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.​

 

[Future Sensors]

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.

Found a new one on Nov 5

Edit Nov 6: One day later, seems resolved. Thanks.

 

[Deven Patel]

I have an idea for the search bar, so I think it would be better to reveal the "Search Filters" popup window by default on desktop. Now the user has to click on the filter button to open the "Search Filters" popup window. It is better for usability to reduce the number of clicks required to perform an important task.

So you could take the content of the "Search Filters" popup window and place it under the search bar, and make it visible by default, and remove the filter button, because the advanced search options would be visible at all times. And that would mean that you would eliminate the popup window, too.

So then if the user wants to filter the results, then the user can do it right away, without clicking on the filter button. That would improve the usability because it would eliminate an unnecessary click on the filter button. And there is enough space under the search bar for the advanced options on desktop.

But on mobile keep the filter button, because there is not enough space on mobile to display all the advanced search options.

But on desktop there is enough space to get rid of the popup window and to reveal the search filters by default.

Great idea! We'll certainly consider it.

So is it so hard quest in the USA to open one more bank account in London, for example???

Yes sir. Managing international bank accounts isn't as easy as opening a website account. Unless a huge percent of our sellers need this, it's not worth investing time and resources into it. As I mentioned in my previous post, we just added an ACH transfer option which can be used for US based bank accounts where we cover the fees (international sellers can set up a virtual account at Wise to use this option). And of course we already support PayPal, Payoneer, and wire transfers. These four options should be more than enough to cover practically everyone.

Regarding escrow...
There are only 2 popular and not complicated options: Sedo External Transfer (3% or min. $60), DAN Lead import (5%).
So not so many competitors as you think.

There's also Escrow.com and I believe SH recently launched this as well. Again, all these alternatives already exist so what's the point of creating yet another option needlessly?

Some suggestions:

• A few weeks ago when I started listing on Alter, the names with "new extensions" would retain the letter case exactly as you typed them. Since then, Alter started to force lowercase on the extension which makes them look worse, because in most cases for such names the extension is a meaningful part of the name (eg. Laboratory.Equipment not Laboratory.equipment). Please undo that change and allow capitalising first letters of the extension, its unfair that new extension domain listings are being "punished" like that.

Thanks for the suggestions! We haven't changed anything regarding capitalization. I just tried to add a random domain and the casing is being preserved as expected. Can you please try again and reach out to support if the issue still persists for you?

• Search results are packed with names where their presence is justified by a "keyword" entered by the seller. For example, if I search "finance" on Alter, only few names on the first page have "fin" in them, and many names are completely random. The name with a full "finance" which is the exact match comes first and that is correct, but after that I believe the names which have a part of the search query (such as "fin" for "finance", "robo" for "robot", "meta" for "metaverse" etc.) should be given priority over names which are "finance" only because their seller put "finance" keyword in the listing.

Those names aren't random. Just because the keyword you're searching for isn't part of the name doesn't mean it's not valuable to buyers. For example, when you search for the keyword food, should names like Pan, Fysh, and FunMilk not appear on the first page because the word "food" isn't part of their name?

If we blindly prioritized all names with the word "food" in them then names like "FoodPlastic" and "GoFoodyGo" would appear higher than Pan/Fysh/FunMilk/etc which don't seem that useful for buyers looking to name their foodtech startups. Don't you think?

For more examples, see results for keywords meta and robo. The results seem to make sense to me when I put myself in the buyer's shoes.

Could you be feeling this way because your names aren't appearing high enough? As sellers, we're often biased towards our own names.

• After a name is sold, its not unusual the nameservers will not be changed for weeks and months by its new owner. What happens on Alter is you just land on the main page if you visit such name. It would be much better if Alter instead was showing a page with names similar to the one visited, because it could help to convert the visitor into a buyer.

Great idea! We'll certainly consider it.

Found a new one on Nov 5

Show attachment 203571

Edit Nov 6: One day later, seems resolved. Thanks.
Show attachment 203633

Thanks! Right after you posted, we tracked down that data and removed it which is why it appears to be resolved. That said, we still aren't able to catch this bot(s) in action so if you notice this behavior again please reach out to support. We just enabled some additional logging that may help us track it down next time.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Escrow.com with many banned countries and with their complicated verifications is not a popular option a few years already... Only fanatics use it.

 

[sircc]

Suggestions:

-Please add the possibility to choose how many domains appear on the domain page. Presently, it's set to 50, I'd like to see increments of 100, 500, 1000.

-Please add the possibility to update the price on the domains page view, in the price column. See Dan example. Also, there needs to be a way to bulk edit right on the domains page.

-Please add, on the all domains page from the dashboard, the price we are asking with the possibility to change it there.

-Please add total number of domains in account directly on the dashboard page.

