost dead....

Nope, it's completely different. We still curate and appraise domains unlike them. Not to mention our commission is 2X lower and on par with regular marketplaces.

Our brandable inventory will actually get a boost because of this change (i.e. traffic from undecided buyers who land on non-brandables + higher marketing budget due to more overall sales).

While the new non-brandable inventory will benefit from the marketing dollars that are currently being wasted due to a lot of low budget buyers bouncing because they can't find a domain that's affordable.

Let me give a couple examples to clarify:

Scenario 1: An undecided buyer with a budget of $3-5k lands on a standard domain. Since they're not sure about the name they landed on yet, they could potentially buy a premium domain instead.

Scenario 2: An undecided buyer with a budget of $500 lands on our marketplace through a paid marketing channel. Since they can't afford a premium name anyway, they'll search long and hard for a cheaper alternative. This is where standard listings will benefit.

Win-win.

 

[clickcents]

Hi @Deven Patel

1)When trying to list standard domains (say 10 to 15) bulk,it is getting added 1 or 2 or some times 3..i mean the bulk adding feature is not properly working..i hope that other sellers also see this bug..

2) Suggestion for Auto Verification of domains if already pointed to Alter DNS.

3)If auto verification not possible right now,Bulk manual verification to be enabled..right now we have to manually click and verify each domain which is already in Alter DNS (same like we change DNS in bulk with registars)

4) It will be very good if seller gets a portfolio page of whatever domains seller lists in Alter
(Example like www.alter.com/seller/sellerusername/portfolio.php) sothat sellers will promote their logo based portfolio url through different channels which will bring additional traffic and buyers and conversions..

 

[Recons.Com]

So any transparent stats on the marketplace in regards of the total portfolio size and the annualized STR?

It is amazing that all the brandable marketplaces compete for the investor names without providing any metrics. The investors are expected to risk their income by committing to the experiment and finding it out for themselves. And even then their info won't be sufficient or representative often because of the size of portfolio and rarity of sales due to that.

 

[Future Sensors]

Thanks! Please reach out to support and we'll take care of it for you.

We only allow a limited number of keywords/ideas/categories to prevent keyword stuffing. This restriction will help keep the listing quality high because it'll force us to think hard about the keywords/ideas/categories that accurately describe the name.

But these keywords were populated by Alter, not me. How can it be keyword stuffing? I did not even touch those fields.

I simply want to make a change only in the capitalization of the domain name, but it's not possible to save the change I made, because of the errors.

I do not even want to change the other fields.

Please have a look at this.

 

[Charybdis]

You could add icons to the auto-generated logos, in addition to the text.
There are a lot of free (or paid) icons you could use. This would improve the generated logos. Then it should be possible to modify the placement of the icon relative to the text (in front of the text, above the text, below the text, or after the text). But make sure that the license of the icons allows the commercial use of the icons even in logos.

 

[Lord Antares]

You guys should read between the lines.

The main point is that most of the traffic is coming from direct type ins. By making this change, Alter will increase the domain count (and thus visitor count) manifold and they will funnel the traffic to actual good domains. This is why he says that premium domains will be preferred by their search algorithms.

So anyone who has good domains should greatly benefit from this. You will have more visitors seeing your domains through the suggested listings of worse domains. Those who have shitty domains will kind of be used as bait but in all honesty, they don't lose out on anything.

If they listed their domains on DAN, for example, it wouldn't make much of a difference cause they will see a similar landing page at Alter with the same commission as they would on DAN.

In conclusion, smart change.

 

[Recons.Com]

You guys should read between the lines.

The main point is that most of the traffic is coming from direct type ins. By making this change, Alter will increase the domain count (and thus visitor count) manifold and they will funnel the traffic to actual good domains. This is why he says that premium domains will be preferred by their search algorithms.

So anyone who has good domains should greatly benefit from this. You will have more visitors seeing your domains through the suggested listings of worse domains. Those who have shitty domains will kind of be used as bait but in all honesty, they don't lose out on anything.

If they listed their domains on DAN, for example, it wouldn't make much of a difference cause they will see a similar landing page at Alter with the same commission as they would on DAN.

In conclusion, smart change.

They would lose. Because Dan and afternic landers don't distract a potential buyer with another name.

 

[tiletalk]

Deven, I note some of my names listed on Alter.com are also listed on Dan.com under your account on Dan.com.

The last login is showing as over 1 month ago with over 10+ offers received for listed domains on Dan.

Is this still being checked by your team?

 

[Lord Antares]

They would lose. Because Dan and afternic landers don't distract a potential buyer with another name.

Yes, that's true. But if you've got quality brandables, you will greatly benefit from this business model. In fact, I think I suggested something like this to Deven some time ago.

It would be nice if you also got some suggestions for other names of the same seller, even if not premium, so there is some incentive to keep non-premium names there.
Also, seeing how this should increase the number of listed domains, it would be nice if there was some filter to search for parts of words and patterns so non-premium names wouldn't get left out in the dust.

 

[tomcarl]

There is no marketplace/sales platform that doesn't offer alternatives to potential buyers without slight digging/research into where they're buying from, and most do.

I personally would love to see a completely neutral marketplace that showcases all domains within it based on popularity (traffic/views/CTR/favs/LIKES), bumped to the top of the search lists by default. (Like a YouTube-type algorithm but for domains)

Let the domains themselves sort everything out because it's all perception, what might not be flagged premium could be in the eyes of others and sell quicker than the rest if given a level playing field with perks based on the traffic it's bringing to the playing field. Names not that great? Price accordingly for the bargain hunters. Everyone pools traffic, everyone wins.

