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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.
I wrote a whole thing, but I'm editing and deleting it because it's kind of pointless. There's too much negativity in this thread for my personal taste so like wiser people than me have done in the past- I'll simply unfollow it. Good luck to all and see you around NamePros. :)
 
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Can you see expert vote results when domain is also reviewed by SH internal team?

Recently submitted 7 names with SH coins, none were accepted. Some were auto-rejected after 12 votes - for these at least you can see reviewer votes, eg. 1/12 - 0/12 so you get some sense on the direction what names SH is looking for, and it's a faster process. Others were waiting 3-5 days until they got 16-17 expert votes, only to get to Not Approved with only tag "Reviewed by SH Internal Team". These were some of the better names, some accepted by BB others got offers in the past, so I would like at least to see how reviewers saw them, but it seem internal vote overrides everything and you get 0 feedback.
 
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I joined Squadhelp on March 30 of this year and I am happy to report that I just sold my first domain Cleansey dotCom on their platform! I just posted sale this on NP Official Sales Thread, but I will add more relevant SH Details here.

Cleansey dotCom - Sold for $2599

Platform: Squadhelp

Date: May 28

Take Home Commission: 1819

Acquired on Godaddy auctions for $277.16 on 4/27

Hold Time: 31 Days

Net Profit: $1542

Here is a screenshot of my SH dashboard as of today for further context:

SH-Stats-6-9-20.png


It is important to note that out of the 18 domains I have listed as Premium on SH, I have acquired 14 on the aftermarket for $99 or more and only 4 domains have been hand regged for about $8.

After submitting many domains you get a feeling for which names will most likely be accepted, but it is much easier to get an aftermarket domain acquired for about $100 on their premium listings than a hand registered domain. That's the reason why my approval rate is about double the site average. It would be every domainer's dream to sell a $2500 domain they acquired for $8 about a month or two ago but it's not always realistic (though it did happen with my Shield Silver sale I just reported a few weeks ago)

Cheers!
 
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By the way, it helps to purchase domains you personally would use in case the domain does not sell within a reasonable amount of time. In the back of my mind, I had an idea for Cleansey as a cleaning supply affiliate site so it helps to justify the initial $250+ purchase, but of course I would welcome the sale, especially a quick sale of about 30 days :)
 
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The latest squadhelp update limits the amount of super boosts one seller can have active at a time to just 4. So a small portfolio holder who has just 4 names listed can boost their entire portfolio. A large portfolio holder can only boost a very small fraction of their portfolio. This is a ONE TWO PUNCH. Increase the competition in the marketplace by adding tens of thousands of new names and take away the ability to increase the marketing of your names.

essentially what this has resulted in is no sales over the past few weeks. Prior to this new update, sales were on target to cover costs and maybe show a return.
 
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essentially what this has resulted in is no sales over the past few weeks. Prior to this new update, sales were on target to cover costs and maybe show a return.

Maybe it's resulted in a bit wider distribution of sales among the seller community vs. favoring a few top sellers. As it should be.

If these limits weren't in place, virtually every domain owned by a seller-reviewer would always be at the top of the marketplace.

SH did the right thing here.
 
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The latest squadhelp update limits the amount of super boosts one seller can have active at a time to just 4. So a small portfolio holder who has just 4 names listed can boost their entire portfolio. A large portfolio holder can only boost a very small fraction of their portfolio. This is a ONE TWO PUNCH. Increase the competition in the marketplace by adding tens of thousands of new names and take away the ability to increase the marketing of your names.

essentially what this has resulted in is no sales over the past few weeks. Prior to this new update, sales were on target to cover costs and maybe show a return.


I have had 4 sales total, on a portfolio of well over 350 names. But I love the platform, and the customer service at SquadHelp, and I still feel very positive, and committed to growing my portfolio with them. What I did wonder was, how have super boosts helped your sales? Do you think they have been important to your success?
I have tried them quite a few times, and haven't noticed any difference in sales.
 
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I think SH might have over-corrected with the limits on boosts and superboosts. Limiting superboosts to 3 with coins, 1 with points hasn't really achieved much that I can see, it was supposed to open up more spaces for everyone but now there are constantly 50 or more superboost slots available, which means lots of people who prefer to use points are just not boosting anymore. And because any name can only be boosted once a month, I don't find regular boosts have much effect.
 
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Has the reading from the dashboard that states the overall payout amount possible for the portfolio, after commission, been removed? I can't see it on my dashboard. I can see the overall portfolio value still.
 
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Has the reading from the dashboard that states the overall payout amount possible for the portfolio, after commission, been removed? I can't see it on my dashboard. I can see the overall portfolio value still.

yes, same for me.. Expected Income not visible on marketplace dashboard account right now. maybe there is some maintenance on SquadHelp.
 
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I wanted to share an update on my SH experience so far.

I now have 53 premium listed names and another 2 basic plus.

Approval rate at just over 20%.

Very excited to hit the "Silver" tier and the benefits along with this.

As for domains approved, consistent theme is 2 word combinations having a much higher approval rate.

Time from submission to approval or rejection did slow down a bit. They were doing this at record speed for a few months now, so I'm guessing submissions might have increased recently.

Plan now is to continue submissions to hit next tier at 100 domains.

I think support there has been great so far which is why I have been using SH rather than BB or BP.
 
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@GrantP It seems like some submissions completely bypass expert reviewers. I think this because such submissions have no mention of how many votes the submission received. Why is this?

More often than not the above mentioned submissions are also rejected.

