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.​

 

[HandmadeLife]

If he did such a great job, than why the hell domain sellers came to me screaming?

Fakers are talking now.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

This drama does no one any good.
I sincerely hope emotions will take a step back and things will move forward.
The Alter marketplace offers some features none of the competitors have, and as a fresh build worked smoothly.
I hope it will continue.
Bob

 

[Deven Patel]

Regarding the domain age, I really appreciate the feedback everyone!

After thinking it through again, we decided to show the age dynamically. Moving forward the domain age information will only be shown if the domain is older than a year.

@sellian @Joe Nichols

 

[Deven Patel]

Hi all,

I would like to thank you for using Alter and for your continued support in our journey to change the world, one domain at a time. We're glad you're with us!

Over the last few months we've learned a lot from both buyers and sellers. Based on this invaluable experience, we've decided to make some big changes to our marketplace.

First, I'd like to share some data with you to help you understand why we're making this decision. Let's look at how far we've come in a little over 8 months:

• Website Traffic: 800,000 visitors
• Traffic Breakdown: 53% direct / 44% market / 3% partners
• Domains Reviewed: 80,000
• Domains Accepted: 8,000
• Domains Listed: 4,200 (5% of submissions)
• Seller STR: Up to 20%
• Total Sales: $350,000
• Commission: $35,000 (10% of sales)
• Transaction Fees: $12,000
• Marketing Spend: $60,000

Please note that the figures above have been rounded for legibility and do not include staff related costs (i.e. curation, support, marketing, development, operations, etc).

As you can see, we've made a ton of great progress in a short amount of time. On average, our marketing efforts generated over 80% more traffic to domains listed on our marketplace!

However, we also discovered a few challenges along the way like these:

• Fruitless Appraisals: Around 95% of submitted and 40% of accepted domains are never listed. This means a lot of time we spend on reviewing and appraising domains is wasted.
• Loopholes: There are sellers who try to game the system by creating multiple accounts to circumvent our submission limit, by marketplace hopping because they're impatient or didn't like their logos, etc. All of this ends up wasting our energy.
• Limited Inventory: A lot of our marketing dollars are wasted because of our small inventory. We're learning that buyers who come from paid channels typically want more options.

As you can imagine, these challenges are consuming a lot of our resources which can be better spent on marketing your domains and generating more sales instead.

So after much deliberation, we have decided to change the way our marketplace works with the introduction of premium and standard listings. Moving forward, sellers can list any domain they want at any price on our marketplace as standard listings with a minimum list price of $499. Once listed, our team will automatically review the domains behind the scenes to see if they qualify for premium upgrade.

All standard listings will receive automatically generated stylish logos which can be edited using our easy-to-use logo editor. Our platform will also automatically generate catchy descriptions, keywords, ideas, and categories for all standard listings. Sellers have the option to edit their listings as they see fit. See example of a standard listing.

Premium listings on the other hand will receive professionally designed logos and will be appraised by our team just like before. If your domain qualifies for premium listing and its list price is within 20% of our appraisal, it will automatically be upgraded. Otherwise, you will be asked to change the price of your domain if you wish to proceed with the upgrade. All existing listings have already been upgraded to premium.

We'll promote both premium and standard domains across various marketing channels like PPC, SEO, social media, remarketing, and our partners for maximum exposure. However, premium domains will receive a higher priority. For example, they'll appear higher in search results and syndicate quicker to our partners. You can learn more about all this on our sellers page.

Now I understand a lot of you may be thinking that a large inventory means low sell-through rate. But based on all the feedback we've received from buyers, we don't think this is true especially today when buyers are much more tech savvy. After spending thousands on marketing, we discovered that there are primarily two types of buyers:

1. Decided Buyers: Majority of buyers are already attached to a name they like so they simply type it into their browsers and/or search for it at a registrar. If the domain is available and affordable, they buy it. Otherwise, they buy a cheaper alternative like a different extension or one with a prefix/suffix (e.g. the, a, hq, app, etc). 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 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. Thanks to Google they're already aware of other marketplaces so you can't really "lock" them in. Makes sense because nobody's going to spend thousands of dollars on something without thoroughly researching all available alternatives. 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. If the buyer doesn't find the type of name that appeals to them, they typically bounce to another marketplace.

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.

We're confident that this new direction will create a win-win scenario for both buyers and sellers. Buyers will have more choices which will lead to more sales and in turn result in a larger marketing budget for sellers.

If you have any questions or concerns about these changes, please feel free to reach out to us at any time.

Sincerely,
Deven

P.S. We also launched a trademark search engine that provides up-to-date data on millions of US trademarks for free. It's a great way for buyers and sellers to check for potential trademark conflicts. That said, trademarks are a complicated subject so we recommend talking to a trademark attorney for anything beyond simple searches. For instance, you may still be able to use a name even if it's trademarked if your business is in a different industry.

 

[Deven Patel]

Yes I said Dan competitor. So I am talking landing pages only. No additional marketing.

First of all, thanks for sharing all your thoughts on this matter. I appreciate it. We're constantly reviewing all the feedback provided here by you and other sellers to see how we can position ourselves to make everyone happy. Although I can't promise you anything, we will certainly try and see if there's anything we can do about our commission.

I also wanted to say that I highly respect all our competitors. Everyone started at the same place and they're all doing what they need to in order to succeed just like you and I. It's often hard for those on the outside to truly appreciate the trials and tribulations of running a business like this. Selling a few domains on your own website with little traffic is very different than running a large marketplace that's being bombarded with millions of conflicting opinions. From buyers who think domains should be worth no more than $10, to sellers who think they know how to sell based on some random piece of advice they read on a forum, to malicious people who are constantly trying to exploit the business. The larger you get, the bigger the problems become.

