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.

 

[DomainBanana]

My account has suddenly been configured to bypass the standard review process.

I did not request this.

It is extremely disappointing that Squadhelp has chosen to punish my criticisms of the review process by altering my account without my approval.

This is not professional. It is also not ethical.

Sellers should not be punished for criticizing the marketplace. If Squadhelp is acting against me in this way, how else are they acting against me? And who else are they acting against?

Very disappointed @GrantP, particularly after our phone conversation

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Is anyone here a reviewer at Squadhelp now?

Great question. I was invited but didn't follow up. Maybe everyone was.

 

[Samer]

Squadhelp @GrantP

i accidentally delisted a name in review.

sucks, how did do that? it had 4 expert reviews

Can you please bring a 2nd box pop up for confirmation? I tried contacting support; and surprisingly off weekends

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Here's my two cents' worth as an ex-reviewer who was doing it for about a week:

1. Acceptance to one marketplace doesn't mean a domain will be accepted elsewhere, especially when we're talking about unregistered or recently handregged domains. BB is full of low quality domains that likely shouldn't have been accepted. SH is too. Falling in love with low quality domains isn't beneficial and the sooner domainers get over their genius naming abilities, they're able to evaluate domains better and get the right perspective on their own domains and other people's domains.

2. Inspiration- no offense, but if you or me or anyone else handregged a domain lately or submitted an unregistered one for consideration- it's not the best domain out there by a long shot (unless it's a brand new trend that just emerged and you managed to catch a relevant domain early). Domains that people are so scared will be ripped off have been available for anyone to register for awhile and sometimes were never registered before. In 99.9% of the cases these domains aren't registered in any other extension. People who have been domaining for a long time don't need to be inspired by submissions- they can see which names sold and which names were recently added to the marketplace if they're really into getting relevant data and/or inspiration from others. Everybody has access to that data. And being inspired by submissions that haven't even been approved yet doesn't make much sense to me. If they're aftermarket domains- you can't tweak them and get something equivalent. If they're low end domains- it's very likely nobody with exeperience in domaining cares about them. Similar domains get submitted/registered all the time due to the limited amount of meaningful keywords and prefixes/suffixes. Even while submitting, I'm sure most if not everybody can see that many times other people already submitted their idea. People who have been in the industry for awhile can likely find better handregged domains than less experienced domainers and don't need to get inspired by them- so again, don't fall in love with your low end domains and accept them for what they are- lottery tickets that can be easily replaced. Personally I find it hard to believe that a reviewer will get 4 random domains to choose from and then take the time to go check who owns one and then decide not to choose it because he hates the owner. Or not choose it because it somehow competes with one of their own domains. I mean... it's only 1 vote out of 20 anyway in the worst case scenario. And reviewers are being monitored. Don't know. Seems OK to me. No solution can ever be perfect when humans are involved. Mistakes will always be made. But at least now submissions are reviewed super quickly without cost to sellers.

3. I'm not saying that the system is perfect and since people have concerns- the system should be tweaked to address that. That's the good thing about SH. They're attentive to sellers and often make changes based on feedback. People who feel like they're being dealt a lesser hand always speak out, especially when so called "insiders" are involved and are perceivably getting unfair advantages. It's been like that with BB. It's like that with SH. And that's fine. Hell, I also criticized BB and SH for a lot of things and I understand where people are coming from. I'm not a reviewer anymore so I'm in the same boat as the rest of the sellers. My acceptance rate is fine. Even higher than before, if I'm not mistaken. But either way, at least from my own experience, I think the power attributed to reviewers and the value of these benefits is somewhat exaggerated. Reading some of what people say- I could almost feel like an idiot for quitting being a reviewer after a week. The truth is, once the compensation switched from coins to points- it wasn't worth my time. Going over so many low end domains is super boring. $5 per sold name is renewal money for a few domains, at the best case scenario. As for points- I've had a lot of points I got the old fashioned ways and I continue to accumulate them like that so I always have enough. Personally, up till now I think I used points for one boost when the feature first came out and for one lifestyle image when that became available. I got some complimentary images automatically for some of the higher quality domains, as other sellers with domains that are priced high get.

Anyway... this post is waaaay too long so I'll wrap it up!

Imagine...

1 great domain name submitted for a hygenic product that is needed today by a domainer at a site where other domainers are to be the critical thinkers for the platform.

