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]

Two of Squadhelp's greatest strengths are innovation and speed of implementation.

Two of Squadhelp's greatest weaknesses are innovation and speed of implementation.

Sometimes, it feels like major changes are implemented with an "act first, think later" mentality, and sellers are left scrambling to deal with the fallout.

• This jolting shift happened with the sudden shift to "coins" for reviews (Squadhelp had previously said "never trust a marketplace that charges you for a review").
• The shakeup is still ongoing with the seller-reviewer policy.
• Now, we are guinea pigs for a new policy that allows basic plus listings with 3+ votes to have logos and be searchable in the marketplace alongside premium listings.

The line between premium and basic plus listings is now paper-thin, yet SH still takes higher commissions for premium listings.

If Squadhelp allows Basic Plus listings to be searchable with logos on the marketplace, I see no reason for any distinction between Basic Plus and Premium listings.

If any domain (correction: any domain with 3+ votes) can now be searchable on the marketplace with a logo, there's no longer much reason to review domains at all.

With the new policy, it seems Squadhelp has rendered its own curation process and the premium/basic+ distinctions obsolete.

Your thoughts?

 

[Samer]

Two of Squadhelp's greatest strengths are innovation and speed of implementation.

Two of Squadhelp's greatest weaknesses are innovation and speed of implementation.

Sometimes, it feels like major changes are implemented with an "act first, think later" mentality, and sellers are left scrambling to deal with the fallout.

• This jolting shift happened with the sudden shift to "coins" for reviews (Squadhelp had previously said "never trust a marketplace that charges you for a review").
• The shakeup is still ongoing with the seller-reviewer policy.
• Now, we are guinea pigs for a new policy that allows basic plus listings to have logos and be searchable in the marketplace alongside premium listings.

The line between premium and basic plus listings is now paper-thin, yet SH still takes higher commissions for premium listings and premiums go through a review process while Basic Plus don't.

If Squadhelp allows Basic Plus listings to be searchable with logos on the marketplace, I see no reason for any distinction between Basic Plus and Premium listings.

If any domain can now be searchable on the marketplace with a logo, there's no longer much reason to review domains at all.

With the new policy, it seems Squadhelp has rendered its own curation process and the premium/basic+ distinctions obsolete.

Your thoughts?

Basic Plus dont count towards benefit tiers.

 

[Samer]

@GrantP

My previous wholesale market buy was hastily aborted -- the owner top-5 SH seller-- said he never listed and never will. OK, i was refunded.

My 2nd subsequent wholesale purchase after; attempt contact seller push, in vain, still waiting

Vincent kind confirm sent to seller; still waiting

 

[DomainBanana]

Basic Plus listings dont count towards benefit tiers.

True, there are still some differences. In addition to benefit tiers, basic plus:

• are not included in any advertising or retargeting campaigns
• are not eligible for Boosting feature (or Super Boost).
• are not eligible for Installment payments
• do not receive a complimentary Logo Design
• "typically" rank below other comparable premium listing in the Marketplace.

Nevertheless, giving Basic Plus with 3+ votes and premium listings near parity in the marketplace is somewhat confusing and disappointing.

With recent actions, the distinctions between these two categories have been nearly eliminated.

I feel like there should either be a solid division (not searchable, no logo), or no division at all.

By listing basic plus and premium listings side by side with no distinction, SH has wiped away the significance of its own premium / review / curation process.

And with that, they have wiped away sellers' hard work in building a portfolio of premium listings that stand out from the crowd of junk in an already saturated market.

 

[Joakim]

In all honesty, they are asking for trouble with the fast pace they are implementing changes. Constant changes, without much thought - so it seems.

In the end, I have no doubt about this, they could start seeing a decline in quality inventory. Sure, they can continue selling garbage. But really, it's not very attractive spewing random names around to clueless endusers.

I as well as anyone, can decide to leave. At the moment, I feel like I'm taking the piss. Huge commissions, and they're having "fun" experimenting with garbage ideas.

 

[Rhinnnn]

The line between premium and basic plus listings is now paper-thin, yet SH still takes higher commissions for premium listings and premiums go through a review process while Basic Plus don't.

