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.

 

[BrandCougar]

Looks like you won’t have to worry about rejections when they expect you to pay for submissions now.

@karmaco -

When did they start charging for submissions?

I was not aware of this - no announcement that I know of.

So SquadHelp has decided to mimic BrandBucket's model?

-Cougar

 

[Domain Redux]

Honestly, my experience with Squadhelp has been rather poor.

When I first found out about them and read that some individuals reported sales from SH, I decided to list a some names to see if they would be accepted. Turns out I had two names accepted for the premium listing and decided to use the Boost Visibility on one. Come to find out that both names accepted were going to blank pages for 2-3 weeks even after notifying staff that there was an internal issue on their end (yes, I did point to the correct nameservers). My Boost Visibility as a result was also wasted.

After seeing their recent update to charging individuals to potentially list their names as premium, I'll no longer be going to them as a service. I also feel that the commission rates are exceptionally high.

 

[private123]

10% approved premium listing
$10 per listing ( for 100 Domains )

5% approved premium listing
$20 per listing ( for 100 Domains )

 

[NYJimbo]

Just noticed for the first time on my dashboard the "0 coins" next to my name.

 

[BrandCougar]

How do you acquire (purchase) "SQH coins"?

It sort of would be nice if they would have provided instructions.

 

[NYJimbo]

After reviewing everything, I am fine with the idea of $1 per submission. I know that anywhere you give some thing or service for free, you are going to get people who take advantage of it.

I can imagine every time a new person goes on SH to sell, they submit large numbers of their domains for review, many of which probably are junk (we see it on namepros too) and that overloads the submission process.

$1 a name is fine and keeps out less serious people or those who will throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.

 

[RozasMD]

After reviewing everything, I am fine with the idea of $1 per submission. I know that anywhere you give some thing or service for free, you are going to get people who take advantage of it.

I can imagine every time a new person goes on SH to sell, they submit large numbers of their domains for review, many of which probably are junk (we see it on namepros too) and that overloads the submission process.

$1 a name is fine and keeps out less serious people or those who will throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.

I disagree. If the overload is the problem, just place a limit for each user. 1 a day. 10 a week. 20 a month. Whatever. Just make some numbers, expect what that would bring, what would be the best to manage, and set that limit.

Some SH user copied this on a reply to the announcement:

"We, at Squadhelp, strongly believe that the incentives of a Marketplace must directly align with the incentives of a seller. If we are unable to sell your names, we should make no money, period.

If a Marketplace is charging a listing fee, you have to consider whether their incentives are directly aligned with yours."

So apparently, they made a nice little contradiction here.

I can see they might be facing a problem with submissions. But they came to a poor, poor solution.

 

[Cdomains]

After reviewing everything, I am fine with the idea of $1 per submission. I know that anywhere you give some thing or service for free, you are going to get people who take advantage of it.

I can imagine every time a new person goes on SH to sell, they submit large numbers of their domains for review, many of which probably are junk (we see it on namepros too) and that overloads the submission process.

$1 a name is fine and keeps out less serious people or those who will throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.

As I said in another post, the domains I submit to SH are regged just for SH as I do not expect these

type of names to sell anywhere else.

As I also said before, most of my names are rejected at first and the few I decide to resubmit for review

are mostly accepted after review.

So now I get to lose money on the domains I regged that were rejected and will never sell elsewhere

and I also get to lose an additional dollar on each one too.

Not !!!!

I don't think so!

 

[NickB]

Posted this in another thread - you need to buy a minimum of 5 coins at a time, so your minimum spend will be $5 a pop not $1........

 

[BrandCougar]

@MrAcidic -

Where do you purchase the SQH coins?

I don't see a link (or instructions) anywhere on the site or my Dashboard.

Appreciate any insight you could provide.

Thanks,

-Cougar

 

[NYJimbo]

Posted this in another thread - you need to buy a minimum of 5 coins at a time, so your minimum spend will be $5 a pop not $1........

But you use 1 coin per name. So spend $5, you can use them when you want for next 5 names.

The coin buy page does seem to offer 1 coin at a time, not sure if anyone tried it.

 

[NYJimbo]

@MrAcidic -

Where do you purchase the SQH coins?

I don't see a link (or instructions) anywhere on the site or my Dashboard.

Appreciate any insight you could provide.

Thanks,

-Cougar

https://www.squadhelp.com/buy-squadhelp-coins

 

[KDN]

It's not ideal but it's inevitable. To be fair, SH still has the fastest review time among the brandable marketplaces. I'm still waiting for my first sale though. I'm close to 200 names already. Hopefully next month!

Sold a name 4 days after this post.

 

[GrantP]

Hi everyone,

Since there has been quite a bit of discussion and feedback related to the recent changes, I wanted to provide a quick update and a recap.

First of all, the purpose of these changes is not to add an additional line of revenue for SH. The goal is to continue to build deeper and long term partnerships with our sellers, while allowing a controlled growth of our marketplace listings.

Based upon everyone's feedback, we have made an additional change which will give our sellers the option to choose whether to stay with the existing commission structure (no upfront submission fee) or pay the upfront submission fees for a lower selling commission.

