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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.
note: We had no sales in September. Comparable, last September we had two sales with half of the inventory. Good luck in October everyone.

Ouch, I'm sorry to hear, you have like around 500 names listed, right?
You should have a solid 1-3 sales each month, at least this is what it used to be at BB and BR a while back with similar numbers. I never heard of anyone with 500 names not to make a single sale at a brandable marketplace, probably it's just unfortunate...hope you'll get back on track asap.
 
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Ouch, I'm sorry to hear, you have like around 500 names listed, right?
You should have a solid 1-3 sales each month, at least this is what it used to be at BB and BR a while back with similar numbers. I never heard of anyone with 500 names not to make a single sale at a brandable marketplace, probably it's just unfortunate...hope you'll get back on track asap.

I now have 558 premium listings.
 
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I’m very happy with the introduction of annualized sales
At 4% the average of the whole marketplace that’s fantastic for sure
Still I believe these guys listen and have a very high degree of bias for action which is customer obsessed
 
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I’m very happy with the introduction of annualized sales
At 4% the average of the whole marketplace that’s fantastic for sure
Still I believe these guys listen and have a very high degree of bias for action which is customer obsessed

At 4% I think @JudgeMind should have had about 20 sales in the last 12 months, right? I wouldn't call that fantastic, I think BB used to be at around 5%-6% a few years back while BR had about 8%-10% (well BR never let everyone and his mom to join the platform).

What I noticed and don't like is that many SH owned names sell for $1,300-$1,400 on the platform and that's clearly undercutting the other sellers. Also they seem to include names sold at Afternic in the equation and this clearly affect the maths. I have a 33.77% STR without selling a single name on SH (well just started to list names in Aug.) how cool is that?

SH97.png
 
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At 4% I think @JudgeMind should have had about 20 sales in the last 12 months, right? I wouldn't call that fantastic, I think BB used to be at around 5%-6% a few years back while BR had about 8%-10% (well BR never let everyone and his mom to join the platform).

What I noticed and don't like is that many SH owned names sell for $1,300-$1,400 on the platform and that's clearly undercutting the other sellers. Also they seem to include names sold at Afternic in the equation and this clearly affect the maths. I have a 33.77% STR without selling a single name on SH (well just started to list names in Aug.) how cool is that?

Show attachment 168941
Counting September sales last year I sold 19 premium names in the last 12 months.

I think it would be beneficial for Squadhelp to list and sell their sh owned domains at a higher price point. Setting a higher benchmark for their platform. Most of my names are listed <$2000. I feel if Squadhelp listed most of theirs at $2000-$2500 it would be beneficial to all and those names listed at $1799 by sellers could be increased to $$2199 for example
 
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I think it would be beneficial for Squadhelp to list and sell their sh owned domains at a higher price point. Setting a higher benchmark for their platform. Most of my names are listed <$2000. I feel if Squadhelp listed most of theirs at $2000-$2500 it would be beneficial to all and those names listed at $1799 by sellers could be increased to $$2199 for example

Margot has her own domains at BB, Michael used to have his own domains at BR but I have never seen them undercutting the other sellers. What SH is doing by listing own names at $1,200, $1,300 or $1,400 is disgusting imo ... they should keep their domains at the marketplace median price and/or should clearly add an "owned by SquadHelp" label next to their crappy stuff. The quality of their own names is mostly meh and they must have a different review process if any. For instance names like Lomodila (listed at $1,199) would probably never get accepted if submitted by me. If I knew all these before I wouldn't have bothered to list any name with SH.
 
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95% of my submissions go through an internal review meaning they get at least 3 expert review upvotes, yet they always get rejected. I'm guessing it's because they are mostly newly dropped hand regs but a good name is a good name in my opinion. Are poorer names being favored over good ones just due to a higher age?
 
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I’ve gone through my whole portfolio at sh and have gotten expert classifications completed on any name that didn’t have an “excellent” completeness. This was following a short discussion I had with darpan Munjal who recommended improving discoverability of domains in my portfolio. I hope sales will pick up by doing this. I’ve also started submitting to contests, which is something I wasn’t doing much of.
 
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95% of my submissions go through an internal review meaning they get at least 3 expert review upvotes, yet they always get rejected. I'm guessing it's because they are mostly newly dropped hand regs but a good name is a good name in my opinion. Are poorer names being favored over good ones just due to a higher age?

Agreed, Rayman.

The SH review process continues to be jumbled and inconsistent.

The recent video by Grant @ SH on how to improve one's acceptance rate has some fine branding 101 advice, but SH's actual approval process doesn't seem to follow these standards at all.

There are now at least 4 types of reviews on SH, each with its own standards and biases:
  • 'Expert' reviews - based on the opinion of a few competing sellers who are simultaneously trying to sell the same kind of names they're approving/rejecting. We don't see these scores anymore.
  • Internal reviews - inconsistent. heavily favors a few top-selling keywords (cana, qore, finiti, etc.)
  • Bulk acceptances - where SH makes individual, under-the-table deals and occasionally accepts a large amount of junk from large portfolio holders.
  • Combination - 'experts' might unanimously like a name, but then the SH internal team has some extra time and decides to override the 'expert' opinion and reject the name
Most sellers I hear from, here and in Branders Union, say the #1 frustration with SH is the review process.

