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.​

 

[Charybdis]

Overall great improvements!

But sadly you no longer design logos for free, don't you? It's actually a price increase for sellers, because previously the logo design was free for premium names, now sellers must pay 5 USD / logo.

Could you please continue designing logos for free for those domains which were selected as "premium quality" by your AI? It is also your best interest to sell as many domains and as quickly as possible, and the logos help to highlight great domains. But if sellers won't pay the extra fees for the logo design, then these domains will have less chance to sell.

And I miss the free appraisals, too. Could you please introduce a paid appraisal option? For example, manual appraisal could cost 1 USD / domain, and then you would manually appraise a domain and suggest a price tag. My problem now is that the automated appraisal tool is not that accurate, and you no longer suggest a price tag in case of premium domains, so sellers are now in the dark about how to price a domain.

There are 3 small bugs:

1) in case of previously premium names, on the similar names section you list the same domain name as well which is displayed on the landing page. For example: https://alter.com/names/pan.com
As you can see, the same domain name, pan.com is listed again under the "Similar Business Names" section.

2) And the other issue: you display the phone number in a format which is confusing.

Please display the phone number on the landing pages in numbers only and include the international country calling code as well. Non-US visitors won't be able to call this number in this format. And people have smartphones which display numbers only when dialing a number, so displaying a phone number with letters is confusing, it only applies to old phones when there were both letters and numbers on the buttons (now smartphones don't even have buttons anymore).

3) third bug: if you insert a space before the search query by mistake, then Alter won't be able to recognize the keyword and it will display the default view only.

Example:

https://alter.com/names?q=+tech
As you can see, there is an extra space before the word tech. In this case, the search results are not related to tech, but this is the default view only.

Now without the extra space:
https://alter.com/names?q=tech

it works now. But that extra space shouldn't affect the search results, just remove spaces before and after the search query before displaying the results.

 

[SuperBrander]

Congrats on the latest improvements. They seem like a good step in the right direction. Personally I didn't like the whole premium vs non premium concept. I went to Alter now to see how things look after the latest change. After sorting by price high to low, I got extremely bizarre results. Some insane prices for bad domains alongside high end dictionary words. So even if the new algorithm is working well in other aspects, the sort by price option is totally wacky at the moment due to the mix of domains that were curated by Alter mixed in with domains people added and assigned their own prices to. I don't know how a potential buyer can sort by price without being confused by this. @Deven Patel Can you please comment about this matter? Thanks.

 

[Charybdis]

I don’t see the option making offer from the landing page. Am missing something?

@johnn now Alter supports the make offer option.

 

[tomcarl]

Great update and improvements! Hoping to see a search by category display but maybe on next one.

 

[ddesigns]

This are indeed features that you @Deven Patel have come up with in Alter. I am sure its going to give a run to the competitors. My half portfolio is at Alter currently and seeing good traffic (both direct and partner network). I would like to know how accurate will be the Appraisal that you have integrated in the site, I tested it today for one of my name and it showed 5000 USD, same name was appraised by Brandpa for 1000 USD and was rejected by SH So just wanted to know how accurate they are, as it will help us in pricing the names.

Also the traffic that we see daily, is this the real "human" traffic or it counts bots as well? Because one name that I have parked on Alter showed 600+ traffic in one day and from second day it was not showing any traffic/less traffic.

I'll be happy if you guide on this.

Wishing you best of luck with the new updates, Waiting for 1st sale on Alter and then will move all my domains here

Keep rocking..

 

[Deven Patel]

seems the appraisal doesn't work well for 2 word combinations.
Example: SmartShop .com & ShopSmart .com have appraisals of $389.

Sorry about that! There was a bug that we didn't catch during deployment which impacted all the appraisals. We released a fix around midnight last night. Now those names are appraised at $5,265 and $2,003 respectively which is much more reasonable.

But sadly you no longer design logos for free, don't you? It's actually a price increase for sellers, because previously the logo design was free for premium names, now sellers must pay 5 USD / logo.