-More stats. I'd like to know if a domain is put in the shopping basket, if someone has contacted Alter through chat, email or phone about a domain. These stats are important to domain owners. We can adjust pricing, renewals etc. with this knowledge. Stats of this nature are vital and valuable.



thanks

 

[TheTruthFoundation]

@Deven Patel why do you remove curate listing? Now, every domain can list at alter without approve?

 

[BRANDERX]

I know Alter is no longer curated, but it does look messy at times. Maybe add "no numbers" to the filter, & if all extensions are accepted, maybe add all extensions to filter? I'm not sure how, but it does need some organization in my opinion.

This is what I get for (shortest/all)

 

[sircc]

Are we all wasting our time with Alter? @Deven Patel
Last seen November 6th.

 

[Deven Patel]

Escrow.com with many banned countries and with their complicated verifications is not a popular option a few years already... Only fanatics use it.

I understand.

Suggestions:

-Please add the possibility to choose how many domains appear on the domain page. Presently, it's set to 50, I'd like to see increments of 100, 500, 1000.

-Please add the possibility to update the price on the domains page view, in the price column. See Dan example. Also, there needs to be a way to bulk edit right on the domains page.

-Please add, on the all domains page from the dashboard, the price we are asking with the possibility to change it there.

-Please add total number of domains in account directly on the dashboard page.

-More stats. I'd like to know if a domain is put in the shopping basket, if someone has contacted Alter through chat, email or phone about a domain. These stats are important to domain owners. We can adjust pricing, renewals etc. with this knowledge. Stats of this nature are vital and valuable.



thanks

Thanks for the suggestions!

why do you remove curate listing? Now, every domain can list at alter without approve?

See here.

I know Alter is no longer curated, but it does look messy at times. Maybe add "no numbers" to the filter, & if all extensions are accepted, maybe add all extensions to filter? I'm not sure how, but it does need some organization in my opinion.

Appreciate the feedback.

Are we all wasting our time with Alter? @Deven Patel
Last seen November 6th.

Please note that NamePros isn't our official support channel. For quicker responses, you can always reach out to support at anytime.

 

[Charybdis]

I sold a hand-reg yesterday on Alter. I hand-registered this two-word .com domain name 6 months ago for 6.99 USD and now I sold it for 1299 USD (net proceeds after the 10% commission: 1169 USD). Total profit: 1162 USD.

This domain was originally accepted as a premium domain.

The transaction went smoothly, I quickly pushed this domain to Alter, then I received the money in 1 day. So the transaction was closed from start to finish in 1 day.

I received the full amount, PayPal didn't charge me any fees.

Overall great experience!

 

[Brands]

Alter.com is a great Marketplace. In some cases the autogenerated logos are
not that appeasing. Check ping for instance. Maybe they should have standard font. Thank you.

 

[sircc]

@Deven Patel

I just want to let you know, in the event of a domain sale, the domain in question is still made available for purchase (at least until the client pays), to anyone that might be interested.

This could potentially lead to problems, in the event the name is bought twice, by different clients.

 

[jag81]

Q: What's more valuable than a one-word premium domain?

A: A one-word premium domain with a ton of backlinks and traffic.

my guess with Alter is that maybe the whole marketplace has been primarily about maximizing the sale of one name:

Alter .com

Do you have any basis for this theory?

I do like Alter’s landers and I don’t believe they are building this platform to sell their single domain.

However the one thing that I didn’t appreciate was that they increased my Sedo listing prices by 21% without being very upfront about it. I liked the convenience of having them list on my behalf to Sedo. But a 21% markup means I will end up paying over 30% commission on Sedo sales (21% markup plus 10% alter commission) when I could have listed them there myself.

Sedo charges 15% commission (or 20% commission for Sedo MLS) and I am guessing Alter receives even better commission due to volume listings.

So can someone explain why are we not better off listing the domains on Sedo ourself? If it’s about convenience, there are services such as Domain.io which offer this syndication for free (although you need to pay a monthly membership fee I think).

I wonder if Alter discloses whether or not a sale occurred on Sedo.

*Edited to add : the final commission actually ends up being 35% (not 30%) for Sedo sales. Here’s a real example: a domain is listed on Alter for $3199. Alter lists on Sedo for $3999. If it sells on Sedo for $3999, Alter pays me $2879 net. So I ended up paying $1120 (3999 - 2879) in total commission for this sale. Final commission that I ended up paying = 1120/ 3199 = 35.04% of my Alter listed price !! Am I missing something ?

 

[ir7]

I will give it a try!

 

[Deven Patel]

I sold a hand-reg yesterday on Alter. I hand-registered this two-word .com domain name 6 months ago for 6.99 USD and now I sold it for 1299 USD (net proceeds after the 10% commission: 1169 USD). Total profit: 1162 USD.

This domain was originally accepted as a premium domain.