Some of my rejections are absolutely baffling. It would be nice to be given a clear reason as to why good brandable domains are being rejected. Something like 'too many similar domains' or 'not a good fit for our target audience' would be really helpful in helping me understand what to submit next.

One last thing, I've had names pending review for over a month now. What is the ETA on these reviews?

Thanks
 
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@GrantP Please address following issues:

1. After domain Submission (For Premium Listing Approval), SH provides the option of "Remove" in order to remove any submission in case of double thoughts on the part of creative. However, your support told me Coins or Points will not be refunded if submission is removed.

Brandbucket already provides refund in such a scenario & I believe SH should also follow since atleast in case of Unregistered Domain submission, there are no 'Expert Reviewers' in the approval process.

2. "Domain Review" Requests are taking forever! I submitted "My Accepted Selling Price is too low" request for 1 of my name, 40+ days ago. No decision has been taken yet & All of my 4 Domain Reviews are in 'Pending' status.

I've contacted support multiple times & every time they tell me relevant teams have been notified!

So can you look into this & do something to atleast decrease such long durations for a simple domain review?

Looking Forward To Your Response Here.

Regards
 
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Seriously their Domain Review takes ages, i have about two names i i requested review since April.
Nothing yet.
 
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I don't think anyone is reviewing those requests :D I've decided to move on.
 
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It seems like some submissions completely bypass expert reviewers. I think this because such submissions have no mention of how many votes the submission received. Why is this?

More often than not the above mentioned submissions are also rejected.

Some of my rejections are absolutely baffling. It would be nice to be given a clear reason as to why good brandable domains are being rejected. Something like 'too many similar domains' or 'not a good fit for our target audience' would be really helpful in helping me understand what to submit next.

One last thing, I've had names pending review for over a month now. What is the ETA on these reviews?

We have made some changes to the expert review process. Previously if a name did not receive enough votes, it was automatically rejected. Now, several of these names (which did not receive enough votes) are also sent to the internal SH team for another review. If the name is auto rejected due to low number of votes, the expert review score is displayed next to the name. However if the name was also sent to SH team for another review, we do not display the expert review score in that case because the final acceptance or rejection was done by SH team in that case.

Regarding the "Request Review" delays, we agree that the current timeline is not acceptable. We are working on improving this timeline. Over the last several weeks, the submission volume has increased quite a bit, which is leading to some delays. While we have ramped up the review resources for first time reviews, we still need to do more work to improve the second "Request Review" timeframe.
 
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After domain Submission (For Premium Listing Approval), SH provides the option of "Remove" in order to remove any submission in case of double thoughts on the part of creative. However, your support told me Coins or Points will not be refunded if submission is removed.

If you remove a submission before it is approved or rejected, the coins should be automatically refunded. If that is not happening, please share an example with the support team and we will look into it further.
 
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We have been working on server upgrades as well as few other changes to handle a much higher number of website visitors. As a result, this morning we had a brief outage which resulted in these errors. It should be fixed now.
 
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We have made some changes to the expert review process. Previously if a name did not receive enough votes, it was automatically rejected. Now, several of these names (which did not receive enough votes) are also sent to the internal SH team for another review. If the name is auto rejected due to low number of votes, the expert review score is displayed next to the name. However if the name was also sent to SH team for another review, we do not display the expert review score in that case because the final acceptance or rejection was done by SH team in that case.

Regarding the "Request Review" delays, we agree that the current timeline is not acceptable. We are working on improving this timeline. Over the last several weeks, the submission volume has increased quite a bit, which is leading to some delays. While we have ramped up the review resources for first time reviews, we still need to do more work to improve the second "Request Review" timeframe.

Thanks for your response.

How about providing a valid reason for rejecting perfectly good brandable domains? I am talking domains that at auction cost hundreds and were very competitive.

I understand that there is some degree of subjectivity in any review process, yet I strongly feel genuinely quality brandables are being rejected, at a loss to SH.
 
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If you remove a submission before it is approved or rejected, the coins should be automatically refunded. If that is not happening, please share an example with the support team and we will look into it further.
Is this applicable to both coins & points? Whether registered or unregistered?
 
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How about providing a valid reason for rejecting perfectly good brandable domains? I am talking domains that at auction cost hundreds and were very competitive.

I understand that there is some degree of subjectivity in any review process, yet I strongly feel genuine good brandables are being rejected, at a loss to SH. Over the last 6 months, 5 of my domains that SH rejected have all sold, which means thousands in lost revenue for SH.

It is valid feedback and we have considered providing reasons. In fact we used to provide some standard reasons in the past. However, the feedback from most sellers was that those reasons were not very helpful, because often times they were a bit generic. On the other hand, providing these reasons can take significant time, which will substantially increase the timeline for domain reviews. As a result at this point we do not plan to provide reasons so that we can continue to keep the review timeframe to less than 7-10 days in most cases. We may revisit this in future.

On your point related to good names being rejected, I will share this feedback with the marketplace team. We do believe that the expert review process is allowing us to make better decisions however we will continue to evaluate our review process. Since this can be a bit subjective, we may not always make the right decisions. However it is in our best interest to minimize those situations.
 
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Is this applicable to both coins & points? Whether registered or unregistered?

Looks like it is applicable to coins, but not to points. We will make some changes in near future so points are refunded as well if you remove a name before it gets accepted or rejected.
 
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Looks like it is applicable to coins, but not to points. We will make some changes in near future so points are refunded as well if you remove a name before it gets accepted or rejected.
So whether domains are registered or unregistered, if submitted using coins, then coins will get refunded in case of domain retraction, right?
 
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