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.
Our smart search algorithm uses a number of factors to rank names based on buyer feedback. Everything from the domain's extension, length, price, brandability, popularity, and more is used to determine its rank. This means high quality names continue to thrive while giving new listings an equal opportunity (just like SEO).
As
@Bob Hawkes pointed out, the discrepancies you see are likely due to the fact that (1) .coms account for a large portion of our current inventory and (2) buyers naturally prefer .coms over other extensions.
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
Thanks for the very well-thought-out feedback! Much appreciated. Exactly, every scenario is different which is why we generally deal with it on a case-by-case basis. In a case where an expensive renewal is quickly approaching, we would inform the buyer right away so they can move forward accordingly.
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.
As you may know, the domain industry is very supply heavy meaning it’s super hard to find buyers (i.e. there are over 13M domains listed for sale yet only about 1-2% of them sell on average annually). Like it or not, the fact of the matter is the industry needs more buyers than sellers so I personally would make it as easy as possible for buyers to purchase domains. Making the math unnecessarily complicated seems like a turn off. If you're worried about losing a few dollars due to inflation, just price the name a bit higher. Problem solved.
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.
I guess I'm a bit confused. How would you monitor the traffic if the domain forwards to Alter anyway? Note that we do offer analytics inside our dashboard and you can set up Google Analytics for your portfolio as well.
Regarding custom emails/subdomains for promotional material, that's very interesting. I would love to learn more about this and whether you've had any notable success using these approaches.
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...
Things always appear to be easy on the outside. Using nameservers allows us to do more than just forward the domains (e.g. provision SSL certificates properly, verify domain ownership with our partners using TXT records, etc). Unless there's a major advantage to using a different approach, we'd rather not invest additional time and money into it when that money can be used for other high priority items like marketing instead.
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.
I agree but considering that so far the partners have only contributed to <5% of our sales and their policies are always changing, it probably doesn't make sense to implement any more features for those exceptions. We can always deal with the issue manually when needed during a sale.
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.
It is just MUSTHAVE requirements to be competitive.
We (domainers) don't ask anything special.
when we are told that something is being worked on, or being considered, or is being "sent to the team," it almost always means we won't see any changes for months or years... or ever.
I don't see any reason why sellers can't just pay 50% commission to a marketplace and be happy about it.
But seriously, if we were swimming in money we could do everything everyone wanted and more but at 10% that's simply not feasible. So instead, we prioritize based on seller demand (no point in developing something that 1% of sellers want for instance) and more importantly our overall goal (more sales). Our biggest differentiator against the competition is
marketing, to give your domains a higher probability of a sale. The nice-to-have features aren't that important if they don't result in a sale at the end of the day.
We’re not like other marketplaces. We actually market your domains and bring in more buyers for an industry low 10% commission compared to 11-30% elsewhere. We market your domains via PPC, SEO, social, retargeting, etc (here are some
examples of ads we're running and the types of
keywords we rank for on Google). And our landing pages use logos which are proven to improve STR too (no other non-brandable marketplace offers this).
Regarding why our landers use descriptions/keywords/categories, it's for both on-site and off-site SEO. So for example, when a buyer searches for something like
moon business names in Google, Alter shows up in the #1 spot among 147,000,000 results. Then when the buyer clicks on that result and lands on our website, our on-site ranking takes over. We've built our own internal search engine for business names. Just like Google, our search algorithm uses a number of factors to rank names based on buyer feedback. So that when a buyer searches for a keyword like health on Alter, we show them all the potential names that they can use in that industry and not just the ones that contain the search keyword (e.g. Nursor, Feetz, CareDish, Curemont, etc).
Based on all of your past posts, it seems like you guys don't value or even believe in the most important benefit we offer (marketing) so why use Alter at all? There are already other marketplaces that offer everything you want including Efty where you don't even have to pay a commission.
Wire payments are only over $5K? Is that right? (if so, why??)
Sedo/DAN send even $xx IBAN wires using Commerzbank or AMRO...
Wires were only allowed for amounts larger than $5k because our bank charges us a $45 processing fee and since our 10% commission is all-inclusive, we couldn't afford to spend more than 1% on cashout fees.
That said, we did consider your feedback and have added an ACH transfer option which can be used for US based bank accounts for any amount (international sellers can set up a
virtual account at Wise to use this option). Additionally, we've removed the $5k wire limit so you can use wires for any amount you like. However, a processing fee of $45 will be applied to wires below $5k.
