Atom / Atom.com - Marketplace (formerly Squadhelp)

[JudgeMind]

Hey Folks,

I've just started using squadhelp.com to list some of my brandable. So far I have 76 domains listed, there is no fee to list. I've had some decent action so far in the way of interested buyers but no sales as of yet. I've only been with them for 1 week now.

A bit of a summary review of SquadHelp:

PROS

• No Listing fee
• No Logo design fee
• Ability to submit your names to end users holding naming contests
• Ability to chat directly or send a message directly to end users.
• Stats of your marketplace domains are shown in the marketplace dashboard.
• Their customer service and support has been great, 24hr a day chat.
• Ability to increase or decrease the list price of your domains or to show a discount. You can decrease or increase the price yourself by $200. If you want to lower more, you can contact support.
• End users can shortlist your domains before they make a decision on which they want to purchase. The number of shortlists is shown in you marketplace dashboard.
• When you submit your names you get to set the price you wish to get. Because their commissions are high I recommend listing at a higher price to offset the commission costs.
• Their landing pages are fairly basic but they work. Because the marketplace is fairly new, I'm sure we will see style improvements in the future.
• One thing I really like is they accept multiple extensions. I have listed .co and .io along with .com
• Each seller gets a direct link to their marketplace portfolio, HERES MY PORTFOLIO. It is handy if your trying to p[promote your portfolio through social media.
• I like that their marketplace doesn't have tens of thousands domain listings like BB. They are fairly strict on the domains they accept to list and so this helps keep the number of domains in the marketplace down and gets your listings more exposure.

CONS

• Their commissions are very high, depending on the domain name they are usually between 30% and 35%. However, there are no listing fees, no logo design fees, so in the end their commission is very similar to brand buckets.
• Their logos are not top quality, in fact I requested to have some of my logos remade.
• I think they have a big backlog of logos to design, the wait time for logo design has been around 1 week, but your names are still listed while the logos are being designed.
• After your names are accepted you need to agree to their commission rate, at this point you also need to apply your own keywords, descriptions etc. I found this was very time consuming.

 

[silentg]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1786101541524455640

 

[Devanos]

I have pending appeals going back to Feb 20. I had two appeals for selling price too low that were submitted in late Feb and early March. Those were approved in weeks. The rejected appeals seem to be taking months. If you get an answer, please post here. I'd like to know too.

I have 13 domains appeals since February. Today all of them was rejected.

 

[silentg]

All mine was rejected too. Did anyone's appeals get approved?

 

[draco]

All mine was rejected too. Did anyone's appeals get approved?

Yes. I had 6 approved and 2 rejected.

 

[NameGroove]

Is anyone else seeing a traffic problem the past few days? My domains consistenty got ~200 views per day and 16-20 shortlists per day. Then the past few days, literally zero shortlists and very few views. Anything wrong over at Atom?

 

[draco]

Is anyone else seeing a traffic problem the past few days? My domains consistenty got ~200 views per day and 16-20 shortlists per day. Then the past few days, literally zero shortlists and very few views. Anything wrong over at Atom?

Yes, I have the same issue. Right above the chart, it says:

Alert: Due to heavy traffic, we have temporarily limited the processing of analytics data. Therefore, visits and shortlists may not be accurate.

 

[NameGroove]

Yes, I have the same issue. Right above the chart, it says:

Alert: Due to heavy traffic, we have temporarily limited the processing of analytics data. Therefore, visits and shortlists may not be accurate.

That notice has been there for months... this issue (at least on the graphs) just started 2 1/2 days ago

 

[draco]

That notice has been there for months... this issue (at least on the graphs) just started 2 1/2 days ago

I'm guessing it's a lot worse now. If we're only short a few visits and shortlists, we probably wouldn't notice.

 

[NameGroove]

Is anyone else seeing a traffic problem the past few days? My domains consistenty got ~200 views per day and 16-20 shortlists per day. Then the past few days, literally zero shortlists and very few views. Anything wrong over at Atom?

Show attachment 256364

@GrantP can you comment on this?

 

[silentg]

I saw the same issue on my account with the traffic and contacted them. I was told the engineering team is aware of the issue.

 

[ArielT]

Any way to customize the for-sale landing page for standard domains?

 

[NameGroove]

I saw the same issue on my account with the traffic and contacted them. I was told the engineering team is aware of the issue.

Shortlists seem fixed as of yesterday. Views still seem low, but perhaps they fixed everything half way through the day

 

[Future Sensors]

A message from Grant that was just sent to all Sellers on Atom.com:

---

Just a quick heads up - we've got our new name servers up and running for you to point your domains to Atom.com:

ns1.atom.com
ns2.atom.com

Don't worry though - we will continue to support the original Squadhelp name servers (ns1.squadhelp.com, ns2.squadhelp.com) for the foreseeable future. So no rush to make any changes if you're happy with how things are!

