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.

 

[Ostrados]

I have a sharp decrease in shortlists too. It seems like a bug.

Did you report to SH support?

 

[November]

I noticed it 10 min ago, but I'll report it.

 

[domains21]

Has anyone ever managed to submit a non-com domain to contest?
I see this everywhere:

I think the contest holders fill some kind of form, and the first entry kinda allows something else maybe, but then the second one makes it impossible.

They only want a .com but it doesn't have to exactly match the company name you submit. So you could submit Ignited for company name and they would accept GetIgnited(.com). If they want something other than .com then that will show under the 'Acceptable Domain Extensions'.

 

[Avijit Roy]

I have a sharp decrease in shortlists too. It seems like a bug.

Same with me. i have 27 listed and i used to have shortlist of 6-10 daily. Now it's 2 average.

 

[JudgeMind]

With my current portfolio size, if I were to be getting the "SITE AVERAGE" Sell Thru Rate 11.77% for 12 months, I should be selling 34 domains per year, 2-3 per month...on average.... my current "TIME TO SELL" is 14 weeks, site average is 25 weeks now.. When I first started selling with SH the time to sell was just 3 weeks and the site average was 5 weeks..... @GrantP can you please comment on how the sell through stats are legitimate if the average time to sell is so high? Please feel free to use my portfolio as reference.

 

[Bogdan]

I'm with SH for about 8 months, 34 domains, 3 offers, and 0 sales so far. I'll quit if there will not be a sale before the new year.

 

[Laguna]

I'm with SH for about 8 months, 34 domains, 3 offers, and 0 sales so far. I'll quit if there will not be a sale before the new year.

Same here. Seems like the shortlists are just like the like button on namepros. Means diddly squat ( British expression lol)

 

[Atom.com]

I would like to address few of the recent comments .

@GrantP can you please comment on how the sell through stats are legitimate if the average time to sell is so high? Please feel free to use my portfolio as reference.

The Average time to sell and sell through rate are two different (mostly independent) metrics. It is possible to have a really short time to sell, with a really low sell through rate. This is because the time to sell is based on the domains you actually sold, while the sell through rate is based upon all your domains. For example, let's say you have a portfolio of 100 domains , but you sold one domain 2 weeks after listing. In that case, your time to sell would be 2 weeks while your sell through rate would be 1%.

Infact, based upon our current algorithm, your sell through rate will actually show 0% because the 12 month and 6 month sell through rates are calculated only for those domains that were atleast listed for 12 month and 6 month respectively. In other words, if your domain sells in less than 6 months, it is currently not reflected in the sell through rate.

As indicated in one of the previous posts, we plan to update the sell through rate calculation over the next few days to provide a more accurate view of the sell through across the platform (by also including those domains which are selling in less than 6 months).

On the broader point, it is certainly expected that our platform's overall sell through rates will gradually decline and settle towards a lower number as we increase the listings in the Marketplace. Regardless of this expected decline, our goal is to continue to offer the best sell through rates in the industry by ensuring a high level of marketing spends. In addition, we are significantly more selective in approving new domains to the marketplace to ensure that the growth of marketplace is extremely controlled.

Since all these metrics are averages, it is possible that the experience of individual sellers may be different - some may achieve a much better sell through than the average, while others may achieve a lower sell through. These variations will likely be even higher, if you have a relatively smaller portfolio.

We are currently operating at highest level of marketing spends, and we plan to increase them even more. However at the end of the day we absolutely understand that you would not want to continue to list your domains with a platform if you are not seeing results. We also recognize that some sellers may find that they are seeing better success with other platforms - in those cases, it certainly makes sense to move more domains towards that platform.

While ultimately it is your decision, we do recommend to list your domains for atleast 12 months before evaluating your overall portfolio performance.

 

[JudgeMind]

I would like to address few of the recent comments .



The Average time to sell and sell through rate are two different (mostly independent) metrics. It is possible to have a really short time to sell, with a really low sell through rate. This is because the time to sell is based on the domains you actually sold, while the sell through rate is based upon all your domains. For example, let's say you have a portfolio of 100 domains , but you sold one domain 2 weeks after listing. In that case, your time to sell would be 2 weeks while your sell through rate would be 1%.

