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Alter.com Marketplace

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Deven Patel

Founder, Alter.comEstablished Member
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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.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Regarding https redirects, it's more of a feature than a bug. Technically speaking, it's complicated to implement so we haven't had a chance to work on it yet. It's on our roadmap though.

I think it is just a simple server-side redirect, you don't need to generate SSL certificates. If your server is Apache or LiteSpeed, then I think you can do it with a few lines in the .htaccess file.
 
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Congrats to Deven and the Alter team for this interesting new hybrid platform.

I would like to suggest that some additional darker colors be added to the logo palette that is offered for standard listings.

Dark colors can often have a powerful and prestigious effect. A dark navy blue for example, not much lighter than black, can have great impact.

To note, the matching background color themes do not need to be darkened correspondingly.

alter_colors.gif
 
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I just sold my domain through the Alter.com platform. Jane recommended i switch from Buy It Now only to installments and that was good advice. It took a couple of weeks to close the deal and when i had my doubts the she kept assuring me that all was well and that these things take time. Jane was right and sealed the deal. Transfer and payment was smooth.

Edit
 
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I see that even non-premium domains receive relatively good traffic, nice!
 
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I see that even non-premium domains receive relatively good traffic, nice!
my non premium domains are simply outclassing my premiums in terms of traffic...
 
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Congrats to Deven and the Alter team for this interesting new hybrid platform.

I would like to suggest that some additional darker colors be added to the logo palette that is offered for standard listings.

Dark colors can often have a powerful and prestigious effect. A dark navy blue for example, not much lighter than black, can have great impact.

To note, the matching background color themes do not need to be darkened correspondingly.

Show attachment 192483

This was on my list of suggestions too. Well presented.

Deeper, darker, richer colors makes it all 'pop' better, as you shown in the chart.
 
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Regarding https redirects, it's more of a feature than a bug. Technically speaking, it's complicated to implement so we haven't had a chance to work on it yet. It's on our roadmap though.

I have just tested it again, and now it is working for some domains (the https redirects), but for other domains it's still not working.

For some domains I get this error, when trying to access the domain via https:

NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
Subject: sni-support-required-for-valid-ssl
 
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I mean yes, curate the premium domain names manually, but then you could use an algorithm to score the non-premium domains, after you have rejected them as premium. As a basic example, domain with hyphens should be displayed lower than domains without hyphens etc.

So I referred to the non-premium domain names which were rejected as premium names. It is still important to prioritize the better names in the "non-premium" sections.

I totally agree that Alter should strive to also list "non-premium" domains in approximate order of quality. This will be very important over time once the inventory increases.

I'm sure many buyers will abandon their search if they don't see at least some quality examples high up in a list of several thousand domains to maintain their motivation and interest.

Each domain's price should also be considered. Way over-priced (but good) domains should not generally have the highest placement. In other words, the quality of the domain is not the only factor - price is also important. It's a value proposition. Domains priced to sell should get the highest placement.

If good domains at fair prices are placed below thousands of less valuable deals, sellers will ultimately lose patience and remove their listings. This could result in a decline in inventory quality over time.
 
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Looks like Deven got some more colors added :)
 
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@Deven Patel Congratulations for surpassing 10 000 listed domains!
 
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Quick announcements...

1. We are excited to share that all HTTPS requests will now be redirected properly to their respective landing pages!

2. We have also added three new colors to our logo editor (dark blue, dark green, and dark brown).

I think it is just a simple server-side redirect, you don't need to generate SSL certificates. If your server is Apache or LiteSpeed, then I think you can do it with a few lines in the .htaccess file.

I appreciate the tip though unfortunately the solution did involve generating SSL certificates for each domain because browsers first need to establish an HTTPS connection to the server before they actually see the redirect request. Otherwise, the browser would throw an error message instead.

I have just tested it again, and now it is working for some domains (the https redirects), but for other domains it's still not working.

For some domains I get this error, when trying to access the domain via https:

NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
Subject: sni-support-required-for-valid-ssl

That's because we were in the middle of implementing it at that point. After your post, we decided to push it up on our roadmap. Thanks again for all your feedback!

Congrats to Deven and the Alter team for this interesting new hybrid platform.