If Squadhelp allows Basic Plus listings to be searchable with logos on the marketplace, I see no reason for any distinction between Basic Plus and Premium listings.

If any domain can now be searchable on the marketplace with a logo, there's no longer much reason to review domains at all.

With the new policy, it seems Squadhelp has rendered its own curation process and the premium/basic+ distinctions obsolete.

Your thoughts?

Only Basic Plus names that have received at least 3 Expert votes are eligible to become searchable and get a logo. So they still have to go through the review process first.

https://helpdesk.squadhelp.com/en/articles/4001020-basic-plus-searchable-listings

 

[DomainBanana]

Only Basic Plus names that have received at least 3 Expert votes are eligible to become searchable and get a logo. So they still have to go through the review process first.

Thank you @Rhinnnn , I missed that and am glad to see there's still some minimum threshold.

Nevertheless, Basic Plus listings with 3+ up votes and a logo are now indistinguishable from premium domains on the marketplace.

 

[Veneris]

I thought squadhelp's recent Introduction of the Expert reviewers process was to curate the market and help seive quality over quantity...
Now with the introduction of this basic plus policy, what point are they trying to make exactly? @GrantP, kindly respond to this. I feel the basic plus policy is contradicting the earlier Expert Reviewers policy you guys introduced and hence not a step in the right direction.

 

[GrantP]

Thanks for sharing the feedback regarding Basic Plus listings.

As a background, we've always had a small percentage of our Basic Plus listings searchable in the Premium Marketplace (if they received certain number of contest likes). The recent change allows for an additional vetting process for Basic Plus listings that may not have been submitted to contests.

As a context, we currently have about 7500 Basic Plus listings and only about 400 of such listings qualify to be searchable under this new rule (about 6%). The goal of this change is not to flood the marketplace with Basic plus listings, but allow a small number of listings that have gone through some vetting process to achieve a bit more visibility in the Marketplace.

Even when these listings are searchable, they do not receive several benefits that are only offered for premium listings - most importantly, these listings are not included in any of the Advertising campaigns (for new customer prospecting or retargeting). These listings also rank below premium listings, and they are not included in our AI based recommendation technology.

We believe this offers a reasonable compromise, and allows for some additional visibility for listings that have gone through a vetting process.

The change was done based upon the feedback received from several sellers. However if many people do not support this change, please share your thoughts here or in the discussion forum , and we would be glad to revisit it.

 

[GrantP]

+1 on this inquiry about .app, @GrantP - I've listed a handful of names and they're searchable and have even had logos made, but they are not resolving. I contacted support but they had no idea what to say.

Easy fix would be allowing names to be forwarded to the SH sales page as opposed to using nameservers, but if I do that I get emails warning me the names will be delisted because I'm not using the right nameservers.

Our engineering team is working on the issues related to resolving .app domains. It turned out to be a bit more complex issue than earlier expected however we are working on this, and hope to have a solution in next few days.

 

[GrantP]

@GrantP

My previous wholesale market buy was hastily aborted -- the owner top-5 SH seller-- said he never listed and never will. OK, i was refunded.

My 2nd subsequent wholesale purchase after; attempt contact seller push, in vain, still waiting

Vincent kind confirm sent to seller; still waiting

Thanks for your feedback, and sorry to hear about the cancellation of your first order. We are working on few more changes to further streamline the Wholesale order process, and I will share your feedback with the product team.

 

[Samer]

Thanks @GrantP, if any changes made, Pl consider bug bounty or inconvenience bounty.

I continue to buy from SH Wholesale market.
it’s my favorite. Thank you for your time.

Samer

 

[howudoin8]

@GrantP Please Answer this.

Portfolio Popularity of my Profile (33%) is way lower than site average of 50% even though my Shortlist rate is ALMOST DOUBLE of site Average & Approval rate is at 15% (Higher than site average of 10%), so how to improve Portfolio Popularity Percentage?

If I become more active on SH (Such as rating logos, participating in contests etc), then will that improve my Portfolio Popularity?