 

[eternaldomains]

• Loopholes: There are sellers who try to game the system by creating multiple accounts to circumvent our submission limit, by marketplace hopping because they're impatient or didn't like their logos, etc. All of this ends up wasting our energy.

Yes, this new change means you can no longer submit unregistered names for review. However, we already have 4,000+ premium names listed so you can generally get a sense of the types of names we're looking for by viewing our existing inventory.

Just 2 suggestions:

1. To prevent multiple accounts you can always implement IP address checks & make members pre-connect their payout methods. That way it'll be much easier to weed out the culprits.

2. Allow super minimal amounts of unregistered submissions. Like around 1 to 5 max in one go. That way those new to the domaining industry can still participate and learn without incurring too many losses.

I hope you will consider my suggestions.

 

[Deven Patel]

Hi @Deven Patel

1)When trying to list standard domains (say 10 to 15) bulk,it is getting added 1 or 2 or some times 3..i mean the bulk adding feature is not properly working..i hope that other sellers also see this bug..

2) Suggestion for Auto Verification of domains if already pointed to Alter DNS.

3)If auto verification not possible right now,Bulk manual verification to be enabled..right now we have to manually click and verify each domain which is already in Alter DNS (same like we change DNS in bulk with registars)

4) It will be very good if seller gets a portfolio page of whatever domains seller lists in Alter
(Example like www.alter.com/seller/sellerusername/portfolio.php) sothat sellers will promote their logo based portfolio url through different channels which will bring additional traffic and buyers and conversions..

1. Thanks for pointing this out. Thanks to another seller, we learned about this bug yesterday and already released a fix so can you please try it again? If you find any other issues, please reach out to support so we can patch it up quickly.

2-3. Yup, this is on our roadmap already. Though note that if a domain switches hands, you'll have to use a different set of nameservers to verify the domain (NS3 & NS4 instead of NS1 & NS2).

4. We already offer this. Just head over to Settings > Portfolio to set up your custom URL.

 

[DotKing]

As I explore and think about these new changes, I like them more and more.
Great tools for logo and domain descriptions!

I would suggest one thing. Since we can list different extensions now, we should be able to make logo text which includes the extension.
Let's say we want to list 'design.agency'. Logo with just the word 'design' is not the best option, it's incomplete. One word new TLDs are working great as a brand along with the extension.

Cheers

 

[Deven Patel]

So any transparent stats on the marketplace in regards of the total portfolio size and the annualized STR?

It is amazing that all the brandable marketplaces compete for the investor names without providing any metrics. The investors are expected to risk their income by committing to the experiment and finding it out for themselves. And even then their info won't be sufficient or representative often because of the size of portfolio and rarity of sales due to that.

As always, I appreciate your feedback!

If you put yourself in our shoes for a minute you'll realize that your statement applies to us as well.. investors are expected to risk their income by committing to the experiment. We are doing just that.

I understand my email was pretty lengthy so you may have missed some things but I provided a full set of data like our traffic/sales/STR/costs/etc. Most other marketplaces are nowhere nearly as transparent.

We also tell you exactly how much traffic our marketplace generates for each of your domains on your dashboard. On average, our marketing efforts generated over 80% more traffic to domains listed on our marketplace.

As I mentioned a number of times in the past, STR depends solely on the quality of the portfolio. On Alter, STR ranged anywhere between 0% to 20% in the last 8 months. You can't simply look at the average STR across the entire marketplace because all that shows you is the quality of the marketplace's inventory at the time, not it's capability to produce sales.

And trust me, I get it. It's frustrating not to have all the data on hand to be able to make accurate decisions. We face that all the time. For example, even though a lot of advertising companies allow you to track conversions, a lot of buyers use different browsers, make purchases outside the tracked time frame, touch multiple channels, etc so it's super hard to figure out exactly where the thousands of dollars we spend on marketing are more effective. Unfortunately, bad quality data is just a fact of life so we all have to deal with it and find ways to work around it.

 

[Deven Patel]

But these keywords were populated by Alter, not me. How can it be keyword stuffing? I did not even touch those fields.

I simply want to make a change only in the capitalization of the domain name, but it's not possible to save the change I made, because of the errors.

I do not even want to change the other fields.

Please have a look at this.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. My comment wasn't directed at you. It was directed at how anyone can edit their listings moving forward. These restrictions were put in place so that people editing their own listings would have to think hard about how to accurately describe their names rather then add every keyword/idea/category under the roof for additional exposure. In fact, we often fell for the same trap too when we were editing premium listings.

In your case, if you reach out to support we can take care of the update for you so you can keep the existing meta data as is.

 

[Future Sensors]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. My comment wasn't directed at you. It was directed at how anyone can edit their listings moving forward. These restrictions were put in place so that people editing their own listings would have to think hard about how to accurately describe their names rather then add every keyword/idea/category under the roof for additional exposure. In fact, we often fell for the same trap too when we were editing premium listings.

In your case, if you reach out to support we can take care of the update for you so you can keep the existing meta data as is.

Sorry. I've tried reaching out to support in the past about a technical issue. Since then, I prefer to do it here.

This is relevant to all, and sharing our experiences is the power of this forum.

In this case, I think there should be no option "Edit Listing" for premium listings populated by Alter, when they cannot be changed without these errors. It's not that important further to me, just trying to help here.