The transaction went smoothly, I quickly pushed this domain to Alter, then I received the money in 1 day. So the transaction was closed from start to finish in 1 day.

I received the full amount, PayPal didn't charge me any fees.

Overall great experience!

Congrats and thanks for sharing your experience!

Alter.com is a great Marketplace. In some cases the autogenerated logos are
not that appeasing. Check ping for instance. Maybe they should have standard font. Thank you.

Thanks for the feedback! Design is often subjective. We probably can't make everyone happy. But note that the logos are fully customizable in your Alter account.

I just want to let you know, in the event of a domain sale, the domain in question is still made available for purchase (at least until the client pays), to anyone that might be interested.

This could potentially lead to problems, in the event the name is bought twice, by different clients.

Can you please clarify? We don't consider it a sale until the buyer actually pays. It can't be bought twice since the listing would be removed as soon as the first payment is received.

one thing that I didn’t appreciate was that they increased my Sedo listing prices by 21% without being very upfront about it. I liked the convenience of having them list on my behalf to Sedo. But a 21% markup means I will end up paying over 30% commission on Sedo sales (21% markup plus 10% alter commission) when I could have listed them there myself.

Sedo charges 15% commission (or 20% commission for Sedo MLS) and I am guessing Alter receives even better commission due to volume listings.

We don't receive any special discounts for volume listings. The only way to get rid of markups is for us to charge you a higher commission so that we can pay those partners from it. Is having no markups worth paying 30% commission to us?

Right now we simply tack on the partner's commission on top of the listing price so that you net the same amount as expected on Alter (i.e. if you list a domain for $1,000 on Alter and it sells on a partner marketplace then you'll still profit $900).

The main benefit of syndication is the convenience of not having to worry about dealing with different companies, updating prices across accounts, re-verifying domains, etc. A number of sellers asked for this so we implemented it. It also made sense because personally I'd rather spend that extra time finding new names to invest in rather than on maintaining existing inventory. In fact, our partners have only contributed to <5% of our sales so far.

Based on our experience, a small difference in the pricing doesn't impact STR because domains are unique. Unlike 99% of products listed on Amazon, there can only be one owner of each domain. And when buyers want that specific domain they're not going to care about the small difference in pricing because they don't even know there's a difference (if they did, they would simply buy it from the marketplace that offered it for the cheapest in which case you still get that sale).

This practice isn't new in the industry. When you list domains on Afternic or Sedo, some of their partners will also mark up your prices on their marketplaces.

Anyway, we understand that everyone has their own opinion about this which is why syndication is optional. If you don't want to take advantage of it then simply disable it in your Alter account.

I will give it a try!

Thanks for giving us a shot. Welcome aboard!

 

[sircc]

Can you please clarify? We don't consider it a sale until the buyer actually pays. It can't be bought twice since the listing would be removed as soon as the first payment is received.

If a potential client purchases a domain but neglects to pay promptly, someone else can buy and pay immediately for the domain. What happens to client 1, when he realizes the domain was sold to another buyer?

 

[Deven Patel]

If a potential client purchases a domain but neglects to pay promptly, someone else can buy and pay immediately for the domain. What happens to client 1, when he realizes the domain was sold to another buyer?

Sorry, I'm afraid I still don't understand. There's no way to purchase/reserve a domain prior to payment. In other words, a sale can't occur until payment is successfully processed.

 

[sircc]

Sorry, I'm afraid I still don't understand. There's no way to purchase/reserve a domain prior to payment. In other words, a sale can't occur until payment is successfully processed.

Okay, thanks Deven.

 

[BRANDERX]

So yesterday it was mentioned that a major non .com investor left Alter because of the extensive .com promotion on Alter's homepage. Putting .com & non .com aside, I do kinda agree that since Alter is no longer curated, why feature any domains on the homepage??! Be neutral.. imo

 

[Deven Patel]

So yesterday it was mentioned that a major non .com investor left Alter because of the extensive .com promotion on Alter's homepage. Putting .com & non .com aside, I do kinda agree that since Alter is no longer curated, why feature any domains on the homepage??! Be neutral.. imo

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This is the first time I'm hearing about this. Can you tell me who you're referring to (DM me if you want to keep it private)?

To address your concern, the names on the homepage aren't manually curated. They're essentially the top X% of our inventory. The goal is to attract and retain potential buyers as soon as they land on the homepage. Showing low quality names or nothing at all won't help with that. It's the same strategy large marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart use. Even Afternic and Sedo does this.

 

[BRANDERX]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This is the first time I'm hearing about this. Can you tell me who you're referring to (DM me if you want to keep it private)?

Not really, it's public info on a public forum.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/a-...sales-outbound-and-more.1259279/#post-8462156

I understand it's not manually curated, it's still curated though, on a marketplace that dropped curation.