One thing SH does extremely well, though, is listen to feedback. So over time, I'm hopeful they'll eventually get things right.
 
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I submitted a domain I own s/t/o/r/k/s/y/./c/o/m to SquadHelp for review. Within hours of my domain being rejected by the SquadHelp internal team (September 30th), they registered a variation of it (storkzi) and 48 hours later the domain is now live complete with a logo on SquadHelp.com.

@GrantP I'd be interested to hear your thoughts regarding why this should be considered anything less than slimy.
 
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I submitted a domain I own s/t/o/r/k/s/y/./c/o/m to SquadHelp for review. Within hours of my domain being rejected by the SquadHelp internal team (September 30th), they registered a variation of it (storkzi) and 48 hours later the domain is now live complete with a logo on SquadHelp.com.

@GrantP I'd be interested to hear your thoughts regarding why this should be considered anything less than slimy.

zi in the end of a name is known to be relatively stronger than SY
Just my 2 cents here
 
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zi in the end of a name is known to be relatively stronger than SY
Just my 2 cents here
You are joking right? Zi would sixth choice with Sy being 1 or 2.

The accusation is SH bought and listed a similar name immediately after rejecting his not what spelling is preferred.
 
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You realize Squadhelp is registering these in behalf of submissions from domainers and creatives, right? For example, I can submit squadzi and get 30 percent if I allow Squadhelp to register. They get the majority of the sale proceeds.
 
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zi in the end of a name is known to be relatively stronger than SY
Just my 2 cents here

I don't know why you're debating the value of suffixes, as if it matters in the SH review process.

One day -sy could be accepted, -zi rejected.

Another day -zi could be accepted, -sy accepted.

Or, the same name could be rejected from one seller and accepted from the next, depending on which type of review it went through ('expert' / internal / bulk / combination).

Or, the same name often gets rejected and then accepted a few months later.

It's not worth trying to figure out the acceptance logic on SH because often there is no logic.
 
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SH has its owned portfolio from seller submissions of available names, so yes they are a competitor to some degree. They don't hide this, so I don't have any problem with them utilizing the data they collect.

I don't know if that's what they did in this case. Or if someone who reviewed your name decided to register it or request SH to do so.
(Edited based on Grant's post below)
 
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I would like to address some of the recent comments.

1. Of the 60,000+ names listed in SH marketplace, we currently have 1 name that is solely owned by SH. All other names are either owned by sellers, or are registered by SH on behalf of other sellers who receive a commission when the name sells.

2. None of the SH discovery algorithms (e.g. sorting, AI) differentiate names based on registration type or commission rates. In other words, a name does not achieve a higher ranking in the Marketplace because it is registered by SH (where SH commission is higher).

3. We price most recent hand-regs in the $1699 to $2000 price range - this pricing applies to SH owned domains as well as seller owned domains. This is not meant to undercut anyone - we just find this range to be the optimal price point for most hand-reg names. Over time, as we collect additional analytics, we do increase the pricing for several SH registered domains. Sellers also have the flexibility to make some adjustments to those prices (higher or lower) for both seller owned and SH registered domains.

submitted a domain I own s/t/o/r/k/s/y/./c/o/m to SquadHelp for review. Within hours of my domain being rejected by the SquadHelp internal team (September 30th), they registered a variation of it (storkzi) and 48 hours later the domain is now live complete with a logo on SquadHelp.com.

@GrantP I'd be interested to hear your thoughts regarding why this should be considered anything less than slimy.

I looked into this specific domain. Your domain, s/t/o/r/k/s/y/./c/o/m was submitted to SH on Sep 30, at 7:38AM CST, and was rejected on Sep 30, at 6:06pm CST.

The other domain, s/t/o/r/k/z/i.com was submitted as an unregistered domain by another seller on Sep 25 at 8:26 pm (5 days before your submission). It was approved by SH on Sep 29th at 6:07pm CST (1 day before your submission) and registered by SH on behalf of other creative on Sep 29th at 8:47pm CST. (still 1 day before your submission). This can also be verified via Whois info in case you are interested.

As a background, we get more than 200,000 unregistered domain submissions per month to SH contests (in addition to several thousand unregistered marketplace submissions). It would be unethical for us to take seller's or creative's ideas and then register our own names based on those ideas.

We understand that it can take time to build trust with a marketplace or any business for that matter. We have a 24x7 support team that can help answer any such concerns. You can certainly disagree with our approval or rejection criteria. However, please use your best judgement before implying a business may be engaging in unethical or "slimy" practices.
 
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I would like to ask if the Cloud Brokers Program is alive. It would be great for a broker to do outbound and get paid by SH and not by me. If SH was hiring a broker the 30% commission would be more than justified.

