news Alter ceasing operations

[Mkt Sales Leads]

Email received today:

Farewell​ Hi there, First and foremost, I would like to thank each and every one of you for using Alter to sell your domain names. We couldn't have come this far without your invaluable support. Over the last couple years we've been on a mission to transform the domain industry. However, despite all our attempts we weren't able to find a sustainable business model. So it is with a heavy heart I write to you today to say farewell. On April 2nd, all third-party domain listings will be removed from our marketplace. Seller accounts will remain active for the foreseeable future so those with a positive balance or pending installments can continue to cash out. Lastly, we realize this decision wouldn't be fair to sellers who spent money to have professional logos designed on our platform. So we have refunded all relevant payments back to your account balance which can be cashed out at any time. We truly wish you all the best in your future endeavors. It’s unfortunate that this wasn’t the outcome we wanted but we’re thankful to everyone that came with us on the journey. Sincerely, Deven Patel Founder & CEO

 

[william]

LOI sent to Deven, hopefully transition will start early next week, once Definitive Agreement is final and Escrow transaction processed. Let's shake things up in brandable domain marketplace

I'm guessing the acquisition price was $100K.

 

[F.E.]

Incorrect Not yet acquired, but price is way higher than $100k

 

[BRANDERX]

Sounds exciting. Hope it won't be a one-man show.

Please announce it in a new thread once all is done. I'll check it out..

 

[postscripter]

I too got the email and it is helpful you posted it here in the event someone may not have seen/received it.

Mr. Patel and I do not know each other and we have never interacted in any capacity, but I just wanted to say this was a very classy thing for him and his team to do regarding notifying those using the site.

I've been self employed since being 15 years old (with a brief stint helping a friend for about 6 months) and I've seen many people make an attempt to start and operate a business with very few succeeding long term.

In all my years, I've never received a notice like this of someone terminating/canceling services. It truly made my heart heavy reading the email. I just wanted to say it was a very classy thing to do during these times when professional (an personal) courtesy has bottomed out.

May you do well in your next endeavor Mr. Patel and thank you for trying to give the industry a breath of fresh air.

what kind of notice companies give when closing? I mean what is so nice about this compared to what you see when companies notifying clients about closing?

 

[Mister Funsky]

what kind of notice companies give when closing? I mean what is so nice about this compared to what you see when companies notifying clients about closing?

Maybe you can post notices from other companies (sent to you via email, prior to their termination) that have ceased operations so we may compare.

 

[postscripter]

Maybe you can post notices from other companies (sent to you via email, prior to their termination) that have ceased operations so we may compare.

somehow we ended up asking each other of examples to compare. Which is a bit funny.
But for now, you got two likes I got nothing, so it seems majority agree with you that it was a specially nice email.

 

[Jason Baudendistel]

Heads up , Deven has already decided firmly to move on from Alter. I was going to submit an offer but sounds like the process for several bidders was already pretty far along.

 

[Mister Funsky]

sounds like the process for several bidders was already pretty far along

It would be an awesome asset for the right company/group. I'm aware of one of those looking at the property...it would not surprise me if things aren't decided in the next several days.

I hope whoever ends up with it tries to keep it as a 'stand alone' rather than simply absorb it.

 

[DomainRecap]

I wonder what the big costs were. Trying to run before they could walk? Would be interesting to know.

I would imagine paying for promotion and traffic generation.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

I would imagine paying for promotion and traffic generation.

Possibly, but surely if they put the correct names on their listings then the traffic should have been flowing in regardless?

 

[Future Sensors]

What's interesting, is that after Deven's Farewell message on 2022-03-19, at least 59 new domains have been submitted with nameservers pointing to Alter.

 

[F.E.]

Probably they forgot to close listing page

 

[Future Sensors]

Probably they forgot to close listing page

These are new domain registrations.

 

[F.E.]

Probably Alter forgot to close down domain submission form

 

[eternaldomains]

Incorrect Not yet acquired, but price is way higher than $100k

Just in case that you DO end up acquiring it, all I hope that you'll implement are these few things:-

1) a proper partnership with Pa/yo/ne/er (cause I still don't believe Alter.com is a real partner of Pa/yo/ne/er based on how it's [not] "connected" compared to real partners such as BB & SH), and

2) include user-made logos as part of the items on the seller side invoices/receipts so that when Pa/yo/ne/er or some crazy bank decides to question sellers regarding incoming payments, sellers can then declare something like "BRAND/ING PACK/AGE sales" instead of "domain name sales" and shut the mouths of those domainer-hating b'tards. I'm just sick of financial institutions trying to murder domainers just because some rich guy like Kill Gates refuse to pay names for more than $10 and decided to brainwash the whole world by marking us all as "cybersquatting gangster criminals"

If you implement just these 2 things you already have at least 2 major USPs (for attracting sellers) on your side. Some people might say DAN is a Pa/yo/ne/er partner, but their implementation of Pa/yo/ne/er is just too fishy to me, because every other Pa/yo/ne/er partner never asked for additional bank details while selecting Pa/yo/ne/er payouts.

