IT.COM

Alter.com Marketplace

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch

Deven Patel

Founder, Alter.comEstablished Member
Impact
1,075
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.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
40
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Can you show the number of favourites on the front if more than 5/10 to show that it is hot domain name.

I was thinking about the same thing. If people can see that others have favorited domains, they might hurry and buy the domain. However, this might other domains which haven't been favorited. Not sure this is the right way.

Great idea! We were already thinking about something like this for the landing pages to create a sense of urgency/social validation for buyers. The question is which domains to do this for (top 10%, top 50%, all?). We can also use the number of visitors with an upper cap so most listings have some kind of validation as opposed to the favorites count (domains are visited more than they're favorited).

If a person favorites a domain, you could send the other favoriters a notification. This would make them think about the domain again and might impact their decision. This might be good. But sending them an on-site notification might be useless as they won't be likely to browse it often and sending it via mail could be considered too aggressive. Many things to think about.

This is a good idea but yea, it could be too aggressive. Don't want it to turn into a ton of endless spam. We already noticed this now (i.e. if we reach out to the buyer too often regarding an inquiry, they're much less receptive). Besides buyers don't have to register in order to favorite names so we don't have their email addresses.

Also, the rejected names go to the bottom but I prefer to delete them once rejected. Can you allow us to select deleted domains at once and delete them rather than 1 by 1. It is not a big deal but tedious.

We'll see what we can do but as you pointed out there's no need to delete declined names.
 
0
•••
@Deven Patel what's with alter and made up names. You guys rarely accept two keyword brandables, almost all your accepted domains are made up names. Do you have data that prove made-up names sell more or what's the rationale behind this?
 
Last edited:
7
•••
The quality of the logos produced are really good compared to what I am receiving elsewhere.

Your designer has done excellent job. Well thought out
 
3
•••
The quality of the logos produced are really good compared to what I am receiving elsewhere.

Your designer has done excellent job. Well thought out
Exactly.
 
1
•••
@Deven Patel what's with alter and made up names. You guys rarely accept two keyword brandables, almost all your accepted domains are made up names. Do you have data that prove made-up names sell more or what's the rationale behind this?

Thanks for asking! Not sure if that's the case. I just checked our listings and around 30-40% of the names are two words. Ultimately, it all depends on the names that sellers actually submit. If good two word names are submitted then we'll certainly accept them.

At the moment we're also giving priority to names that work across multiple industries. Not too keen on names that are super niche. For example, something like "BalloonBlog" is too specific and much less likely to sell than something like "TechBlog". Also, a lot of two word names we see aren't that brandable. See examples below.

Examples that were recently declined (obscured for privacy): DigitalVersify, GreatShroom, BurntLion, StallionFlare

Examples that were recently accepted (actual listings): CuteRoll, PayBlade, KindAim, RealLake, ProudHill
 
7
•••
Great idea! We were already thinking about something like this for the landing pages to create a sense of urgency/social validation for buyers. The question is which domains to do this for (top 10%, top 50%, all?). We can also use the number of visitors with an upper cap so most listings have some kind of validation as opposed to the favorites count (domains are visited more than they're favorited).
I think number of favorites is better than number of visitors. Number favorited shows more social validation and acceptability than number of visitors. Some names have traffic based on the previous use of the domains but in real sense they may not be good fit for buyers.
 
2
•••
How much time do you usually need to approve or deny a domain name? I have more than 10 domains waiting from last week (7 days specifically)
 
0
•••
How much time do you usually need to approve or deny a domain name? I have more than 10 domains waiting from last week (7 days specifically)

Used to be 2 to 3 days but i am also noticing quite a lot of delays atm. My worst one so far is 7 days.

Because of manual approval process I think there is a bottle neck.
 
0
•••
@M0rd0r @tiletalk The review process generally takes about 24-72 hours on average but could take longer during peak times like now. Remember, there's no downside here for sellers because they're allowed to do whatever they want with their names in the meantime so it's not really a bottleneck.

In fact, the real bottleneck for us right now is actually with our logo design process. It takes time to produce good logos and we don't want sellers to have to wait too long for it which is what would happen if we accepted too many names at once.

Contrary to popular belief, the mechanics of running a marketplace (or any business for that matter) are always much more complicated than they look from the outside. :)
 
6
•••
@M0rd0r @tiletalk The review process generally takes about 24-72 hours on average but could take longer during peak times like now. Remember, there's no downside here for sellers because they're allowed to do whatever they want with their names in the meantime so it's not really a bottleneck.

In fact, the real bottleneck for us right now is actually with our logo design process. It takes time to produce good logos and we don't want sellers to have to wait too long for it which is what would happen if we accepted too many names at once.

Contrary to popular belief, the mechanics of running a marketplace (or any business for that matter) are always much more complicated than they look from the outside. :)

Thanks for letting us know Deven.

Happy to wait a little longer to keep the logo standards as they are at present. As previously mentioned very thought out and good logos.
 
1
•••
Hi again Deven, I have noticed that some of my domains that were shortlisted aren't anymore. Is this normal? Are potential buyers manually doing this? Thank you!
 