Infact, based upon our current algorithm, your sell through rate will actually show 0% because the 12 month and 6 month sell through rates are calculated only for those domains that were atleast listed for 12 month and 6 month respectively. In other words, if your domain sells in less than 6 months, it is currently not reflected in the sell through rate.

As indicated in one of the previous posts, we plan to update the sell through rate calculation over the next few days to provide a more accurate view of the sell through across the platform (by also including those domains which are selling in less than 6 months).

On the broader point, it is certainly expected that our platform's overall sell through rates will gradually decline and settle towards a lower number as we increase the listings in the Marketplace. Regardless of this expected decline, our goal is to continue to offer the best sell through rates in the industry by ensuring a high level of marketing spends. In addition, we are significantly more selective in approving new domains to the marketplace to ensure that the growth of marketplace is extremely controlled.

Since all these metrics are averages, it is possible that the experience of individual sellers may be different - some may achieve a much better sell through than the average, while others may achieve a lower sell through. These variations will likely be even higher, if you have a relatively smaller portfolio.

We are currently operating at highest level of marketing spends, and we plan to increase them even more. However at the end of the day we absolutely understand that you would not want to continue to list your domains with a platform if you are not seeing results. We also recognize that some sellers may find that they are seeing better success with other platforms - in those cases, it certainly makes sense to move more domains towards that platform.

While ultimately it is your decision, we do recommend to list your domains for atleast 12 months before evaluating your overall portfolio performance.

thanks for the info grant.. it is unfortunate however, as many of us sellers scaled our portfolio of premium listings after SH announced the average sell through rate was 20%... this misleading information has cost us sellers a lot of time and money and now with the premium marketplace over saturated with tens of thousands of names.. we can’t recover the thousands of dollars we’ve invested because our names, quite simply, are not being seen by potential buyers.

it’s great for SH to scale and have as many domains as possible listed in your marketplace, but your sellers suffer

 

[DomainBanana]

If I were SH, I'd invest in hiring industry pros who understand brandable domains and their valuation.

You can keep upping the marketing spend, but lipstick on a pig only goes so far.

 

[JudgeMind]

 

[Avijit Roy]

disappointing

What i find is really terrible is that, they are adding twice the name than other brandable marketplace, with that they are compromising with quality.

 

[BRANDERX]

They are trying to reinvent the brandable space with their new inventory.

Most end users wont fall for it.

imo

 

[Ategy]

When I tried SquadHelp over a year ago, the experience was really very bad.

I submitted a batch of about 25 domains in no particular, and they approved 5 in row (somewhere in the middle) and none of the others .. as if they had a quota and really didn't give it any real thought, as they dismissed some of the better ones.

Worse yet .. the rejections seemed to have counted as negative ratings towards me like if a contest holder had rejected them .. everything from that point forward was so limited that there really wasn't any point in doing anything further .. it was just frustration after frustration.

I even sent in some UX/Bug feedback, and never heard anything after the initial canned response.

Nothing was clear at all .. they had different submission types, and seems they wanted exclusivity, when I simply wanted to add domains that I could suggest for relevant contests.

I realise a lot has likely changed in a year .. but considering their super high commissions, and more importantly, that I'd likely restart with negatives on my account, I really couldn't be bothered.

 

[ecomslice]

I would like to address few of the recent comments .

We are currently operating at highest level of marketing spends, and we plan to increase them even more. However at the end of the day we absolutely understand that you would not want to continue to list your domains with a platform if you are not seeing results. We also recognize that some sellers may find that they are seeing better success with other platforms - in those cases, it certainly makes sense to move more domains towards that platform.

While ultimately it is your decision, we do recommend to list your domains for atleast 12 months before evaluating your overall portfolio performance.

@Grant while you acknowledge excepting the move of domains, your policy also does full suspension and punishment of accounts for doing so. I may have to send one of my premiums to a sedo auction this month, I will expect no recourse due to this.

