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.

 

[Innoverge]

I’m curious if a level of trust is lost with buyers in WLM who land on a page that is branded as, for example BrandAim, then they go to submit an inquiry via email but the email address is Squadhelp. Or they phone and they reach Squadhelp support. To me this could be very confusing as a buyer and difficult to trust the process.

I’ve suggested that Squadhelp add a canned statement that will appear on WLM pages indicating that BrandAim is a partner of Squadhelp.. anyone have any other suggestions?

That's true, the mention of SH partner should clear things up to a certain extent.
If the idea is to offer a complete e-commerce marketplace experience just for domains, it's only right that the seller has the option to make his WLM his own, just like with Shopify etc.
There are other concerns too, since squadhelp acts as an intermediary in negotiations at WLM and is the only one with access to buyer/inquirer contact details, i wonder if there's a firm policy in place which dictates that SH agents can only contact these buyer/leads concerning the WLM domain the inquiry was made on, and no suggestions pertaining to domains outside the seller's WLM can me made whatsoever.

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

And then my Rehearse(xyz) and Suffice(xyz) got rejected though they are both English words @GrantP

They are right here , not good names.

 

[Votumejero]

They are right here , not good names.

OK, thanks.. I'd know better.

 

[eternaldomains]

EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED

 

[ExDom]

I added some basic listings today and the rules have changed:

Commission Rule
Squadhelp Commission: 15% of Selling Price ($300 MINIMUM)

Commission Details
Squadhelp keeps 15% of selling price or $300 (whichever is greater). View all Terms and Conditions for Domain Marketplace

My old listings still have the old rules:

Commission Rule
Squadhelp Commission: 7.5% of Selling Price (Min $100)

Commission Details
Squadhelp keeps 7.5% of selling price or $100 (whichever is greater). View all Terms and Conditions for Domain Marketplace

Any comments @GrantP ???

 

[NorthernDomains]

I added some basic listings today and the rules have changed:

Commission Rule
Squadhelp Commission: 15% of Selling Price ($300 MINIMUM)

If true, I'm moving on.

 

[Atom.com]

I added some basic listings today and the rules have changed:

Commission Rule
Squadhelp Commission: 15% of Selling Price ($300 MINIMUM)

Commission Details
Squadhelp keeps 15% of selling price or $300 (whichever is greater). View all Terms and Conditions for Domain Marketplace

My old listings still have the old rules:

We haven't changed the commission for Basic Listings. Do you mind sharing the specific names with our support team via chat so we can investigate this further?

On a broader note, we are planning on announcing a major update to our listing types (Premium, Basic, Basic Plus, WLM) in order to simplify our offerings. Currently there is redundancy in various listing types which leads to confusion. Going forward we will follow a much simpler model (our base category will continue to have a 7.5% commission). More to come in next few days.

 

[ExDom]

Thank you @GrantP for your reply I have contacted the support team as advised. These were mostly 3 letter .io names. It would be nice to do a reworking to the listing types, I did add the listings as basic because I also wanted to list them to the wholesale marketplace.

As far as I know you cannot add wholesale prices to your WLM listings.

 

[Coindoji]

@GrantP What kind of .VC domains do you accept? acceptance rate is ridiculous... You literally declined one of the best names for Venture Capitals companies, I checked thousands of them before on Linkedin and Crunchbase, and acquired corresponding .VC domains - one word dictionaries... Stealh.vc Adonis.vc Rune.vc Spell.vc Moonglade.vc and many others, there is a ton of funds/companies for each word, operating under same names but don't have a .VC extension, yet you declined those.. So, legit question is - what kind on names, if not these, do you want to see on SH? Puppy.vc and Lawyer.vc? :D

 

[Innoverge]

@GrantP What kind of .VC domains do you accept? acceptance rate is ridiculous... You literally declined one of the best names for Venture Capitals companies, I checked thousands of them before on Linkedin and Crunchbase, and acquired corresponding .VC domains - one word dictionaries... Stealh.vc Adonis.vc Rune.vc Spell.vc Moonglade.vc and many others, there is a ton of funds/companies for each word, operating under same names but don't have a .VC extension, yet you declined those.. So, legit question is - what kind on names, if not these, do you want to see on SH? Puppy.vc and Lawyer.vc? :D

They seem to have a random but, small list of .vc domains in their mrktplace and I assume they're more likely to accept keywords that're connected to venture capital like, seed,money etc.
I submitted Idea.vc which was almost immediately accepted but, the approved price didn't meet my expectations, as i had to reject it.
While it's a good time to invest in .vc domains , i believe acquiring premium keywords closely associated with venture capital would make safer bets, compared to hand-registering keywords, dictionary or otherwise, targeting pre-existing companies that share the same name.