Just the other day we had a "buyer" deposit a fraudulent check for $65k that we had to waste time and money sorting out. Then there was this seller who was trying to siphon money through stolen credit cards. All of these issues cost real time and money to resolve. Most of these problems are tackled behind the scenes so on the outside everything appears peachy. My point is all of this is taken care of for you behind the scenes in return for the commission you pay. Even then a huge chunk of sellers constantly hop around from one marketplace to another wasting all the effort spent marketing their domains. So it's not as simple as commission - processing fee = profit.

Now I understand what you're saying in regards to providing a lander-only service but my question to you is why? Why wouldn't you want your domains to be marketed? In your own words, isn't it all about sales at the end of the day?

I don't personally agree with your approach of just using a landing page alone but if that's what you really want then why not just use Efty? It's 0% commission and a small monthly fee that's equivalent to paying for your own web hosting. Why would you want to use any marketplace at all in that case?

Efty + Dan do have payment plans.

I thought you had to pay the full 9% (+2% CC now) at DAN for payment plans based on this post.

Squadhelp do actually protect against Chargebacks.

I thought they didn't based on this article. Maybe things have changed.

I am not aware of any of those charging extra fees to withdraw payment. Can you clarify which ones you think do?

I may be wrong but this post makes it seem like there's a 4% fee for PayPal payouts over $2k.

I think you can get cc fees at around 2% for high vol, bank wire costs less

Then you can charge 5-6% and still be profitable.

Can you tell me where we can get CC processing for 2%? As I mentioned above we pay 3-5% in transaction fees right now to our processor Stripe (2.9% CC + 0.4% chargeback + 1% international) and payouts (1% Payoneer, 0.5-1% wire, etc). Bank wires are rare and buyers typically don't use them for majority of the transactions especially since a lot sales happen through monthly installment plans.

Even if we did no additional marketing at all, there are still operational costs to think about like software development, web hosting, customer support, taxes, etc. On the support front, we offer concierge service which Escrow.com charges an additional 3.25% for (in fact they charge you a total of 9.6% for the same service we provide without even a landing page).

Keep in mind these aren't automated transactions. Each one can easily take 15-20 mins of human time (i.e. transferring the domain from the seller into company's account, transferring it to the buyer, processing payouts, sales/support inquiries, etc).

If if get the buyer through my lander I do not want that to lose even 10-20% chance of sale. I bring the lead I want the best possible chance of a sale. Traffic leakage is deal breaker for me.

I don't think you're seeing the full picture. Sure, there's a 10-20% chance of you losing the sale but there's also a 10-20% chance of you gaining one that you wouldn't have otherwise. It works both ways and only benefits you in the long run especially if you have high quality names (i.e. if a buyer landed on a crappy name and saw your quality name under it, they'll buy yours instead). So unless you have crappy names, you will actually benefit with this feature.

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 real buyers and they told us that they're already aware of other marketplaces and alternatives. Go ahead and type in a basic keyword like "domain marketplace" into Google and tell me what you see. Do you think buyers who are about to drop a couple grand don't already do that?

Heck, if they're about to buy an aftermarket domain, they generally already have an account at a registrar where they'll transfer the domain. All the buyer needs to do is use the registrar's search bar to find an alternative which'll cost them 250X less if available.

From our experience, buyers aren't buying domains from your own website or WL marketplace because they're "locked in". They're buying them because they're attached to that specific name. And if that's the case then showing other domains under yours isn't going to make one bit of a difference to them. But the additional traffic you'll receive from it may make a huge difference to you (bigger audience = higher probability of a sale for you). Quality has and will always wins.

Personally I have no interest in brandable marketplaces or logos. They tend to favour a small group of insiders who benefit more.

This is exactly why we're taking the hybrid approach where you can list any domain you want and still be able to take advantage of brandable landers. In fact, we're the only marketplace that does this right now for 10% commission (the other one charges 25%). We believe that brandability is the future of domaining. If you don't believe me, compare the search trend of the keywords "business names" vs "domain names".

This is the issue. Favours certain sellers over others currently.

We have something in the pipeline that I think will help you feel better about certain sellers being favored more than others. Stay tuned!

It's not a one of the other situation. You can have it as an option that can be turned on or off depending on the sellers preference.

If enough sellers want this then we'll certainly consider it. Though one of our goals is also to keep things simple so if this option doesn't really benefit anyone than it would be pointless to add it and unnecessarily create confusion. So far I haven't seen much interest from others and/or enough data to help justify that it works. As I mentioned above, it actually helps sellers who have quality names.

2-3% of millions per month in sales. Think big.

Sure, but 0% of millions per month in sales is $0. If we're already spending up to 5% in transaction fees then based on your math 5% + 2-3% of profit would put us in the 7-8% range without doing any marketing at all. At that point why not just spend the extra 2% and have us market your names to a broader audience? Especially in an industry that is very supply heavy with nowhere near as much demand (20+ million aftermarket domains vs 1-2% average STR).

Offer a better product at better prices and domain investors with large portfolios will jump ship.
It's very easy to switch providers. Key thing here is better product. Alter seems to have done most of that hard work already in that regard, so well positioned.

Agreed, but in this industry most platforms have already capped out on features. In other words, adding more features isn't going to give you more sales. But doing marketing will.

While the current setup (not having a buyer account) will work technically, having an account at Alter can subconsciously confirm that Alter is indeed a solid company. Especially when it comes to installment plans and higher lease amounts, DNS changes, invoicing, it seems nice from the buyer's perspective to be able to log in to their own environment. I also think that repeat purchases can be stimulated for larger companies that often have several projects needed to be named.