Not too long ago, my Portfolio Popularity was 70% when I used to do the above things. So will my Portfolio Popularity bounce back if I start doing them again?

 

[E-Thunder]

I wanted to share a new review and 2 week update on my Squadhelp experience. Hopefully sharing will give everyone some perspective on things.

I now have 20 domains listed. This is up from 16 just 2 weeks ago.

Approval rate has fallen slightly to 17.7%, but is still well above the 11.1% average.

Again, all approvals have been 2 word combinations. All made up words or plays on words were rejected, so it appears this is pretty consistent week over week. I would suggest sticking with real words and compounds, or know that they appear to have a better change for acceptance. *I would be curious if anyone has had an opposite experience too.

Average time from submission to acceptance or rejection has been 3 days or less. Time frame for logos has been longer than in the past, with most of these not done and taking a week or 2 after acceptance.

I am motivated by the new tier system and feel like there is something I am now working towards. I like the additional benefits when growing the portfolio there. The coins will be a plus for sure.

Time wise, I have spent hours scouring the contests. This has given me lots of inspiration of domains to register, not just for use at Squadhelp but in general. Just yesterday I registered a domain that I never would have come up with on my own, so that credit can be given all to Squadhelp.

I did receive some "likes" for contest entries, and it seems like I am in consideration for some of these which I now enjoy.

The whole atmosphere I like there, it seems like more of community than BB or BP, which I really like. I likely will solely use Squadhelp for brandable domains moving forward now.

As for domains that didn't make the cut, I continue to compile a list of these and plan to share soon. It will be interesting to see everyone's view of what I submitted that got rejected!

 

[DomainBanana]

Thanks for sharing your experience, @E-Thunder.

I don't think anyone should put much stock in approvals or rejections from a review process based on superficial polling. A process that, by virtue of the small number of seller-reviewers, is vulnerable to corruption. It's ingenious of Squadhelp to offload the serious business of reviews onto a few sellers and compensate them with fake currency (points). But, in my view, the process is a conflict of interest and doesn't give brands the comprehensive and objective analysis they deserve.

Squadhelp does polls, not reviews.

I recently sold a brand for 3x what Squadhelp would have listed it for. The "experts" rejected it with a 2/9 score. In this case, I should be thankful for the poor judgement of the seller-reviewer squad.

Regarding the Squadhelp community, I have found it to be cult-ish, with little tolerance for critical thinking and a great deal of under-the-table backstabbing.

In my experience the communities at other marketplaces are much more civil and intelligent.

Squadhelp has many wonderful aspects, though. Dan, Grant, and the team are top notch.

Good luck on your journey.

 

[Samer]

Thanks for sharing your experience, @E-Thunder.

I don't think anyone should put much stock in approvals or rejections from a review process based on superficial polling. A process that, by virtue of the small number of seller-reviewers, is vulnerable to corruption. It's somewhat ingenious of Squadhelp to offload the serious business of reviews onto a few sellers and compensate them with fake currency (points). But, in my view, the process doesn't give submissions the comprehensive and objective analysis they deserve.

Squadhelp does polls, not reviews.

I recently sold a brand for 3x the amount that Squadhelp would have listed it for. The "experts" rejected it with a 2/9 score. In this case, I should be thankful for the bad judgement of the seller-reviewer squad.

Regarding the Squadhelp community, I have found it to be a cult-ish environment with little tolerance for critical thinking and a great deal of under-the-table backstabbing.

In my experience the communities at the other brandable marketplaces are much more civil and intelligent.

Good luck on your journey.

To be fair, they use Slack (sym: WORK) invite-vetting process, like 10 SH Prem qualify expert easiest to attain, loyalty.
Squadhelp forum is public and open to all.

Your willingness to share has been overlooked with innovation. The recent sales are awesome
Know there’s more data (probably) but this amt share “recently sold” front page is the best part

Onward! dont stab; BP higherrate all new acc join after certain date! SH operation viability; they got a good thing going; and by all account they “care”. We’ll see if discussions lead any.

 

[Footprint789]

Is anyone observing a dip in the quality of the support recently ?

