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.

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

Got another one approved at $,2799, but very slow progress, they are veeeery picky.

so why are discounts reset every Monday? should remain in place till dn owner disables it.

imo

Yes i agree. Its a headache to do manual tasks each monday for promotions.

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

Any sales so far?

Not so far. I hope i will get a sale soon.

 

[CDM]

I just discovered SquadHelp by visiting a domain and the landing page too me there. In the past two hours I've been researching the site, chatted w/ support and looking over their terms, then came here to read other's reviews.

Currently they have over 500 active contests, but almost all of them are for under $300. The handful that are above this, none is higher than $1,000.

The OP and some other NP'ers here said they sold domains through contests for over $2k, over $4k, etc. How often do the contests with such budgets appear? On their 'seller' page they claim that companies with budgets from $2,000 to $100,000 like Dell and Microsoft use SquadHelp, but it seems like talking fluff compared to what I can see of their active contests.

If they have a sell through rate of 20% perhaps it is no surprise if most names sell for $xxx range. Am I missing something?

I'm still curious, but as of now they don't look worth the time to list names for such high commissions if there is little demand for high-end inventory.

One thing I noticed, in the terms for the Basic Listings, it says the commission is 15% or $300, whichever is greater. Since pricing is capped at $1,799, then you will always pay $300 since 15% of $1,799 is $270. Huh? Worse for Basic Plus, since the commission is $400 but still the price is capped at $1,799.

If anyone has feedback to show me wrong I'm all ears. I do see some higher end names listed in their Premium section, some in the 5-figure range, if they do extensive marketing and can attract retail buyers in this range then it might be interesting to experiment with some premium listings, but I would wonder how many sales will they make in that high-end that would not be coming in from direct navigation, but based on their marketing effort? Just a question.

 

[SuperBrander]

@CDM

1. The contest prize and the domain price are two different things. A contest doesn't have to have a $2K or $4K prize in order to submit a $4K domain to it. Sometimes there are contests with prizes over $300 but that's quite rare. Sometimes, not very often, there's one for $500 or $1000, but that's usually the most a contest prize gets to. Sometimes, also not very often, a CH states they're open to buying an expensive domain and states a high budget. Usually you just have to pitch based on the contest brief and gut feeling.

2. SH at the moment is mostly selling domains in the low $X,XXX range, specifically $1000-$2000. That's their sweet spot. At this point, to my estimate, they've had somewhere in the ballpark of 20-25 sales above $2000. As far as I know they had three sales for $XX,XXX (one was an upgrade of a company that was previously on a .co so it was a result of direct navigation). Installments were added relatively recently so that has helped with sales of domains beyond the $1000-$2000 range and should continue to generate more.

3. Every marketplace needs time to gather momentum and SH puts a lot of effort into marketing and it also attracts end users organically thanks to the contests. I have quite a few domains listed for $XX,XXX. So far it hasn't proved fruitful and other marketplaces perform better selling expensive domains, but for now I'm giving them a chance and time. If it doesn't work out, I'll eventually remove them.

 

[CDM]

@SuperBrander thanks for the reply and thanks for clarifying about the contests. I clicked on a few of the contests and no where did I see the contest holder had specified a budget or max price for a domain. The only number I saw was the prize amount, so I could only assume that was the domain budget. Where do you find out the budget for the domain contests?

 

[SuperBrander]

@CDM Unfortunately at the moment there's no way to know the budget. Or if they're open to it at all since marketplace submissions are automatically allowed in all contests. Sometimes you can suggest a domain and the contest holder writes in a comment that they're not interested in buying a domain. Recently SH implemented an option for the CH to request to stop getting marketplace suggestions after the contest starts if he isn't interested in receiving them. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I think SH needs to address this situation better. Sometimes a CH will buy a name if he falls in love with it even if he didn't intend to spend that money and just wanted a contest (depending on his company's financial means of course). Still, the current situation where it's kind of like shooting in the dark isn't optimal and can waste time pitching to people who don't even want to buy a marketplace domain or have a budget you can't cater to since you don't know what it is.

