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.​

 

[Deven Patel]

You could add icons to the auto-generated logos, in addition to the text.
There are a lot of free (or paid) icons you could use. This would improve the generated logos. Then it should be possible to modify the placement of the icon relative to the text (in front of the text, above the text, below the text, or after the text). But make sure that the license of the icons allows the commercial use of the icons even in logos.

Thanks for the feedback! Yup, we thought about that and it is on our roadmap. We just wanted to get something out quickly for now.

That said, text-based logos have been trending recently with new startups. Popular examples include logos of:

• Quora
• Coinbase
• Cruise
• Box
• Stripe
• Betterment
• Patreon
• Symphony
• Blue Origin

 

[Deven Patel]

You guys should read between the lines.

The main point is that most of the traffic is coming from direct type ins. By making this change, Alter will increase the domain count (and thus visitor count) manifold and they will funnel the traffic to actual good domains. This is why he says that premium domains will be preferred by their search algorithms.

So anyone who has good domains should greatly benefit from this. You will have more visitors seeing your domains through the suggested listings of worse domains. Those who have shitty domains will kind of be used as bait but in all honesty, they don't lose out on anything.

If they listed their domains on DAN, for example, it wouldn't make much of a difference cause they will see a similar landing page at Alter with the same commission as they would on DAN.

In conclusion, smart change.

I appreciate your thoughts!

Though there's no need to read between lines, I already described in detail what we learned from buyers in my 1,000+ word email/post.

Let me reiterate here. We discovered that there are primarily two types of buyers:

1. Decided Buyers: The majority of buyers (~80-90%) are already attached to a name they like so they simply type it into their browsers and/or search for it at a registrar. These buyers don't care much about whether a domain is premium or standard since they're not looking for choices.
2. Undecided Buyers: These are the minority of buyers (~10-20%) who need help picking a name. Though they typically already have an idea of how they want the name to sound, spell, or feel so they generally want more similar options. This is also where a lot of our marketing dollars are spent right now but there isn't much ROI here due to our small inventory and a lot of the buyers having low budgets that can't afford a premium name. So these buyers typically bounce to another marketplace thereby wasting the money we spent on bringing them to our site.

Our goal with this new tiered approach is to quickly build up inventory without sacrificing quality. Since premium listings will naturally be high quality, undecided buyers with high budgets won't bother searching through thousands of standard listings. On the other hand, undecided buyers with low budgets and more time on their hands will have the option to find a needle in the haystack. Either way, we'll be able to capture the sale rather than losing that buyer to another marketplace.

So to sum it all up... both premium and standard domains benefit.

The existing brandable inventory will get a boost (i.e. traffic from undecided buyers who land on non-brandables + higher marketing budget due to more overall sales).

The new non-brandable inventory will benefit from the marketing dollars that are currently being wasted due to a lot of low budget buyers bouncing because they can't find a domain that's affordable.

Few examples to clarify further:

Scenario 1: An undecided buyer with a budget of $3-5k lands on a standard domain. Since they're not sure about the name they landed on yet, they could potentially buy a premium domain instead.

Scenario 2: An undecided buyer with a budget of $500 lands on our marketplace through a paid marketing channel. Since they can't afford a premium name anyway, they'll search long and hard for a cheaper alternative. This is where standard listings will benefit.

Win-win! Again, we're only talking about undecided buyers in these two scenarios. Decided buyers who already know what domain they want (80-90% of buyers) will buy the name regardless of whether it's premium or standard because they only care about that specific name.

 

[clickcents]

1. Thanks for pointing this out. Thanks to another seller, we learned about this bug yesterday and already released a fix so can you please try it again? If you find any other issues, please reach out to support so we can patch it up quickly.

2-3. Yup, this is on our roadmap already. Though note that if a domain switches hands, you'll have to use a different set of nameservers to verify the domain (NS3 & NS4 instead of NS1 & NS2).

4. We already offer this. Just head over to Settings > Portfolio to set up your custom URL.

Thanks for the reply..

I checked for bulk adding of domains and working smoothly now in single stretch..

Great to know that your team is working of auto verification/bulk verification which is necessarily required as bulk standard domains are added by sellers..

