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.​

 

[gina ferrano]

A bit of a quandary, as I consider where to list or potentially move a 'premium' name(s) over to Alter. For example, I have a name that I could list right now on BB or SH that would be accepted (or already has been accepted as premium) but on Alter, it would not be (hypothetical) so I find myself listing the stragglers, no logo, 'non-premium'. I do appreciate Deven's efforts, a fellow domainer, and he's very open it seems. And certainly, the 10% commission is a strong appeal.

Another dilemma is I might find one of my names next to an unrelated 17L .xyz type name and I cringe, to my eye, it looks bad. As a potential buyer, I would get frustrated and look at maybe the first two pages. This is why keywords are so important if you click on one keyword and get 4k names, most unrelated to the keyword, that can feel a bit chaotic. This is why some of the 'premium' names, with 3X advantage (18 keywords 15 categories, description 100 character+) have an unfair advantage. Aren't there limits in place?

I noticed that a number of you had questions about how standard vs premium listings appear in search results.

But again, just because a domain isn't accepted as premium doesn't mean it's not a good domain. Think of premium as the "Amazon's Choice" inventory on Amazon. Just because a product isn't accepted as "Amazon's Choice" doesn't mean it's bad quality or won't sell. Another way to think of premium is the top X% of the names we have. Since it's a limited number, we can't accept everything.

Also, both standard and premium domains receive the same benefits except that premium names get a boost in search results (i.e. we market both standard and premium names to buyers).

 

[Charybdis]

@Deven Patel is it a good idea to embed a sales video on the landing pages? You could use the same video on every landing page, self hosted.

You could just turn the landing page text into video. I almost never see a sales video on domain name landing pages, it would be a unique marketing tactic.

And maybe you could include a detailed FAQ on the landing pages, I think people have some questions before purchasing a domain for 2000 - 5000 USD.

I think the long text and the video are not a problem, those people who are interested in a domain name will read all the text and watch the video. Only those people will skip the text and the video who are not the target market anyway.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Another dilemma is I might find one of my names next to an unrelated 17L pornhub type name and I cringe, to my eye, it looks bad.

It seems there are currently only a handful of adult names on the site, but I totally share this concern as well, @Deven Patel . I can't imagine that Alter is a good place to try to sell adult names, so is it really worth the pain to others to allow adult names to be listed? If one is to allow adult names, why not have a segregated section of the marketplace, only seen by those who are specifically searching for adult names, like is done on NamePros?

I realize the non-currated listed possibility, which I support, makes it difficult to control. Why not a simple stated policy that adult names are not permitted? I realize what is adult is somewhat subjective, and the sort of cute suggestive names I don't particularly object to. But if for example you search the .net extension listings there is a name starting with P that to me should not be on the general site.

Thank you for considering this view.

Bob

PS Thanks for implementing advanced search. The .com, .net, .co, .io are obvious extension choices. I like that the default choice is all TLDs. It seems a bit odd that the last choice is .ly, as far as I can see there are 0 listings currently on Alter with that TLD. Or perhaps you see .ly as good for branding, and hope to encourage some listings? With several hundred .xyz listings already on Alter, and reasonable retails sales in that TLD last year, I would like to see that as an option, but realize some others would not agree.

 

[gina ferrano]

It seems there are currently only a handful of adult names on the site, but I totally share this concern as well, @Deven Patel . I can't imagine that Alter is a good place to try to sell adult names, so is it really worth the pain to others to allow adult names to be listed? If one is to allow adult names, why not have a segregated section of the marketplace, only seen by those who are specifically searching for adult names, like is done on NamePros?

I realize the non-currated listed possibility, which I support, makes it difficult to control. Why not a simple stated policy that adult names are not permitted? I realize what is adult is somewhat subjective, and the sort of cute suggestive names I don't particularly object to. But if for example you search the .net extension listings there is a name starting with P that to me should not be on the general site.

Thank you for considering this view.

