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.​

 

[xeroox]

@Deven Patel

It would be cool a internal sold list like in squadhelp

 

[Deven Patel]

@xeroox This is already on our list but we haven't had a chance to seriously think about the pros and cons yet. For instance, buyers typically don't like their purchases being disclosed (see the recent angel.com sale conversation). On the other hand, I can see some of the benefits for sellers. Maybe we can come up with a solution that helps both sides. Anyway, TBD.

Our focus right now is on testing different marketing channels and producing sales.

 

[xeroox]

@xeroox This is already on our list but we haven't had a chance to seriously think about the pros and cons yet. For instance, buyers typically don't like their purchases being disclosed (see the recent angel.com sale conversation). On the other hand, I can see some of the benefits for sellers. Maybe we can come up with a solution that helps both sides. Anyway, TBD.

Our focus right now is on testing different marketing channels and producing sales.

Thanks I can understand the issue. I don't know if it's already filtered but is the "traffic" filtering ourself/logged in users?

 

[Deven Patel]

I don't know if it's already filtered but is the "traffic" filtering ourself/logged in users?

We try to filter out all the bot traffic from the visitor data you see in your account but we do not filter out logged in traffic because it's still real human visitors.

Also, note that we only show unique visitors so multiple repeat visits from the same person to the same domain aren't counted. In other words, if you see 10 visitors next to your domain, it means 10 different humans viewed it.

 

[cillx]

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.

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 sold my first name recently on Alter for buy now price. The transaction went smoothly. Have 80 names with them...

 

[DotKing]

I'd like to suggest search field in results pages of Alter catalog. Right now visitor needs to go back to homepage to search for another term. I think it would increase user experience.
Anyway platform is beautiful and promising. Keep up good work!

 

[Deven Patel]

I'd like to suggest search field in results pages of Alter catalog. Right now visitor needs to go back to homepage to search for another term. I think it would increase user experience.
Anyway platform is beautiful and promising. Keep up good work!

There's a large search bar prominently positioned in the top navigation bar. You won't see the search bar if you're logged in as a seller because that space at the top is used for account related functions. Simply log out or use a private browser window to see it.

 

[Deven Patel]

Alter is live on Product Hunt! Come check us out and spread the love.

If you're not familiar with Product Hunt, it's a curation of the best new products, every day. This is where a ton of entrepreneurs and product makers looking to build new startups hang out.

 

[capybara]

Alter is live on Product Hunt! Come check us out and spread the love.

Its never a good move to try to stand out by attacking your competition. The best you can achieve with that is tarnish the industry as a whole and consequently yourself as a part of it.

Most are already taken and existing domain owners want outrageous prices in return.

Outrageous? Really?

Surprise! The person below has an opinion about you:

It looks to be a good site but the prices on these brands are outrageously high.

 

[Deven Patel]

Its never a good move to try to stand out by attacking your competition. The best you can achieve with that is tarnish the industry as a whole and consequently yourself as a part of it.

I completely agree. You couldn't have said it any better.

Outrageous? Really?

Surprise! The person below has an opinion about you:

Yes, and that's not a surprise at all actually. Most buyers already think that and this person's comment further validates it. In order to convince them otherwise, we first have to show them that we understand where they're coming from. As you can see in my reply to that person on PH, I go on to explain the real value of good names.

When it comes to marketing, you have to understand and speak to your audience. It seems like you may be looking at it from the seller's perspective and I apologize if you were offended by it. Unfortunately, we have to balance the expectations of both buyers and sellers. That's no easy feat!

 

[Tom_Collins]

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. 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?

Same thing...I had 9 names...all got rejected within an hour at Alter.

I then submitted them to Squadhelp. 1 Got approved at Squadhelp premium listings after a day.

 

[osamson]

Congrats on the sale.
Good one

My first sale on Alter.com
Transaction went smoothly.
All payments received.

 

[DotKing]

My first sale on Alter. All went smoothly, nice experience!
Thanks Alter!

 

[Reyginus]

My first sale on Alter. All went smoothly, nice experience!
Thanks Alter!

Show attachment 190500

Congrats, man. This is good. Still waiting for mine. How many months?

 

[DotKing]

How many months?

This one was listed for around 1 day

 

[dido90]

This one was listed for around 1 day

WOW!! amazing, congratulations.

 

[Devanos]

My first sale on Alter. All went smoothly, nice experience!
Thanks Alter!

Show attachment 190500

Congratulations

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[SirJulius]

Hello @Daven....

I am trying to wrap my head round this premium listing thingy.

Like, since all submitted names are automatically accepted, then how do we know names that are premium when it just got accepted and have not been verified and listed?

And secondly, some of us have an already accepted names that is on pending verification, but after this your update, everything cleared.
How do we get this names back?

Regards.

 

[Deven Patel]

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.

Thanks for the feedback! As I explained in my post, that was only part of the problem. The other bigger problem was that buyers didn't have enough options which wasted a lot of our marketing efforts.

I wouldn't worry about low quality names impacting high quality ones. That's exactly why we introduced the premium/standard tiers. Premium names will always appear higher in search results so most buyers will never see the low quality names unless someone is super picky.

 

[wwwulff]

To bee honest, I am only interested in premium listing, so does the change mean that all names I list for review will first be listed as basic and subsequently as premium if approved? (For me, this would mean that I would delist the name again if it was not approved) And the change will also mean that you can no longer list unregistered names for review?

I support the idea of $1 for every submition will help only to attract loyal sellers

 

[Deven Patel]

Hello @Daven....

I am trying to wrap my head round this premium listing thingy.

Like, since all submitted names are automatically accepted, then how do we know names that are premium when it just got accepted and have not been verified and listed?

And secondly, some of us have an already accepted names that is on pending verification, but after this your update, everything cleared.
How do we get this names back?

Regards.

Once listed, our team will automatically review the domains behind the scenes to see if they qualify for premium upgrade. 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. We will notify you via email if a domain is premium eligible.

Unfortunately, we did have to clear the existing submissions in order for the new updates to work properly. If you need a list of those names, please reach out to support.

 

[SirJulius]

Hello @Deven Patel

The thing is... since most sellers submit unregistered names, I/we need to know if a name qualify for the premium listing before registering it....
If there is no feature like this, then most of your sellers will go on reg spree on standard listing meanwhile their target is premium listing. This for sure will likely not be feasible putting in in place the cost of domain registration.
So I suggest you put in a measure for sellers to know a domain qualifies for premium listing before listing it.

Regards

 

[Deven Patel]

To bee honest, I am only interested in premium listing, so does the change mean that all names I list for review will first be listed as basic and subsequently as premium if approved? (For me, this would mean that I would delist the name again if it was not approved) And the change will also mean that you can no longer list unregistered names for review?

I support the idea of $1 for every submition will help only to attract loyal sellers

I appreciate the feedback! But as I mentioned above, that was only part of the problem. The other bigger problem was that buyers didn't have enough options which wasted a lot of our marketing efforts.

I wouldn't worry about low quality names impacting high quality ones. That's exactly why we introduced the premium/standard tiers. Premium names will always appear higher in search results so most buyers will never see the low quality names unless someone is super picky.

Yes, this new change means you can no longer submit unregistered names for review. However, we already have 4,000+ premium names listed so you can generally get a sense of the types of names we're looking for by viewing our existing inventory.

Why not list your non-premium domains with us as well? You would still be able to take advantage of all our other benefits (i.e. our marketing, customer service, installment plans, logos, partner syndication, etc all for 10% commission).