As for defense of the current topics, I will share to this thread that I have been fortunate, I have many good things to say about the platform, and in all fairness, even though I agree with the dilution being problematic It was always a choice to throttle expense of adding versus sales coming in. it is our choice to wind up or down our growth on the platform.

Squadhelp team should however take into account the amount of loyal / long term creatives that are now halting or drastically reducing their input.
of course you will always have pouring in of additions and new comers @Grant , but you should judge the affects of happy or unhappy creatives based on the data with longer-term view, not the influx of those new and unaware of the dilution ripple effects.

 

[BrandCougar]

I would like to address few of the recent comments .



The Average time to sell and sell through rate are two different (mostly independent) metrics. It is possible to have a really short time to sell, with a really low sell through rate. This is because the time to sell is based on the domains you actually sold, while the sell through rate is based upon all your domains. For example, let's say you have a portfolio of 100 domains , but you sold one domain 2 weeks after listing. In that case, your time to sell would be 2 weeks while your sell through rate would be 1%.

Infact, based upon our current algorithm, your sell through rate will actually show 0% because the 12 month and 6 month sell through rates are calculated only for those domains that were atleast listed for 12 month and 6 month respectively. In other words, if your domain sells in less than 6 months, it is currently not reflected in the sell through rate.

As indicated in one of the previous posts, we plan to update the sell through rate calculation over the next few days to provide a more accurate view of the sell through across the platform (by also including those domains which are selling in less than 6 months).

On the broader point, it is certainly expected that our platform's overall sell through rates will gradually decline and settle towards a lower number as we increase the listings in the Marketplace. Regardless of this expected decline, our goal is to continue to offer the best sell through rates in the industry by ensuring a high level of marketing spends. In addition, we are significantly more selective in approving new domains to the marketplace to ensure that the growth of marketplace is extremely controlled.

Since all these metrics are averages, it is possible that the experience of individual sellers may be different - some may achieve a much better sell through than the average, while others may achieve a lower sell through. These variations will likely be even higher, if you have a relatively smaller portfolio.

We are currently operating at highest level of marketing spends, and we plan to increase them even more. However at the end of the day we absolutely understand that you would not want to continue to list your domains with a platform if you are not seeing results. We also recognize that some sellers may find that they are seeing better success with other platforms - in those cases, it certainly makes sense to move more domains towards that platform.

While ultimately it is your decision, we do recommend to list your domains for atleast 12 months before evaluating your overall portfolio performance.

@GrantP -

Thanks for your response.

Based on you current Sell-Thru-Rate (STR) formulas, are the following statements below correct?

Please advise.

-Cougar


FOR EXAMPLE:

A) As of today, if you currently have 10,000 domains listed (that have been listed for more than 12+ months on the site) and you sold 1,179 of those domains to date - your 12+ month STR would be displayed as being 11.79% - Correct?

B) As of today, if you had a surge 6 months ago of domains being added to the platform and you currently have 22,000 domains listed (that have been listed for more than 6+ months on the site) and you have sold 1,340 of this pool of domains to date - your 6+ month STR would be displayed as being 6.09% - Correct?

C) And excluded from those calculations - are any sales that have occurred prior to 6 months (both on the numerator and denominator) of each calculation? - Correct?


OBSERVATION:

Using the above example would indicate that your "true" STR for prior 6+ month to 12+ month window [months 6/7/8/9/10/11] had a STR rate of 1.34 % = (1340 - 1179) / 12,000) for domains having been on the site for 6 months, but less than 12 months.

With this model, this would annualized to 2.68% for a 12 month period. (give or take)


SUGGESTION:

1) Please provide the (actual) numbers for the above calculations, so we all have a crystal clear picture of the STR reality that exist today.

2) Use the above model to illustrate the 6-to-12 STR for the past 5 (bi-annaul windows). This would provide CONTEXT for your Sell-Thu-Rates currently displayed on the Dashboard. For example, bench 2017(Q1Q2) with 2017(Q3Q4) with 2018(Q1Q2) with 2018(Q3Q4) with 2019(Q1Q2) using the above "Observation" modeling formula. This would normalize the trending to a consistent window capture/bench - and would indicate performance hampering via upward scaling.

