BrandBucket Experience

[xtremex]

hello

I am new to BrandBucket. Before getting my hands on this

I wish to experience about brandbucket from my fellow members


Thanks

 

[SuperBrander]

@Arca Totally agree about the bad standing issue. Making it work retroactively was a bad move by BB, IMO, for sure. Hopefully BB will fix it and also clear the uncertainty regarding the things you mentioned moving forward. I think building trust with sellers is super important. As a client, I feel BB does do quite a lot of things right and they do have good customer support, but as far as transparency and making sellers feel secure about their investment... things could definitely use an improvement.

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

@Dnbolt @Arca

Before one hour or so , BB updated the seller dashboard if You havent noticed yet. They show the marketplace domains and the number of domains published last week
At least as sellers we get to see these stats now.

 

[Dnbolt]

@Dnbolt @Arca

Before one hour or so , BB updated the seller dashboard if You havent noticed yet. They show the marketplace domains and the number of domains published last week
At least as sellers we get to see these stats now.

@hookbox just saw your message will pm you. Lol, looks like bb is getting lots of ideas from me:

1. first they came up sellers stats which I started (now discountiuned)
2. Then they came up with published domains which I did
3. For number of domains in market done same time ( don't get why it was removed from homepage)

Lets see if they will publish removed domains and sold domains (hoping they do this (will save me))

One could say I helped improved bb. Yes?

 

[Dnbolt]

@hookbox just saw your message will pm you. Lol, looks like bb is getting lots of ideas from me:

1. first they came up sellers stats which I started (now discountiuned)
2. Then they came up with published domains which I did
3. For number of domains in market done same time ( don't get why it was removed from homepage)

Lets see if they will publish removed domains and sold domains (hoping they do this (will save me))

One could say I helped improved bb. Yes?

Yes.

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

@hookbox just saw your message will pm you. Lol, looks like bb is getting lots of ideas from me:

1. first they came up sellers stats which I started (now discountiuned)
2. Then they came up with published domains which I did
3. For number of domains in market done same time ( don't get why it was removed from homepage)

Lets see if they will publish removed domains and sold domains (hoping they do this (will save me))

One could say I helped improved bb. Yes?

I actually suggested on Slack that they add names that sold to the dashboard if they dont want that data to be available publicly.

Another interesting and very positive thing is that now once a buyer hits BB homepage , a pop up asks if he or she would like suggestions and then post a name request where all sellers get notifications and each submit 5 names only. This is good for two things :

1 : The chances of many sellers, some never had a sale making a sale would increase as the buyer would most probably find name or names he likes in the submission.

2: This gives open and equal field to all sellers to submit their names, and here, the first five names submitted are on the top then you click on the request and all names show. No bias in terms of search results here as each person can submit and only those who make to top 5 can hope something but that would not matter too..you know why? Cause they added or shall I say changed a feature which Name My Company( NMC) had already, which is upvoting but this time with a nice twist. This time, only the name requestor can vote the for the name from 1 to 5 stars. So you might submit a name in a crowd of 180+ names already submitted but if the requestor sees it and likes it, boom...suddenly your name is top of the list.

I dont only post negative things about BB but I am a man who always gives credit where it is due and these changes would certainly make something happen.

 

[Nerevar]

Has anyone saved the BB sales for the last year(s) that user Dnbolt has been publishing? I would like to examine them again very much (strictly privately of course). But I have not saved them myself unfortunately.

 

[gblasting]

Looks like BB has reduced the maximum number of submissions on NameMyCompany to 2 entries per individual.

I think this is a wise decision as it makes people enter with their best 2 entries rather than 'spray and pray.'

 

[bazabizo]

How many sellers are there on BB?

 

[stewmath]

I think they suck, i have submitted my 4L.com domains and they rejected them saying they dont meet their requirements etc, blah blah blah

 

[Brandworthy]

How many sellers are there on BB?

I *think* the number is greater than 10,000, but I cant remember where that came from. It might have been mentioned somewhere, or perhaps in some correspondence I had with them. It's a very hazy recollection, so I don't want to assign certainty to my claim. But I do know they have a boatload of sellers with less than 10 names.

 

[Brandworthy]

some others have done the same exercise on NamePros for other Keywords (I didnt like their language though demonstrating the facts)

I'm guessing that was me, and I'm taking that criticism of my language on board. The only thing I will say in my defense was that I knew about many of the things that were happening behind the curtains at the time. Some of those things are still not widely known outside the insiders group.

how they might arrange their search algorithm (as the heated, now deleted, discussion about that in this thread showed)

FWIW I did quite a lot of analysis on their results to try to figure out some of the basic parameters they were using. Suffice it to say I wasn't a fan of what I found. I haven't been following this thread so I missed the discussion you refer to, but it sounds interesting none the less that others are complaining about the search "algo".

 

[Sinh]

Actually I don't understand how they BB appraise the domains, I have only high quality domains (premium names) on BB and looking for the 1st sale on BB.

