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]

What are the chances that a seller is going to buy a domain from your marketplace versus sellers who are experimenting with your Search and trying to see if their domains are showing up?

Please note that search results aren't counted in your stats. The "visitor" count you see in your account only includes people who actually viewed your listings/landers. I think that might solve your concern.

I see you are trying to promote non-keyword domains to interested buyers but it looks like you giving a very little boost to the domains that contain the search term. It's rare that a domain that contains the search term will show up on the first page.
Can you give a boost to domains that contain the search term a bit? I think it makes a lot of sense. I predict your CTR will increase if you did that. Just try an A/B test between search results that contain the term VS that don't contain the term.

Our algorithm works the same across the board. It doesn't distinguish between keyword vs non-keyword domains. However, it does consider how buyers interact with the names so you may be seeing an inadvertent effect across some specific search terms which could be due to a number of reasons like our inventory not having enough keyword based domains, the keyword based domains being too niche, etc.

Here's an example of the results that show keyword based domains at the top: https://alter.com/names?q=talent

Suggest:

- Bulk verify option after names are already submitted.
- Bulk category editor.
- 'Description refresh' button (set a new/correct description based on new categories assigned)

Thanks for the suggestions! We just released a feature that will automatically verify your domains after they've already been submitted. On that note, we also released the ability to add/edit thousands of listings at once through a CSV file.

Does Alter alert people who already favourited your names when you reduce prices like SH? @Deven Patel. It will be a great feature if not already in place.

No, because we don't require buyers to sign up for an account. Buyers seem to appreciate less friction and also the fact that they don't have to worry about endless spam.

the search engine is not good. For ex, I put "poker" and in the first 10 or 15 pages appear unrelated domains like ribil, joiti, sonsic, orifund, skabble ... up to page 17 some domains related to Poker begin to appear.

That's the point. By default, you're performing a "broad" match search which will only show you quality results at the top. I think what you're looking for is results that only contain the keyword "poker" which you can accomplish by choosing the "contains" filter.

Broad Match: https://alter.com/names?q=poker
Contains Match: https://alter.com/names?q=poker&placement=contains

Note how the top row of quality results appear in both sets.

I was just wondering, do you have any stats like to average favorites-to-sale ratio or visits-through-marketplace to sale ratio etc.? Would be helpful in some calculations.

EDIT: Also, it would ne nice having an option to show number of favorites for domains which are favorited. Might add a sense of urgency in buyers.

We do not track these because they don't accurately paint the picture.

Regarding favorites-to-sales, we've seen buyers who never favorited a name as well as buyers who have so it's not really a useful metric to track across the entire marketplace. However, you can do this for your own portfolio if you like.

Regarding sales-through-marketplace, again it's super hard to track because of buyers using multiple devices and marketing channels over a span of few days before actually pulling the trigger. What we do instead is try to survey the buyers if possible after the sale. This is how we discovered that around 80% of them come through landers (very rough estimate).

Regarding showing favorite counts to buyers, we already show "X buyers viewed this domain recently" on the landers. I think that accomplishes the same goal.

Just moved 1/3 of my portfolio to Alter. Domains already listed on SEDO and Arternic, does it make sense accepting this form?

If your names are already listed there and you don't care about the benefit of saving a ton of time dealing with different companies, updating prices across accounts, re-verifying domains, etc then you don't need to syndicate your domains. It's just an added convenience for busy sellers.

From your Syndication

Automatically list my "Buy Now" domains at the marketplaces and registrars mentioned above

------------------

What about my " make offers " domains !!

We can only syndicate domains with a BIN price because we don't have enough information to negotiate on your behalf on other platforms. If you have a lot of MO-only inventory then syndication may not make sense for you.

Sold my second name via Alter - icona.net $899 (non Premium listing)
Great experience, Thanks to Alter

Thanks to the team at Alter, I managed to sell the only name I have listed there. I've had this name for 2 years tried to list it at SH but it was rejected, I knew the name had some sort of value so submitted the name at Alter in January 2021 and it was accepted.

Awesome, congrats on the sales!! And thank you for using Alter.

 

[capybara]

Two weeks ago I had a sale on Alter, first received a payment email and in a few hours transfer request, the domain was pushed to Alter account promptly and then that was it. Asked in a few days and Alter told me they are unable to contact the buyer. Likely the emails went to spam so there is very little chance it gets better, who knows how long is it gonna be before the buyer wakes up and decides to do something about their purchase... It was not a big sale, less than 2K, and we all know the stories of much more expensive domains which go to the expired auctions the next year after having been purchased, its not unusual when buyers forget about their freshly acquired domains and is likely what happened to my sale as well.