Could you please continue designing logos for free for those domains which were selected as "premium quality" by your AI? It is also your best interest to sell as many domains and as quickly as possible, and the logos help to highlight great domains. But if sellers won't pay the extra fees for the logo design, then these domains will have less chance to sell.

You're right unfortunately. I do understand your concern but I don't think it's a price increase because all other companies that do offer it for free charge you 30% commission (3X more than us).

At first this was a symptom of us no longer curating names manually. But then we dug into our data and realized that the free logos resulted in a major loss for us too because sellers often jumped from one marketplace to another without any consequences (thus a lot of the money we spent on logos was wasted).

I absolutely agree logos make a difference which is why we offer our logo designer for free and you can upload your own logos for free as well. If you still prefer a professional logo, you can get one at cost (actually we still take a loss on them because we don't charge you processing fees which can be up to 10% + the amount of manual work involved in reviewing them, logos often take multiple revisions to get right).

And I miss the free appraisals, too. Could you please introduce a paid appraisal option? For example, manual appraisal could cost 1 USD / domain, and then you would manually appraise a domain and suggest a price tag. My problem now is that the automated appraisal tool is not that accurate, and you no longer suggest a price tag in case of premium domains, so sellers are now in the dark about how to price a domain.

We can certainly look into this depending on how many other sellers want it. However, our tool is pretty good. We tested a lot of our existing listings against it and majority of them were appraised very well. There was a bug when we first launched so you may not have gotten the right appraisals. We released a fix last night so try now.

in case of previously premium names, on the similar names section you list the same domain name as well which is displayed on the landing page. For example: https://alter.com/names/pan.com
As you can see, the same domain name, pan.com is listed again under the "Similar Business Names" section.

Thanks for pointing this out. We did notice that but decided to keep it that way because this has more pros than cons. A major pro being the name the visitor is interested in gets retargeted back to them. Also, as more related names are added to our marketplace, the chances of the same name appearing there will decrease.

Please display the phone number on the landing pages in numbers only and include the international country calling code as well. Non-US visitors won't be able to call this number in this format. And people have smartphones which display numbers only when dialing a number, so displaying a phone number with letters is confusing, it only applies to old phones when there were both letters and numbers on the buttons (now smartphones don't even have buttons anymore).

Noted. The reason we display the letters is for memorability. It's much easier to remember the phrase than the individual digits (like 800-FLOWERS for example). For visitors who are looking to call in instantly, they can just click on the number and their mobile device will automatically dial the correct version. But of course, if we see that buyers are getting confused then we'll certainly change it.

if you insert a space before the search query by mistake, then Alter won't be able to recognize the keyword and it will display the default view only.

Example:

https://alter.com/names?q=+tech
As you can see, there is an extra space before the word tech. In this case, the search results are not related to tech, but this is the default view only.

Thanks for reporting this. It should be fixed now.

Congrats on the latest improvements. They seem like a good step in the right direction. Personally I didn't like the whole premium vs non premium concept. I went to Alter now to see how things look after the latest change. After sorting by price high to low, I got extremely bizarre results. Some insane prices for bad domains alongside high end dictionary words. So even if the new algorithm is working well in other aspects, the sort by price option is totally wacky at the moment due to the mix of domains that were curated by Alter mixed in with domains people added and assigned their own prices to. I don't know how a potential buyer can sort by price without being confused by this. @Deven Patel Can you please comment about this matter? Thanks.

Thanks for the compliments! Regarding sorting by price, it's an unfortunate symptom of dropping the premium label. We also wanted to treat all domains equally as we received complaints from sellers that their non-premium names weren't showing up when sorted by price in the past.

However, that's not going to have much negative impact because sort by "relevance" is used majority of the times. Based on our findings buyers almost never sort by price without filtering the names down further using the search bar first so they'll never want to sort our entire inventory by price. And in the rare event that they do, they would simply use the price filter to weed out the outliers.

That said, if you or anyone else has a better way of dealing with this please feel free to share your thoughts. We're always learning and more than happy to consider your ideas.