I have more than 100 premium and so far had zero Cloud Broker requests. I saw that six months ago SH was looking to hire Cloud Brokers but since then heard no news.

Any feedback regarding this @GrantP would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
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I would like to address some of the recent comments.

1. Of the 60,000+ names listed in SH marketplace, we currently have 1 name that is solely owned by SH. All other names are either owned by sellers, or are registered by SH on behalf of other sellers who receive a commission when the name sells.

2. None of the SH discovery algorithms (e.g. sorting, AI) differentiate names based on registration type or commission rates. In other words, a name does not achieve a higher ranking in the Marketplace because it is registered by SH (where SH commission is higher).

3. We price most recent hand-regs in the $1699 to $2000 price range - this pricing applies to SH owned domains as well as seller owned domains. This is not meant to undercut anyone - we just find that to be the optimal price point for most hand-reg names. Over time, as we collect additional analytics, we do increase the pricing for several SH registered domains. Sellers also have the flexibility to make some adjustments to those prices (higher or lower) for both seller owned and SH registered domains.



I looked into this specific domain. Your domain, s/t/o/r/k/s/y/./c/o/m was submitted to SH on Sep 30, at 7:38AM CST, and was rejected on Sep 30, at 6:06pm CST.

The other domain, s/t/o/r/k/z/i.com was submitted as an unregistered domain by another seller on Sep 25 at 8:26 pm (5 days before your submission). It was approved by SH on Sep 29th at 8:47pm CST (1 day before your submission) and registered by SH on behalf of other creative on Sep 29th at 6:07pm CST. (still 1 day before your submission). This can also be verified via Whois info in case you are interested.

As a background, we get more than 200,000 unregistered domain submissions per month to SH contests (in addition to several thousand unregistered marketplace submissions). It would be unethical for us to take seller's or creative's ideas and then register our own names based on those ideas.

We understand that it can take time to build trust with a marketplace or any business for that matter. We have a 24x7 support team that can help answer any such concerns. You can certainly disagree with our approval or rejection criteria. However, please use your best judgement before implying a business may be engaging in unethical or "slimy" practices.

You have my genuine apology.

For the sake of clarity & due diligence, I did try to verify this info with your support team and was just told that there's no information about that on my account. Additionally, even using a cst to utc/zulu calculator + whois - I struggle to land on the same creation times you have. Regardless, instead of letting ego/emotion fuel my anxiety - it feels much more reasonable to lean into the assumption of good in others and take your word for how all of this played out rather than jumping to negative conclusions.
 
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I had these names recently rejected (which I believe are great brandables) :

eteria
bewey
secria
folmy

No, they are not. Sorry.
 
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No, they are not. Sorry.

I decided to take the first name and see what's up :

upload_2020-10-6_14-52-2.png




I disagree - this is a great name and it sounds awesome for any brand (eternal, eternity), but you might be the type of guy who likes 'Zoxely' and 'Ultala' more (these are accepted, just random examples).
 
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Those saying they reject by domain age, I submitted some hand registrations this week. All domains hand registered last week.
6 domains got approved.
Lexaca, Elivor, Aruzy and Yuoko got preapproved because there were enough votes.

Beuxy and Kovega also got approved.
All 6 were hand registered last week.


Ceurix, Alevv, Volonex, Yozaki, Riboca, Nepolia, Menavio, Bocaty, Topixi, Doconti were names from that batch that got rejected. I think because I submitted everything together, otherwise I am sure 2/3 of these are not bad :) and I usually get a better approval rate on my hand regs. or maybe I registered way too many one day

I submit hand registered domains and they get approved at about 60-70% if they pass the radio test, and are good when you say out

PS: I usually delete domains that don't get approved, so you may want to check them out if you like
 
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@GrantP Your 1-2 syllable filter a bit off.
If your search functionality don't work as intended, I think it would be a better idea to rotate and give equal weight age to every name by randomising the search result

When I search 1 syllable, i find a lot if multi syllable or non pronounceable LLLLs
 
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Perfect example of how the approval process still needs to be improved:

Eteria - rejected
Lexaca, Elivor, Aruzy, Yuoko - accepted

The reviewers aren't using any data to make their decisions- just eyeballing it, apparently. To be fair, they aren't incentivized enough to take the time to do so.
 
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Folks, check your delisted section at sh.. I had a bunch that were delisted and wasn’t sure why.
 
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I decided to take the first name and see what's up :

Good analysis, @Coindoji

The SH review process doesn't mean much because they don't take the time to properly evaluate each domain on its merits. They take shortcuts with a superficial polling process, asking "which name do you like best?", that doesn't factor in the info you shared or many other important data points for a domain.

Because they fail to properly review domains, they can't possibly evaluate them properly either.

They just default to selling names at a discount.

I recently had a name that I invested in for ~$150 rejected from SH. Its 'expert' score was 1/15.

BB approved this domain for $8995.

Meanwhile SH regularly accepts poorly conceived hand-reg names.

For serious reviews / evaluations of a brandable, BB remains the gold standard.
 
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