One of my names is not visible in the AN Integration partners like GD from 3 months. So The name lost almost 3 months of visibility till now. So, when I noticed and reported it on 22 Apr last month, I thought they would resolve it right away since visibility is not a small issue. But even today (after almost a month since reporting, I see absolutely nothing on it. The fact that customers have to keep track of issues and followup with them from time to time is a bit difficult. I lost count of the number of issues I raised recently to which support replied that its been forwarded to the team only to never get a response back. Infact it's also time consuming to explain the same issue in detail every time to other support personnel (or to the same person if they forgot) when we do a follow-up of the issue. Also, I don't think it's possible to remember and keep track of all issues which is why ticket system is being used worldwide. So, @GrantP if I may kindly request, would it be possible to introduce ticketing system for issues like this ? since SH has grown immensely from the beginnings, today to have so many features. More features leads to more issues.

And someone mistakenly uploaded logo of a completely different name to my name. I have seen quite a few like this in the Marketplace, first for my name though. So, when the logo gets uploaded, wouldn't designer(or whoever uploads) cross-check if the logo is correct or not ? Seems like a pretty basic thing to do. Of course, I do understand sometimes mistakes happen. So, I have reported this myself and followed-up with the support today when I reported another issue. I am yet to receive a response on this which is unusual as can be seen from the image.


Previously, SH had one of the best support anywhere I have seen. Every support personnel was fairly knowledgeable about SH and did great job of addressing the issues. And recently I noticed new staff. Not sure if this is somehow related to the dip in the quality, I hope it's not the case. (Infact recently I had to educate one of the personnel that unregistered names are reviewed by only SH team and not by Experts when they replied to me that my unregistered names might have been reviewed by Experts).
Honestly speaking, I miss some of the SH staff.

The reason for this post is to get to know if this is being faced by only me or anyone else observing the same. If it's only me, may be it's a one-off thing, if not, we will be able to provide some feedback on this to @GrantP & help SH in it's growth however small our contribution may be.

Thanks.

 

[geekjojo]

I really like how SH implements new things but I really want to see a feature to get a minimum % of sales for everyone. I know it all depends on the buyer but I have some people with over 100+ domains and 1 sale while people with 20 domains have got more than 5 sales.

They really should think about the minimum % of the sales for everyone. Just my thoughts.

 

[mzakaib]

I get what your saying. I’m still new there and trying out the platform, but it seems like the same domains get most of the exposure. I paid for the Super Boost on a couple of my domains about 4 days ago, and I’m not seeing them anywhere. Let alone in the top 1-3 pages.

They still seem like a excellent company & platform to be a part of! Hopefully I’ll be coming back soon with good results. I’m submitting more of my portfolio & giving it a good go. Pretty exited & feel that my domains will produce results there at the end.

 

[Samer]

Grant, i accidentally de-listed a name "under review" when I had "4 expert reviews" done.

Is it true i have to wait through the weekend to resolve this?

 

[NameWell]

I really like how SH implements new things but I really want to see a feature to get a minimum % of sales for everyone. I know it all depends on the buyer but I have some people with over 100+ domains and 1 sale while people with 20 domains have got more than 5 sales.

They really should think about the minimum % of the sales for everyone. Just my thoughts.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Could you please clarify your idea? "minimum % of the sales for everyone" what is that? How would that work?

 

[DomainBanana]

b) The same name is shown to about 20 different reviewers in 20 different randomized polls.

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.

 

[wwwulff]

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

I have a name still pending approval but it says that the 20 review is completed so where do I see how many have voted it up or down?

 

[Joakim]

I have a name still pending approval but it says that the 20 review is completed so where do I see how many have voted it up or down?

I have several names pending with 20 reviews done, lapsing several days now. Earlier you could see how many up/down votes you got, but not any more. Not sure why it changed, and what is causing the holdup when the review process looks to have finished.

You will get an notification when you receive 5 or more positive reviews though.

 

[DomainBanana]

I have a name still pending approval but it says that the 20 review is completed so where do I see how many have voted it up or down?

If a domain is approved, you do not see how many up/down votes it received.

If it is rejected, you can see votes in the "rejected" panel.

If it's still pending review, you can't see votes.