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

Many names I suggested that had zero history before have been registered by people. I launched a report and so far 2 remain and the rest the CH said they did not register the name or any of their people. What is worse is if the entry is 30 days or longer when you find out and report, they dont investigate as that is too long they said. Names registered same day or within a week of submission are very strange. Some of the names are developed already with the same service, for example I saw a pdf contest and submited a name, before three days I found out it is registered and I visited and it is about pdf service. These can be supernatural coincidence. Oh, did I say names are under privacy?

I am sure if I registered the names I found out got registered then the businesses on them would have easily paid min 1000 per name, so I kinda lost some money, if I might say lol.

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

I am seeing a new "Request Review Button" under all of my premium names , You can ask for a review if you thinks price is too low or logo is not good/any other reason. But, You can ask for review only 5 times each month. A good initiative by SH team.

 

[Abdullah Abdullah]

I saw sales like 95 K and 79 K , so big sales does happen on SH

 

[BrandZen]

This is why I love NamePros. Never tried selling on SquadHelp before but I'll try it tonight.

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

This is why I love NamePros. Never tried selling on SquadHelp before but I'll try it tonight.

Here comes competition for all domainers Best of luck.

 

[pjb1978]

I've submitted about a dozen names, and had about half approved. The commission for the first handful was between 25-30%, but I had 2 more names approved last night at 32.5%!!

I like the platform, I like the structure, but 32.5%?! Anything more than 30% is an auto decline for me, regardless of what they think they can sell a name for. I realize the 2.5% difference is trivial, but the line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere.

 

[SuperBrander]

@Abdullah Abdullah There have been three sales for $XX,XXX. Two of them are the ones you referred to. The third one was for $12,500 and was an upgrade for an existing company from a .co extension. The highest one after that was $4999 if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Cdomains]

I've submitted about a dozen names, and had about half approved. The commission for the first handful was between 25-30%, but I had 2 more names approved last night at 32.5%!!

I submitted about 30 names and only 4 were approved.

After studying the names already listed, I submitted names very similar and they were not accepted.

All my names have a 35% commission and they lowered my prices even though I submitted

prices lower than the $1799 price they show as the limit for basic listings.


I am going to overlook all this to see if I get sales.

If not, I will pull my names.


It is worth noting, you must change the name servers to point to their marketplace.

That means they will get a large commission for buyers who just typed a name directly into their browser and

not because of their marketplace.

 

[boker]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I was checking some names and I found RawPeak.com, which is listed as premium with 114 shortlist, which is ok, it's a nice name so people could like it. The problem is that if you go to rawpeak.com it doesn't take you to SH, actually it looks like there is an actual website/company in Pueblo, US. So, we can list names like this premium domains, domains which are not for sale or at least which don't forward to SH and have 100+ shortlist and nobody from SH to notice?

 

[NYJimbo]

Ever since they switched this week from a limit of 10 names for review to 200 names, my acceptance rate has plunged.

Not sure if I am suddenly registering crap OR they are overwhelmed and are flagging good names as crap OR they have automated the process that uses some tool which increases the number of rejections.

Frankly, I dont see how you can suddenly start accepting 20 times the limit of domains unless you have automated something. Did you suddenly hire a bunch of domain appraising geniuses ?

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

Ever since they switched this week from a limit of 10 names for review to 200 names, my acceptance rate has plunged.

Not sure if I am suddenly registering crap OR they are overwhelmed OR they have automated the process that uses some tool which increases the number of rejections.

Yes it , They are rejecting BB/BP published names too. They are very selective now a days.

 

[NYJimbo]

Yes it , They are rejecting BB/BP published names too. They are very selective now a days.

"selective" is a nice word for what is going on. Shame if SH ruins a good thing.

 

[NYJimbo]

Names using SH dns not resolving right now 12:30 eastern 03/31/2019. What is up ?

 

[pjb1978]

Names using SH dns not resolving right now 12:30 eastern 03/31/2019. What is up ?

Same for me.

 

[golan]

Ever since they switched this week from a limit of 10 names for review to 200 names, my acceptance rate has plunged.

Not sure if I am suddenly registering crap OR they are overwhelmed and are flagging good names as crap OR they have automated the process that uses some tool which increases the number of rejections.