I used mobile in portrait mode for alter account and we could not see that portfolio feature there..you can also check yourself in your mobile also..If you use mobile in Landsscape mode or desktop mode,this feature is visible..That's why I missed this feature and now found..thanks

One quick question also..

With this new changes in Alter,still going to put domains in other market places like DAN/Sedo etc in your alter accounts?

Or this is discontinued after this new change including premium domains?

 

[Deven Patel]

They would lose. Because Dan and afternic landers don't distract a potential buyer with another name.

Thanks again for your thoughts! They're always appreciated.

Let me ask you this, when was the last time you spent a few thousand dollars or even a couple hundred dollars without Googling for alternatives? Your comment makes it seem like buyers who spend their hard earned cash are stupid.

We actually talked to buyers and they told us that they're already aware of other marketplaces. Go ahead and type in a basic keyword like "domain marketplace" into Google and tell me what you see. Do you think buyers don't already do that? And even if a very small number of them didn't, do you think it's wise to "trick" them into buying a super expensive product which they'll regret later on when they do find out about other marketplaces?

Long term regret is much more powerful and damaging than short term satisfaction. In other words, an unhappy customer will not only damage the marketplace's reputation but also the overall domain community's reputation (i.e. this is why a lot of buyers already consider the aftermarket as cybersquatting even though it's not true).

Large companies like GoDaddy and even DAN understand this which is why they also/will offer buyers the option to register new domains at or below cost. All the buyer needs to do is click on their homepage and use their search bar to find an alternative which'll cost them 250X less if available.

From our experience, buyers on brandable marketplaces aren't buying domains because of their limited inventories. They're buying them because they're either attached to the name or they're appraised by the marketplace which makes buyers feel like they're not overpaying. But by no means are they going to spend thousands on a domain if they don't like it just because that one particular marketplace has very limited options. I suspect this is also why other brandable marketplaces decided to increase their inventories to 100K+ domains.

When I was buying domains for my own companies, I spent hours searching for that perfect name. I would create spreadsheets full of hundreds of option across multiple marketplaces before I ended up pulling the trigger.

Marketing by definition means the action of promoting products. In other words, the best marketing can do is spread awareness to domains. It doesn't allow you to force people to buy things they don't want. Quality always wins.

 

[Charybdis]

Isn't the 10% commission too much in case of non-premium domains? There are other marketplaces who charge less and offer more payment methods, such as PayPal or bitcoin.

The 10% commission in case of the premium domains is very good, but in case of non-premium domains, I am not sure. If you designed premium logos even for the non-premium names, then yes 10% commission is good. But with the auto-generated logos I think the commission should be about 7-9% to make it competitive with other marketplaces.

I know that non-premium names might become premium names if you accept them, but after you have rejected them as premium names, then why should a seller keep such a name on Alter when the seller could list that domain elsewhere at a lower commission?

I think for the 10% commission you should design a logo and add more payment methods, such as PayPal and Bitcoin, or reduce the commission to 7-9% in case of non-premium domains.

Edit: I am interested in my premium listings, so more non-premium domains is good for even those sellers who only have premium domains listed, because those other listings can drive more traffic to Alter, and thus to premium listings. I am just concerned about this non-premium domain listing offering: is it a good enough offering to convince sellers to list even their non-premium domains at Alter?

 

[Deven Patel]

Deven, I note some of my names listed on Alter.com are also listed on Dan.com under your account on Dan.com.

The last login is showing as over 1 month ago with over 10+ offers received for listed domains on Dan.

Is this still being checked by your team?

Thanks for the note! Yes, we do check however we haven't received any inquiries from any of our partners in the last 3 months since we've been listing with them. Those 10+ offers might be from the past when the domains weren't part of our account.

Even on the traffic front, we estimate only around 3% of the traffic comes from partners.

 

[Deven Patel]

It would be nice if you also got some suggestions for other names of the same seller, even if not premium, so there is some incentive to keep non-premium names there.
Also, seeing how this should increase the number of listed domains, it would be nice if there was some filter to search for parts of words and patterns so non-premium names wouldn't get left out in the dust.