Great update and improvements! Hoping to see a search by category display but maybe on next one.

Thanks for the compliments and feedback! By categories, do you mean something like what's already in our footer where buyers can click on a category to search within it?

This are indeed features that you @Deven Patel have come up with in Alter. I am sure its going to give a run to the competitors. My half portfolio is at Alter currently and seeing good traffic (both direct and partner network). I would like to know how accurate will be the Appraisal that you have integrated in the site, I tested it today for one of my name and it showed 5000 USD, same name was appraised by Brandpa for 1000 USD and was rejected by SH So just wanted to know how accurate they are, as it will help us in pricing the names.

Also the traffic that we see daily, is this the real "human" traffic or it counts bots as well? Because one name that I have parked on Alter showed 600+ traffic in one day and from second day it was not showing any traffic/less traffic.

I'll be happy if you guide on this.

Wishing you best of luck with the new updates, Waiting for 1st sale on Alter and then will move all my domains here

Keep rocking..

Appreciate the compliments, thanks! No matter the tool you use, you will always have to use your personal judgement to make the final call with automated appraisals. That said, we did test a lot of our existing listings against the tool and majority of them were appraised very well. There was a bug when we first launched so you may not have gotten the right appraisals yesterday. Can you please try now? Also, feel free to DM that domain to me. Now I'm curious.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

"Your domains are automatically listed on over 650 partner marketplaces and registrars."

Deven, This is quite a huge benefit. Does this mean Alter auto-propagates listings to the Afternic network or is it some other network.? Or ??? Can you give us more details please?

Thanks!

Keith

 

[Charybdis]

"Your domains are automatically listed on over 650 partner marketplaces and registrars."

Deven, This is quite a huge benefit. Does this mean Alter auto-propagates listings to the Afternic network or is it some other network.? Or ??? Can you give us more details please?

Thanks!

Keith

Syndication means that your domain will be automatically listed on Sedo (without Sedo MLS) and on Dan.
And then Sedo will list your domain automatically at the partner domain name registrars.

But Afternic doesn't support this, so then you have to manually list your domain on Afternic Fast Transfer.

 

[Charybdis]

I tested the free AI-powered domain appraisal tool by Alter, and it is pretty good! In fact I have never seen an automated appraisal tool before which is as accurate as Alter's. Try it out with a few domains, it can appraise domains pretty accurately.

But it is an automated tool, so it is not perfect of course, but it is a good, free tool to give you a baseline for an appraisal.

However I found out that combining a strong keyword with random characters will get high appraisal values, let's take the word "home" and combine with random characters:

Homewqkf.com: $3,754
Homeiiii.com: $4,030
Homemmmm.com: $4,754
Homewquu.com: $2,597

It would be useful to list the appraisal values automatically next to each domain name in our portfolio on the "Domains" tab.

Could you offer bulk appraisals? So a textarea where I can enter multiple domains at a time and then the tool would appraise them in bulk with one click.

And a more detailed report would be awesome. For example you could list the following things in the appraisal report:
- number of words
- number of syllables
- trademark report
- Cambridge dictionary meaning of the words (if applicable)
- search volume of the words on Google
- number of other TLDs registered and the actual list of other taken TLDs
- Google Trends report
- domain creation date
- number of Crunchbase companies using the text in their names
- Namebio past sales

 

[sircc]

I tested the free AI-powered domain appraisal tool by Alter

Yes, the tool. They actually limit the number of searches you can do.

 

[ecomslice]

Im confused, how can I tell the difference between my Premium and standard now ? there are no stars beside any in " domains " section.

 

[ddesigns]

Appreciate the compliments, thanks! No matter the tool you use, you will always have to use your personal judgement to make the final call with automated appraisals. That said, we did test a lot of our existing listings against the tool and majority of them were appraised very well. There was a bug when we first launched so you may not have gotten the right appraisals yesterday. Can you please try now? Also, feel free to DM that domain to me. Now I'm curious.