Bob

PS Thanks for implementing advanced search. The .com, .net, .co, .io are obvious extension choices. I like that the default choice is all TLDs. It seems a bit odd that the last choice is .ly, as far as I can see there are 0 listings currently on Alter with that TLD. Or perhaps you see .ly as good for branding, and hope to encourage some listings? With several hundred .xyz listings already on Alter, and reasonable retails sales in that TLD last year, I would like to see that as an option, but realize some others would not agree.

 

[Deven Patel]

For me personally it is something like this...

As always, I appreciate your thoughts and the fact that you're taking time out of your busy life to share them. Thanks!

Don't be scared of what I'm about to say.

Lol, what's there to be scared of? Entrepreneurs are already overly ambitious by nature.

That moment might come when Alter would have a huge partner network of its own. This network should be similar to the (combined) partner networks of Sedo and Afternic, but without Alter using these marketplaces. Skip the additional layer. Alter has to enter into these kinds of partnerships much more on their own.

Absolutely, there's no doubt that would be valuable. But in order to achieve that we would need serious leverage (i.e. millions of listings). In the meantime, why re-invent the wheel when the big guys are nice enough to lend a hand? Sellers receive relatively the same benefits at the end of the day.

Decide what Alter wants to be. A general domain marketplace for all domains; or a Brandable domain marketplace only? For me, only a really small percentage of my domains fits the Brandable category.

Why can't Alter be both? In fact, with our new hybrid approach that's exactly what we're trying to achieve. A marketplace for all domains where quality/brandability is rewarded.

Visitors can simply add a desired domain to their basket, and check out with their already existing account and stored payment methods.

Buyers can already do that now if they choose to (store payment method). Though end buyers typically don't make repeat purchases at least until a few months to years down the road when their initial project succeeds or falls apart. In the meantime, their CCs would've expired and the stored payment method would be useless. This approach works better with registrars than with aftermarket marketplaces.

There will be fast transfers to the buyer, within a couple of minutes.

That's certainly a nice-to-have feature but in no way a deal breaker for buyers. Existing marketplaces promote this more for their own sake. Buyers don't care if it takes a few minutes vs few hours (most cases) to complete a transfer. Marketplaces are the ones that truly benefit from this because they have to offer much less customer service to complete the transfer (less man hours fulfilling domains = more profit in their pocket).

You will have a huge team of domain brokers available 24x7x365.

Our average buyer response time is already within minutes. Additional overhead would just add unnecessary cost.

Alter will need to have the same brand awareness as Godaddy. Finally, you will sponsor the Super Bowl, become a public figure, and appear on national television daily.

That would be awesome but a total waste of money because that isn't our target audience. It works for GoDaddy because they generate 70% of their profit from non-domain related services. Not to mention majority of the domains purchased there are unregistered which means they can convert buyers much more easily at $10-20 a pop.

Besides, I don't see how sellers could benefit from two companies competing against each other for ad space. They would end up in a bidding war which would result in both of them having to raise their commissions to be able to afford it. It's a lose-lose situation for both buyers and sellers.

Instead, why not list at both places and take advantage of two different marketing strategies? If you get a sale with them, you pay 20% commission. Otherwise, you only pay 10% commission with Alter. And since you can list on both simultaneously, you would be covering all your bases for the least amount of commission possible. Win-win!

 

[Deven Patel]

You could try to list all your domains on the platform for 30 days and split test against your current landing pages (in terms of traffic and sales).

That's a good idea to A/B test traffic but sales are a whole different story. As I mentioned above, A/B testing STR is practically impossible.

What do you think, how many .com domains are there in the world in total (including registered and unregistered domains, and for-sale and not-for-sale domains) which would ever become premium domains on Alter?

That's obviously super hard to estimate especially since "premium" is subjective. But you can get a rough idea of the total number of premium domains available for sale by combining the inventories across all major brandable marketplaces. Somewhere between 100-200K?

is it a good idea to embed a sales video on the landing pages? You could use the same video on every landing page, self hosted.

You could just turn the landing page text into video. I almost never see a sales video on domain name landing pages, it would be a unique marketing tactic.

Maybe, maybe not. We'll have to A/B test it once we have more listings.

And maybe you could include a detailed FAQ on the landing pages, I think people have some questions before purchasing a domain for 2000 - 5000 USD.