We did think about showing other suggestions from the same seller. But the issue with that is it doesn't benefit the buyer or the seller. It ultimately creates a scenario where the buyer has to work harder to find other relevant names. As I mentioned, trying to "lock" buyers into a limited pool doesn't help them or the seller because if the buyer can't find a good option they'll simply leave without buying anything at all. There's no substitute for quality.

Regarding the search filter for standard listings, we already have this on our roadmap for when the inventory is large enough for it to make sense. In the meantime, keep in mind that buyers can still narrow down the results by searching for specific keywords. For example, if you search for a broad keyword like "tech" you won't see a standard result until page 35. However, if you search for a more specific keyword like "webinar" you'll see a standard listing right away.

In terms of incentives to list standard listings with us, there are still plenty with the biggest being more exposure. You would still be able to take advantage of all our other benefits with standard listings for 10% commission (i.e. our marketing, customer service, installment plans, logos, partner syndication, etc).

The main difference between premium and standard is that premium domains appear higher in search results. Think of premium domains as the "Amazon's Choice" inventory on Amazon with a couple other minor benefits like professional logos and appraisals.

 

[Deven Patel]

There is no marketplace/sales platform that doesn't offer alternatives to potential buyers without slight digging/research into where they're buying from, and most do.

I personally would love to see a completely neutral marketplace that showcases all domains within it based on popularity (traffic/views/CTR/favs/LIKES), bumped to the top of the search lists by default. (Like a YouTube-type algorithm but for domains)

Let the domains themselves sort everything out because it's all perception, what might not be flagged premium could be in the eyes of others and sell quicker than the rest if given a level playing field with perks based on the traffic it's bringing to the playing field. Names not that great? Price accordingly for the bargain hunters. Everyone pools traffic, everyone wins.

You nailed it. Quality always wins.

Though quality is also often subjective so there may still be a buyer out there with a low budget for a name like "ASuperPopularBlog". Buyers often have set budgets so you can't just except every buyer who wants a $500 name to pay a $5k premium. You either sell them something cheaper or you lose them. Simple as that.

 

[Deven Patel]

Just 2 suggestions:

1. To prevent multiple accounts you can always implement IP address checks & make members pre-connect their payout methods. That way it'll be much easier to weed out the culprits.

2. Allow super minimal amounts of unregistered submissions. Like around 1 to 5 max in one go. That way those new to the domaining industry can still participate and learn without incurring too many losses.

I hope you will consider my suggestions.

Thanks for the feedback!

We can certainly do that but as I explained in my post, that was only part of the problem. The other bigger problem was that buyers didn't have enough options which wasted a lot of our marketing efforts.

We'll certainly consider an option where sellers can pay to have names reviewed if there's enough demand in the future. For now we felt like we could better use that time and energy to market domains instead especially since as I mentioned, a lot of the submissions we were getting lately were very low quality anyway.

So far out of all our sellers we only heard from about 3-4 who want to pay to have their names reviewed which tells me there isn't much interest. If you're interested in paying for this service, please reach out to support so we can add your vote.

 

[Deven Patel]

As I explore and think about these new changes, I like them more and more.
Great tools for logo and domain descriptions!

I would suggest one thing. Since we can list different extensions now, we should be able to make logo text which includes the extension.
Let's say we want to list 'design.agency'. Logo with just the word 'design' is not the best option, it's incomplete. One word new TLDs are working great as a brand along with the extension.

Cheers

That's awesome and great suggestion! We'll add it to our roadmap.

 

[Deven Patel]

Sorry. I've tried reaching out to support in the past about a technical issue. Since then, I prefer to do it here.

This is relevant to all, and sharing our experiences is the power of this forum.

In this case, I think there should be no option "Edit Listing" for premium listings populated by Alter, when they cannot be changed without these errors. It's not that important further to me, just trying to help here.

Either way is fine. Though as I mentioned in the past, this isn't an official support channel so you may not always get a quick reply here. It's always best to reach out to support for faster turnaround.

The reason we allowed sellers to edit premium listings is so that they can add their own spin to it if they like. There were a bunch of sellers in the past who requested the ability to do this. It's still optional so for those people who like our premium descriptions, they don't have to lift a finger. They can leave it as is.

In your case, you simply want to edit the casing of your name which you can do yourself if you're okay with limiting the keywords/ideas/categories. If not, simply reach out to us and we'll take care of it like I said.