Last edited:
0
•••
Hi again Deven, I have noticed that some of my domains that were shortlisted aren't anymore. Is this normal? Are potential buyers manually doing this? Thank you!

Are you looking at the same date range as before? Please note that the number of visitors/favorites you see next to your domains are only for the last 30 days. You can view the rest of the historical data on your dashboard by choosing different time frames. :)
 
Last edited:
2
•••
Well. I certainly accept domains are subjective. But this is my recent average first shown pages when visiting. And it's enough I'll just stand back and we'll question life itself.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot_2021-01-16-00-03-58-954_com.android.chrome.jpg
    Screenshot_2021-01-16-00-03-58-954_com.android.chrome.jpg
    264.2 KB · Views: 133
  • Screenshot_2021-01-16-00-03-44-898_com.android.chrome.jpg
    Screenshot_2021-01-16-00-03-44-898_com.android.chrome.jpg
    235.9 KB · Views: 138
  • Screenshot_2021-01-16-00-03-34-715_com.android.chrome.jpg
    Screenshot_2021-01-16-00-03-34-715_com.android.chrome.jpg
    228.5 KB · Views: 113
1
•••
Well. I certainly accept domains are subjective. But this is my recent average first shown pages when visiting. And it's enough I'll just stand back and we'll question life itself.

I'll have to agree with this. I find their evaluations inconsistent. I've found bad domains there and I agree that those you posted are bad.

It makes sense for those marketplaces which charge for listings so they can rip you off, but not alter. Higher number of domains will bring in more traffic to the site but at the cost of dilution of quality.
 
1
•••
Are you looking at the same date range as before? Please note that the number of visitors/favorites you see next to your domains are only for the last 30 days. You can view the rest of the historical data on your dashboard by choosing different time frames. :)

Ok, I didn't know that! I thought that only applied for the views. Thank you :)
 
0
•••
I have had hit and miss with my domains. Some names accepted at SH are rejected at Alter and vice versa.

Where domains are accepted at both, I have gone with Alter because of lower commission.
 
1
•••
@ecomslice @Lord Antares @tiletalk

Thanks for the feedback! It's much appreciated. :)

As you guys noted, quality is subjective. Our goal is to choose names that could potentially work across a broad set of industries. Sometimes it's hard for people outside those industries to see the appeal.

For instance, take a look at these 5000 martech brand names. How many of them do you personally like: https://cdn.chiefmartec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/marketing-technology-landscape-2019-slide.jpg

I actually like those names you mentioned. For example, "Potavia" easily tops the name of a fast food joint I know called "Potatopia". It also has a pot/weed/cannabis reference. "Sentily" can be used in martech for an email marketing SaaS. "Dinpar" returns 140,000 search results on Google. "Kejol" is much better than countless existing companies found on Crunchbase (see attached list). They're all short, catchy, and memorable.
 

Attachments

  • Kejol Comparison.png
    Kejol Comparison.png
    106.2 KB · Views: 221
Last edited:
4
•••
Sold my first name with Alter.com

illevia.com - $1099
Hand regged
listed for 2 months. Buyer first inquired in early December 2020.

The process with alter was smooth. The 10% commission sure is a treat compared to their competitors 30% fee.
 
13
•••
Congrats. What is your portfolio size with alter and what was ur BIN for the sold domain?
Sold my first name with Alter.com

illevia.com - $1099
Hand regged
listed for 2 months. Buyer first inquired in early December 2020.

The process with alter was smooth. The 10% commission sure is a treat compared to their competitors 30% fee.
 
0
•••
213 listed. Sold at Bin price
 
2
•••
Sold my first name with Alter.com

illevia.com - $1099
Hand regged
listed for 2 months. Buyer first inquired in early December 2020.

The process with alter was smooth. The 10% commission sure is a treat compared to their competitors 30% fee.

Nice and I can see the domain is already developed.
 
0
•••
Sold my first name with Alter.com

illevia.com - $1099
Hand regged
listed for 2 months. Buyer first inquired in early December 2020.

The process with alter was smooth. The 10% commission sure is a treat compared to their competitors 30% fee.
Congrats man. Looking forward to the sale of my name Blacen and the newly accepted Blusil. The quality of their logo is enough to give them an extra 5% if I sell. Lol.
 
Last edited:
1
•••
Congrats man. Looking forward to the sale of my name Blacen and the newly accepted Blusil. The quality of their logo is enough to give them an extra 5% if I sell. Lol.
Blusil.com finally Listed.
 
0
•••
@Deven Patel
Just a suggestion, would it be possible to add some basic filters to the "Domains" view?
If we could filter to the status it would be easier for me to check only the listed names. Maybe a toggle button would be enough ("Show only listed names", "Show all names", or something similar). Thank you for considering this :)
 
2
•••
@Deven Patel
Just a suggestion, would it be possible to add some basic filters to the "Domains" view?
If we could filter to the status it would be easier for me to check only the listed names. Maybe a toggle button would be enough ("Show only listed names", "Show all names", or something similar). Thank you for considering this :)

Thanks for the feedback! We're already working on it. :)
 
3
•••
  • The sidebar remains visible by scrolling at a speed relative to the page’s height.
Back