We thought of this but decided against it for now because the text on the landing pages already covers most of the questions buyers have. If we learn that they have more questions that aren't already covered, we'll definitely consider it.

 

[private123]

Slowly slowly becoming it's confusing platform. Very hard to sell here ( buyer's confused, what's buy .xyz, premium or non premium ..... )

 

[Future Sensors]

Hi @Deven Patel

Thank you.

Your question to me was:

"What else can we do to convince you to list all your domains with us?"

I have therefore only answered your question from my current and personal situation, where I already have an excellent existing method to administer my domains and list them on a couple of market places that are important to me. Including Afternic with its many registrar partners such as Godaddy. I find it important to be in the registration path of these major registrars, and I regularly sell through this route. The fact that many customers already have an account with Godaddy the registrar, makes it easier to buy through Afternic with single sign on (sso).

It's not so much about repeat purchases of domains in the secondary market, as you mentioned, it's more about the synergy that Godaddy has between the registrar part and the aftermarket part.

By stored payment methods I do not only mean credit card, but also Paypal and payment methods at a regional level, such as iDeal in the Netherlands.

The fact that Alter does not currently offer a fast transfer option is what you call a 'no deal breaker' for the buyer. However, near instant delivery can be a huge advantage over the normal domain transfer procedure for the buyer. I would also like to point out that this is not only about convenience for the buyer, but also about convenience for the seller, the domainer.

Afternic's many good registrar partners, plus the fact that Godaddy the registrar already enjoys such a huge name recognition with end users, are some more reasons for me to point almost everything to Afternic's new ns5/ns6 BIN landers at the moment, even despite the outrageously high commission charged by Afternic and relative stagnation in terms of innovation. They're certainly not perfect in all ways. My way of pricing on Afternic is much higher than on other marketplaces with much lower commissions, where I passively list my domains. Despite that, the turnover rate is better.

In terms of design and presentation, Alter offers really great landers and call to action. The things you point out are pretty nice for a very large and growing group of domainers, just not enough to make me personally switch at this point in time for all my domains.

I mentioned earlier that the changes in direction of Alter, including the changes in TOS, follow each other rather quickly. I certainly understand why you choose to do this and see that Alter is moving in the right direction. I want to congratulate you with this innovation as a new marketplace. Alter has shown that it can innovate much faster than some of its larger competitors, and Alter listens very carefully to feedback from the domainer world and end-user world. Deven, your experience in previous ventures is very relevant and all that knowledge comes together in Alter.

I still see Alter as a brandable marketplace, despite the new direction it took recently. From the outset, Alter has been promoted as a new brandable marketplace, and you can't quickly change this image in my head. That's the power of promotion, I'm afraid... Even this thread on NamePros was only recently renamed from "Alter.com Brandable Marketplace" to "Alter.com Marketplace". I assume that communication to end users will now also change accordingly (how do you present the new Alter today to end-users?)

Ultimately, all domain marketplaces are about finding the perfect name for the end user. I hope Alter will continue to find excellent ways to differentiate itself from the other domain marketplaces (competitive edge).

In terms of portfolio management, most domain marketplaces offer an easy way to update (upload and download) a large portfolio of domains and their prices through CSV. Today I would like to suggest this for Alter as well.

Thank you again for creating Alter, and I will follow you closely. I currently still have 50 accepted brandables at Alter and these domains will remain there. Maybe I will slowly refer some other domains to Alter during the coming year, depending on changes and innovations

 

[Deven Patel]

A bit of a quandary, as I consider where to list or potentially move a 'premium' name(s) over to Alter. Isn't it subjective in part, if Deven is selecting names that may or may not be 'premium'? I used to select names for another marketplace, so we all have different taste levels.

Thanks for considering Alter! And for providing this invaluable feedback. It's much appreciated.

To answer your question, "premium" is absolutely subjective. But how is Alter any different than other brandable marketplaces on that front? Aren't they all technically subjective?

The problem really is that there's no way to make every seller happy at the end of the day. If you ask a seller who owns VeryLongMeaninglessDomain.com whether their domain deserves to be premium, they'll almost always answer yes. Otherwise, they wouldn't have registered it in the first place.