I would like to suggest that some additional darker colors be added to the logo palette that is offered for standard listings.

Dark colors can often have a powerful and prestigious effect. A dark navy blue for example, not much lighter than black, can have great impact.

To note, the matching background color themes do not need to be darkened correspondingly.

Show attachment 192483

This was on my list of suggestions too. Well presented.

Deeper, darker, richer colors makes it all 'pop' better, as you shown in the chart.

I appreciate all your feedback guys! Keep it coming. :)
 
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We are excited to share that all HTTPS requests will now be redirected properly to their respective landing pages!

Great! I have tested 8 random domains, and https redirect has worked in all cases.

And I added a new domain to Alter, and the https redirect worked right away.

And I think now the website loads faster in case of type-in traffic (when I access the marketplace by entering a listed domain name into my browser).
 
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1. We are excited to share that all HTTPS requests will now be redirected properly to their respective landing pages!

That's a pleasant surprise, thank you. On this particular topic of implementing https all the way, Alter is now leading the way, compared to some other major domain marketplaces that are still struggling with its implementation. Kudos @Deven Patel.
 
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Since I happen to be a qualified graphic designer, I would like to suggest that sellers be allowed the option to submit their own logo designs for their domains. These could appear in either Premium or Standard listings.

For this to work well, Alter should retain the right to reject any submissions for quality control purposes.

Alter could evaluate any Standard domain, pricing and logo submissions for possible elevation to Premium status.

If approved for Premium, Alter would benefit because they would not have to commission a logo. If not, then the addition of logos might still add some quality and excitement to the Standard listings.

If either the domain or logo is not approved for Premium, then sellers and Alter might still benefit because the introduction of some logos to the standard listings should increase their saleability there.

Alter would be free to reject a logo, just as they currently might reject a proposed price. They could accept a domain but reject a logo. The umpire's decision is final.

The possibility that domains with good logos might appear higher up in the standard listings could dove-tail nicely with the earlier comment by @Charybdis:

"It is still important to prioritize the better names in the 'non-premium' sections."

Also, Alter could monitor any standard listings which have logos to see if their traffic increases.
 
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Here's a small suggestion mainly concerned with an aspect of making internal navigation more efficient.

After you edit a domain's description, you then only get the option to view how the published listing will look. Unless you backtrack.

(See first green panel in the illustration below.)

Same thing after you edit a logo.

I think most people would edit the description and the logo consecutively before viewing the listing, so it would be good to have the option to go straight to the logo field instead of having to backtrack to the domain manager.

(See second modified green panel in the illustration.)

Also, where the message says "You have successfully edited the listing..." in the top line only, it would be preferable to say "description" instead of "listing" (or "text" or "copy"). This is because the listing consists of both a description and a logo.

alter_strip.gif
 
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Since I happen to be a qualified graphic designer, I would like to suggest that sellers be allowed the option to submit their own logo designs for their domains. These could appear in either Premium or Standard listings.

For this to work well, Alter should retain the right to reject any submissions for quality control purposes.

Alter could evaluate any Standard domain, pricing and logo submissions for possible elevation to Premium status.

If approved for Premium, Alter would benefit because they would not have to commission a logo. If not, then the addition of logos might still add some quality and excitement to the Standard listings.

If either the domain or logo is not approved for Premium, then sellers and Alter might still benefit because the introduction of some logos to the standard listings should increase their saleability there.

Alter would be free to reject a logo, just as they currently might reject a proposed price. They could accept a domain but reject a logo. The umpire's decision is final.

The possibility that domains with good logos might appear higher up in the standard listings could dove-tail nicely with the earlier comment by @Charybdis:

"It is still important to prioritize the better names in the 'non-premium' sections."

Also, Alter could monitor any standard listings which have logos to see if their traffic increases.

There is a problem with copyright infringement. It is very hard to check the copyright status of each submitted logo.

I ordered a logo design on a freelance marketplace a while ago, and I received 3 logos which were in fact copyright infringement. The "logo designer" just entered my keywords into Google image search, and he scraped whatever logos he could find, removed the watermark from the logos, added my company name, and the logos were done. He scraped these logos from stock photo sites (Shutterstock doesn't even allow you to use their images in logos, even if you buy the image, you are not allowed to use it in logos), from logo databases, from stock logo sites (without paying for them of course), and from various other places.