In the buy it now window it is stated "All payments will be final and non-refundable once the domain is in escrow.". I think it means Alter has it covered within their ToS legally, and since its like that, does it make sense not to pay the seller? The domain is in Alter possession so whenever the buyer is back to claim it Alter has been enabled to complete the transfer...

 

[NameWell]

Alter should collect the phone numbers of both buyers and sellers, and in these cases they could send a text message or make a phone call. If email is the only contact option, and the emails go to spam or the email is not working, then without the phone number it is impossible to contact the buyer or the seller.

It can happen also in the case of a seller: a seller sells a domain, and then Alter cannot contact the seller via email, and there is no phone number.

Definitely! Also, I believe that Alter should have a very clear policy in place for such cases (the buyer makes the payment, the seller transfers the domain name to Alter, the buyer then disappears.) Preferrable option: if the buyer is not responsive for 10 days, the payment is then automatically sent to the seller and the buyer is not eligible for any refunds. Alternatively, it could be that the domain name is transferred back to the seller and put back on the marketplace until things are resolved with the buyer. If Alter ends up refunding the buyer, they should only make a partial refund and use the rest to compensate the seller for the off-market time.

Keeping the seller's domain name as a hostage at Alter's escrow for unlimited time and making the seller cover for all of the time that it was off-market is very unprofessional and not fair. The seller did all they could on their end. It's not their responsibility that Alter can't do their part.

 

[tomcarl]

Best of success to everyone in 2022

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I agree with what others have said that it would not be fair to ask Alter to give up having dns pointed there. The brandable places require exclusivity and have much higher commissions (well SH do allow Afternic, but with added commission and coins). As has been mentioned, Alter invest in our domain names in various ways, including promotion. I am more than happy to have my DNS pointed to them.

I ordered some $5 logos and very pleased with the quality and speed of production (one was in hours and the other about a day). One was a very long name, and really pleased with how much better it looks now compared to the basic logo.

Bob

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Perhaps while we wait to see what develops, it might be a good time to develop a list of what we think is worthwhile about Alter as it stands, and what might need further tweaking. I realize both lists could be long, but maybe concentrate on the most important.

Things I like:

1. I like the presentation of names in the landers. They restrict you to short descriptions, but do give a chance to do a short pitch plus itemize some possible use sectors.
2. I think logos are used well in presentation, and the quality of the logos professionally designed were very good, at least compared to other marketplace logos. I like you could add your own, and even the options with free basic logos were good, especially in this era of minimalistic logos.
3. The site seems to do a good job of getting noticed on Google. For example if I place some domain names on Alter, and on another marketplace, and then Google "EXAMPLE domain" with just the SLD not full domain, but include word domain, it comes very high in Google search for Alter.
4. The basic TM search feature is user friendly and helpful.
5. Allowed BIN, make offer or various lease-to-own options, all user set.
6. I really like the analytics provided. Without doing any extra customization I can see how each domain name does in terms of both direct type-in and views via the Alter marketplace. I can set it to different time periods, thereby doing research if trying changes.
7. Has many features of a brandable place with commission levels of a general purpose marketplace.
8. Site provided phone number and other contact options for dealing with queries.
9. Sales were smoothly processed and payouts were very fast.
10. Many people hate appraisals, but at least if you use one the Alter appraisal is fast, free, and the 6-dimension presentation is helpful.
11. Overall good advice re importance and choosing a name, attractively presented.
12. As a fresh build, the site felt professional and responsive. Some of the legacy marketplaces suffer from decades long gradual evolution, in my opinion..

Things I think need work still, despite efforts to improve so far:

1. I don't think search yet is all that is needed. I don't see the logic of names it shows up for many searches I do. This may be due to the seller choices for categories, or simply search not great.
2. While I understand the move away from a collated collection, I think the varying quality of some names hurts the marketplace. I am not sure what a fair and economical way to address this, but I think that some form of approval of names is needed.
3. It would really help the marketplace to entice a few more stellar assets to the marketplace, and have them show on the home page. I mean great single word .com, .io and .xyz names.
4. I realize this would take some work, but I think cross-agreements with some naming services, web hosting providers, trademark services, branding/marketing experts could help both.
5. I think the appraisal system needs to recognize strength in .xyz and not view it just as same level as other new gTLDs.
6. I wonder if a cloud-based set of experienced naming/domaining people could, for a reasonable fee, help those seeking a name get down to a list of options from Alter. Idea would be the end user would fill a simple form saying something like what the sector is, their preferences re type of name and TLD choices, price range, etc. and then someone who has proven that they have good skills in names and know Alter well would go through and propose 5 names or something that are currently listed. I don't think the fee needs to be much (maybe $20 base and a 1% return from seller should a name get sold from the list to this buyer) but this could make the job so much easier for end user and make up for the weak search to some degree. Some of the features of SH contests, but a fast, small, set of great choices delivered within 24 hr.
7. I don't know details of the advertising spend so far, but if I owned the site I would concentrate on spending promoting Alter, rather than particular names for sale. In the long run this helps sellers more I think, and a better ROI.
8. The basic and professional or user logo presentation for names should somehow include the TLD as well as the SLD.
9. It is a minor thing, but I would take out the requirement to use 'name' in the description, and I would allow alphanumeric in descriptions e.g. saying 3D or web3 is currently impossible.
10. I would encourage buyers to permit announcement of their sales, and do that in a way that Alter had a news feed that is essentially a short announcement of new name for companies. I would keep price privacy as an option, but encourage buyers to let Alter make their new name known to the world. And along the way that would help Alters and sellers too.

I hope that Alter will continue, and some of these ideas will be implemented.

Bob

 

[Bob Hawkes]

It appears that (some?) names at Alter no longer have working HTTPS?

i.e. if you enter https://EXAMPLE.com for a name at Alter Google Chrome will give an security warning.
If you force it to http://EXAMPLE.com it is fine.

Since once visited, and then user return, I think many browsers default to https, it is problematic.

The name itself as directed, that is https://alter.com/names/EXAMPLE.com works fine.

I think it was an issue in early days and promptly fixed. I may not be explaining this well – perhaps @Future Sensors may wish to comment.

If there is any update on future of Alter @Deven Patel I know many would be anxious to know. But also understand that legal or contractual things may make it impossible to release anything now.

-Bob

 

[Deven Patel]

@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.

Thanks for the compliments and the questions! We just launched a couple months ago in June of this year so still working on a lot of stuff. Please bear with us.

What methods of payment are accepted and how can funds be withdrawn?

For buyers, we accept all major credit cards and bank wires. For sellers, we support PayPal and wire transfers.

Is the sale process done using an escrow service or in house?

Sales are processed in-house but we do use Escrow.com if the buyer specifically requests it.

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?

We only transfer the domain over to the buyer once payment is successfully received.

Do domains get transfered to Alter.com's team and from there to the buyer or are they transfered directly to the buyer?

When sold, we ask sellers to transfer the domains to us first and then we transfer them to the buyer to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Do you plan on adding chat support?

Eventually, once we determine how effective it is compared to our existing support options (e.g. online, phone, email).

Installment plans?

This is a tough one. We considered adding the option but didn't have enough data to justify it. There's a major downside to installment payments which is that once one buyer starts the payments the domain is locked for a considerable amount of time where another buyer can't purchase it even if they're willing to pay full price. That's a huge opportunity cost. Also, if the buyer isn't willing to pay full price upfront then there's a chance they may default on the payments all while future buyers are locked out. So we'll have to wait and see if there's enough demand for it on the buyer side before we add the option.

Marketing domains on Google/Facebook/etc.?

Absolutely, we're just getting started!

How many people are currently working at Alter?

I'm afraid I can't answer that question publicly in order to keep competitors at bay.

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.

Think of it this way, we're going to do everything our competitors are doing and more all while being 3X cheaper than them (i.e. 10% commission with us vs 30-35% with competitors). We're going to accomplish this by operating much more efficiently than them (i.e. low overhead, more automation, better allocation of marketing budget, etc). But first we need to increase our listings which means marketing to sellers. That's why I'm here talking to you! Unless we have a decent inventory, most of the buyer-focused marketing would be wasted.

The 7.5% commission you mentioned is really for a Sedo/Afternic/DAN-like experience that offers no curation whatsoever. You're basically asking buyers to find a needle in a haystack of low quality domains. No buyer is going to put that much effort searching through them. I know I never did when I was a buyer.

And I understand why sellers get excited about white label options but I haven't seen any solid data that supports the theory that white label is better than a well-trusted brand like the marketplace itself (i.e. if you were a buyer would you rather buy a domain on GoDaddy or KoolBizNames.com?). I mean I understand white label makes us feel better and we think that buyers will only see our domains vs the others on the marketplace but on the contrary I think buyers are much smarter than that especially when it comes to buying high end domains. They're not going to spend thousands of dollars without thoroughly considering the available alternatives.