For example, I have a name that I could list right now on BB or SH that would be accepted (or already has been accepted as premium) but on Alter, it would not be (hypothetical) so I find myself listing the stragglers, no logo, 'non-premium'.

Have you tried listing that name on Alter yet or are you assuming that it won't be made eligible for premium? Also, note that our premium listings are appraised by us so sellers can still decide NOT to list them as premium even if they're eligible because they don't agree with our appraisal.

Anyway, it doesn't matter what any marketplace thinks of your name, it only matters what buyers think. From a buyer's perspective, would you rather want to see 100K+ names all classified as premium just for the sake of it or only a small portion of them that are actually premium worthy?

I frequently check names on competitor sites and honestly think they're sacrificing quality over quantity. Our hybrid approach solves this problem because we can grow our inventory without having to sacrifice quality. And both premium and standard domains are marketed by us, not just premium. So it isn't necessary for a domain to be premium in order for it to receive exposure.

Regarding professional logos, we are working on a solution for that. In the meantime, note that a lot of modern companies like Stripe, Quora, Coinbase, etc use text-based logos so there's nothing wrong with them.

There are rewards in place at SH, for example, 50 names, 500 names listed, so for me, at least for now, Alter is not my first choice, but my last. I do appreciate Devin's efforts, a fellow domainer, and he's very open it seems. And certainly, the 10% commission is a strong appeal.

I've come across a number of high quality sellers who don't own a lot of domains because they choose to focus all their energy on quality rather than quantity. So it wouldn't be fair to them to only provide certain benefits to sellers who own hundreds of names.

Besides, why should sellers have to jump through hoops and play games based on someone else's opinion of their names? At Alter, it's pretty simple. We reward quality over quantity. If you bring a high-quality name, it will be made eligible for premium regardless of how many other names you have listed. If it doesn't, you can still take advantage of our marketing efforts with standard listings. Simple as that.

 

[Deven Patel]

Another dilemma is I might find one of my names next to an unrelated 17L pornhub type name and I cringe, to my eye, it looks bad. Hopefully, the search function will work better as well, as of a few days ago, I may type in one of my keywords and my name does not appear, but rather completely unrelated names (w/o the keyword), come up first, so it becomes a bit buried in the mix.

It seems there are currently only a handful of adult names on the site, but I totally share this concern as well, @Deven Patel . I can't imagine that Alter is a good place to try to sell adult names, so is it really worth the pain to others to allow adult names to be listed? If one is to allow adult names, why not have a segregated section of the marketplace, only seen by those who are specifically searching for adult names, like is done on NamePros?

I realize the non-currated listed possibility, which I support, makes it difficult to control. Why not a simple stated policy that adult names are not permitted? I realize what is adult is somewhat subjective, and the sort of cute suggestive names I don't particularly object to. But if for example you search the .net extension listings there is a name starting with P that to me should not be on the general site.

Thank you both for providing such valuable feedback. It's truly appreciated. Keep it coming!

As Bob pointed out it's hard to control these listings because of their non-curated nature. Every regular marketplace allows adult names like Sedo, DAN, etc.

That said, you shouldn't have to worry about them for the most part because they should be buried deep in the search results unless a buyer specifically searches for them. We did improve our search algorithm recently which should help alleviate this issue.

Can you try searching for a few keywords and see what happens? If they're still appearing where they shouldn't please let me know so we can tweak the algorithm some more to push them down further.

PS Thanks for implementing advanced search. The .com, .net, .co, .io are obvious extension choices. I like that the default choice is all TLDs. It seems a bit odd that the last choice is .ly, as far as I can see there are 0 listings currently on Alter with that TLD. Or perhaps you see .ly as good for branding, and hope to encourage some listings? With several hundred .xyz listings already on Alter, and reasonable retails sales in that TLD last year, I would like to see that as an option, but realize some others would not agree.

Regarding the .ly extension in search, we simply picked the top five extensions typically used for business names. Our thought process was that buyers won't search for other extensions like .xyz specifically. Heck, I doubt they search for anything besides .com specifically. If they're looking to buy other extensions, they'll just select "All" 99% of the times. Wouldn't you agree?

