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SquadHelp - Marketplace

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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.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
@SuperBrander I will never submit another name for SH to reg due to the commission structure:

You do the work in finding the name, SH gets 65% of the sale. Unless you pay for the renewals (while SH continues to own the name), SH's commissions go up every year and they don't tell you by how much.

This is not honorable compensation. It's a clever way to get domainers to do the heavy-lifting of inventory building while giving them little in return.
 
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@DomainBanana Up to you, of course. I kinda like having this option for certain domains.

@Recons.Com Thanks for supporting the perfectionism. Like I said, definitely not the best name ever. But has some potential.
 
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The/Perfection/ism is perfectly fine. I even like it and can see it taken by a diet/fitness/health/wellness/beauty company...

Names like Avrio/Account/ing or Young/Power/Ment are head-scratchers. In the former, the brand is actually Av/rio and accounting is just the industry. If they accept this, they should accept avrio/construction, avrio/cars etc... You can flood the marketplace with 100K of those names in a week. And the latter is plain bad name. It is either Word+Word or Word+Suffix or Modified word, not everything at the same time. Meaning Young/Power - great, Young/Empowerment or Young/Empowered - good, but Young/Power/ment??? Really???

@Recons.Com, Oddly enough SH has already been flooded with avrio names:

-accounting
-investment
-mortgage
-advisor
-vantage
-medical
-science
-brands
-beauty
-agency
-global
-growth
-realty
-planet

and more!

All "SH Premium"!
 
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@DomainBanana Up to you, of course. I kinda like having this option for certain domains.

@Recons.Com Thanks for supporting the perfectionism. Like I said, definitely not the best name ever. But has some potential.

It doesn't have to be the best. It has a good potential, as it is very positive term. Most would like to see the perfectionism in their service providers, especially in health, beauty etc. Or would like feeling that they see the perfection in you ))
 
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@Recons.Com, Oddly enough SH has already been flooded with avrio names:

-accounting
-investment
-mortgage
-advisor
-vantage
-medical
-science
-brands
-beauty
-agency
-global
-growth
-realty
-planet

and more!

All "SH Premium"!

OK, I just checked. There seem to be plenty of companies in the wild that use "Avrio", so checked what the term means. Apparently, it is Greek for "Tomorrow".

The problem with this is that for every greek good word (let's assume there are 2000 of those), you can combine it with another 2000 of great english words, then you are at already 4 million combos.

Then add latin, spanish etc. to the mix, and we are talking tens of millions. So there is little incentive for an end user to buy your listed name, if he can get similar one for hand reg.

So, SH has definitely been following a dead end here. Just because there are hundreds of Avrio+Word names, doesn't make it a good candidate for SH market.
 
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Yes: Mixing foreign language words with generic industries in English is not a formula for a premium name. Too many possibilities! Very easy for companies to hand-reg these kinds of names and they are not coherent brands.

It's like mixing an invented word + a generic. Zerxa might be fine by itself. ZerxaFoods is not a premium domain.

Even if they've sold one or two of these names due to the high marketing spend, it cheapens the marketplace to have these up there, in my view.

One more example of how SH frequently ventures one step beyond premium branding.
 
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Yes: Mixing foreign language words with generic industries in English is not a formula for a premium name. Too many possibilities! Very easy for companies to hand-reg these kinds of names and they are not coherent brands.

It's like mixing an invented word + a generic. Zerxa might be fine by itself. ZerxaFoods is not a premium domain.

Even if they've sold one or two of these names due to the high marketing spend, it cheapens the marketplace to have these up there, in my view.

One more example of how SH frequently ventures one step beyond premium branding.

I remember BB at its peak was also pushing some openly bad brandable patterns down the throat of end users, using their reputation, google popularity etc. They would accept names that matched certain letter patterns even with zero regard to the meaning and cornering a non-existent market. Until they overflooded the market and left many owners holding the bag with bad potatoes with little chance to sell. They won't drop those either, because of the "escalated commitment". Now SH is going down the same path.

Here are two great names probably available to register and submit to SH: Avrio/Help/com and Avrio/Squad/com ))))
 
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Thanks for your feedback. We have been extremely transparent with providing a wealth of metrics from day one (not only for seller's portfolio but also for the entire website) so the sellers can get an overall sense of the platform at any given time. We have also shared in several of the previous posts (including on Namepros) that the sell through rate is expected to decline as we add more names to the Marketplace. We believe that there is a general lack of transparency across several platforms when it comes to sharing specific information and metrics. We could have chosen to publish vague metrics in quarterly reports but instead we believe it is important for sellers to see specific metrics in real time.