Regarding IBAN, it's my understanding that Sedo/Dan are based in Europe so it's much easier for them use it. We're based in the US which doesn't support IBAN out-of-the-box. We'll explore this more in the future if there's a lot of seller demand. In the meantime, the existing options we offer should be more than adequate.
(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.
I also had an abnormal amount of favourites on October 16th.
All my favorites comes in a day, it then takes a month to get another set of favorites. This has been my dashboard pattern.
Thanks again guys for helping us troubleshoot this. Although we can't be absolutely sure these do seem like bots based on the amount and frequency of favorites on those random days. Normally we can filter out bots by using cookies, JavaScript, looking at HTTP headers, etc. But in this case all of those things match what you would normally see with a human visitor which makes it difficult to tackle. However, we did add an additional check in our code that should help (i.e. checking for mouse movement before registering the favorite). The good thing is these bots affect all names equally so they shouldn't impact your ability to use our "top favorited names" metric to determine which names are hot or not.
Deven is really different. If I had to name 1 marketplace representative on NamePros who silently just executes many suggestions, it would be him. At the other marketplaces, you often don't hear anything anymore, and that is indeed frustrating. I often have these frustrations elsewhere myself, and I recognize the feeling.
Thanks for the compliments! Much appreciated.
We do the best we can to provide value where possible but like with most things in life, everything has a cost (physical/mental/financial). Some founders are willing to pay a higher price to succeed than others based on the level of risk they can tolerate. It's no different than how different sellers take varying amounts of risk when investing in domains without knowing if those names will actually sell.
I haven't been doing this for as long as they have but I can totally understand why other marketplaces are often silent when I put myself in their shoes. Contrary to other industries, domain marketplaces have one major disadvantage. In order to grow their inventories, they have to deal with a variety of conflicting seller opinions that ultimately reduce the efficiency of the marketplace. It's a double-edged sword.
He can always answer individually and in time, it is not necessary to wait and then post replies to all in A4 format...
Please note that NamePros isn't our official support channel. For quicker responses, you can always reach out to support at anytime.
Dns records instead of NS, bulk check
Min offer at 100
API
Noted. Thanks for the suggestions! Also, bulk check is already available.
Does Alter offer a White Label Marketplace like they do on Squadhelp?
Not at this time because our core focus is to increase STR and from our experience white label solutions don't help with that.
will Alter offer cryptocurrency as a means of payment/cashout anytime soon?
Thanks for the suggestion! We're looking into it.
Do Alter still require to remove our names from Sedo / Dan if listed with Alter?
No, you can list your names wherever else you like for whatever price you want. However, if we are already syndicating your domains to
our partners then we ask that you do not list them there yourself in order to protect our relationships with those companies because duplicate listings take a lot of manual effort to sort out. Note that you can disable syndication from your Alter account if you want to manage your domains with our partners directly yourself.
Thanks, mate. Can you list all your domains on Alter now or only brandables?
Do you also have to verify ownership with nameservers or is it simple like Dan?
You can list any name you like. At this time we require all domains to be forwarded to our landing pages using our nameservers. This is because we spend a lot of money marketing your domains through PPC, SEO, social, retargeting, and much more. It wouldn't make sense for another marketplace to get the sale if one of our buyers ends up typing it into their browser and purchasing it elsewhere especially at 10% commission.
Note that among all the industry leaders, Alter offers the lowest commission. 10% with Alter vs 11-30% elsewhere. Also, you can continue to use the other marketplaces while using Alter. That way you pay the lowest commission for buyers that come in through your landers while taking advantage of our marketing at the same time.
I think the default broad match search is not good. Previously hand-vetted premium domains appear at a very low position for some keywords, even if the domain name actually contains the keyword.
So just search for a keyword using the default broad match option, then change the search settings from "broad" to "contains". For a lot of keywords you will see that domains which were manually approved as premium domains before only appear if you select the "contains" filter.
But if the domain name actually contains the search keyword, then I think even in case of the broad match search, you should prioritize those domains which contain the search keyword.
I think the search works better on BrandBucket. On BrandBucket the default option is the broad match, too. But BrandBucket will prioritize those domains which contain the search keyword.
I think if someone is searching for "golf", then first and foremost the searcher is interested in domains which actually contain the word "golf".
I know that the visitors can switch from broad to contains, but how many people will do that? I think the default broad match search function should display more relevant domains.
Thanks for the detailed feedback! Much appreciated. That is kind of the point, to show the best possible names to buyers when they're searching. Our search algorithm considers a number of factors but manually curated names from the past don't receive any special boosts.