By the way, do you have any concrete data that shows what percentage of sales are coming through direct vs other marketing channels on those other marketplaces? We have tried some of those other marketing channels briefly and direct/type-in won hands down. It actually makes sense when you think about it. How many entrepreneurs you know find domains for their business on social media or through PPC or through banner ads? I have started countless projects in the past and have always found domains directly by visiting their landing pages (type-in). Anyway, we still plan on utilizing the other marketing channels but just more efficiently (i.e. use them to enhance our inbound marketing efforts instead).

One last thing, more listings doesn't necessarily mean more sales. I would argue the opposite. Less listings means more sales because buyers have limited options. When it comes to quality vs quantity, I believe quality always wins hands down.

Like other brandable marketplaces, our team actually spends a ton of time curating all the domain listings in addition to the logos. Then there's a ton of marketing work we're doing behind the scenes to grow sales. Remember, we don't succeed unless we actually sell the names so believe it or not sales are ultimately our top priority. So I hope you do give us a chance because without sellers like you, we're screwed!

 

[Deven Patel]

Also, what's with the weird price tags?

$249,196
$6,602
$27,946
etc.

Why not round up or end in nines? I thought there was a science to that.

So we did some A/B testing and it turns out you're right. Buyers did prefer a more simpler price tag. We just updated all our prices to reflect that so now all of them end in a 9. Thanks for all your great feedback!

 

[karmaco]

Deven never said he was doing this. The pull here is lower commission than other brandable markets.

What you guys are suggesting sounds like a cross between a co op and socialism etc which maybe someone will try something like that at a later date. It would be impossible to implement in a way that is completely fair to all.

All domains are not equal, all sellers don’t have the same wealth or lack thereof. So in theory the people with the best most sellable names would be providing for an entire group’s morale or renewals? I don’t get how that is fair.

If I buy a 4 letter name for 1K sell it for 15K I am providing alot more to the group than hand reggers will ever provide to me. Its an extreme example to make my point.

I have seen this idea thrown around elsewhere but its hard to see beyond people with great domains will be rewarding those with possibly not so great domains. In this business you should be rewarded for choosing right not choosing wrong imo.

 

[ecomslice]

Finally back to thread about Alter.

All those who high jacked the thread for personal debate should make your own thread for respect of Alter.

It's valid discussion but more specialized focus

 

[Deven Patel]

Hello Deven, why while we have to wait for the logo, the so called "editorial status" you do not show in the landing page "coming soon" next to our domain name and put also an "inquiry" form for potential buyer to bid for the domain or simply ask 4 info about it? If I type my domain name now in the landing page I see your entire marketplace and no reference to my own domain name, basically free advertising for Alter.

Great feedback! Done and done.

 

[Deven Patel]

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

Thanks for the feedback as always! I understand what you're looking to accomplish with this idea and would love to hear everyone else's opinion on it.

In the meantime, my personal thought is that this would create too much unnecessary complexity for everyone (buyers, sellers, and us).

On the buyer front, once they realize that the marketplace offers discounts, they will be more likely to wait around for them thus reducing the likelihood of an impulse sale (e.g. if you knew that GoDaddy offered discount codes every Black Friday, you would wait until November of every year to buy/renew domains; maybe that's why GoDaddy no longer offers promo codes). Additionally, one of the biggest selling points of a brandable marketplace (vs a regular one) is that the prices are reasonable and set in stone which builds a sense of trust with buyers (they would lose confidence if they knew prices could change especially after purchase; think about how you felt about your cable/internet/phone provider when you found out that new customers were receiving better discounts than you).

On the seller front, it's more work to constantly have to check/adjust prices for your portfolio (especially if it's a large portfolio). Additionally, it would be unfair to sellers who took advantage of these features vs those who didn't as they could potentially see lower STR rates. The way things are now levels the playing field for everyone as all they have to worry about is the quality of their domains.

For us, it would create more unnecessary support inquiries related to discounts which means we would have to invest more resources into the company. This ultimately means we would have to raise our commission to make up for it.

IMO, simplicity always wins. That said, if there's enough concrete data available that shows this actually works in the long-term and benefits both buyers and sellers then I'm all for it.

 

[Deven Patel]

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

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

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

 

[Future Sensors]

I think clarification is important. Is it possible to list a name on your own website, not a marketplace, if the link is to the listing at Alter? I would think this is in everyone's advantage.

Absolutely. And the non-exclusivity was the only reason I signed up for Alter in the first place. Will rethink about adding more domains.

 

[Deven Patel]

But wouldn't it be a good idea to give buyers the option of entering their email addresses to receive a notification when there is a price reduction on the domains they have favorited? It could be just a window somewhere or some kind of pop-up message when the visitor is about to quit the site.