 

[Deven Patel]

Thanks for the reply..

I checked for bulk adding of domains and working smoothly now in single stretch..

Great to know that your team is working of auto verification/bulk verification which is necessarily required as bulk standard domains are added by sellers..

I used mobile in portrait mode for alter account and we could not see that portfolio feature there..you can also check yourself in your mobile also..If you use mobile in Landsscape mode or desktop mode,this feature is visible..That's why I missed this feature and now found..thanks

One quick question also..

With this new changes in Alter,still going to put domains in other market places like DAN/Sedo etc in your alter accounts?

Or this is discontinued after this new change including premium domains?

Great! And yes, we definitely need to improve the mobile experience for sellers.

In terms of standard listings, that's right. You would still be able to take advantage of all our other benefits with standard listings for 10% commission (i.e. our marketing, customer service, installment plans, logos, partner syndication, etc).

The main difference between premium and standard is that premium domains appear higher in search results. Think of premium domains as the "Amazon's Choice" inventory on Amazon with a couple other minor benefits like professional logos and appraisals.

 

[Deven Patel]

Isn't the 10% commission too much in case of non-premium domains? There are other marketplaces who charge less and offer more payment methods, such as PayPal or bitcoin.

The 10% commission in case of the premium domains is very good, but in case of non-premium domains, I am not sure. If you designed premium logos even for the non-premium names, then yes 10% commission is good. But with the auto-generated logos I think the commission should be about 7-9% to make it competitive with other marketplaces.

I know that non-premium names might become premium names if you accept them, but after you have rejected them as premium names, then why should a seller keep such a name on Alter when the seller could list that domain elsewhere at a lower commission?

I think for the 10% commission you should design a logo and add more payment methods, such as PayPal and Bitcoin, or reduce the commission to 7-9% in case of non-premium domains.

Edit: I am interested in my premium listings, so more non-premium domains is good for even those sellers who only have premium domains listed, because those other listings can drive more traffic to Alter, and thus to premium listings. I am just concerned about this non-premium domain listing offering: is it a good enough offering to convince sellers to list even their non-premium domains at Alter?

We did think about two commission rates for premium vs standard but in order to keep things simple we decided to keep it the same for both. And even if we did we actually would've raised the commission for premium because as you can see in the numbers I provided, marketing domains isn't cheap. We spent $60k on marketing and made $23k (loss of almost $40k and that's not even counting staff salaries which is MUCH more than that). It's probably why brandable marketplaces charge 2-3X more than us.

The biggest benefit of listing standard domains with us is marketing. When we bring in buyers through paid channels, they're looking for more options especially buyers with low budgets. Before, if they couldn't find a name that fit their criteria, they would simply leave. Now, we can close them with standard listings.

Additionally, you would still be able to take advantage of all our other benefits with standard listings for 10% commission (i.e. our marketing, customer service, installment plans, logos, partner syndication, etc).

 

[NameWell]

Thanks for the feedback! Yup, we thought about that and it is on our roadmap. We just wanted to get something out quickly for now.

That said, text-based logos have been trending recently with new startups. Popular examples include logos of:

• Quora
• Coinbase
• Cruise
• Box
• Stripe
• Betterment
• Patreon
• Symphony
• Blue Origin

I also have a question regarding those automatically generated text-based logos. To my knowledge if a font / typeface is used for a wordmark (text - based) logo it has to be altered otherwise it is a violation of copyright.

"Designers may use a third party typeface as the basis of a wordmark logo design if the font license allows it, but the letters must be adequately customized. [...] If you create a wordmark without customizing the typeface, it will be considered copyright infringement and could subject the client and designer to legal ramifications." Source: https://support.99designs.com/hc/en...an-I-use-an-existing-font-in-a-wordmark-logo-

@Deven Patel could you please comment on this?

 

[Charybdis]

2 feature suggestions:

• You could translate the interface for buyers into multiple languages, such as German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese etc. No other brandable marketplace does that. It shouldn't be too expensive, since you use mostly the same words on the landing pages. If the descriptions of premium domains are unique, then you could replace that with a generic template text in other languages to save money on translation. And then you could market Alter in other languages, too. That should be cheaper than competing for English keywords.
• What about the naming contests? You mentioned that you add non-premium domains to increase your inventory. If buyers still cannot find a domain on Alter then they could launch a naming contest, and sellers could submit any domain there, even those domains which aren't pointing to Alter.