 

[Deven Patel]

Slowly slowly becoming it's confusing platform. Very hard to sell here ( buyer's confused, what's buy .xyz, premium or non premium ..... )

Can you please elaborate?

Put yourself in the buyer's shoes and do a quick search on Alter. Here's an example of what the results look like for a popular keyword like "tech": https://alter.com/names?q=tech

I don't see anything confusing there, do you? If you think we can improve the experience for buyers even more, I'm all ears!

 

[Deven Patel]

Hi @Deven Patel

Thank you.

Your question to me was:

"What else can we do to convince you to list all your domains with us?"

I have therefore only answered your question from my current and personal situation, where I already have an excellent existing method to administer my domains and list them on a couple of market places that are important to me. Including Afternic with its many registrar partners such as Godaddy. I find it important to be in the registration path of these major registrars, and I regularly sell through this route. The fact that many customers already have an account with Godaddy the registrar, makes it easier to buy through Afternic with single sign on (sso).

It's not so much about repeat purchases of domains in the secondary market, as you mentioned, it's more about the synergy that Godaddy has between the registrar part and the aftermarket part.

By stored payment methods I do not only mean credit card, but also Paypal and payment methods at a regional level, such as iDeal in the Netherlands.

The fact that Alter does not currently offer a fast transfer option is what you call a 'no deal breaker' for the buyer. However, near instant delivery can be a huge advantage over the normal domain transfer procedure for the buyer. I would also like to point out that this is not only about convenience for the buyer, but also about convenience for the seller, the domainer.

Afternic's many good registrar partners, plus the fact that Godaddy the registrar already enjoys such a huge name recognition with end users, are some more reasons for me to point almost everything to Afternic's new ns5/ns6 BIN landers at the moment, even despite the outrageously high commission charged by Afternic and relative stagnation in terms of innovation. They're certainly not perfect in all ways. My way of pricing on Afternic is much higher than on other marketplaces with much lower commissions, where I passively list my domains. Despite that, the turnover rate is better.

In terms of design and presentation, Alter offers really great landers and call to action. The things you point out are pretty nice for a very large and growing group of domainers, just not enough to make me personally switch at this point in time for all my domains.

I mentioned earlier that the changes in direction of Alter, including the changes in TOS, follow each other rather quickly. I certainly understand why you choose to do this and see that Alter is moving in the right direction. I want to congratulate you with this innovation as a new marketplace. Alter has shown that it can innovate much faster than some of its larger competitors, and Alter listens very carefully to feedback from the domainer world and end-user world. Deven, your experience in previous ventures is very relevant and all that knowledge comes together in Alter.

I still see Alter as a brandable marketplace, despite the new direction it took recently. From the outset, Alter has been promoted as a new brandable marketplace, and you can't quickly change this image in my head. That's the power of promotion, I'm afraid... Even this thread on NamePros was only recently renamed from "Alter.com Brandable Marketplace" to "Alter.com Marketplace". I assume that communication to end users will now also change accordingly (how do you present the new Alter today to end-users?)

Ultimately, all domain marketplaces are about finding the perfect name for the end user. I hope Alter will continue to find excellent ways to differentiate itself from the other domain marketplaces (competitive edge).

In terms of portfolio management, most domain marketplaces offer an easy way to update (upload and download) a large portfolio of domains and their prices through CSV. Today I would like to suggest this for Alter as well.

Thank you again for creating Alter, and I will follow you closely. I currently still have 50 accepted brandables at Alter and these domains will remain there. Maybe I will slowly refer some other domains to Alter during the coming year, depending on changes and innovations

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and your continued support!

GoDaddy has been doing a fantastic job no doubt. In fact, I've personally been using them since they were just a small startup back in the late 90s. They easily deserve the 20% commission if they bring in the sale via their own marketing efforts. However, if a buyer comes in directly via type-in, does any of their additional brand awareness help?