This is also a good way of gathering the emails of potential buyers which you can use in the future for marketing campaigns or something similar.

Ah, you're referring to email subscription boxes and exit-intent popups. Yes, those are some ways to collect buyer emails among others. We do have this on our roadmap but haven't had a chance to think it through yet. One thing at a time.

When we do get to it though, it will be a tough decision because we're living in a more privacy-centric environment today (i.e. visitors are beginning to get more and more frustrated about personalized experiences). That doesn't mean it won't work but the portion of people we piss off by doing it will grow over time and ultimately tip the scales in the other direction. Like every other new marketing channel every discovered by mankind, there are always bad actors across the web that overdo it and ruin it for others.

A study found that just one bad experience is enough to stop 51% of customers from ever buying from that business again. Anyway, just pointing out that this types of decisions have lasting consequences so we want to think it through properly before releasing the feature.

P.S. Most people don't know this but Alter offered personalization software to marketers before pivoting to a domain marketplace so I know a thing or two about this stuff.

 

[Deven Patel]

@Deven Patel Can names that were rejected in the past be resubmitted again sometime in the future (i.e. after 3 or 6 months)? With each month and each closed sale you learn more and more about what resonates with your buyers and branding trends are also constantly shifting. So it's quite possible that a name that was rejected now may be a good fit after 3, 6, 12 or 18 months.

Yes, you can re-submit declined names after 6 months if you like. We also re-review previously declined names every so often when our criteria changes so you don't necessarily have to re-submit them.

 

[Deven Patel]

Submitted 25 unregistered names. 4 got accepted.
including Smileta/com on 14th February (around 10pm). Saw the accept mail this morning.
Tried to register all four accepted names and I see Smileta already registered (on the same14th) and pointed to Alter.

Coincidence???

This does seem sketchy. So I investigated it and discovered that this domain was submitted by two different sellers about a half a day apart from two different countries. Very weird coincidence indeed! Did you share the name with anyone else by any chance?

Anyway, when we accept a domain into our marketplace everyone who has submitted that domain is notified because we have no way of knowing who actually owns it at this point. So it seems like whoever else submitted it saw the notification first and grabbed it.

Unfortunately, not much we can do here. My only suggestion would be that if you think the domain is worth it then register it as soon as possible. Also, even though people may be tempted to share their ideas with others, I would suggest keeping them to yourselves while the domains are being reviewed.

And I know some of you may be thinking this so let me clarify it. We would never register anyone's ideas ourselves behind their back. That would be very unethical! It's simply not our cup of tea.

will the wait time of approval and listing improve in the future? I'm at 12 days now http://prntscr.com/zlknv1

The number of days you see there (i.e. 12 days ago) is when you first submitted the domain for review. Not when you verified it for listing. Our control panel doesn't tell you when the listing process started. So if a seller decides to wait 30 days before moving forward with the listing, that would say "30 days ago" which doesn't mean we're taking that long to list it.

I mentioned this here before but let me reiterate it again for convenience.

Domain Review: This is the first step of the process where sellers can submit their names for consideration into our marketplace. If accepted, our team will professionally appraise them and ask you for approval and verification to continue with their marketplace listings. This process takes about 24-72 hours on average but could take longer during peak times. Remember, there's no downside here for sellers because they're allowed to do whatever they want with their names in the meantime.

Domain Listing: Once you decide to move forward by verifying your domains, we'll create professional logos and descriptions for them before finally listing them on our marketplace. This process takes another 24-72 hours on average but could take longer because the design process goes through rigorous review to ensure that logos are top quality. If they aren't, our designers are asked to revise them repeatedly until they are. This is why you'll notice some names get published quicker than others (some logos need more revisions). In the meantime, note that your domain will still be directed to a basic landing page where interested buyers can see that it's for sale and can submit inquiries.

In either case, please be patient. We'll get to your domains as soon as we can!

For future reference, it's always best to reach out to support for quicker assistance on these types of inquiries. Although I do my best to reply to everyone here, this forum isn't our official support channel.

 

[Deven Patel]

Have you considered adding a specific section to Alter for call-to-action names?

I think these types of names are sold more often than people realize, and they can be powerful promotional tools for businesses. I'm sure you already have some shorter ones listed on your site, but showcasing longer versions of these names is a niche that none of the larger brand marketplaces has really explored.

I own a few that generate several million exact match search results, but I've never submitted them to a brand marketplace because they're over 12 characters.