Sedo was never curated, & AFAIK, the first two categories are paid for, & the third is by application.
Also for comparison, BB & Dan don't do it, so it is an option.

But it isn't a major issue. I can live with it

Thanks for for your reply..

 

[Deven Patel]

Not really, it's public info on a public forum.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/a-...sales-outbound-and-more.1259279/#post-8462156

I understand it's not manually curated, it's still curated though, on a marketplace that dropped curation.

Sedo was never curated, & AFAIK, the first two categories are paid for, & the third is by application.
Also for comparison, BB & Dan don't do it, so it is an option.

But it isn't a major issue. I can live with it

Thanks for for your reply..

Thanks! I had personally reached out to her a couple times in the past and she didn't share that feedback with me directly. I suspect there's more to the story than meets the eye so I wouldn't dwell on it too much.

Regarding your homepage concern, we didn't drop curation altogether. We replaced manual curation with an automated algorithm that incorporates buyer feedback. So in essence, high quality names will always receive more exposure, whether it's on our homepage or anywhere else on our website. That's actually the point and our core differentiator.

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

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

Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it.

Btw, any extension can show up on the homepage if the name is high quality. As I mentioned in the last post, the names on the homepage are essentially the top X% of our inventory.

Anyway, I guess I don't understand why that's bad? It's essentially bonus exposure for quality names. If you're worried about your portfolio receiving less attention because of it then I would urge you to think about what happens on other marketplaces when your names are competing against 10M+ other names.

We're actually offering you more value for less commission then what you're paying elsewhere. And you don't have to take my word for it. You can see exactly how much more traffic we're generating for your names on your Alter dashboard compared to direct/type-in traffic. Which other marketplace shows you that?

 

[Reyginus]

Hello @Deven Patel can you include a discount menu as can be seen on other platforms like SH? Sellers can temporarily reduce the price of their names by a certain amount and buyers can see that it is just temporary. E.g Expary.com 3799 3499.

 

[karmaco]

Thanks! I had personally reached out to her a couple times in the past and she didn't share that feedback with me directly. I suspect there's more to the story than meets the eye so I wouldn't dwell on it too much.

Regarding your homepage concern, we didn't drop curation altogether. We replaced manual curation with an automated algorithm that incorporates buyer feedback. So in essence, high quality names will always receive more exposure, whether it's on our homepage or anywhere else on our website. That's actually the point and our core differentiator.

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

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

Ultimately, the whole idea is to do everything possible to increase your STR compared to on other marketplaces. Since we already charge the lowest commission among all industry leaders (10% vs 11-20% elsewhere), even if all these innovative features only resulted in a small lift in STR, I think it's well worth it.

Btw, any extension can show up on the homepage if the name is high quality. As I mentioned in the last post, the names on the homepage are essentially the top X% of our inventory.

Anyway, I guess I don't understand why that's bad? It's essentially bonus exposure for quality names. If you're worried about your portfolio receiving less attention because of it then I would urge you to think about what happens on other marketplaces when your names are competing against 10M+ other names.

We're actually offering you more value for less commission then what you're paying elsewhere. And you don't have to take my word for it. You can see exactly how much more traffic we're generating for your names on your Alter dashboard compared to direct/type-in traffic. Which other marketplace shows you that?

I think the featured names on the front page are NOT great names and would make me go to another platform if I was a buyer.

When you click show more business names and are shown 5 and 6 figure names (some that suck there too) can be a turnoff for the average buyer.

The point is all names should be given fair and equal showcasing and chance to be sold. That is the value any brandable market is supposed to provide. Otherwise, DAN Sedo and Afternic work just fine.

If you are not routinely rotating names shown at the top and only using algo (which can be manipulated) its pretty clear only the pet names (selected by Alter) are receiving more promotion than the rest of the names. Your commish is low but there is 3 charging less ( SH WLM) and two charging 9% (Epik and DAN) as far as other similar options.

 

[BRANDERX]

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

• Experience 1

This is definitely a better experience. But that's not the homepage Deven is it? That's when they begin their search experience.

Btw, any extension can show up on the homepage if the name is high quality. As I mentioned in the last post, the names on the homepage are essentially the top X% of our inventory.

Anyway, I guess I don't understand why that's bad?

It's not. Maybe unnecessary, but you said it could result in a small lift in STR. They could also be the names that never sell, but I wouldn't know facts about that.

We're actually offering you more value for less commission then what you're paying elsewhere. And you don't have to take my word for it. You can see exactly how much more traffic we're generating for your names on your Alter dashboard compared to direct/type-in traffic. Which other marketplace shows you that?

Thanks for your time..

 

[TheTruthFoundation]

@Deven Patel Can you active Sedo MLS premium for sellers? I think you are using Sedo MLS basic.

If you can not active sedo MLS premium, Can you develop an option to exclude sedo from Syndication? (I still want to use Syndication at other marketplaces)