 

[JudgeMind]

There's always the option of using your own email and phone number instead of Squadhelp's. Then you get the spam and tire kickers.

If we are to talk about the level of trust, nothing beats Afternic with the Godaddy brand. I made two sales last month, Afternic and Sedo, even though my domains were pointing to Squadhelp.

Yes, I have had great luck in the past with afternic using their landers. I think if things keep going the way they are I will have to switch back. Bills don’t pay themselves

 

[JudgeMind]

FYI

Now if you choose to use squadhelps landing pages for your WLM listings, only the sellers listings will appear beneath your listings. I have migrated all of my landing pages to squadhelp landing pages in a hope that this will eliminate the potential lack of trust.

 

[howudoin8]

@GrantP

Domain Reviews are taking enormous amount of Time!

1 of my Basic+ Listing has a Shortlist rate of about 30% & I submitted it for review some 30+ days ago & still it is in "Pending" status. Can you please look into this? Domain is SprintLap.com

 

[JudgeMind]

@GrantP

Domain Reviews are taking enormous amount of Time!

1 of my Basic+ Listing has a Shortlist rate of about 30% & I submitted it for review some 30+ days ago & still it is in "Pending" status. Can you please look into this? Domain is SprintLap.com

Did you pay a coin to submit this name?

 

[howudoin8]

Did you pay a coin to submit this name?

Yes

 

[howudoin8]

Yes

To be clear, I paid a coin & name was approved as Basic+ listing. Now that it has such a High SL rate, I again submitted a request for domain review, some 30 days, & still no decision has been taken.

 

[Ostrados]

FYI

Now if you choose to use squadhelps landing pages for your WLM listings, only the sellers listings will appear beneath your listings. I have migrated all of my landing pages to squadhelp landing pages in a hope that this will eliminate the potential lack of trust.

But this way you will lose the traffic to your WLM. Someone that lands on one of your domains might try the search inside your WLM, which can lead to potential sale. I have some domains with decent typein traffic and are bringing traffic to my other domains.

 

[freety85]

SH marketplace update for August 2020

Pending the unlikeliness that a sale comes in in the next day, August was the first month in 2020 I did not complete a sale on the Squadhelp marketplace. Although my portfolio of premium marketplace listings is over 500, the sh marketplace has grown immensely. Sell through rates continue to decline and imo will soon be in line with the STR of other marketplaces 2-3%. In August views and short lists on my names dropped to 0% in the second and third week but went back up a little bit towards the end of the month. Despite purchasing 6 super boosts each week , views and short lists dropped. In the past, purchasing super boosts would bump my names to the first page. In August something changed, I no longer see my super boosted names on the first page of the marketplace.

While August was my worst month of the year for me, july was one of the best with 3 decent SH marketplace sales.

I did close one sale in the BrandAim.com WLM for $1,049. This was my 5th sale via my sh WLM since launching in early July.

Had three other sales in August, each were afternic fast transfer. One for $899 one for $5000 and one for $1999

Thanks for the update @JudgeMind . The marketplace shows 27 sales in total since you joined. This is pretty good over two years. May I ask how many of those sales were installments vs full price sales? I just had an installment cancelled after buyer paying half the domain price off. I consider switching this option off and rely more on impulsive buying. In case the STR reduces further under 1.5-2% will you consider moving your names elsewhere for less commission or simply leaving them on your WLM?
Appreciate your feedback.

 

[GoodKindName]

Thanks for the update @JudgeMind . The marketplace shows 27 sales in total since you joined. This is pretty good over two years. May I ask how many of those sales were installments vs full price sales? I just had an installment cancelled after buyer paying half the domain price off. I consider switching this option off and rely more on impulsive buying. In case the STR reduces further under 1.5-2% will you consider moving your names elsewhere for less commission or simply leaving them on your WLM?
Appreciate your feedback.

I wonder why is your situation is undesirable?

You got some nice money and still own the name you know that might have a good chance to sell again

It is possible that you wouldn't have got any money if not installments

 

[freety85]

I wonder why is your situation is undesirable?

You got some nice money and still own the name you know that might have a good chance to sell again

It is possible that you wouldn't have got any money if not installments

@GoodKindName not moaning at all, this can happen already made some nice ROI. I am trying to collect data whether installments are actually significantly boosting sales from sellers who have significantly more listings. Let's say if from 27 sales 13 or more were installments I am quite convinced the model works, taking into account several buyers ending up putting the initial contest fee to the first installment of the domain. Lately I see quality domains selling for high $x,xxx easily there not sure if those are paid in full or the majority are installments.