All great points! We'll continue to gather feedback from buyers and act accordingly.

I think most of us have a certain percentage of lower quality names in portfolio. But I personally will not think of ever listing these names on Alter. I try to pick only my better names in each price category for Alter. As soon as I notice that low quality and extreme cheap domains become part of the listings, I will not appreciate it as a seller. It's not good for the reference point for potential buyers either.

Makes sense though the challenge we're still having is that there's no consensus on what good quality actually means so every seller draws their own line based on the quality of their portfolio. IOW, everyone essentially thinks they own high quality names. You can clearly see this in a number of posts created after our new direction announcement. I think we have a way to fix this though by improving our search algo and letting buyers decide on quality, rather than sellers. Stay tuned!

My suggestion is to first show some closely related domains from the same seller with high priority, followed by other relevant domains from other members.

Indeed. This is already on our radar. Just waiting for a larger inventory so that the relevance makes sense. Right now we don't have a lot of closely related names so the results aren't that useful.

I think if you want to be the go-to marketplace for all domain investors, then you could support these low-quality names, too. The truth is, there are domainers with junk names
Yes I think domainers with large portfolios have mixed names and if you want to attract all domainers then you could support these junk names, too. The low quality names would appear only at the end of the search results anyway. You don't need to advertise the lower quality names.

I think this may help sellers who own low quality names but can't see it helping buyers. As I mentioned above, buyers wouldn't be interested in names like BossManCatalog.xyz no matter how cheap they are. At that point they might as well add/swap keywords or just buy an available extension for $10. Unless you're looking to use Alter to buy/sell names on a wholesale basis? Even then the profit margin would be impossible to work with unless we introduce a minimum fee. Wasn't Afternic's minimum sale price $250 for a long time before they lowered it?

International wire transfer is expensive, that's why there are services like wise.com. But these global payment providers have local bank accounts and they make the wire transfer payments cheap to customers.

I see what you mean. Agreed, we'll certainly explore this and whatever else ultimately helps buyers buy more domains.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

On that note, have you or anyone else heard from @F.E. recently? I've been trying to reach him over the last week and a half without any luck

That is really concerning. He was active on Twitter as recently as just under 2 days ago when he posted he would be off social media this weekend with family plus things.

I really hope sale proceeds and Alter continues to operate. I see many strengths in marketplace, and @F.E. has ideas for further development.

Thank you for continuing to maintain it during interim period, @Deven Patel

Bob

 

[Deven Patel]

So what exactly is different about this website? At first glance, I can't tell it apart from all the others. What makes it buyer friendly? (Btw I agree the focus should be on buyers; I've been saying that)

We have bold plans but can't disclose everything publicly to keep our competitors at bay. The primary differentiator is our relentless focus on the buyer. In essence, we're creating a community of entrepreneurs through various channels (similar to GoDaddy's playbook). When entrepreneurs succeed, we all succeed. To start, we're building a database of business ideas that are suggested alongside each domain listing.

The biggest tangible differentiator for the seller is the 10% commission (2-3x lower than any brandable marketplace).

Also, 10% is about industry standard these days. However, brandable marketplaces with logos charge more. I notice the domains listed there all come with a logo. So is this site like brandbucket, brandpa etc? Do you pay for a logo and listing?

Yes, Alter is a brandable marketplace. The 10% commission is all-inclusive. There are no listing fees, logo fees, or withdrawal fees. Based on our data, we found that most buyers come through domain redirects anyway so the high commission on other marketplaces isn't justified. In fact, we believe the seller should receive some benefit for the traffic their domains bring into the marketplace (thus our low commission). But that doesn't mean we're not going to utilize other marketing channels. We still plan to but just more efficiently (i.e. use them to enhance our inbound marketing efforts instead). Remember, we don't succeed unless we actually sell the names so sales are ultimately our top priority.

Also, there's no exclusivity beyond redirecting the domain to our marketplace. This means domains can be listed anywhere else or can be delisted at any time the sellers wish.

P.S. I believe great ideas often come from unexpected sources. So if you have any ideas, I'm all ears.

 

[SuperBrander]

@Deven Patel The site looks good, the domain is phenomenal and the logos are great. At the moment, I couldn't see a FAQ section anywhere so I am wondering about a few things. For example:

What methods of payment are accepted and how can funds be withdrawn? Is the sale process done using an escrow service or in house? What process do you have in place in order to make sure a buyer won't use a fake credit card or try to steal the domain in another way? Do domains get transfered to Alter.com's team and from there to the buyer or are they transfered directly to the buyer? Do you plan on adding chat support? Installment plans? Marketing domains on Google/Facebook/etc.? How many people are currently working at Alter?

10% commission isn't too bad, but it seems like it's mostly for a landing page and a logo at this point in time. I don't think type in traffic for a domain someone else owns would help other sellers get sales at the moment since the marketplace isn't established yet, isn't marketed to potential buyers and probably has very few sales. SH's White Label Marketplace offers a 7.5% commission for a personalized marketplace with 24/7 support, installments, ability to upload logos and control the prices, the description and the way the domains are presented. Efty doesn't charge a commission at all, also gives a lot of flexibility regarding appearance, text and pricing plus has Dan.com integration if needed and also allows sellers to handle leads on their own. So I'm not sure if your site currently offers a better alter(native) than those options or BrandBucket/BrandPa, which might be the real competitors you're trying to be an alternative for but at the moment have a big advantage since they're already established and attract potential buyers not just based on direct traffic.

I'm open to be convinced though because I like the potential and the buyer oriented mindset (if it can result in more eyeballs/buyers).