Edit: Actually, looking at my list of submissions, I see that I did submit a few of them (not all) to Alter. I assume they were rejected because of length, but perhaps your team had other reasons.

Thanks for the feedback! Shorter names are always preferred but if the name is high quality and brandable then we may accept it. I just checked and the longest name will have listed right now is 15 characters long.

 

[wwwulff]

dear @Deven Patel

I have sold a few of my alter.com listed domain names to some other user. And I have sent a mail 2 times now to transfer the domains from my alter.com portfolio to his. Its been over a week now but I haven't received any response yet. Please look into it.

Thanks.

As far I know you must delist the names and the buyer must submit them again and they will automatically be listed in buyers account when they are verified (see post 252)

 

[Deven Patel]

How does GoDaddy register approved names we delay to register? I only use their evaluation after I've registered a name (and that's for EMDs) not before I reg it.

I know GD track names when you visit their sites for search and register the good names you search (some will call this stealing), but is it also possible they are doing it for Brandable names?

This is the second Brandable name I delay (just 2-3 days also. I love to reg in bulk. Like 5 or more at a go) in registering but found in GoDaddy when I searched for it?

Have they infiltrated who.is or there is a backdoor in the Brandable market from where they see names accepted, weigh them and reg them? Or this is just a coincidence?

Nothing's impossible but this sounds like a coincidence. A large company like GoDaddy isn't going to risk damaging its reputation over something that's relatively small like this. Anyway, let's keep this thread focused.

I submitted 25 domains 2 days ago, and today 23 got rejected. It was a bit weird, as there were a couple of very nice names as well, but that's okay.

In my first submission like month ago, I got more than 80% of my names approved. After that 100% is rejected... mostly highly appraised names from other marketplaces with obvious value.
Maybe they have periods of rejecting all names or something like that. I really do like Alter marketplace concept but this is not so motivating.
I also experienced express rejections.

I submitted 25 domains yesterday and today I got 3 approved, the rest was rejected -- It´s a low accept rate, but they probably did´t like the rest and I appreciate the pace

I guess then Alter's taste has altered :D I'm not sure what the real explanation is, but my best guess is that in the past they wanted to increase the inventory to a certain level (this doesn't mean they accepted junk names, but they accepted most good names), but now as they gained more experience on what sells, they narrowed down the types of names they accept.

Our criteria does change slightly based on past sales and size of our inventory but for the most part it's still the same. What we do see however is that the quality of the names being submitted by a single seller declines over time (most sellers probably submit their best names first).

Anyway, we are humans after all and are prone to miss a few good names from time to time so if any of you feel strongly about a name that should have been accepted, please feel free to reach out to support. You can do this by simply replying to the email notification you receive with a few words on why you think the name's valuable. We would be happy to take another look.

Anyway, has anyone here sold any names on Alter? I only have a few names there (28, average listing time is just 3 months) to already have one.

I lost track but people have reported various sales on this thread. You just have to search through it.

Then I submitted 2 domains and both of them got rejected in 2 and 5 minutes. That's more than weird. I guess the people who are checking the submitted domains worked pretty fast today. Or maybe there's some issue at Alter and all domains get rejected automatically?

This happens when we're reviewing names at the same time as new submissions arrive. Because of our 25 domain submission limit, sellers often submit new names as soon as they receive email notifications for their existing submissions. This occurs when we're just about to finish reviewing the initial batch so the new submissions are now at the top of the queue and get reviewed much quicker. Basically, it's just a coincidence.

 

[Deven Patel]

Thank you very much for your detailed reply I'm very optimistic about Alter, and I'll keep submitting domains. I hope the platform is slowly turning into a strong competitor of the "giants", Brandbucket and Squadhelp By the way, are you planning to start a newsletter for sellers? Or there's already one and I don't know about it?

Thanks for the compliments and support!

Although we don't have a newsletter per se, we do send out important announcements via email when necessary. Our thought process is that people receive too many emails already, we don't want to add to the clutter unless we have something important to share.

 

[Deven Patel]

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.

Thanks for the compliment! I completely agree with you and actually take pride in putting myself in others' shoes. This is exactly why I was transparent with our numbers (at least the ones I thought were useful).

I do understand your concern and am trying my best to help address it if you're willing to listen. Please realize that there's no simple answer that's going to help you determine which marketplace works best for you.

Let me explain. And please feel free to add your own thoughts based on our own experiences.

A/B Testing STR

My last company offered analytics software to 300,000+ marketers so I understand how valuable data can be. However, most of the metrics people look at are typically vanity metrics that make us feel good but don't actually help us make any useful decisions. Marketplace STR is a vanity metric.