 

[Messiah]

With sellers experiencing huge name rejections recently, it would be interesting to know how much have sellers wasted their $ in BB's Growth Program or if at all the Growth Program is useful to them.

 

[Justin Matmor]

With sellers experiencing huge name rejections recently, it would be interesting to know how much have sellers wasted their $ in BB's Growth Program or if at all the Growth Program is useful to them.

With all the rejections the growth program has saved me several thousand dollars to be precise. I now submit first, wait for the review and then buy the domain. Previously I used to buy first, then submit.

The GP is a now brainer.

 

[Messiah]

the growth program has saved me several thousand dollars

Excellent. How many domains have you added and how many domains got rejected since you shifted to the Growth Program?

 

[thedotsol]

With all the rejections the growth program has saved me several thousand dollars to be precise. I now submit first, wait for the review and then buy the domain. Previously I used to buy first, then submit.

The GP is a now brainer.

So you are saying if BB rejects domain, it is not worth buying?

 

[Sinh]

So you are saying if BB rejects domain, it is not worth buying?

BB rejects 4L.com sometimes as well. I think that they have other looks on domains that is not like our views. I think so.

 

[Justin Matmor]

Excellent. How many domains have you added and how many domains got rejected since you shifted to the Growth Program?

Added about 10, rejected about 30

 

[Justin Matmor]

So you are saying if BB rejects domain, it is not worth buying?

Exactly. All my sales on BB have been sold to end users.

 

[thedotsol]

Exactly. All my sales on BB have been sold to end users.

There is no point to argue with you on this, but you might lose some other opportunities with your strategy. I also have some domains at BB, but I earn with rejects also and it's not easy to me to decide which channel brings me more money.

 

[thedotsol]

BB rejects 4L.com sometimes as well. I think that they have other looks on domains that is not like our views. I think so.

Exactly. In a recent past they have drastically changed their approval policy. As a result, you have many mediocre names that were approved last summer. And now they have tightened things again, so some better names than these already listed, got rejected easily.

Hence, the reason not to relay on them (BB) only...

 

[Mister Funsky]

domain value is in the eye of the beholder

So true...been doing this so long names I sold years ago have been let go and I got them again...some had their value tank but a couple have gone up in popularity significantly...hope to 10x previous sales amount.

 

[Arca]

I'm guessing that was me, and I'm taking that criticism of my language on board.

I'm fairly sure this was not directed at you, but at a pretty long (now deleted by mods) discussion where analysis of the search results at BB for certain keywords, and who owned what % of those search results, was posted by a few different members. Some of the analysis was delivered in language that at times was a bit too confrontational towards the BB inner circle, which was unnecessary. At the same time, which I suppose caused frustration among the people posting their findings, leading them to use such language, it looked like the BB bosses (M+M) consistently owned what might be a quite disproportionate amount of the domains that get a good placement on the first few pages of the search results (since nobody knows how the search algorithm works, sellers can only speculate about the implications of their findings). Since the discovery of domains by end-users through search at BB is the main value added at BB, it's obviously somethings sellers care a lot about (as type-in sales would have sold on any platform, so discovery of your name through their platform search is the main way BB can provide additional sales that might not have happened on other platforms).

The only thing I will say in my defense was that I knew about many of the things that were happening behind the curtains at the time. Some of those things are still not widely known outside the insiders group.

Care to share the gist of it?

 

[Brandworthy]

Care to share the gist of it?

I'd rather not go into specifics, but I will make a general comment that transparency at BB has not improved at all IMO. That lack of transparency to many will suggest they have something to hide, and this helps no one.

On the search algo - one of the stated goals of the new search which was implemented last year was to surface historic names, i.e. names which were listed longer on the site. Previously search results were basic chronological indices of names, so as more names were added older names got further buried. This was an admirable goal, but I'm not sure that the implemented solution favoured all users equally.

The new search does appear to surface more diversity, but certainly some of the result sets might be questionable. While BB have stated that domain owner is not a factor in the results, domain age, price, keywords are definitely factors. It's widely known that insiders have/had more control over some of those factors than regular sellers, e.g. it was previously the case that insiders set their own pricing, and their pricing (IMO) was often far higher than accepted prices set for regular sellers. I think this should have been expected since we all suffer from internal bias, and frequently believe our names are worth more than they are. So self-set prices being higher than normal is quite normal behaviour, but I do think it was a mistake allowing BB insiders to set their own pricing. Why might this matter? Because higher priced names, or names in certain price ranges might appear at higher positions and at higher frequencies in search results.

When you review the factors at use in their search algo, look at which factors inside users had/have more control over (price, keywords), and combine this with age of name/portfolio, you can see that the changes introduced may have disproportionate outcomes for some users over others.

FWIW my 900+ portfolio on BB has seen a single sale yet in 2017. I don't submit names any longer, and have another ~300 accepted names which I do not intend to list at this time.

 

[Dnbolt]

Greetings people,

Does brandbucket suggest users to make a 301 redirect instead of a 302? (if not changing nameserver)
Why I am asking? because I see a problem.