 

[SuperBrander]

@timestamp How can you or anyone else for that matter decide that a seller got enough money in a single year and doesn't deserve more? You don't know the cost of the domains, the size of the portfolio that needs to be renewed etc. Plus, how can you decide for another person who made a great decision in buying a specific domain or domains, that you'll take away money from him, regardless of how much was made? IMO if a domainer doesn't make a sale in an entire year, they aren't a domainer, they shouldn't be dealing with domains and would do themselves a favor if they quit or learn as much as possible before continuing wasting their time and money. Or try to get SH to register domains for them so they won't have any costs and then if they get a sale they can start buying their own domains.

This whole suggestion is basically a way for people who aren't good at domaining to get charity so they can continue to renew low quality domains and buy more. Charity has its time and place but domaining is about skills, making good decisions consistently and being rewarded for it. You're looking at it from the narrow perspective of a domainer who doesn't have money. Of course it's great for such a person. It would also be great if every year people who lost money in the stock exchange will be paid by people who made money in the stock exchange. But why should that happen? Domaining, like any other investment, is capitalism, not socialism. Expecting successful sellers to carry the weight of unsuccessful sellers is unrealistic and since there's no incentive for successful sellers to do it, I don't think it's likely to happen.

 

[tiletalk]

Can I recommend you add an option which will allow sellers to reduce the price by 5%, 10%, 20% or let us choose an option where your system will automatically propose random discounts up to max %. This needs to be limited to max 10 to 20% of portfolio otherwise it will be mayhem.

Also at the same time allow increases in domain prices but with 1/2 week notice and it displays on the front saying Price increase peoposed! Buy now

Can you guys start sharing monthly sales volume? Say at the start of Feb you tally up total sales from Jan and so on? This will give confidence to sellers and may be a way to increase your popularity.

If you dont want to give total monthly sales volume then ok it is understandable, instead something like X many 1 letter domain, X many 2 letter domain, X many 3 and so on... sales for January etx

 

[Joe N]

Haven't seen much in the way of reported Alter sales yet, so I thought I'd share one from last week:

PropFi (dot) com - $2,000

This was listed at $3,699, and I think the buyer got a super price for a quality name. In fact it already appears to be re-listed at Sedo. It's the bare minimum I was willing to sell this name for, and only because the ROI was solid, having stumbled upon the name in GD closeouts.

@Deven Patel - Has there been any consideration to having Alter take a harder line with price negotiations? I know some sellers will appreciate having all offers brought to them, even when they're less than half of the list price (I was informed of an $800 offer on a $2,250 name at Alter a couple months ago), but I worry that this tactic will ultimately undercut your and your sellers' long-term profits and success.

I think one of the big advantages of listing with a brandable marketplace is the added prestige/credibility that comes with the price tag of the name. That, along with increased visibility, is why I like to have brandable names listed at marketplaces. However, once buyers get wind that Alter is playing softball in negotiations by encouraging buyers to accept much lower prices than those listed, I think the marketplace will become somewhat of a haven for investors (rather than end users).

Just a thought, and I would be curious to hear the rationale for operating this way.

 

[ExDom]

Regarding Smileta it sure has nothing to do with the Alter team I was the one that reged it after it was accepted. It was on my list of unreged brandables for more than a year among hundreds of other names. Most assuredly with hundreds of names on our lists, we are bound to share a fair percentage of names.

Moral Lesson: If you believe in the name just go for it and don't wait for BB/SH or Alter to tell you if it is good or not, I was recently going through my list and saw names like toddlerhq.com and serenenights.com, which turned into great sites and I didn't register them just because they where rejected at the time.

Also I sold more "rejects" than accepted names last year although this may have to do with selling the "rejects" around $500 while accepted brandables sell for minimum $1500.

P.S. Alter looks promising and I like that new features are added daily.
P.S.2 "This domain name is already submitted by another member" message that Squadhelp does, when I get it I am tempted to register the name without waiting for the acceptance result, so it might have the exact opposite effect of the one intended!

 

[Deven Patel]

alter supports ppc landing pages just like dan integrates bodis?

Not at this time. Right now our focus is on improving STR through supercharged landers.

It would be nice if landing pages included all lowercase/all uppercase somewhere to increase confidence of the visitors.

We had considered that but couldn't find a place to show all uppercase/lowercase versions of the name without affecting the aesthetics. Also, because we handle all transactions manually we can ensure that buyers don't get duped (i.e. we can easily process a refund in that case).

I have a quick question for Alter, when I include the "both" option for pricing, and I add a "Minimum Offer" price, is this automatic? Meaning if someone does submit the offer price, do they get the domain at that price, or do I still get to negotiate?

As @Jurgen Wolf pointed out, the minimum offer value is simply the starting point for negotiations. If a buyer submits an offer that matches your minimum, you will have the opportunity to accept/counter/decline/cancel/ignore it.

Sorry to be negative, but I am finding trying to create copy for my domains extremely frustrating.

Right now, it seems all of the "Descriptions, Keywords and Ideas" are very random, which is fine. I would like to add my own information.

The problem is, I usually can't. (I actually took images to show clearly, but can't upload here apparently)

You have restricted what we can write far too much.

Descriptions: Why must the word "name" be included? And why are we reduced to 100 words? It would be nice if we could give the potential buyer a "sense" of what our domain can become through copy writing. Instead we have one sentence. Is this necessary? Also, you can't use anything but periods or commas. No numbers, quotes, etc... Again, very limiting.

Keywords: I understand why there is a limit of 6, that is fine. But again, certain words or numbers aren't allowed. Since we are already limited to 6, why can't we use whatever words or phrases that we believe the client would type in to find the domain? They are always the same, which means as soon as you get enough domains, the keyword search function will be pretty useless to the client when they are searching. Which also means they'll get bored or frustrated and leave.