Frankly, I dont see how you can suddenly start accepting 20 times the limit of domains unless you have automated something. Did you suddenly hire a bunch of domain appraising geniuses ?

i was switched from 10 to 25 then to 15

 

[Recons.Com]

Yeah, going to 15 has hurt my acceptance as well. Also, seems adding at late US hour might result almost in all of them rejected. Some weird logic there. Not sure it is dependent on whose shift it is and whom you get as an appraiser.

@GrantP could you please clarify how it works.

 

[NYJimbo]

6:46 am eastern, names on SH again not resolving. SH website is working though.

"Bagsbynature.com is DOWN for everyone.
It is not just you. The server is not responding..."

"Exibeat.com is DOWN for everyone.
It is not just you. The server is not responding..."



One more example, not my domain:

"Infinitley.com is DOWN for everyone.
It is not just you. The server is not responding..."

I didn't report other times this happened but did yesterday and this morning.

Page views are way down, not sure if related, but this can't keep happening.

 

[GrantP]

Yeah, going to 15 has hurt my acceptance as well. Also, seems adding at late US hour might result almost in all of them rejected. Some weird logic there. Not sure it is dependent on whose shift it is and whom you get as an appraiser.

@GrantP could you please clarify how it works.

Thanks for tagging me. As a general practice, I tend not to respond to conversations in this thread because we would like the community to share their candid opinion and feedback with each other without us introducing any bias from SH perspective. However, if you would like us to clarify something, please tag me and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. Also, we are continuously adding new features to our Marketplace and we announce all such updates in our Discussion Forum. In addition, we heavily rely on the feedback in our discussion forum to influence our product roadmap, so I encourage everyone to participate there as well.

Regarding the questions about approval rate, let me clarify a few things:

1. We do not use any automated tools or algorithm to approve or reject marketplace submissions. All submissions are reviewed by humans.
2. The submissions are assigned randomly to members of our Marketplace review team - which means that it does not really make a difference what time of day you submit the names.
3. Your current submission limits do not have any bearing on the approval of your future submissions. These limits simply control how many submissions can you submit at a time, before you have to wait for them to be reviewed. If your approval rate stays high, you will continue to see almost unlimited submission privileges (i.e. 200 submission limit)
4. Our team does take into account a list of criteria while deciding whether or not to approve the submissions. We also review certain past metrics from contests (if they are available). As a background, we have more than 6 million domains that have been submitted to our contests. So if you are submitting a recently registered name to marketplace, there is a good chance that name was previously submitted to our contests by someone else. In that case, we already have some metrics on how well that name was liked by previous contest holders. As an example, if you submit a name AwesomeName.com, and we see that it was previously submitted to 20 different contests over last few years by different people and never received a high rating or shortlist, there is a good chance it is not resonating with our customers and therefore it may not be approved. This is one of the several things we look at. Here is an article that covers some of the things we look at while approving the names:
https://helpdesk.squadhelp.com/domain-marketplace/marketplace-submission-best-practices

5. Having said that, we are going to stay extremely selective and curated about which names to approve in the premium domain marketplace. We want each name to receive high visibility, and therefore we might even reject a good name if there are already very similar names in the marketplace. If your name was approved in other marketplaces, it usually does not play a factor in our own approval decisions. Each marketplace has their own methodologies, and we are building a unique platform which may not align with the criteria used by other marketplaces.

Of course, the most important thing to note is that there is no exact science or criteria that can determine exactly which names to approve or reject. There is always going to be the "human element" or subjectiveness in approving the names, and in some cases our assessment may not be accurate. We continue to learn and our criteria will likely continue to evolve as well.

 

[GrantP]

"Bagsbynature.com is DOWN for everyone.
It is not just you. The server is not responding..."

"Exibeat.com is DOWN for everyone.
It is not just you. The server is not responding..."

We are in the process of upgrading our Name Servers, as well as adding some extensive system checks to exclude certain type of Bot traffic in our calculation of View counts. The intermittent issues experienced during the last 24 hours should now be resolved but it is possible that you might see few more temporary issues over next 24 hours.

If you see any issues, feel free to report them to our support team.