Having said that, our goal is to continue to deliver the highest sell through rate in the brandable space, which is why we are continuing to make marketing and platform investments at a rapid pace. We are also now significantly more selective in accepting new domains because we want to grow the marketplace in a very controlled fashion.

As far as the quality of names is concerned, we use a combination of data as well as our understanding of our customers to determine which names will best resonate with them. There is a lot of subjectivity in the brandable space, and we do our best to apply our learnings from 25,000+ naming contests and end user feedback. We certainly do not get it right every time, but we use a wealth of metrics internally to learn and improve our ability to pick the names that would resonate with our customers.



Yes all these 3 examples provide a correct view of how these metrics are currently calculated. We will continue to add additional more metrics to the platform over time - however the most immediate change you can expect to see is that the sell through rate will begin including names that sold in less than 6 month time frame as well.



I looked into the interaction with our team and I am sorry to hear that you had a disappointing experience. When new users sign up in our platform, they are randomly assigned contests by our platform to minimize any potential of misuse. Since it is a competitive platform, we are extremely sensitive about ensuring that new users are not in any way connected to the contest holder, and the random assignment is one way to address that situation. I see that you were interested in joining one contest that was not assigned to you. It appears that if you select certain filters, it also shows contests that may not be assigned to you, which can lead to confusion. We will work on making this more clear on our platform so that we can minimize any confusion because I can see how that could be frustrating. I see that your payments have been refunded but if there is anything else we can do, please reach out and our team will address the issue promptly.

thank you for the follow up. I’m venting as I’ve invested a lot of time and money into what SH was, not liking the massive marketplace competition with no views/sales of my names. Hope you can understand.

I will say this, squadhelp still is an industry leader in customer support and their staff is always very helpful. Regardless of my bickering above, my current 6 month sell thru rate of 4% is still double the industry standard. It just sucks to be below the site avg sell through rate and with 292 listings, I’d expect more sales. Cheers
 
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So it looks like there's a new feature called "Exit and Intent Offers." What I like about SH is that they keep trying new things. Great job! @GrantP
 
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Interested to see if it helps. I’ve applied it to my account, I’ve tried to test it to see if it’s working but doesn’t seem to be yet.
So it looks like there's a new feature called "Exit and Intent Offers." What I like about SH is that they keep trying new things. Great job! @GrantP
 
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What's the typical time frame from sale to payout ? I just got notice that A/l/t/h/e/y/a/.com sold for $1649, but the say transfer and then payment can take "7-14 days because many customers ask for Trademark validation before moving forward with the transfer". How often does the trademark check kill the sale ?

First sale on SH and am trying to get an idea of how they compare to BP or BB.
 
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Interested to see if it helps. I’ve applied it to my account, I’ve tried to test it to see if it’s working but doesn’t seem to be yet.

just an fyi , I have confirmed this feature will not work with any domains currently showing a discount already.

I do urge if possible @GrantP to allow two options so that we can enable exit feature on discounted domains also.

I am still beyond grateful for squadhelp, their sharing of data gives a very helpful advantage to those who are new, I was drowing in brandpa as a noob and it was costly and defeating.
 
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Speaking from my own experience, payment is usually received within 10 days. I've never had a trademark problem result in anyone backing out of a sale. I have had one which was bought on a payment plan and the buyer made four payments before defaulting.
 
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Two of my premium names were delisted more than a week ago.

I asked support to relist them, but they say they are unable to relist them.

Asked @GrantP via DM here to look into it, no reply from him, don't know if my request is being ignored or what.

This is frustrating. I was in the process of growing my SH portfolio, but now thinking of removing my names and moving on. I think asking support to relist a name is a waste of time. It is so easy on other marketplaces to publish delisted names, without contacting support.

@GrantP please help
 
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Two of my premium names were delisted more than a week ago.

I asked support to relist them, but they say they are unable to relist them.

Asked @GrantP via DM here to look into it, no reply from him, don't know if my request is being ignored or what.

This is frustrating. I was in the process of growing my SH portfolio, but now thinking of removing my names and moving on. I think asking support to relist a name is a waste of time. It is so easy on other marketplaces to publish delisted names, without contacting support.

@GrantP please help

Why were they delisted? purposely ? or just random error on platform end ?
 