 

[varmuk]

@deven Please add bulk nameserver (ownership) verify option.

 

[Recons.Com]

As always, I appreciate your feedback!

If you put yourself in our shoes for a minute you'll realize that your statement applies to us as well.. investors are expected to risk their income by committing to the experiment. We are doing just that.

I understand my email was pretty lengthy so you may have missed some things but I provided a full set of data like our traffic/sales/STR/costs/etc. Most other marketplaces are nowhere nearly as transparent.

We also tell you exactly how much traffic our marketplace generates for each of your domains on your dashboard. On average, our marketing efforts generated over 80% more traffic to domains listed on our marketplace.

As I mentioned a number of times in the past, STR depends solely on the quality of the portfolio. On Alter, STR ranged anywhere between 0% to 20% in the last 8 months. You can't simply look at the average STR across the entire marketplace because all that shows you is the quality of the marketplace's inventory at the time, not it's capability to produce sales.

And trust me, I get it. It's frustrating not to have all the data on hand to be able to make accurate decisions. We face that all the time. For example, even though a lot of advertising companies allow you to track conversions, a lot of buyers use different browsers, make purchases outside the tracked time frame, touch multiple channels, etc so it's super hard to figure out exactly where the thousands of dollars we spend on marketing are more effective. Unfortunately, bad quality data is just a fact of life so we all have to deal with it and find ways to work around it.

Hi, Deven

First, let me compliment you on your outstanding customer service here. Your responses are patient and detailed.

Now, on the subject...

I'd suggest that Alter puts itself in investor shoes, not the other way around. Most investors have 10-200 names on a given platform. It would take them years of commitment to figure out if the platform is giving them an edge or not due to the rules of statistics. 100 names are normally expected to produce 1 sale, but it could be 0 it could be 2-3 in any given year. So they won't know if it was due to the efficiency of the platform or pure random luck.

Now, 5000 names, on the other hand, your data would be more representative and useful for those that haven't joined, like me.

I have refused to grow my portfolio with BB, BP and SH since they stopped publishing this data and won't join any new platform without this. I am getting around 1.5% STR with Afternic landers and my own and I need to be certain that a platform gives an investor considerably above that for me to be worth the trouble. And that is without factoring in the investor risk that a platform will start big and then decline like BB and SH with some investors reporting having 300-500 names and not having a single sale in months. I am in similar position as well, btw, with around 650 names on BB, BP, SH and just 2 small sales in about 7 months combined from those three. For comparison, Afternic has provided around 5 sales in that span on similar size sample (I have 9000+ with Afternic) with considerably less commission on each.

 

[Deven Patel]

I also have a question regarding those automatically generated text-based logos. To my knowledge if a font / typeface is used for a wordmark (text - based) logo it has to be altered otherwise it is a violation of copyright.

Great question! The fonts we use have commercial licenses that allow them to be used for logos so it shouldn't be a problem.

Regarding copyright law, it varies between jurisdictions but in the US fonts/typefaces are not eligible for copyright. Unless you're trying to resell the font file itself which is a different story.

 

[Deven Patel]

2 feature suggestions:

• You could translate the interface for buyers into multiple languages, such as German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese etc. No other brandable marketplace does that. It shouldn't be too expensive, since you use mostly the same words on the landing pages. If the descriptions of premium domains are unique, then you could replace that with a generic template text in other languages to save money on translation. And then you could market Alter in other languages, too. That should be cheaper than competing for English keywords.
• What about the naming contests? You mentioned that you add non-premium domains to increase your inventory. If buyers still cannot find a domain on Alter then they could launch a naming contest, and sellers could submit any domain there, even those domains which aren't pointing to Alter.

Thanks for the suggestions! We'll certainly consider these in the future.

 

[Deven Patel]

@deven Please add bulk nameserver (ownership) verify option.

I appreciate the suggestion! It's already on our roadmap and we've added your vote.