3) The problem with your current modeling is that you have a HUGE "ramp up" slide on your metrics for newly added domains. The only way to normalize your data and provide an apple-to-apples comparison is to provide CONTEXT to your calculations by providing actual numbers to each of the 6-12 window periods. By sharing these numbers, you will table the mystery.


I am not asking for monthly details or individual transaction details, I am asking for a simple quantum way of benchmarking your 6 month progressions - which should be a KPI for performance level tracking.

This is one way of providing the "fluidity" of your STR by benching like performing sliding windows with identical lengths (bi-annual clustering).

What this model will do is provide a clear picture of "inventory turn".

 

[BrandCougar]

@GrantP -

I hope the above observation is helpful.

Many on this thread are Data Analyst by trade (myself being one for a manufacturing firm). We track inventory turn per product, per bin, per category, per distribution channel to gauge product sell-thru. This also provides us forecast modeling for inventory capacity needs.

Stocking has a carrying costs, whether physical or digital. Yes, digital assets have a carrying cost - not only in out-of-pocket cost to create logos and publishing expenses, but also in lost opportunity cost and carrying cost for the inventory providers (domain selling partners).

Using bi-annual or quarterly "inventory turn" as a KPI will help to clarify performance impact when considering inventory acquisition, inventory throttling, inventory glut, vendor (seller) impact, and also can be helpful for forecasting or identifying carrying cost for seasonal (or trendy) stocking.

Regards,

-Cougar

 

[Laguna]

@GrantP -

Thanks for your response.

Based on you current Sell-Thru-Rate (STR) formulas, are the following statements below correct?

Please advise.

-Cougar


FOR EXAMPLE:

A) As of today, if you currently have 10,000 domains listed (that have been listed for more than 12+ months on the site) and you sold 1,179 of those domains - your 12+ month STR would be displayed as being 11.79 % - Correct?

B) As of today, if you had a surge 6 months ago of domains being added to the platform and you currently have 22,000 domains listed (that have been listed for more than 6+ months on the site) and you have sold 1,340 of this pool of domains to date - your 6+ month STR would be displayed as being 6.09% - Correct?

C) And excluded from those calculations - are any sales that have occurred prior to 6 months (both on the numerator and denominator) of each calculation? - Correct?


OBSERVATION:

Using the above example would indicate that your "true" STR for prior 6+ month to 12+ month window [months 7/8/9/10/11/12] had a STR rate of 1.34 % = (1340 - 1179) / 12,000) for domains having been on the site for 6 months, but less than 12 months.

With this model, this would annualized to 2.68% for a 12 month period. (give or take)


SUGGESTION:

1) Please provide the "real" (actual) numbers for the above calculations, so we all have a crystal clear picture of reality.

2) Use the above model to illustrate the 6-to-12 STR for the past 5 (bi-annaul windows). This would provide CONTEXT for your Sell-Thu-Rates being displayed. For example, bench 2017(Q1Q2) with 2017(Q3Q4) with 2018(Q1Q2) with 2018(Q3Q4) with 2019(Q1Q2) using the above "Observation" modeling formula. This would normalize the trending to a consistent window capture/bench - and would indicate performance hampering via upward scaling.

3) The problem with your current modeling is that you have a HUGE "ramp up" slide on your metrics for newly added domains. The only way to "normalize" your data and provide an apple-to-apples comparison is to provide CONTEXT to your calculations by providing actual numbers to each of the 6-12 windows. By sharing these numbers, you will table the mystery.


I am not asking for monthly details or specific transaction details, I am asking for a simple quantum way of benchmarking your 6 month progressions - which should be a KPI for performance level tracking.

This is one way of providing "fluidity" of you STR by benching like performing windows (with identical lengths - bi-annual clustering).

What this model will also do is provide you a clear picture of "inventory turn".

Geez, I just went dizzy reading that

 

[BrandCougar]

@Lagunaboy -

So did I writing it...

The bottom line ---> bi-annual "inventory turn" tracking for each 6 month window period would illustrate the impact of the recent inventory acceleration.

-Cougar

 

[ahmed gamil]

Nice post
its Good Market but high fee you cant add price more 2300 I think you must pay to list with a high price