Unless you know something I don't, based on my experience, it doesn't matter which marketplace you use for landing pages as long as it's trustworthy (i.e. it has support options, positive reviews, media coverage, etc). Most end users don't care about whether they're buying an aftermarket domain from a company they saw during the super bowl or not as long as they feel safe to buy from that company. Otherwise, none of the other marketplaces and registrars across the world would be able to sell anything (the ones that own 70% of the remaining domain market share).

There's also a possibility that seeing the logo of a registrar on the landing page can have the opposite effect. It can easily tempt buyers to go and search for available domains instead. I mean who wouldn't want to save a ton of cash if the opportunity presented itself.

So why not save yourself half the commission for type-in traffic and get some additional exposure through other channels by listing simultaneously at both places? Like I said, win-win.

 

[gina ferrano]

Thanks for considering Alter! And for providing this invaluable feedback. It's much appreciated.

To answer your question, "premium" is absolutely subjective. But how is Alter any different than other brandable marketplaces on that front? Aren't they all technically subjective?

The problem really is that there's no way to make every seller happy at the end of the day. If you ask a seller who owns VeryLongMeaninglessDomain.com whether their domain deserves to be premium, they'll almost always answer yes. Otherwise, they wouldn't have registered it in the first place.



Have you tried listing that name on Alter yet or are you assuming that it won't be made eligible for premium? Also, note that our premium listings are appraised by us so sellers can still decide NOT to list them as premium even if they're eligible because they don't agree with our appraisal.

Anyway, it doesn't matter what any marketplace thinks of your name, it only matters what buyers think. From a buyer's perspective, would you rather want to see 100K+ names all classified as premium just for the sake of it or only a small portion of them that are actually premium worthy?

I frequently check names on competitor sites and honestly think they're sacrificing quality over quantity. Our hybrid approach solves this problem because we can grow our inventory without having to sacrifice quality. And both premium and standard domains are marketed by us, not just premium. So it isn't necessary for a domain to be premium in order for it to receive exposure.

Regarding professional logos, we are working on a solution for that. In the meantime, note that a lot of modern companies like Stripe, Quora, Coinbase, etc use text-based logos so there's nothing wrong with them.



I've come across a number of high quality sellers who don't own a lot of domains because they choose to focus all their energy on quality rather than quantity. So it wouldn't be fair to them to only provide certain benefits to sellers who own hundreds of names.

Besides, why should sellers have to jump through hoops and play games based on someone else's opinion of their names? At Alter, it's pretty simple. We reward quality over quantity. If you bring a high-quality name, it will be made eligible for premium regardless of how many other names you have listed. If it doesn't, you can still take advantage of our marketing efforts with standard listings. Simple as that.

To answer your question, yes. I have a name right now I'm testing, 'premium' on both SH and BB, on Alter it is not. It would make much more sense to list it on the other two marketplaces. It's subjective in what you say, what is 'high quality?' There's an inference there. Though you never answered the question regarding names with the 18 keywords, categories, descriptions past 100 characters? Not only does a premium name come out ahead in the search, but it can also be found more easily b/c there are 3X the search options. If I were a buyer coming to Alter, I would stop after the first 3 pages.

 

[Deven Patel]

To answer your question, yes. I have a name right now I'm testing, 'premium' on both SH and BB, on Alter it is not. It would make much more sense to list it on the other two marketplaces. It's subjective in what you say, what is 'high quality?' There's an inference there.

Can you please share that name? You can send it over DM if you want to keep it private. Let me take a look.

High quality to us means the name is short, catchy, memorable, pronounceable, and easy to spell. A name great companies and products can be built on like Google, Yahoo, PayPal, Stripe, Apple, Amazon, Subway, Blue Origin, SpaceX, Coinbase, NamePros, etc. Here are some examples of what we consider high quality.

Also, rather than comparing each marketplace's definition of premium, can you try comparing the actual traffic your name receives across all three marketplaces? You can test it out by listing the name at each marketplace for 60-90 days. If your name gets more traffic on Alter then it shouldn't matter whether we classify it as premium or standard.