These choices will be available to those sellers (within the next 24 hours) who meet the following criteria:

• You have a minimum of 25 names published in the premium domain marketplace
• Your account is in Good Standing (i.e. no violations of our policies)
• You have not delisted an excessive number of domains from the Marketplace
• Your Marketplace approval rate is greater than 5%.

If you are a new seller (or have less than 25 listings), you will be required to use the Squadhelp Coins in order to submit your Domains to the Marketplace. Once you achieve 25 listings and meet the above criteria, you will be able to opt for the no upfront fee option if you prefer.

We also hope you take the time to review all the other changes announced today:
* 7.5% commission for Basic Listings (instead of 15%)
* A new searchable option for Basic Plus Listings
* Additional pricing flexibility to set your own selling price (upto $2399).

As always, please continue to share your feedback so we can continue to improve !

 

[gblasting]

Hi everyone,

Since there has been quite a bit of discussion and feedback related to the recent changes, I wanted to provide a quick update and a recap.

First of all, the purpose of these changes is not to add an additional line of revenue for SH. The goal is to continue to build deeper and long term partnerships with our sellers, while allowing a controlled growth of our marketplace listings.

Based upon everyone's feedback, we have made an additional change which will give our sellers the option to choose whether to stay with the existing commission structure (no upfront submission fee) or pay the upfront submission fees for a lower selling commission.

These choices will be available to those sellers (within the next 24 hours) who meet the following criteria:

• You have a minimum of 25 names published in the premium domain marketplace
• Your account is in Good Standing (i.e. no violations of our policies)
• You have not delisted an excessive number of domains from the Marketplace
• Your Marketplace approval rate is greater than 5%.

If you are a new seller (or have less than 25 listings), you will be required to use the Squadhelp Coins in order to submit your Domains to the Marketplace. Once you achieve 25 listings and meet the above criteria, you will be able to opt for the no upfront fee option if you prefer.

We also hope you take the time to review all the other changes announced today:
* 7.5% commission for Basic Listings (instead of 15%)
* A new searchable option for Basic Plus Listings
* Additional pricing flexibility to set your own selling price (upto $2399).

As always, please continue to share your feedback so we can continue to improve !

The problem: Excessive submission volume and marketplace growth
Sub-problem: Massive delistings of premium names after initial investment in logo and advertising fees by SH.

I believe the first criterion to have both options enabled is unfair to sellers with small portfolios. As long as you have a good record with SH, you should have both options enabled for you. I have a portfolio of 7 premium names and the last (and only) time I submitted names to SH was in February 2019. So why am I being penalized for a problem I did not cause or contribute to?

If anything, it is sellers who do mass submissions (and in turn have bigger portfolios) that should be made to pay a listing fee.

How about updating the first criterion to:
You have a minimum of 25 names published in the premium domain marketplace/**You have a X% 6 or 12 months sell-through rate.** or any other 'good record' criteria you can come up with that has nothing to do with portfolio size.

The reason why I chose sell-through rates is because selling on SH evidences two things which shows good record:

a) You pick good names (or you are lucky )
b) You have kept your names long enough on SH for them to sell.

Some of us prioritise having good names (and sales) over a large portfolio and we should not be penalized for not doing mass submissions (afterall, it's free), which is the problem SH is trying to solve in the first place.

 

[karmaco]

The problem with SH is they change their core beliefs every few months—this listing fee is a perfect illustration , are restrictive and control freaks, accept too many subpar names, high commisions, below market pricing, charge you for everything now even selling your own names to other sellers,offer a domainer program but do a bait and switch once you hit that hundred, won’t even get into the obvious issues with the contests.

Those who it works for great. For me, I am happier with their competitors who don’t change rules every five minutes or just selling on my own or on DAN. You don’t need them. They need you. If your name is going to sell it will sell anywhere.

 

[Constantin S]

I've previously tried to list some of my domains but they only accept domains that does NOT contain numbers and they only accept .io, .co, .net & .org, which is pretty bad for my portfolio because I have some really good domains that can't be listed because of this.

Any updates about that? @GrantP (you can find my whole portfolio in signature)

 

[bojan1]

This morning I have sold my first SH domain at SquadHelp for a wholesale price, and I have been charged $5 fee by SquadHelp plus, as I have read, I will be also charged by PayPal 10% on that fee during withdrawal!? And after that my country will tax me 10% on that fee.That is to much of a commission for a wholesale prices.

BrandBucket and BrandPa don't charge you anything for bartering domains for a wholesale prices among sellers.

 

[RozasMD]

Hi everyone,

Since there has been quite a bit of discussion and feedback related to the recent changes, I wanted to provide a quick update and a recap.

First of all, the purpose of these changes is not to add an additional line of revenue for SH. The goal is to continue to build deeper and long term partnerships with our sellers, while allowing a controlled growth of our marketplace listings.

Based upon everyone's feedback, we have made an additional change which will give our sellers the option to choose whether to stay with the existing commission structure (no upfront submission fee) or pay the upfront submission fees for a lower selling commission.