A marketplace is essentially the sum of all seller portfolios listed on it. So if the quality of the names on marketplace A is higher than marketplace B, marketplace A will naturally have a higher STR compared to marketplace B. And that tells you absolutely nothing about how well your personal STR will be on either because the quality of your portfolio may be better or worse than the average quality of the names listed on that marketplace.

For instance, on Alter we have sellers who have STRs up to 20%. Does that mean every seller on our marketplace will have the same STR? Heck no! Most sellers will be nowhere near that range because sellers with super high STR typically own ultra premium names that cost thousands to acquire in the aftermarket.

The problem is that the rules of statistics aren't as applicable to domains as most people seem to think. There's no way to A/B test anything properly because there are way too many variables at play. Some of the those variables that impact STR include:

• Name Uniqueness: Each name is unique in that a single change of letter could result in a completely different name with a whole different meaning and quality (e.g. "visa" is 100X better than "iisa").
• Domain Price: Since there's no single formula that you can use to value domains they're priced all over the place. Naturally, a lower priced domain will sell quicker.
• Listing Window: Trends are constantly changing in business every few months so what sells today may not sell tomorrow (i.e. you have yearly trends like holiday/tax/school/voting seasons, mixed with larger trends like pandemics/stock markets/healthcare/inflation, mixed with consumer trends like clean energy/healthy eating/remote work, mixed with increase in mobile usage/decrease in domain usage, etc, etc). All of these trends affect STR.
• Portfolio Quality: As more and more names are sold, the quality of a portfolio naturally drops because again each domain is unique and over time all good domains are going to be sold out. This means the overall industry STR is always decreasing.
• Marketing Budget: Every marketplace has a different marketing budget which isn't always consistent over time so your domains may get more exposure in January and less in February.

And these are just a few variables I thought of off the top of my head. There are plenty more. So unless you have a way to list the same name at the same price across different marketplaces at the same time, you will never be able to produce any conclusive results.

A/B testing by definition is a way to compare two versions of a single variable. Like if you were trying to determine the STR of the same model of headphones on Amazon vs Walmart. A/B testing doesn't work if you're trying to sell a headphone on Amazon and a heater on Walmart during the winter. Those are two different products, two different prices, two different time frames, that appeal to two different audiences.

The only way I can think of where an A/B test could theoretically work for domains is if you take a good sample size of names (at least a few thousand), list them for a year on different marketplaces at the same time using TXT record verification, not use any landing pages to prevent traffic leakage (i.e. the domains would forward nowhere when typed into the browser), and refund any sales that occur during that period to prevent portfolio quality from changing. That would get you very close but still won't be accurate because the experiment won't account for the varying marketing budget of each marketplace during that specific time frame.

My point being.. A/B testing domain STR across different marketplaces is an impossible task. Most marketplaces understand this which is why they don't try to compete on it. They focus on the features and benefits instead. But as humans, we want a simple answer to everything so we latch onto the easiest formula we can find (marketplace STR) even though it's wildly inaccurate (vanity metric).

Transparency

I'm not asking you to choose Alter blindly. We have been very transparent about how much traffic we're generating to your portfolio through our traffic breakdown chart that looks something like this (you can view the data at the portfolio level or at the individual domain level):

Marketplace: Visitors learned about the domains from our marketplace.
Partners: Visitors learned about the domains via our partners (estimated).
Direct: Visitors learned about the domains by typing them in their browser.

Again, every seller's numbers will vary based on their own unique portfolio so I can't just give you an exact number in terms of how much you will benefit from our marketplace. But we do provide this tool to make that decision super easy. I haven't seen any other marketplace offer this data.

New Direction

I think a lot of sellers are looking at this all wrong so let me provide some more insight.

The whole point of the change was that running a brandable marketplace at 10% commission is very unprofitable especially with a small inventory. You can go back and check our numbers to see what I mean (we were operating at a major loss). And even at 30% commission it seems like our competitors aren't able to make it work which is probably why they keep increasing their own inventories to 100K+ names. It seems like every brandable marketplace eventually ends up at the same spot as we've seen countless times in the past (increase inventory to be profitable).

And I don't think these other brandable maketplaces are cash cows like a lot of people suspect. Why? Because during the last couple months we spent a considerable amount of money marketing on Google/Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/etc and noticed that the customer acquisition cost was wayy beyond $1,000+. That means it would cost way more than $1,000 to acquire a single customer who ends up buying a $2-3k domain. Of course, we don't know the exact CAC because of our very small sample size but my point is that it's super expensive to acquire customers through ads (it could cost $1k or even $10k to acquire a single customer). This is probably why they charge 30% and increase their inventories to 100K+ names (bigger inventory = more direct traffic = free advertising).