For example, here are the two sets of results you mentioned for the keyword "golf":
Which results feel better from the buyer's perspective? I would personally pick broad match because as a buyer looking to name a golfing company, I would want to see high quality names like "Teedax" and "Topped". Also, quality names with the keyword "golf" are always displayed at the top like "Golfverse" for example. And as you can see in the contains match, the rest of the words that contain "golf" aren't that great quality wise.
The same thing happens
on BB though all their names are curated so it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. Again, quality names that contain the search word will always be shown at the top even for broad match (see broad match for
tech and
fox for example). But of course the algorithm isn't 100% perfect so some random names may be missed which is why we tweak it when necessary.
Their search is obviously broken. Using either contains or starts, ends with search term and nothing shows up on the first page. Not a single domain with the correct term.
Not sure I understand. Can you please elaborate?
Really? Harsh? I'm just being completely honest. I'm not familiar enough with Alter, so I'm not yet comfortable keeping the DNS with them. Isn't that fair? I don't have to keep the DNS with Dan. I don't have to keep the DNS with Afternic. I don't have to keep the DNS with Sedo. I don't have to keep the DNS with Squadhelp. Why should I have to keep the DNS with Alter? This isn't being harsh. This is being honest.
No disrespect but your posts do sound a bit aggressive. I understand you may not agree with the way different companies do business but just like you everyone is simply trying to find the best way to succeed. If every company did the same exact thing then honestly there would be no point in competing at all. It would just lead to a race to the bottom which doesn't benefit anyone.
As I mentioned above, at this time we require all domains to be forwarded to our landing pages using our nameservers. This is because we spend a lot of money marketing your domains through PPC, SEO, social, retargeting, and much more. It wouldn't make sense for another marketplace to get the sale if one of our buyers ends up typing it into their browser and purchasing it elsewhere especially at 10% commission.
Note that among all the industry leaders, Alter offers the lowest commission. 10% with Alter vs 11-30% elsewhere. Plus those 30% marketplaces actually require you to use their landers AND prevent you for listing your names anywhere else. Go figure! With us, you can continue to use the other marketplaces while using Alter. That way you pay the lowest commission for buyers that come in through your landers while taking advantage of our marketing at the same time.
Do you offer just escrow service or do you plan it?
For example, when I park my domains on Bodis and negotiate with my bidders directly - I need just escrow and nothing more.
We don't offer that at the moment because we wanted to keep things super simple. And since there are other companies that already offer it, it felt redundant. That said, if there's enough demand, we'll certainly look into it.
First sale on Alter and I'm grateful for the 10% commission, which is 1/3 the rate of Alter's competitors.
BB/SH: 30% commission under $5k
Alter: 10% commission under $5k
To put this in perspective, compare an average $2,500 sale over 100 sales on Alter vs. competitors:
BB/SH: 100 sales @ $2,500. You pay $75,000 in commission
Alter: 100 sales @ $2,500. You pay $25,000 in commission
Over 100 sales @ $2,500, you pocket an additional $50,000 by listing at Alter vs. the leading brandable marketplaces.
Alter doesn't yet have the traffic or sales levels as the leading marketplaces, true, but it has been growing fast.
The low commission from this first Alter sale makes me reconsider whether the BB/SH premium is worthwhile.
Wow, I appreciate the candid feedback. Thanks!
To compensate for their 3x commission, do BB & SH deliver at least 30% more sales?
Exactly, that's what it all boils down to. Unfortunately,
as I mentioned in the past it's impossible to run a simple A/B test between marketplaces due to the varying benefits every company offers.
Also, I think every marketplace is trying their best to produce sales, from brandable marketplaces that actually do marketing to regular marketplaces that simply rely on type-in traffic. On the brandable side, I understand why they charge 30% commission. Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is generally very expensive when it comes to marketing (e.g. it can easily cost $1k+ to acquire a single customer through just ads alone).
Normally, I would recommend using the shotgun approach where you list your names at as many places as possible to target all available buyers. Some marketplaces may get you more sales than others but being on all of them gives you the best chance of success. However, this is only possible to do with regular marketplaces, not with brandable marketplaces since they require exclusivity.
So I think the decision regarding which marketplace to use for brandables requires a slightly different thought process. I'm sure sellers probably have their own ideas here. But if it were me personally, I would list the popular/high quality names on Alter and shotgun everywhere because those typically don't need as much marketing (i.e. the chances of the popular names selling through type-in/direct traffic are much higher so there's no point in paying 3X commission for them). And list the cheaper/lower quality names on brandable marketplaces that charge 30-35% commission as they probably need much more marketing power (i.e. hand regs/names with <$100 reseller value where paying higher commission still provides enough ROI). Problem solved.