These choices will be available to those sellers (within the next 24 hours) who meet the following criteria:

• You have a minimum of 25 names published in the premium domain marketplace
• Your account is in Good Standing (i.e. no violations of our policies)
• You have not delisted an excessive number of domains from the Marketplace
• Your Marketplace approval rate is greater than 5%.

If you are a new seller (or have less than 25 listings), you will be required to use the Squadhelp Coins in order to submit your Domains to the Marketplace. Once you achieve 25 listings and meet the above criteria, you will be able to opt for the no upfront fee option if you prefer.

We also hope you take the time to review all the other changes announced today:
* 7.5% commission for Basic Listings (instead of 15%)
* A new searchable option for Basic Plus Listings
* Additional pricing flexibility to set your own selling price (upto $2399).

As always, please continue to share your feedback so we can continue to improve !

New Squadhelp user here (absolutely no new domainer). I registered about 10 days ago, and I was in the middle of the process of trying to build a portfolio at Squadhelp, just as I have in some other marketplaces.

I had time to submit only about 15 names before this change was made. To be honest, I think I'l forget about it.

To build a small but big enough portfolio, let's say about 50 names, considering rejection % and learning curve about what names Squadhelp value most, you'd probably need to submit 250-500 names. At $1 each, that's a nice little investment just to see if you're lucky enough to have the chance to test the waters.
It's a stop sign for me.

If you have an issue with mass submissions... well, that's easy, disallow mass submissions. As I wrote in my previous post, just set a limit per user. Whichever you find the perfect one. 1 a day. 10 a week. 20 a month. Whatever.

Unless you're just happy with current users and don't want to attract any new one. Which could be an option. But as a new user I can only say this is kind of a deal breaker. It forces me to stick with the marketplaces I'm used to and I already know - where the learning curve is somehow complete and my acceptance ratio is quite high.

 

[Domain Redux]

This morning I have sold my first SH domain at SquadHelp for a wholesale price, and I have been charged $5 fee by SquadHelp plus, as I have read, I will be also charged by PayPal 10% on that fee during withdrawal!? And after that my country will tax me 10% on that fee.That is to much of a commission for a wholesale prices.

BrandBucket and BrandPa don't charge you anything for bartering domains for a wholesale prices among sellers.

I believe this is still a thing also...the buyer can back out for a full refund even after they buy the domain. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[bojan1]

New Squadhelp user here (absolutely no new domainer). I registered about 10 days ago, and I was in the middle of the process of trying to build a portfolio at Squadhelp, just as I have in some other marketplaces.

I had time to submit only about 15 names before this change was made. To be honest, I think I'l forget about it.

To build a small but big enough portfolio, let's say about 50 names, considering rejection % and learning curve about what names Squadhelp value most, you'd probably need to submit 250-500 names. At $1 each, that's a nice little investment just to see if you're lucky enough to have the chance to test the waters.
It's a stop sign for me.

If you have an issue with mass submissions... well, that's easy, disallow mass submissions. As I wrote in my previous post, just set a limit per user. Whichever you find the perfect one. 1 a day. 10 a week. 20 a month. Whatever.

Unless you're just happy with current users and don't want to attract any new one. Which could be an option. But as a new user I can only say this is kind of a deal breaker. It forces me to stick with the marketplaces I'm used to and I already know - where the learning curve is somehow complete and my acceptance ratio is quite high.

There used to be a limit of submissions per account before this changes, and as I saw everything was fine. Review time was significantly shorter than at BB or BP.... so it doesn't make sense to me all this changes!? SH didn't charge you for a submission but they did charge you for a domain sales within they marketplaces.... BB and BP charge you for a submission (BP listing fee), but they don't charge you for a reseller transfers.

I still don't see logic behind new changes!?

 

[bojan1]

I believe this is still a thing also...the buyer can back out for a full refund even after they buy the domain. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Even after domain is transferred to him!? I didn't know about this.

 

[bojan1]

Today I have received email of approval one of my domains for a Basic Plus listing? What is that now... I have never received similar emails before. I am really not interested in anything less than Premium listing, since having listed domain without professional logo on brandables site doesn't make sense to me. I would rather choose DAN.

 

[Kai W.]

I noticed the problem of SH a long time ago, complicated panels, and a lot of points. But I still stay there because I like to connect with the end users, SH has the game, SH does it, but BB and BP don't. So I still use SH to understand the user's needs. By the way, I have not sold it successfully on BB and SH.

 

[NYJimbo]

Maybe someone can explain this to me:

I was looking at the SH wholesale market where you can buy approved, listed domains for a fraction of the price. Some of these are owned by SH as they were not registered by the current owner of the listing, rather SH registered it. Naturally the payout to the owner would be less and that is agreed upon when you submit your domain (or you let SH decide the rate).

Anyway, I noticed some payout discrepancies which confused me. Here is a capture of part of one:

Note that the retail or sale price is $1,599
The expected payout to you in commission is $575
The agreed rate of commission is 22.5%

However, 22.5% of $1,599 is actually $359, not $575

Am I missing something ? To me it looks like the quoted payout is much higher than it really will be.