Thanks for the reply and feels good to see that Alter is upgrading the features. I will surely DM you the name so you can see

 

[Future Sensors]

Hi @Deven Patel

Congratulations on the new features, much appreciated

My Alter portfolio is now 720 domains - or 17% of all my names.

I noticed that some fonts don't support numbers. Alter is provisioning fonts randomly to newly added domains, so some logos show the wrong info for such domains containing a number. Incomplete fonts are: Budget, Christopher Done, Daddy Rewind, Elektra (this one is particularly interesting, as it replaces the number with info about the maker of the font), First Man, Gecko Lunch, Golden Ranger, Happy Sunday, Humble Cafe, Kashie Mercy, Kestoy Rock, Nadia Sofia, Rhyanie Lane, Richie Brusher, Ruth Calligraph, Wild Black, Wild Black Italic.

In the keywords field, I'm unable to enter a number, so I'm unable to enter technical terms like e.g. "5G".

I've started ordering Alter logos for 15 domains. Is it possible to keep track of the domains I've made these logo requests for? Like a short message that a request has been made on the details page. And a graphical indication in the portfolio overview (status: Logo Active/Logo Requested/No Custom Logo).

While editing and saving, I'm experiencing a lot of really short Alter "Under Maintenance" messages, which immediately disappear when I reload the page (or resubmit my edits). Are you aware of this?

Thanks for fixing the business card mockup for longer domain names.

Keep up the good work, you're innovating fast.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Syndication means that your domain will be automatically listed on Sedo (without Sedo MLS) and on Dan.
And then Sedo will list your domain automatically at the partner domain name registrars.

But Afternic doesn't support this, so then you have to manually list your domain on Afternic Fast Transfer.

Deven, Is this accurate? Can you confirm this, please? Thanks!

 

[xeroox]

@Deven Patel following the question above, how is calculated the markup? my domain on alter with 2499 price, on sedo is 3199

 

[wwwulff]

SmartShop for $5,265 - I would like to bye it for that price and I`m not an enduser

 

[Deven Patel]

I tested the free AI-powered domain appraisal tool by Alter, and it is pretty good! In fact I have never seen an automated appraisal tool before which is as accurate as Alter's. Try it out with a few domains, it can appraise domains pretty accurately.

But it is an automated tool, so it is not perfect of course, but it is a good, free tool to give you a baseline for an appraisal.

It would be useful to list the appraisal values automatically next to each domain name in our portfolio on the "Domains" tab.

Could you offer bulk appraisals? So a textarea where I can enter multiple domains at a time and then the tool would appraise them in bulk with one click.

Thanks for testing! We'll certainly consider those ideas.

Yes, the tool. They actually limit the number of searches you can do.

Correct, as with any other automated tool, you still have to use your personal judgement.

Regarding the limit, how many domains are you trying to appraise? We have a daily limit to prevent abuse. Though the limit for logged in users is much higher than for visitors.

Im confused, how can I tell the difference between my Premium and standard now ? there are no stars beside any in " domains " section.

That's kind of the point. Please see the "Rethinking Premium" section of the last announcement for details.

I noticed that some fonts don't support numbers. Alter is provisioning fonts randomly to newly added domains, so some logos show the wrong info for such domains containing a number. Incomplete fonts are: Budget, Christopher Done, Daddy Rewind, Elektra (this one is particularly interesting, as it replaces the number with info about the maker of the font), First Man, Gecko Lunch, Golden Ranger, Happy Sunday, Humble Cafe, Kashie Mercy, Kestoy Rock, Nadia Sofia, Rhyanie Lane, Richie Brusher, Ruth Calligraph, Wild Black, Wild Black Italic.

Thanks so much for investing your time into this! Great catch. We just removed those fonts.

Is it possible to keep track of the domains I've made these logo requests for? Like a short message that a request has been made on the details page. And a graphical indication in the portfolio overview (status: Logo Active/Logo Requested/No Custom Logo).

That's an interesting request. Is there something specific you're trying to accomplish? If you're worried about repeat orders, you should see a note about the previous order when you try to order again.