20 UK/Ireland Moderators
15 positive votes.

20 USA Moderators
9 positive votes.

20 Swedish/German Moderators
2 positive votes.

That's how I see it from my experiences from all of those places. There on the last one we see a mentality that has been given the role of Devils Advocate. That will be the hardest group to crack for many reasons.

Poland/Russia... etc... well my ex wife was Russian.

Add some alcohol into that mix and well...

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

I would never run a business on the blind trust put in others. I see the many pitfalls waiting to happen around me every day.

This is an experiment doomed to fail like when Google et al let everybody choose when they wanted to come in to work. The Culture they were trying to promote, started at work, died. Teams died, and nobody did anything.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

My account has suddenly been configured to bypass the standard review process.

I did not request this.

It is extremely disappointing that Squadhelp has chosen to punish my criticisms of the review process by altering my account without my approval.

This is not professional. It is also not ethical.

Sellers should not be punished for criticizing the marketplace. If Squadhelp is acting against me in this way, how else are they acting against me? And who else are they acting against?

Very disappointed @GrantP, particularly after our phone conversation

Isn't this a good thing?

 

[jk23]

Great question. I was invited but didn't follow up. Maybe everyone was.

How many domains have you sold on SquadHelp?

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

How many domains have you sold on SquadHelp?

Sold for $8000+

Is that why? Hmmm...

Could have sold for more but price negotiations through the platform didn't work out with the buyers. My portfolio stats are high among the visitors and domains are on many shortlists.

 

[jk23]

How many domains?

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Squadhelp @GrantP

i accidentally delisted a name in review.

sucks, how did do that? it had 4 expert reviews

Can you please bring a 2nd box pop up for confirmation? I tried contacting support; and surprisingly off weekends

Support will fix that quick enough.

 

[Samer]

Support will fix that quick enough.

You'd think so, but they went DAN, and/or Sedo on me when they said weekend off.

 

[DomainBanana]

Isn't this a good thing?

While I have criticized elements of the standard review process and offered suggestions on how to make it more fair, going back to the traditional process is a significant limitation.

As Grant explained:

• submission limits will be lower
• approval/rejection time frame will be significantly longer
• names may still receive votes from expert reviewers (so there really is no opting out, this just drags out the process)

Given these disadvantages, I did not want to opt out.

Squadhelp acted against my account because I spoke out against the process.

Extremely unethical.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

While I have criticized elements of the standard review process and offered suggestions on how to make it more fair, going back to the traditional process is a significant limitation.

As Grant explained:

• submission limits will be lower
• approval/rejection time frame will be significantly longer
• names may still receive votes from expert reviewers (so there really is no opting out, this just drags out the process)

Given these disadvantages, I did want to opt out.

Squadhelp acted against my account because I spoke out against the process.

Extremely unethical.

Maybe they did that to me too then. I don't care. Not sure I will submit any more names there. I get more response from elsewhere and no price limitations.

 

[NameMedia]

I find them really good in domain response review times, great usually, actually. And I always find their customer service great. I do notice maybe a week a month there seems to be a lot more rejections. It may just be coincidence, rather than a regular pattern. But the busier they get, I have also noticed more rejections.

 

[GrantP]

I would like to address some of the recent comments.

We continue to add Beta features to our platform, and make updates to those features based upon ongoing feedback from our community. In fact we strongly encourage everyone to share feedback (both positive and negative), so that we can continue to improve. The Expert Review process is one such feature we recently added. We have been making ongoing adjustments to this process based upon everyone's feedback. Even though majority of sellers are happy with the new process, some sellers have told us that they prefer the previous process where all their names are reviewed by SH team. We respect that feedback and have acted swiftly to now allow sellers to opt out of the Expert Review process, so that their names are reviewed by the internal SH team for approval and rejection (as before).

It is not possible for us to offer a 24-48 hour turnaround on SH/ internal reviews given the significantly high volume of submissions we receive. Therefore, opting out of the expert review process will lead to some delays in approval times, and some limits on free submissions (i.e. how many names can be submitted at a time) so that we can manage the submission queue efficiently. This appears to be a reasonable compromise for sellers who prefer to stay with the previous process.

Squadhelp acted against my account because I spoke out against the process.