Allowing user-submitted logos would be a copyright nightmare, I don't recommend this.

The premium logos are very good already.

Instead of the user-submitted logos, Alter could further improve the logo generator and Alter could select the better standard listings and design logos for them, those domains would still remain standard listings, but they would become upgraded standard listings with logos, I don't know whether it is feasible or not.

Or Alter could introduce the option to order logos for standard listings, for example 1 logo could cost 5 USD (in case of a standard listing).
 
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@Deven Patel I don't know if it's economically feasible or not, but you could upload professional human voiceover audio files, at least for the premium domains. Human voiceover sounds better than the computer-generated voiceover.

But it's just a suggestion, don't implement it if it's too expensive.
 
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There is a problem with copyright infringement. It is very hard to check the copyright status of each submitted logo.

I ordered a logo design on a freelance marketplace a while ago, and I received 3 logos which were in fact copyright infringement. The "logo designer" just entered my keywords into Google image search, and he scraped whatever logos he could find, removed the watermark from the logos, added my company name, and the logos were done. He scraped these logos from stock photo sites (Shutterstock doesn't even allow you to use their images in logos, even if you buy the image, you are not allowed to use it in logos), from logo databases, from stock logo sites (without paying for them of course), and from various other places.

Allowing user-submitted logos would be a copyright nightmare, I don't recommend this.

The premium logos are very good already.

Instead of the user-submitted logos, Alter could further improve the logo generator and Alter could select the better standard listings and design logos for them, those domains would still remain standard listings, but they would become upgraded standard listings with logos, I don't know whether it is feasible or not.

Or Alter could introduce the option to order logos for standard listings, for example 1 logo could cost 5 USD (in case of a standard listing).

BrandBucket and SquadHelp both allow sellers to submit logos.
 
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Here's a small suggestion mainly concerned with an aspect of making internal navigation more efficient.

After you edit a domain's description, you then only get the option to view how the published listing will look. Unless you backtrack.

(See first green panel in the illustration below.)

Same thing after you edit a logo.

I think most people would edit the description and the logo consecutively before viewing the listing, so it would be good to have the option to go straight to the logo field instead of having to backtrack to the domain manager.

(See second modified green panel in the illustration.)

Also, where the message says "You have successfully edited the listing..." in the top line only, it would be preferable to say "description" instead of "listing" (or "text" or "copy"). This is because the listing consists of both a description and a logo.

Show attachment 193149

Or just combine the two edit screens into one, so one could edit the description and the logo on the same page.
 
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Could also settle the hassle of verifying each and every logo by only allowing trusted sellers after applying / request.

Another option...offer logo upgrades from Alter designers on standard listings at a competitive price.
 
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Hi @Deven Patel

One of the top 3L domains on Alter is currently also listed in the Sedo GreatDomains Auction (June 17-24).

Could you please explain how this is possible - are we allowed to do this?
 
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Here's a small suggestion mainly concerned with an aspect of making internal navigation more efficient.

After you edit a domain's description, you then only get the option to view how the published listing will look. Unless you backtrack.

(See first green panel in the illustration below.)

Same thing after you edit a logo.

I think most people would edit the description and the logo consecutively before viewing the listing, so it would be good to have the option to go straight to the logo field instead of having to backtrack to the domain manager.

(See second modified green panel in the illustration.)

Also, where the message says "You have successfully edited the listing..." in the top line only, it would be preferable to say "description" instead of "listing" (or "text" or "copy"). This is because the listing consists of both a description and a logo.

Show attachment 193149

Thanks for the suggestion! We've added a link to edit the logo on the first success screen. :)
 
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@Deven Patel I don't know if it's economically feasible or not, but you could upload professional human voiceover audio files, at least for the premium domains. Human voiceover sounds better than the computer-generated voiceover.

But it's just a suggestion, don't implement it if it's too expensive.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't be economically feasible to produce the audio manually.

Can you DM some examples that sound off to you? Maybe there's another way to fix them.
 
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