Though you never answered the question regarding names with the 18 keywords, categories, descriptions past 100 characters? Not only does a premium name come out ahead in the search, but it can also be found more easily b/c there are 3X the search options. If I were a buyer coming to Alter, I would stop after the first 3 pages.

Sorry, I thought I did. You shouldn't have to worry about them for the most part because they should be buried deep in the search results unless a buyer specifically searches for them. We did improve our search algorithm recently which should help alleviate this issue.

For example, when you search for the keyword "tech", you'll see all the names that strongly match the keyword first. Note that both premium and standard names appear at the top because our algorithm considers the quality of standard names as well, not just premium. For standard names, it looks at the name's length, extension, keywords, etc. Your name's search ranking will also constantly shift around based on its popularity and other factors. Ultimately, our goal is to give buyers the best results possible regardless of their status.

Can you try searching for a few keywords and see what happens? If your names aren't appearing as you think they should, please let me know so we can tweak the algorithm further. We're constantly trying to improve it so your feedback would be super useful.

 

[Future Sensors]

Also, rather than comparing each marketplace's definition of premium, can you try comparing the actual traffic your name receives across all three marketplaces? You can test it out by listing the name at each marketplace for 60-90 days. If your name gets more traffic on Alter then it shouldn't matter whether we classify it as premium or standard.

Ceteris paribus. This is only true, if the way traffic is measured, is exactly the same across marketplaces. In practice, marketplaces have different methods regarding repeat visits, bot traffic, url redirects, etc. And even then, you will be testing during different periods. But apart from this, you have a good point.

Can you tell us some more about how/what traffic is counted and presented in the Alter dashboard?

 

[Deven Patel]

Ceteris paribus. This is only true, if the way traffic is measured, is exactly the same across marketplaces. In practice, marketplaces have different methods regarding repeat visits, bot traffic, url redirects, etc. And even then, you will be testing in different periods. But apart from this, you have a good point.

Can you tell us some more about how/what traffic is counted and presented in the Alter dashboard?

You are absolutely correct sir. But since there's no other way to accurately make a comparison, I think traffic gets you pretty close. My assumption here is that all marketplaces would have very similar criteria when it comes to tracking traffic. Maybe not?

For Alter, we try to filter out all bot visits through multiple approaches. Two of the most effective methods are user-agent checks server-side and using JavaScript client-side. Ultimately, the goal is to only capture real human visitors (unique visitors so no repeats). We then report redirects vs marketplace traffic right on the dashboard so sellers can see how much of their traffic came in via type-ins vs Alter's marketing efforts.

 

[Charybdis]

Can you tell us some more about how/what traffic is counted and presented in the Alter dashboard?

https://www.namepros.com/threads/alter-com-marketplace.1208387/page-18#post-8247845

 

[Future Sensors]

You are absolutely correct sir. But since there's no other way to accurately make a comparison, I think traffic gets you pretty close. My assumption here is that all marketplaces would have very similar criteria when it comes to tracking traffic. Maybe not?

For Alter, we try to filter out all bot visits through multiple approaches. Two of the most effective methods are user-agent checks server-side and using JavaScript client-side. Ultimately, the goal is to only capture real human visitors (unique visitors so no repeats). We then report redirects vs marketplace traffic right on the dashboard so sellers can see how much of their traffic came in via type-ins vs Alter's marketing efforts.

Thank you for providing this background @Deven Patel.

I think that's a pretty good way of tracking.

DAN also filters pretty heavy non-human traffic from their statistics. DAN's optional Google Analytics integration shows all traffic by default, but you can filter out any traffic there as well.

At Sedo there are different methods between traffic measured/displayed on Sedo parked landers, and Sedo for sale landers. It's documented somewhere in a posting from Sedo on this forum.

Afternic still does not provide any traffic stats for the new ns5/ns6 BIN landers, but they're working on an improved interface.

Other marketplaces all have their own methods with slightly different variables, and it's indeed interesting to know more about the exact methods used when comparing marketplaces. A lot of users on this forum are just comparing these numbers without any context.

(In general) it can be useful to know which crawlers are indexing your site, and how often they do this. Not all crawlers are the same. Some are security scanners to check content per company policy, some are scanning for exploits, some are checking for developed domains and trademark issues, some are just indexing your site in search engines...