While you're not required to point your name servers to Atom for your Standard Listings, there are plenty of benefits to doing so.

We've got several awesome updates in the works, so keep an eye out for more announcements coming your way soon. Stay tuned!

 

[NameGroove]

Atom is reviewing names VERY slowly these days, I've had names with 10 reviews sitting there for weeks, some almost a month. If they're going to take this long, I may as well go back to submitting with BrandBucket who also takes >1 month to review.

 

[Devanos]

Atom is reviewing names VERY slowly these days, I've had names with 10 reviews sitting there for weeks, some almost a month. If they're going to take this long, I may as well go back to submitting with BrandBucket who also takes >1 month to review.

I recently listed some domains for review without use coins, and it took more than two months to get response.
Regarding listing unregistered names using points, the process became much slower.
Does all this mean that the platform has become very compressed?

 

[Future Sensors]

The dashboard is unworkably slow, atm.

 

[GoKaizen]

Since the upgrade and namechange to Atom I've had a huge increase in interest in my domains.

 

[freety85]

Since the upgrade and namechange to Atom I've had a huge increase in interest in my domains.

Is it materializing in offers / or view /shortlist and repeat visitors only? Thanks

 

[internext]

All mine was rejected too. Did anyone's appeals get approved?

My Accepted Selling Price is too low > 2 approved > 1 rejected
My Domain was rejected but I feel it is a great fit > 3 rejected

 

[NameGroove]

Since the upgrade and namechange to Atom I've had a huge increase in interest in my domains.

i've had just the opposite. Views are down 50%. Shortlists are back to normal however.

 

[GoKaizen]

That's interesting.

Might be an SEO thing. I feel like my domains are doing better with discovery and I had a sale yesterday.

i've had just the opposite. Views are down 50%. Shortlists are back to normal however.

 

[pelez]

i've had just the opposite. Views are down 50%. Shortlists are back to normal however.

same with me, few years but still no sale yet

 

[GoKaizen]

Good to know. Thanks for sharing.

I keep a small portfolio on SH/Atom. Don't expect to grow it.

Afternic is always king for sales.

At the end of the day, it is about your total revenue and the hours/effort you have to put into it. Plus, scaleability, if that is important for you.

I left SH, BB, BP even before the 15%/25% Afternic commission discrepancy and I believe after that staying makes even less sense except for few sellers that might get better exposure, are willing to jump through the hoops of regularly doing stuff there (contests, boosts, etc.). My last drop with SH was them demanding that I set higher bin at Afternic. My name, my rules. The max they can demand is the same price. Plus, it also meant that they are willing to change the rules on the fly, which makes the partner unpredictable for me and, thus, unreliable, not worthy.

Now, point by point:

- Revenue. SH just was not providing me sufficient sales as compared to what I am making from similar names with simply listing at Afternic. And that is with lower commission, higher bins, no jumping through the hoops with submitting, listing, logos, approvals etc. Why SH performance was subpar is a different question and not my problem. But if you want to discuss that, here is my view. They have too many subpar names that takes away from the exposure of good names and throws off potential buyers. Also, there is only so much of "magic" they can do via ads, promos, social, repeat buys. That number can only be in 500-1000 sales a year range with 90% probability. While the normal STR of non-SH network+lander conversion will still be in 0%-1% range depending on quality. So, that 500-1000 domains were creating the huge STR effect when spread over 10000 names (5%-10% extra) and even with 100000 names it was ok (0.5%-1% extra), but spread over 250000 names, it is just 0.2%-0.4% extra which doesn't even justify the higher commission, not speaking of probable lower conversion of the landers.

- Hours/Efforts. Again, with Afternic, it is just list, change NS and forget. Now compare that with the things you have to do with SH.

- Scaleability. And this is huge for me. If your focus is buying names that are good for SH, BB taste and are probable to get approved there, plus you are wasting time with everything else there, you can't really grow fast. It also throws off your sense of what is a really good domain. I regularly see offers of SH wholesale portfolios and looking through those lists gives me nausea. How did someone think that buying/renewing those names was good idea and how did SH agree that they were good names?!!!

 

[NameGroove]

Good to know. Thanks for sharing.

I keep a small portfolio on SH/Atom. Don't expect to grow it.

Afternic is always king for sales.

You can list names that are on Atom at Afternic too. So I see no downside to the extra Atom marketing.

 

[karmaco]

You can list names that are on Atom at Afternic too. So I see no downside to the extra Atom marketing.

The downside is you have to pay two parties a commission for a lead. Kind of a pain and a convoluted system. Many more sales seem to be originating from GD/Afternic than from the actual SH lander.