Ideas: This is the most limiting. Why can we only use short words. And half the time it doesn't accept my words even though they are legitimate business ideas. This should be somewhere where we are free to give the potential client an idea of what they can use the domain for. But it's very difficult with the way you have this limited.

I want to create enough copy to help convert the client. The descriptions and ideas shouldn't have a word limit at all, or at least 500 words minimum. You would think you'd want the domain owners to write copy in order to convert sales as it's better for you and us. But I find this all too restrictive to properly do anything.

I think on the client side when they see the same basic sentences on every single domain again and again, it is no longer a place to look for legit business names, rather it's just a list that is poorly curated.

Again, I am not trying to be negative, I think your platform is very easy to use in other aspects and am happy with everything else, other than this. So I won't move my names off, I just wish I had far more control over the "selling" aspect of the business as these are my domains.

Thanks for your time on reading this. @Alter.com

Thanks for the feedback! It's much appreciated.

The reason we restricted a lot of this is to ensure consistency and a high quality experience for buyers. I don't know if you remember the MySpace days but if you do then think of this as MySpace vs Facebook (i.e. MySpace allowed anyone to add anything which created a ton of spam/disorganization and they ultimately paid the price of losing their users to Facebook which was very well organized because of the restrictions).

Effective marketing is all about the right balance of art and science. @Bob Hawkes does a fantastic job explaining the pros and cons of shorter descriptions above so I don't want to repeat that. But it's always better to keep things short and simple especially in a day and age when visitor attention spans have drastically dropped (the average visitor attention span today is less than 7 seconds which means if we don't grab their attention within that time frame then they'll bounce). The shorter description will force you to think harder and in effect help you write something that will get the job done quicker/more effectively (i.e. the buyer will benefit much more from a 100 character description). Twitter was actually founded on this very logic even when Facebook already offered the ability to post much longer content (i.e. the only reason Twitter succeeded initially was because of their 140 character limit).

Regarding ideas, they don't need to be short, they just have to have a common suffix like "store", "shop", "service", etc. The reason being the landing page automatically creates a sentence based on those ideas so it helps ensure that the sentence is well-formed (i.e. "Perfect for business ideas like a xxxxx agency, a xxxxx company, a xxxxx brand, a xxxxx service, and more."). Right now our system checks your input against around 300 suffixes which should cover 99% of cases (e.g. store, shop, service, cafe, broker, class, service, activity, bank, brand, company, etc). Again, these are suffixes (general categories) so you can prepend virtually anything you like in the front (e.g. yoga service, consulting service, health service, gaming service, virtual reality planting service, yearbook decoration service, etc).

Regarding repetitive automated descriptions, a lot of it has to do with names being made-up and of course there are algorithmic limitations when you're dealing with such a small amount of data. At the end of the day, automation can only take you so far especially when you're dealing with creative tasks. This is why everything that's currently automated can still be updated by you manually if you like.

I agree it can be a bit of work for large portfolios but just like with anything else in life, the more work you put into something, the better the outcome with be. It's no different than the amount of work you put into finding the right names to invest in. Those that invest more effort into it generally end up coming out ahead. Our goal is to make that process as easy as possible for you without charging you an arm and a leg.

That said, please note that the default information generated should be very broad so it won't impact your listings in any negative way. Any additional effort you invest into improving it will simply boost the probability of a sale but doing nothing won't hurt it. Think of that information is being no different than any other content on the rest of the landing pages. It's there to help that small number of buyers who need convincing but it won't hurt your chances with the majority of buyers who already have their hearts set on the name.

Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it. Especially since it requires no additional effort on your part (though as I mentioned above, you still have the option to improve the listings further if you want).

When a domain is leased, I assume Alter takes care of the renewals during the lease term. Have you already dealt with renewals of premium (ngtld) domains, that can be very expensive?

Alter generally takes care of the renewals for majority of the regular TLDs but buyers would be responsible for the premium renewals. I do want to thank you for bringing this up because we had completely forgotten to mention this on our website. We added the proper verbiage now.

Does Alter share buyer and seller info like Dan or keep it confidential?

The buyer and seller information would be kept confidential. However, we do show the buyer's name to sellers if a buyer makes an offer. On the other hand, the buyer would only be able to see the seller's name if the seller decides to act on the offer (i.e. accept/counter/decline it). The seller's name will not be shown if the seller cancels the offer or ignores it/lets it expire.

Ideas and feedback:

- 'Add to Shortlist' button might be more intuitive than a heart. Some might think it's only decoration.
- Quick access to most recently shortlisted names.
- Keep shortlists permanently so they don't roll off. This is valuable data for what names are resonating most with visitors over long-term.
- Highlight the speaker icon with 'Hear This Name' text, otherwise just decoration to some.
- Automate possible uses based on newly assigned categories. Hundreds of names, too much to edit manually.
- Custom edit pronunciation, sometimes it's off.
- Optimized cross-promoted domains based on Suffix/Prefix/Category i.e Row 1 'Other names based on [suffix']... row 2 'Other names based on [Prefix], row 3 'Other names based on [same category names]'
- Logos on main page are kinda huge compared to other markets. Might look better scaled down a bit?

Best

Great feedback as always! I appreciate all the time you put into this.

Regarding making the favorite button more noticeable/actionable on landers, agreed and noted.

Regarding quick access to most recently favorited names, right now you can get pretty close by simply changing the date range of your dashboard (i.e. set it to "Today" or "Yesterday" and you'll be able to see the top favorited names for that time frame).

