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.​

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Is Alter only for so-called "brandable" names?

No.
You can sell any domains.

 

[Dane]

But if enough sellers want this disabled, we can certainly implement a feature that allows it. However, the question at that point becomes..

are you willing to lose potential buyers in return?

Yes. There's nothing worse than images or categories or descriptions that are incorrect and can't be removed/changed.

 

[Deven Patel]

Is Alter only for so-called "brandable" names?

No, you can list any domain. Alter brings the benefits of a brandable marketplace to all domains. Brandable vs non-brandable are just keywords coined by domainers. Buyers don't know the difference or care for that matter. Every name can be branded in the right hands.

Yes. There's nothing worse than images or categories or descriptions that are incorrect and can't be removed/changed.

It can be changed to whatever you want. And again, the auto generated information is very broad. It's applicable to virtually any name on the planet. Here's an example:

A flawless and marvelous name ready to brand. Perfect for business ideas like a digital solution, a corporate site, a mobile app, a web portal and more.

Have you used our platform yet? I get the impression that you haven't.

 

[Dane]

Have you used our platform yet? I get the impression that you haven't.

No. I thought it was only for cutesy short little so-called "brandable" names.

 

[Domain boy]

Are .io, .net, and .org domains given the same visibility as .com domains? Because when I visit Alter's dashboard I usually only see .com domains.

Thank you!

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Are .io, .net, and .org domains given the same visibility as .com domains? Because when I visit Alter's dashboard I usually only see .com domains.

Thank you!

Deven can provide a more authoritative answer, but I think short, .com, that build on important sectors have an advantage, and the Alter homepage I too see only .com.

However, if you search on a topic, you readily find other extensions listed fairly high. For example, search for defi. For me at least as well as .com it shows .net, .network, .vc, .xyz and .co on page 1.

Most of my names don't get a ton of traffic, but I can confirm that some of the .co, .xyz, .net and .org, and other TLDs, do get traffic, including that from the marketplace.

Bob

 

[Domain boy]

Deven can provide a more authoritative answer, but I think short, .com, that build on important sectors have an advantage, and the Alter homepage I too see only .com.

However, if you search on a topic, you readily find other extensions listed fairly high. For example, search for defi. For me at least as well as .com it shows .net, .network, .io, .xyz and .co on page 1.

Most of my names don't get a ton of traffic, but I can confirm that the .co and .xyz and some of the .net and .org do get traffic, including that from the marketplace.

Bob

Thank you Bob! Now it is much more clear. I will try to search by category as you said

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Partly you don't see .io names come up often, simply because relatively there are not many listed yet. I think there are just 56 on site, out of I think something over 32,000 names total. Not sure why that is. That could be an advantage to those listing .io names, if a buyer comes looking for an .io name, and looks through them all, your name will get seen.

 

[Future Sensors]

So in cases where the buyer needs to pay for renewals, we would let them know before closing the transaction to prevent problems down the road. We have to handle this on a case-by-case basis based on the sale price and the renewal price so that we don't take a loss (i.e. we want to make sure the renewal cost only accounts for a small portion of our commission).

Thank you @Deven Patel.

Sounds like a good plan to me. I realise that it's extra work to implement. You have to track domain renewal dates for special TLDs, which can sometimes occur rather quickly after a sale or LtO has taken place. You also have to know the estimated renewal prices (at the current registrar, and/or the registrar where your escrow account is). I guess you'll need some input from the domain owner as well, who is not always well informed about all these renewal prices.

Something for your TOS. If an LtO buyer (or Alter the company) renews an expensive (tier) ngTLD domain, and after a few months the buyer decides to terminate the LtO construction, will the buyer get a refund? I guess no, but it has to be clear for all parties involved.

In some cases high renewal amounts can be involved. One domain that I now refer to Alter is a .shop domain with a yearly renewal fee of USD 1,092, and this is at one of the lowest-cost registrars in town. Other registrars may charge even more for this. It's an exception in my portfolio, though.

Brainstorming. If the renewal date is soon in sight, you may disable LtO as an option.

Will all domains purchased via LtO go to the Alter Escrow account? When it's a transfer, this then already includes a 1Y renewal. Not with a push.

One final note. These matters are also relevant for domains that are purchased without LtO. The normal BIN sales. There may be high costs associated with a transfer for either buyer or Alter.

Good luck implementing this beast

 

[capybara]

Can you please elaborate? To me the whole point of installments is to make the purchase affordable to buyers thus increasing your STR. As it stands now, sellers also get to keep all the past payments in case the buyer decides to cancel the plan. IMO, adding yet another barrier for buyers seems unnecessary because it could reduce STR.

If I have a name sold for $36K over 3 years via installments, the 12K received in the third year is going to have less value than $12K today.

Though I'm curious, where would you prefer to point your domains and why? We already offer one of the lowest commission rates across the industry so why not use us as the "base" and list your names everywhere else too to get the broadest coverage?

I like to monitor and analyze my traffic as well as for a few very special domains I want to have my custom email and possibly something on subdomains/subfolders as an extra promotion material while having the main page forwarding to the marketplace. Giving up my nameservers means giving up on all that.

This is because we spend a lot of money marketing your domains through PPC, SEO, social, retargeting, and much more.

This could be solved by automated checking whether the main page forwards to Alter or not, as long as it does, I believe the result should make no difference for Alter...

Can you please reach out to support with your OS/device/browser information so we can troubleshoot?

Will do.

Yes, syndication is all or nothing.

As I can see, the make offer domains are not being syndicated. Adding some other exceptions to that needs to be considered, for example Dan does not transact non-transferable domains registered with Sav, so should a sale of such domain happen on Dan, everyone involved – buyer, seller, Alter and Dan – would be nothing but troubled.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

I don't see any reasons: why marketplace can't be highly configurable...
So you can opt-in/out: what you want for your needs/vision and based on your experience.

 

[Dane]

I don't see any reasons: why marketplace can't be highly configurable...
So you can opt-in/out: what you want for your needs/vision and based on your experience.

Yes! Do any of them have this capability?

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Technically Epik is very configurable, but their reputation nowadays is at the lowest point.

 

[Dane]

Technically Epik is very configurable...

Ummm... (nevermind)

 

[ArielT]

Would you please consider adding TransferWise as one of the payment methods?

Interesting

But, if they pay through bank transfer, I think bank transfer to transferwise would be possible. I don't think It's a must transferwise to transferwise

Not sure though

 

[Dane]

Wire payments are only over $5K? Is that right? (if so, why??)

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Sedo/DAN send even $xx IBAN wires using Commerzbank or AMRO...

 

[Dane]

Sedo/DAN sends even $xx IBAN wires using Commerzbank or AMRO...

Right. Makes no sense to require a $5K minimum for a wire transfer. I don't like it.

 

[Future Sensors]

Can you please DM me an example of a domain where you see this behavior so we can troubleshoot? It could certainly be some random bot that our system hasn't caught yet.

(enormous amount of times favorited in a short period)

I can only see the amount in the Dashboard, not whether they are humans or bots.

You are able to view more in my account. The abnormal amount of Favorites was e.g. on October 16, and October 18, 2021.

 

[Charybdis]

Wire payments are only over $5K? Is that right? (if so, why??)

No. Wire payments are available for every domain name, no price restriction. You have to click on the Buy Now button to see the wire transfer option.

But it is only possible to send the money to a US bank account, it would be better to offer local bank accounts as well.