Often we only want to see human traffic. But even the interpretation of human traffic is difficult. A domain can sell after 1 successful visit, another after 3,926 visits. The way I use statistics from domain marketplaces, is to detect differences in traffic within my complete portfolio. Are there technical problems that I have to fix when there are exactly 0 visitors over a longer period? Why are some domains getting way more traffic than other domains in the same category? What are the differences between TLDs? Etcetera.

 

[Charybdis]

Thank you for providing this background @Deven Patel.

I think that's a pretty good way of tracking.

DAN also filters pretty heavy non-human traffic from their statistics. DAN's optional Google Analytics integration shows all traffic by default, but you can filter out any traffic there as well.

At Sedo there are different methods between traffic measured/displayed on Sedo parked landers, and Sedo for sale landers. It's documented somewhere in a posting from Sedo on this forum.

Afternic still does not provide any traffic stats for the new ns5/ns6 BIN landers, but they're working on an improved interface.

Other marketplaces all have their own methods with slightly different variables, and it's indeed interesting to know more about the exact methods used when comparing marketplaces. A lot of users on this forum are just comparing these numbers without any context.

(In general) it can be useful to know which crawlers are indexing your site, and how often they do this. Not all crawlers are the same. Some are security scanners to check content per company policy, some are scanning for exploits, some are checking for developed domains and trademark issues, some are just indexing your site in search engines...

Often we only want to see human traffic. But even the interpretation of human traffic is difficult. A domain can sell after 1 successful visit, another after 3,926 visits. The way I use statistics from domain marketplaces, is to detect differences in traffic within my complete portfolio. Are there technical problems that I have to fix when there are exactly 0 visitors over a longer period? Why are some domains getting way more traffic than other domains in the same category? What are the differences between TLDs? Etcetera.

So the TL;DR version of your post is suggesting to implement Google Analytics integration.

 

[Future Sensors]

So the TL;DR version of your post is suggesting to implement Google Analytics integration.

Hi @Charybdis

Alter is already using Google Analytics integration for internal purposes, using a fixed UA. I think such a Google Analytics integration for individual sellers is (only) a 'nice to have' at this time, without any priority. GA will be overkill for most users, and the added benefit of adding GA to making better decisions is doubtful in most situations. Not all, but most situations.

While I'm here, I'd rather prefer Alter devote time to making it easier to update user portfolios through CSV.

• CSV download+upload for domains, pricing, descriptions, tags, categories, casing.
• CSV download for daily statistics (visitors, favorites) for all domains in portfolio.

 

[Charybdis]

A minor bug, I can't enter quotation marks in the description, for example this is not allowed:

A great name based on the word "example".

I get this error:

Please make sure the description only contains letters

 

[Deven Patel]

A minor bug, I can't enter quotation marks in the description, for example this is not allowed:

A great name based on the word "example".

I get this error:

Please make sure the description only contains letters

Try single quotes.

Example: A great name based on the word 'example'.

 

[Deven Patel]

@Future Sensors @Charybdis

Your comments regarding Google Analytics sparked my interest so I did a quick comparison of the traffic between the two using a random sample of 20 domains.

Individually, there was a variation of around +/-20% but overall, the difference was very small (~2%). See attached data. So it seems like our tracking algo is pretty much on par with Google Analytics.

 

[Charybdis]

Try single quotes.

Example: A great name based on the word 'example'.

Thanks, that worked.

However in US English double quotation marks are more common.

And in fact, curly quotes are the nicest way to use quotation marks, not straight quotes. So this is the nicest way to use the quotation marks:

A great name based on the word “example”.

But this is not allowed.

 

[ktyong]

Hi!
I was recently sold the domain xxxxx.org on alter.com for $6804 in 12 month installments.
I used several sites such as Sedo, Afternic, Godaddy, Dan, Epic etc.
Recently changed the parking of 350 domains to alter.com.
There seems to be a definite advantage to installment sales.
A number of inquiries and negotiations are currently underway.
I hope alter.com will rapidly expand the market and lead the market.