While editing and saving, I'm experiencing a lot of really short Alter "Under Maintenance" messages, which immediately disappear when I reload the page (or resubmit my edits). Are you aware of this?

Thanks for reporting this. It should now be fixed.

Does this mean Alter auto-propagates listings to the Afternic network or is it some other network.? Or ??? Can you give us more details please?

following the question above, how is calculated the markup? my domain on alter with 2499 price, on sedo is 3199

Afternic isn't our partner at the moment but Sedo and DAN are. The rest of the registrars are part of Sedo's MLS network. So all domains listed on Alter will automatically be syndicated across their network.

The partner's commission is added on top of our price so your net is the same as if you sold the domain through Alter. It's no different than how MLS partners markup their prices.

The benefit here is that this helps you save a ton of time because you don't have to worry about dealing with different companies, updating prices across accounts, re-verifying domains, etc. However, if you prefer you can choose not to syndicate your domains by heading over to your account "Settings" page and then clicking on the "Syndication" button.

The way it stands now, listing your domains on Alter and Afternic would give you the broadest coverage for the least amount of effort.

SmartShop for $5,265 - I would like to bye it for that price and I`m not an enduser

Automated tools are never 100% on the mark, even humans aren't.

As I mentioned before, you still have to use your personal judgement when it comes to automated tools especially because appraisals aren't a science and everyone has their own opinion on what a domain is worth. For example, look at EstiBot's appraisal for this domain ($2,300).

 

[davidc1]

I currently use dan for my domains (20k+), is it possible to sell all over alter ?
Why would it better to use alter ?
Do you have a csv import/export and/or API for bulk sellers ?

 

[ecomslice]

I think we would need to know their commitment and amount of ad expenses to know the true value.
I am curious if it will be a good thing, or a massive cesspool of poop with any quality floating with random success.

I currently use dan for my domains (20k+), is it possible to sell all over alter ?
Why would it better to use alter ?
Do you have a csv import/export and/or API for bulk sellers ?

 

[davidc1]

I think we would need to know their commitment and amount of ad expenses to know the true value.
I am curious if it will be a good thing, or a massive cesspool of poop with any quality floating with random success.

I dont need any marketing on my domains, except sedo mls automatically added.
I have some cons about dan and it seems alter take care of what says their customers to improve their product...

 

[ecomslice]

I respect your strategy. But I've sold 30+ domains on squadhelp that had no chance ever selling. So I'm super confident ads work.

Maybe it's a two heads are better then one thing. Sedo MLS. Plus ads. Might make magic

In my humble opinion the more people in a mall. The more each store will sell.

 

[Future Sensors]

That's an interesting request. Is there something specific you're trying to accomplish? If you're worried about repeat orders, you should see a note about the previous order when you try to order again.

Hi @Deven Patel. It's because it's difficult to keep track of which domains currently have logos. I'd like to order more logos, but it's not easy to see which domains already have (custom) logos in my portfolio. With larger portfolios like mine (737 domains at Alter, atm) this really is an issue. I'd like to spend more, but miss the overview.

 

[BrandableDomain]

Congrats to Deven and the Alter team for the fast and positive development of the platform.

I agree with @Future Sensors that a logo indicator would be useful in the domain manager. It would be even better if Alter logos could be distinguished from Seller logos too. For example:

Maybe some more metrics would also be good on the Dashboard page like total domains listed, as well as domains with logos listed.

I did notice that the total domains listed is displayed on the domain manager page, but the Dashboard is great as an overview.

 

[ddesigns]

@Deven Patel What I notice after the update is, the domains listed at Alter are not seen on Dan or Sedo. Though the traffic stats shows visits from partner, still they are not seen on those platforms. It was showing earlier..

 

[BrandableDomain]

Stars are now displaying in the domain manager to denote the addition of logos. If you hover over a star, a hint tells you whether it is a professional Alter logo or one uploaded by the seller.

Thanks @Deven Patel.

I have just uploaded a new logo for review, and noticed that that domain now displays a very pale star and the hint message says "Uploaded logo is pending".

These innovations are very good.