Wishing you success on your bid.

 

[F.E.]

Thanks for your input @eternaldomains. If I be the one who finalize this deal (and I hope so), there will be major changes in operations. Been on a call today with Deven walking me through d2d operations and I feel that those majors changes would be easily implemented within a month-two, since Deven and his team made a really good job in back-end, so onboarding on codebase would be pretty easy.

Regarding your feedback:
1) I am not sure, since I haven't discussed, but I believe in order to make payouts to Payoneer, you need to register merchant account or some equivalent (business) and I guess Alter is, maybe it's just a little complicated UX that made you think they aren't. Even if not, I'll most definitely make sure to get that partnership if I am the one holding a wheel.

2) That's a good point, and I'll definitely think on how to properly structure invoices sovthat the sellers won't have such headaches.

Aside from that, if acquisiton goes well, you could also expect more quicker payouts. Current payout schema is done more-less same as most of other marketplaces do, but in this case I'll probably release funds to sellers immediately after payment is made for a domain, seller pushed a domain to holding account and complete rest of the transfer with buyer in back-end.

 

[VJB]

Something cooking up.

 

[F.E.]

Oh, I thought I was bidding against some major player

https://twitter.com/x/status/1507111574414180357

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

that's the whole point of any marketplace: to generate sales. I'm 100% positive that Deven had best intentions and plan for Alter, but that plan required capital sacrifice and operating in net loss for many years, and investing your own money if you'd like to compete with others. Aside that, low commission also brought a lot of lesser quality names which also polluted overall domain portfolio, and blurred lines (I talked about this previously) between brandable domain marketplace and general domain marketplace, so Alter ended up competing with Brandbucket, Squadhelp and others while in reality all that time, those were not its competitors.

If you're going to acquire the appraisal tool, be mindful that it's fallible (like many are - see attached):

 

[F.E.]

Godaddy: More than $25,000
Estibot: ~$5,000
FreeValuator: $645
PCdomains: $3,140
DomainIndex: $1,960

So I'm not sure what would you expect from appraisal tool?

Plus consider that real domain valuation is based on multiple factors, and we're talking about brandable domain marketplace, so people who are coming to Alter appraising are mostly appraising unique/brandable ones. Will certainly consider updating that tool to follow trending words/phrases as well in future, but that would happen once/if the transition is completed and major changes regarding operations are set.

 

[Charybdis]

I can still read in the admin area: "On April 2nd, all third-party domain listings will be removed from our marketplace."

This tells sellers to remove their domains as soon as possible. If someone wants to continue operating the marketplace, then you should at least remove this message. By the time you acquire the business it won't have any sellers left.

 

[F.E.]

If you read my previous messages carefully, you should understand that if I am the onez this message actually helps me, as all of the domains sooner or later will be reviewed and majority of them removed.

Thanks for the heads up though

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I hope that if it appears possible/likely that Alter will continue, probably under new management, that the takedown date of April 2 will be extended, so that there will be an orderly continuation.

I understand that one, or more, of the possible new owners may desire to take it back to a conventional curated brandable marketplace, as it started, and many listings will at some point be taken down.

I am not surprised that ability to add domains continues, and a few new have been listed.

I have been monitoring the total number of domains, and it is surprising how few have yet migrated to somewhere else. Probably indicates hope that Alter will continue.

Bob

 

[Future Sensors]

it is surprising how few have yet migrated to somewhere else

Alter does not detect immediately that nameservers are already pointing elsewhere. Of the 831 domains I changed NS for on March 19th, only 60% has been detected by Alter so far.

 

[eternaldomains]

I have been monitoring the total number of domains, and it is surprising how few have yet migrated to somewhere else. Probably indicates hope that Alter will continue.

Bob

I'm one of those who didn't remove, or more like didn't bother to remove until the last minute countdown. Just thinking that I'll do it while panicking on the last minute