Regarding shortlists rolling off, all the data is permanently kept and you can use your dashboard's date range feature to filter through it. I think you're looking at data on the Domains page which only shows you the last 30 days worth. The reason for this is so that every domain has equal footing when you sort by visitors/favorites/offers (i.e. so that you're always looking at data for the same number of days and newly added domains don't get pushed down just for being new).

Regarding the speaker icon, we do show a tooltip when you hover over it but since pronunciation is often subjective, we didn't want to make it too distracting.

Regarding the accuracy of automatically generated keywords/categories/ideas, a lot of it has to do with names being made-up and of course there are algorithmic limitations when you're dealing with such a small amount of data. At the end of the day, automation can only take you so far especially when you're dealing with creative tasks. This is why everything that's currently automated can still be updated by you manually if you like.

I agree it can be a bit of work for large portfolios but just like with anything else in life, the more work you put into something, the better the outcome with be. It's no different than the amount of work you put into finding the right names to invest in. Those that invest more effort into it generally end up coming out ahead. Our goal is to make that process as easy as possible for you without charging you an arm and a leg.

That said, please note that the default information generated should be very broad so it won't impact your listings in any negative way. Any additional effort you invest into improving it will simply boost the probability of a sale but doing nothing won't hurt it. Think of that information is being no different than any other content on the rest of the landing pages. It's there to help that small number of buyers who need convincing but it won't hurt your chances with the majority of buyers who already have their hearts set on the name.

Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it. Especially since it requires no additional effort on your part (though as I mentioned above, you still have the option to improve the listings further if you want).

Regarding better name recommendations, agreed and noted for the future. Right now our marketplace has a very limited inventory. This would work much better if we had a lot of recommendations to show for each category.

Regarding logo sizes, I think we fall somewhere in the middle compared to other marketplaces. There's a competitor that actually uses an even larger size. Though we'll certainly consider ways to improve this as we move forward.

Your system doesn't allow to remove all these keywords and ideas.
Also I don't need their autogeneration at all.

Categorization is not necessary as well.

Yesterday I have parked 1 of my .PROs on DAN - and received $999 initial bid this morning...
No ideas, no keywords, no categories... Just domain - and just works!

Thanks for your thoughts! I appreciate it. I get the feeling that you're not a big believer of marketing? Let me try to change your mind.

Even though you personally don't see the benefits, I assure you that marketing does work. Otherwise, industry leaders in other sectors like Amazon and eBay wouldn't encourage sellers to use thousands of keywords on their product landing pages.

The whole point of it is to reach as many potential buyers as possible even ones that never considered your name in the first place. IMO, there's nothing wrong with increasing the probability of a sale if we can do it without any downsides. I mean at the end of the day, isn't domaining essentially a numbers game? The sellers who can improve their numbers generally come out ahead (i.e. by improving the quality of their names, by studying current trends, by assessing past sales, by reaching as many buyers as possible, etc).

Sure, you were able to sell that .PRO name just by relying solely on type-in traffic but you don't know if any of our innovative features could've helped sell it even quicker. In other words, if you could've sold that name a month (or even a day) quicker without paying an extra dime, why wouldn't you want to? That's essentially our goal.

That additional information on our lading pages won't make any difference to majority of the buyers who already have their heart set on your name and are going to buy it anyway (like they do on other marketplaces). However, it will help you reach even more buyers especially those that do need that additional push/convincing. So there's no downside to it, only a major upside.

Just put yourself in the buyer's shoes for a minute and think about which experience you would prefer if you were looking to name your new business/company/product/service:

• Experience 1
• Experience 2
  
• Experience 3
  
• Experience 4
  
• Experience 5

Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it. Especially since it requires no additional effort on your part (but you still have the option to improve the listings further if you want).

One more transaction successfully completed here. Thanks @Alter.com

Verified.xyz sold for 14888 usd.

Wow, congrats again and keep it up!! Random idea for when you retire... you should consider offering domaining courses to aspiring sellers. I think you can help a lot of people with your level of expertise, not to mention you'd probably make a killing doing it!

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Not sure if @Deven Patel still checks here at NamePros, but just wanted to say how much I appreciated what he created, and the classy way that he always interacted, even right down to the closing messages.

Alter did many things well:

• great analytics to check visits and favourites on individual names, sorted by marketplace and direct
• superb user interface
• excellent information for startups choosing a name
• comprehensive information on each domain in a standardized way
• nice logo options
• excellent visibility on net it seems of names
• great commissions
• BIN, make offer and payment plan options
• etc.

I am really sorry that the project did not work out, and wish you the very best in your next venture.

Sincerely,

Bob

 

[SuperBrander]

@timestamp You're treating the 15%-20% difference between different marketplaces as if it's money that just landed from the air and can belong to anyone. The fact that Alter offers a 10% commission and other marketplaces 25%-30% doesn't turn the difference in commission into spare money that should be distributed to domainers who aren't doing things right. Let's remember that other marketplaces, though they charge a high commission, are proven venues that sell a lot domains and invest a lot of money into advertising and in the case of SH, also sophisticated AI systems. Some of the domains that are selling are terrible ones. So for now, in many cases the high commission they charge can be justified. Plus, in SH's case they also offer the white label marketplace. Alter needs to prove itself and show that it can really sell domains and provide the same sort of success as other marketplaces. Yesterday I got a pretty big sale at the WLM and I'm paying 7.5% commission. If it were up to you and this domain was at Alter with the "rewarding domainers who don't sell" policy you're suggesting, I'd have to take 20% of that and distribute it to other domainers and get... what exactly? A warm and fuzzy feeling? Charity is charity and domaining is domaining. Learn, work hard, make money and reinvest. If a domainer can't do that, they shouldn't be domaining.