So rather than raising our commission to 30% and still having to increase our inventory like our competitors, we decided to take a different innovative approach that allows us to sell more at the same low commission as before.

Moving forward, think of Alter as a hybrid marketplace where you can list both brandable and non-brandable names at one low commission of 10% which is on par with what you would pay at other non-brandable marketplaces anyway. But with Alter you would be able to take advantage of all our additional benefits (i.e. our marketing, customer service, installment plans, logos, partner syndication, etc). These benefits apply to standard listings as well.

Let me repeat, both premium and standard domains receive the same benefits except that premium names appear higher in search results. Think of premium as the "Amazon's Choice" inventory on Amazon with a couple other minor benefits like professional logos and appraisals.

We've also seen sellers intentionally downgrade to standard because they didn't agree with our appraisal. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just a different strategy that works for them. Our new approach works with that strategy while the old one wouldn't have.

Another reason we decided to do this is because we realized that quality is often subjective and there were plenty of instances where a name that we had declined sold elsewhere. On the other hand, there are names that we accepted that haven't sold yet. This new approach fixes that problem because sellers can list their names regardless of what we think of them based on what works for them. We simply surface the best of the best for a little extra exposure through premium.

With Alter, our goal has always been to be super efficient at everything and reinvest majority of the profit we generate back into marketing. In fact, while we were marketing our inventory on AdWords we noticed that there were only two other brandable marketplaces competing for the same ads (based on impression share). One spent a little more than us while another spent less. And surprisingly, we didn't see any non-brandable marketplace on that list. We might be the only marketplace that actually markets non-brandables.

Since we launched the marketplace last year I have invested thousands of dollars into the company and haven't taken a single dime out because I truly believe that this new direction we're taking is the future (i.e. pool everything together and let quality win with a little extra manual push via premiums).

Optimal Strategy

I'm sure everyone here would agree on one thing. That more quality exposure is always better regardless of how much it is. You never know if that one dude or dudette on marketplace X ends up falling in love with your domain even though that marketplace only brought in 1% of the overall traffic. In fact, we didn't receive a single inquiry from any of our partners over the last 3 months BUT just recently got a $20k lead from one of them. And keep in mind that our partners only generate about 3% of the traffic.

My point is, even an additional 1% of exposure could lead to a big sale. So instead of comparing different marketplaces against each other, why not optimize your strategy around maximum exposure instead by listing your names on all of them?

As I mentioned before, after spending thousands on marketing we noticed that 80-90% of buyers came directly through the landing page. These are also decided buyers that are already attached to the name so it doesn't matter which marketplace you use for the landing page as long as it's trustworthy (i.e. offers multiple support options, has decent reviews, and some social proof like media logos). For the rest of the 10-20% of buyers who don't come directly and are undecided about the name they want, it's just the matter of listing at as many other marketplaces as possible.

Our goal at Alter is to (1) provide a super trustworthy landing page and (2) drive as much quality traffic to it as we can at the lowest commission possible. So why not point your domains to Alter and list them everywhere else too? That way you pay the least amount possible for the most probably sales channels (direct + extra exposure through our marketing) and you still won't miss out on a potential sale elsewhere.

 

[Deven Patel]

Quick announcements...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Show attachment 192483

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

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

I appreciate all your feedback guys! Keep it coming.

 

[Deven Patel]

One of the most popular requests we've received from sellers was the ability to add better logos to their domain listings. Well, now you can!

We're excited to announce that you can now order professional logos for all your domains for just $5 each. You can even upload your own logos if you like for free.

Additionally, domains using either a professional or uploaded logo will appear higher in search results right next to premium listings. It's a fantastic way to highlight quality names!

So moving forward, here are the three types of logos you can add to your domain listings:

• Basic Logos: Created using our easy-to-use logo editor.
• Professional Logos: Created by our professional designers.
• Uploaded Logos: Created by you based on your own vision.

Just like before, when you list new domains, our platform will continue to automatically create basic logos for them. But now you have the additional options to either have our designers create a professional logo for $5 or upload your own for free.

You can do this by clicking on the "Edit Logo" button found next to each domain in your Alter control panel. You can even switch between the different types of logos if you change your mind later.

For professional logos, you will have the opportunity to specify your own criteria. Logo payments will be deducted from your account balance which can be topped off using any major credit card.

We're confident that these new features will improve our marketplace and ultimately generate more sales. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us at any time.