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Interested to see if it helps. I’ve applied it to my account, I’ve tried to test it to see if it’s working but doesn’t seem to be yet.
It seems that the feature/discount will be visible only for constest holders/potential buyers/.
 
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Hmm.. very strange. I saw the new feature/discount window for 1 of my domains. But my domain was discounted so I shouldn't see the new discount window. :xf.laugh:
 
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Just throwing this out there, but could it be that the end users on SH have discovered the wholesale marketplace and are buying their startup names from there? The timing in the reduction of sales does line up with the launch of the wholesale marketplace. When the wholesale marketplace was announced this was my primary concern and the reason why I did not like the idea. @GrantP
 
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Just throwing this out there, but could it be that the end users on SH have discovered the wholesale marketplace and are buying their startup names from there? The timing in the reduction of sales does line up with the launch of the wholesale marketplace. When the wholesale marketplace was announced this was my primary concern and the reason why I did not like the idea. @GrantP

I highly doubt that. I had to ask to even be able to view it. A regular person on the site does not see it. Unless something changed.
 
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@JudgeMind the wholesale marketplace isn't public. There are qualifications that deter end-users from using it:

There are two ways to become an Authorized Wholesale Buyer.

a) Automatic Qualification

Your SH account automatically qualifies as an Authorized Wholesale Buyer if you meet any of these conditions:

  • Minimium of 10 approved and live premium listings in SH Premium domain marketplace
  • Minimum of 3 approved and live listings in SH Premium domain marketplace, PLUS a Tier A creative status.
  • Minimum of 3 approved and live listings in SH Premium domain marketplace, PLUS one or more contest wins.
b) Manual Qualification

If you do not meet the automatic qualification criteria above, you can manually apply to become an Authorized wholesale buyer, as long as you have a minimum of 3 approved and live listings in SH Premium domain marketplace. In this situation, you must send us additional supporting information that shows you are an active Domain Investor. For example, you can send details of your NamePros account, or link/screenshots that show your active domain Portfolio.

An approval is entirely up to SH's team discretion. Also, your account must stay in Good standing at all times to retain this status.

SH was a small marketplace that aggressively marketed its inventory. Of course STR would be high and it's only natural that it will go down with growth.

Relax.
 
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Just throwing this out there, but could it be that the end users on SH have discovered the wholesale marketplace and are buying their startup names from there? The timing in the reduction of sales does line up with the launch of the wholesale marketplace. When the wholesale marketplace was announced this was my primary concern and the reason why I did not like the idea. @GrantP

Few clarifications -
  • We are not seeing an overall reduction in end user sales. We are infact selling significantly higher number of domains per month compared to the period before Wholesale Marketplace was announced.
  • It is extremely difficult (and unlikely) for an end user to get access to the Wholesale marketplace. In order to be eligible, they would need 10 premium (live) listings in our Marketplace. Which means they would need to submit on an average 100+ domains (based on our approval rate). For anyone with less than 10 listings, we manually review their portfolio to ensure they are an active Domainer.
  • Most of the domains purchased in our Wholesale marketplace are listed back on SH platform.
 
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  • We are not seeing an overall reduction in end user sales.

Yes, but the marketplace STR has significantly decreased. This is a natural result of growth.

Sellers shouldn't expect demand to follow suit when SH dramatically increases supply. There are only so many buyers out there.
 
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It seems that the feature/discount will be visible only for constest holders/potential buyers/.

This feature is designed to show a popup when our system detects a high degree of likelihood that the user is about to leave the website. There are few other rules that limit the visibility of the popup based upon time spend, number of visits etc.

We are currently testing few different options for popups so you might see few different variations. As with other features that we add, we plan do a significant amount of A/B testing before we finalize the design and the actual rules that will trigger this popup.
 
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Two of my premium names were delisted more than a week ago.

I asked support to relist them, but they say they are unable to relist them.

Asked @GrantP via DM here to look into it, no reply from him, don't know if my request is being ignored or what.

This is frustrating. I was in the process of growing my SH portfolio, but now thinking of removing my names and moving on. I think asking support to relist a name is a waste of time. It is so easy on other marketplaces to publish delisted names, without contacting support.

I will look into this further. We currently do not allow automatic relisting of domains, because we typically first look into the circumstances around the previous Delisting. However I have noted your feedback and we will work on making this process more efficient.
 
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@GrantP I think sh should scrap wholesale channel and set up a slack group for members. I believe namepros members will appreciate slack more for domain exchange
 
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