 

[Veneris]

Please include payoneer in your payment method, many of us are happy with that option.
Click like if you agree with me that payoneer is a good payment option for domainers.
@Deven Patel please take note of this suggestion.
Thanks

 

[SuperBrander]

@Deven Patel All brandable marketplaces have been struggling with incorporating Afternic because of policy issues that prevent 3rd parties (in this case Alter) from listing domains owned by other people. Is there definitely an agreement in place with them?

 

[JudgeMind]

Alter is making it happen! Congratulations @Deven Patel and team!! Keep up the hard work.

 

[Deven Patel]

Important Update

After clarifying our relationship with Afternic, it appears that there was a misunderstanding between our teams. So unfortunately, we will no longer propagate domains listed on Alter to either Afternic or Uniregistry at this time.

However, we will still list your domains on the following partner marketplaces and registrars:

• Sedo, DAN.com, IONOS, Namecheap, Network Solutions, Name.com, Epik, NameSilo, Hover, Dynadot, Register.com, BigRock, 101domain, SnapNames, Sav, Hexonet, Internet.bs, Moniker, Rebel, InterNetX, Dofo, WebNames, and more

In order to protect our relationships with these partners, you cannot list your Alter domains with any of the companies mentioned above since we will be doing it on your behalf moving forward. If they are already listed there, please remove them from there before February 15th. Otherwise, you are free to list them anywhere else you like including on Afternic and Uniregistry by yourself.

In order to make this process smoother for our sellers, we have released a bulk export tool that allows you to download a CSV of your listed domains. You can access this tool by logging into your Alter account and then clicking on Domains > Listed > Export CSV (cloud icon found next to the search bar).

We are very sorry for any inconvenience the prior announcement may have caused. Thank you for your continued support!

 

[cillx]

• Domains Reviewed: 80,000
• Domains Accepted: 8,000
• Domains Listed: 4,200 (5% of submissions)

However, we also discovered a few challenges along the way like these:

• Fruitless Appraisals: Around 95% of submitted and 40% of accepted domains are never listed. This means a lot of time we spend on reviewing and appraising domains is wasted.
• Loopholes: There are sellers who try to game the system by creating multiple accounts to circumvent our submission limit, by marketplace hopping because they're impatient or didn't like their logos, etc. All of this ends up wasting our energy.
• Limited Inventory: A lot of our marketing dollars are wasted because of our small inventory. We're learning that buyers who come from paid channels typically want more options.

You have reviewed 80000 domains but accepted only 8000! this is the main issue here. I'm pretty sure you had rejected many cool names because you were too picky. On the other hand, now you are going to do the complete opposite and going accept everything.

You could simply reduce marketplace hopping and free appraisal seekers by introducing a token system where you require $1 token for every submition. Then you will only attract loyal sellers. Now introducing accepting everything your marketplace will be flooded with lots of crappy names.

In my opinion, you should at least have basic rules, like for example, no more than 10 letters, no numbers and hyphens, no more than two words, etc.

 

[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]

An improved search experience is here!

Based on everyone's feedback, we just released a more advanced search functionality on Alter. Now you can click on the filter icon located next to the search bar to fine tune queries based on keyword placement, domain extension, length, price, etc.

 

[Deven Patel]

Wow, so much animosity. Damned if we do and damned if we don't.

It's interesting, a number of other marketplace executives I've had the pleasure of chatting with so far seem jaded against sellers. I'm beginning to see why.

Rather than criticize something you don't fully understand, why not offer constructive feedback that can actually help everyone? Ideas are easy, execution is hard, my friends.

Regardless of your intent, I do appreciate all your thoughts. So thank you!

Now let me address all your concerns the best I can below.

I see what you did there. Ranking by price is misleading. The default "Relevance" shows completely different picture.

On the first page there are names like wolf/ora, ka/aft, app/rila, zur/ova, v/esert, furn/ixo, salary/leap, gil/ur, joi/ti, gift/glad, oro/min, flavor/spin etc. that are at best hand-reg quality. How they are premium in your definition of it (apparently, you claim that you guys are very selective in your premiums) and, more importantly, why you think they are so good that they should be on the first page by relevance is just beyond me.

I mean, it is your site and you can do whatever you like, but please don't claim that Alter is somehow super-selective in quality. The names on your FIRST page are nowhere near your examples above like yahoo, google, paypal, stripe, subway, blue origin, spacex, coinbase, namepros etc. They are similar to yahoo/va, googol/rila, stripe/leap, subway/glad, blu/oromin, apple/spin, amazon/ur, coinbase/ti etc.

You my friend are the one who suggested in another post that I put myself in your shoes. Yet, when you have something to say you completely neglect your own advice.

In the case of premium, ranking by price is NOT misleading because those are all curated names. Generally speaking, the highest quality names will have the highest appraisals (i.e. think one-word dictionary domains). However, just because they're high quality doesn't mean they'll sell quick. As you may know, impulse buys occur in the $2-3k range. This is why our first page shows different results.

Our relevance/ranking algorithm takes into account a number of things like the name's length, extension, keywords, price, popularity, etc. We're also constantly fine-tuning the algo based on buyer feedback. Although I appreciate your thoughts, you have to understand that seller feedback is often very biased towards their own names.

I completely agree that a number of premium names listed on our marketplace aren't that high quality but have you really thought about why that might be? When we first started out, we needed to ramp up our inventory very quick in order to compete against other marketplaces with 50-100X more names. So we had to make sacrifices on the quality front. Do you suggest we downgrade those existing listings now to help you feel better?

I mean, if you guys are willing to list ultra-premium dictionary names worth 6-7 figures with Alter, those would be the only names listed as premium right now.