We will never take action against a seller for criticizing features. If we did not want any criticism, we would not have an open Discussion forum, or participate in NamePros openly soliciting feedback on features. In fact ,we encourage everyone to share any critical feedback in public (instead of private) so that others can also weigh in. This allows us to better prioritize any changes (if many users disagree with a recent change, we will likely put a higher priority on making any necessary updates).

It looks like our team has provided to you reasons why your account is set to bypass the Expert Review process. As explained to you privately, this change was due to some specific incidents that we prefer to not discuss in a public setting. We would be happy to share the details with you again privately. Your account is still active, and you can continue to submit the names which will be approved or rejected by SH internal team (similar to how it worked before the expert review feature).

 

[DomainBanana]

We will never take action against a seller for criticizing features...As explained to you privately, this change was due to some specific incidents that we prefer to not discuss in a public setting.

One of the incidents that you prefer not to discuss in a public setting is my criticism on NamePros. I have a direct quote from Jonathan at support telling me this:

"We have reviewed your ongoing feedback regarding this process, and have also noted your specific allegations that some of the reviewers ... might have rejected your name due to conflict of interest. Some of these specific allegations were also posted in a public forum. While we appreciate your feedback, we have concluded that this feature is not a good fit in your situation."​

I do not appreciate being punished for criticizing the process, particularly after I explicitly discussed this with you over the phone and you assured me that the issue would be taken care of.

Please restore my account immediately.

 

[GrantP]

I checked back the communication history, and it looks like you have left out specific sections from the above message that actually mentioned the specific incident which led to the action. Please feel free to discuss this further with our support team.

 

[DomainBanana]

I checked back the communication history, and it looks like you have left out specific sections from the above message that actually mentioned the specific incident which led to the action. Please feel free to discuss this further with our support team.

The meaning of the quote is intact. Squadhelp retaliated against me for speaking out on NamePros.

I spoke with you directly about this and you assured me the issue would be resolved. It has not been.

This is not ethical.

Please restore my account now.

 

[NameMedia]

@GrantP Thanks for introducing the new membership tiers, and the bonuses with that.
Would you consider increasing the number of domain reviews available as we go up the membership levels?
It would be great to have more than 5 reviews a month available. I understand the review limit total also applies to logo redesign requests (as part of the membership level bonuses). Thanks.

 

[howudoin8]

@GrantP I made this post a week ago & still received no response. Can you please address this https://www.namepros.com/posts/7768004/

 

[NameWell]

Grant said domains are shown to 20 reviewers to protect against conflicts of interest. Just had a domain reviewed by only 12 reviewers.

This domain received 3 up votes, which meets the 25% threshold. It was still rejected.

My approval rate has gone way down under the new system. Given the higher reject rate, it is now very expensive to list a premium domain on SH.

3 up votes only mean that you can list it as basic plus and it will be visible in the marketplace. Also, you can request a logo design for $5. To get it approved as premium you need at least 4 up votes.

 

[Zagalee]

3 up votes only mean that you can list it as basic plus and it will be visible in the marketplace. Also, you can request a logo design for $5. To get it approved as premium you need at least 4 up votes.

But I've 5 votes in one of my domain but still rejected , requested for review and got no response for over 2 weeks.

 

[NameWell]

But I've 5 votes in one of my domain but still rejected , requested for review and got no response for over 2 weeks.

Oh, sorry I wasn't clear in my last post. I meant that to have a chance to get it approved for premium you need at least 4 up votes. Getting 4 up votes means that your domain name will be reviewed by SH internal team and they will decide weather to approve it or not. I don't know how many up votes you need to receive in order to get your domain names auto-approved.

 

[DomainBanana]

Oh, sorry I wasn't clear in my last post. I meant that to have a chance to get it approved for premium you need at least 4 up votes. Getting 4 up votes means that your domain name will be reviewed by SH internal team and they will decide weather to approve it or not. I don't know how many up votes you need to receive in order to get your domain names auto-approved.

A minimum number of upvotes makes no sense if some domains only get 12 votes while others get 20.

My domain could have been auto-approved if the process wasn't halted at only 12 votes.

 

[NamePrime]

From what I observed, though I'm not sure if this is correct. They allow extra voting if you reach at least certain threshold. Like if you get 3/12, they continue the voting process to say 15 votes. If after that you get another vote, now 4/15, they continue voting until 20. If you get 5 votes, it's auto listed, otherwise SH takes over and makes decision whether to list your name or not.

They don't give continue voting if you get 0/12 or 1/12 which, I guess, makes sense.