And since you selectively chose examples that fit your narrative from our first page, let me selectively choose a few that fit mine.. P/an, Le/ek, No/ol, Ni/dom, Yi/xe, Le/za, Gi/lur, Ly/be, Tee/ro, So/tel. You don't think these are quality names? You have to look at both sides of the story. Algos aren't perfect.

I understand that you are either a fanboy or an insider, right?

Really? The first thought that comes to your mind when you hear something against your narrative is that it must be shilling? Why so much hate against someone you barely know?

First, searching by relevance is very relevant in this case. Because, that is basically the default view when a visitor clicks on "more business names" on index page and comes to alter.com/names. This is the HIGHEST exposure view. As most clients won't change the navigation and/or for the ones that do the views would be split among other choices. I mean, come on! Fro/ban and Joi/ti and Just/rix next to Pan?

I understand why you would think that but it's wrong. The "All Names" page is nowhere near the highest traffic page. It receives ~5% of the views compared to the homepage/category pages/keyword pages. Again, you're letting your personal feelings get the best of you.

Second, sorting by popular, is not much better. "Top names" include celc/om, rea/nix, app/nor, bill/axa, show/brook, pro/zom, jiz/ax, Niro/si, hu/tiva etc. On the FIRST page, Carl!!!

The name Cel/com is being used by a company generating over $1 billion in revenue. But you think the name is low quality?

When you sort by "popular", our algorithm looks at the names' popularity to sort them. How else do you think we should sort them? Please offer any valuable insights you have. I'm happy to listen.

I am going to have to agree. My main problem with Alter is we have very different ideas about what is a premium name. I do not have this issue with the other sites. I just gave up after they reject great name after great name and put these mediocre names as “premium”.

I think you're completely missing the fact that all our names are pretty much marketed just the way premium names are on other marketplaces. So it isn't necessary for a domain to be labeled premium in order for it to receive exposure. It's no different than our competitors. The only difference is that the competitors label all their names as premium to make you feel better.

Would you rather have us charge 30% commission and accept 100K names like our competitors? Paying 3X lower commission in return for losing a label doesn't seem that bad to me. Unless it is?

Same here, I stopped submitting long ago, still scratch my head trying to figure out how the owner claimed his marketplace is only for top quality, super premium names yet average names are listed as premiums all over the place.

As I mentioned above, the reason is simple. Because those are all the names we have or they were accepted when we were first starting out when we needed to quickly increase our inventory. If you own better names, list them with us. We would love to make them premium eligible.

I see for example Manggo dot com being listed, I submitted in the past a lot of double letter names previously accepted at BB or BR and absolutely every single one has been rejected, yet manggo is there and I'm sure there might be some others as well.

Have you tried Googling the phrase? 1.3M+ results. Just because a name has double letters doesn't automatically make it a good name.

I just had a look at the alter.com/names page, about half of the names listed on the best traffic page are a joke imo ... I see looplix and I wonder if they know what loo means in the UK

Keyword: In your opinion. Case closed.

As I mentioned above, the "All Names" page is nowhere near the highest traffic page. It receives ~5% of the views compared to the homepage/category pages/keyword pages.

Seems to me like majority of this animosity arises because every seller thinks their own names are better than the rest. So let me run this idea by you guys off the top of my head.. instead of us picking premium names, what if we let the sellers decide themselves by paying 1% of the domain's list price to upgrade their name? For example, if you want to list a domain priced at $3k as premium, you would pay a fee of $30. How does that sound? Put your money where your mouth is?

Listen you guys, I know how easy it is to criticize others especially when things don't work out the way we want them to. I understand being nice is hard but it's historically proven to be effective. Putting that hard work in generally results in a better society.

Anyway, as I said countless times before I'm always happy to listen to all your feedback and incorporate it into our marketplace if it makes sense. But we can't do that if you don't offer constructive feedback.

At the end of the day, we're trying to offer more value than any other marketplace at 10% commission. Let's not lose sight of that.

Otherwise, you are all more than welcome to start your own marketplaces and compete against Alter if you think you can do a better job.

 

[Hui Siew Choong]

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.​

Alter.com is just awesome , I sold a domain recently and whole transaction completion is fast and I just cash out thru wire transfer . Most importantly, the fee in unbelievably 10%

 

[Deven Patel]

Could you please add an option of getting logo designs for increased commission? Like designing logos and if the domains gets sold you charge 15% commission compared to the usual 10%commissions.

That's an interesting suggestion. Though honestly I don't think it's worth giving away 5% of your profit on a $5 professional logo (e.g. on a $3k sale, it would cost you an extra $150).

Keep in mind that our basic and uploaded logo options cost $0. However, if you still want a professional logo then $5 is a very small investment compared to the $8-10/year the domain costs to renew.

If you're worried about the cost, here's a strategy I would suggest. Order professional logos for only a few of your top names at first. Then once you sell one, you can reinvest that profit in the other names slowly over time. By then you should also get an idea of whether you want to even keep some of the other names in your portfolio by sorting them by visitors, favorites, offers, etc.

Congratulations for surpassing 30 000 listed domains :D

Looks like Alter is growing fast.

Thanks! It wouldn't have been possible without everyone's continued support. It's much appreciated!

There seems to be a problem with showing visitor counters in the Dashboard, but only when "Today" or "Yesterday" is selected. Other periods show fine.

Thanks for reporting this! It should be fixed now. Please let us know if you're still experiencing the issue.

Do they require US tax forms like Afternic/GoDaddy?
Or NO - like Sedo/DAN?

No forms at this time. If you have any other concerns, please feel free to reach out to support for a faster response.