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.

 

[BrandCougar]

@GrantP -

Another side of this would be to (in parallel) track the bi-annual or quarterly "inventory turn" for those individuals who are reviewing and accepting Premium names to your marketplace.

By tracking "reviewer performance" per Acceptance Review Employee, you will have a KPI to help standardize your review process, identify potential training needs, and strive for Acceptance consistency.

Another way of viewing the value of "inventory turn" tracking - not only for stakeholder benchmarking, but also for performance improvement and quality assurance.

-Cougar

 

[auctionpop]

I would like to address few of the recent comments

@GrantP - Can you review my most recent chat log with Vincent? My username on SquadHelp is Bourbon. I lost a frustrating amount of time due to errors with your website, and even more time trying to pry some semblance of attentiveness and care from your chat agent. I was promised a refund for both the coins I purchased and the contest submission fee, but your customer service agent didn't seem especially interested in even acknowledging the problem on your end until I mentioned NamePros. Extremely disappointing experience.

 

[Atom.com]

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

Thanks for your feedback. We have been extremely transparent with providing a wealth of metrics from day one (not only for seller's portfolio but also for the entire website) so the sellers can get an overall sense of the platform at any given time. We have also shared in several of the previous posts (including on Namepros) that the sell through rate is expected to decline as we add more names to the Marketplace. We believe that there is a general lack of transparency across several platforms when it comes to sharing specific information and metrics. We could have chosen to publish vague metrics in quarterly reports but instead we believe it is important for sellers to see specific metrics in real time.

Having said that, our goal is to continue to deliver the highest sell through rate in the brandable space, which is why we are continuing to make marketing and platform investments at a rapid pace. We are also now significantly more selective in accepting new domains because we want to grow the marketplace in a very controlled fashion.

As far as the quality of names is concerned, we use a combination of data as well as our understanding of our customers to determine which names will best resonate with them. There is a lot of subjectivity in the brandable space, and we do our best to apply our learnings from 25,000+ naming contests and end user feedback. We certainly do not get it right every time, but we use a wealth of metrics internally to learn and improve our ability to pick the names that would resonate with our customers.

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?

Yes all these 3 examples provide a correct view of how these metrics are currently calculated. We will continue to add additional more metrics to the platform over time - however the most immediate change you can expect to see is that the sell through rate will begin including names that sold in less than 6 month time frame as well.

Can you review my most recent chat log with Vincent? My username on SquadHelp is Bourbon. I lost a frustrating amount of time due to errors with your website, and even more time trying to pry some semblance of attentiveness and care from your chat agent. I was promised a refund for both the coins I purchased and the contest submission fee, but your customer service agent didn't seem especially interested in even acknowledging the problem on your end until I mentioned NamePros. Extremely disappointing experience.

I looked into the interaction with our team and I am sorry to hear that you had a disappointing experience. When new users sign up in our platform, they are randomly assigned contests by our platform to minimize any potential of misuse. Since it is a competitive platform, we are extremely sensitive about ensuring that new users are not in any way connected to the contest holder, and the random assignment is one way to address that situation. I see that you were interested in joining one contest that was not assigned to you. It appears that if you select certain filters, it also shows contests that may not be assigned to you, which can lead to confusion. We will work on making this more clear on our platform so that we can minimize any confusion because I can see how that could be frustrating. I see that your payments have been refunded but if there is anything else we can do, please reach out and our team will address the issue promptly.

 

[Recons.Com]

The meaningful and either to understand way to calculate the sell through for the past 12 months would be to divide the total number of sales in the past 12 months by the average daily number of the domains listed within that period. No need to complicate it.

When people see your numbers, like 11% that is what they assume. Basically, that if they list 100 names and give it 12 months, they will have a good chance of having 11 sold.

 

[DomainBanana]

Re: Quality -- In addition to the logo problem, it reflects poorly on the marketplace when SH gives premium status and pricing to a great deal of hand-regged junk (and I'm not saying all hand-regs are junk):

M / o / n / a / r / c / h / s / A / n / d / M / a / v / e / r / i / c / k / s . com, $1499
T / h / e / P / e / r / f / e / c / t / i / o / n / i / s / m . com, $2299
A / v / r / i / o / A / c / c / o / u / n / t / i / n / g . com, $2399
M / a / l / e / O / r / d / e / r / P / r / i / d / e . com, $1349
Y / o / u / n / g / P / o / w / e / r / m / e / n / t . com, $1699
t / h / y / n / k / v / e / n / t / u / r / e / s . com, $1599
I / g / n / i / t / e / d / I / m / p / a / c / t .com, $1849
C / u / m / m / u / n / i / t / o . com, $1699
A / v / a / n / t / a / C / B / D .com, $2199

???

I'm not right all the time, either, but I don't believe any of the above belong on a brandable marketplace. Many premium SH names make me cringe.

Sales data should help correct course in the long-run, but in the interim, I'd strongly suggest bringing on some industry veterans to give you some insight into the definition and valuation of brandable domains.

 

[Atom.com]

Another side of this would be to (in parallel) track the bi-annual or quarterly "inventory turn" for those individuals who are reviewing and accepting Premium names to your marketplace.

By tracking "reviewer performance" per Acceptance Review Employee, you will have a KPI to help standardize your review process, identify potential training needs, and strive for Acceptance consistency.

Another way of viewing the value of "inventory turn" tracking - not only for stakeholder benchmarking, but also for performance improvement and quality assurance.

This is great feedback. Intact, we have started tracking our team's performance on the following levels:

• Sell Through Rate by Reviewer: This metric allows us to offer incentives to the reviewer who delivers the best sell through rate for names they approved.
• Sell Through Rate by Logo Designer: This metric allows us to see if a certain designer is able to achieve better sell through rates on the logos they designed.
• Overall Logo Ratings by Logo Designer: We use this seller Logo ratings to provide feedback as well as make staffing adjustments in our Logo team (e.g. if a specific logo designer is consistently receiving poor ratings on their logo designs, it will likely affect their ability to continue to work with us on new logo designs)

We will continue to add even more internal metrics to ensure a high level of accountability that is directly linked with delivering a strong portfolio performance.

 

[auctionpop]

I looked into the interaction with our team and I am sorry to hear that you had a disappointing experience. When new users sign up in our platform, they are randomly assigned contests by our platform to minimize any potential of misuse. Since it is a competitive platform, we are extremely sensitive about ensuring that new users are not in any way connected to the contest holder, and the random assignment is one way to address that situation. I see that you were interested in joining one contest that was not assigned to you. It appears that if you select certain filters, it also shows contests that may not be assigned to you, which can lead to confusion. We will work on making this more clear on our platform so that we can minimize any confusion because I can see how that could be frustrating. I see that your payments have been refunded but if there is anything else we can do, please reach out and our team will address the issue promptly.

I didn't select any filters of my own accord. The issues that arose were in relation to filters displayed to me as pre-selected defaults. NamePros wont let me link to the screenshot that I provided during chat, but 'Assigned To Me' is clearly shown as a filter that has been applied. I registered dental assistant related domains, spent time on research, and even started design on logos (Chef Michelle Ann & Eco-Logic) under the belief that the listings shown as being assigned to me were... actually assigned to me.

This issue isn't that anything needs to be made clearer. Being a web developer, there's usually not much that confuses me in regards to navigating a website.The issue in this particular case is that your website displayed incorrect information that ended up costing me time and money.

The domains will be a plus thanks to affiliate programs offered by companies specializing in invisible braces, and obviously there was no guarantee that they would win the contest.

It's the loss of time, oddly blasé attitudes, and having to abandon projects (and a platform) I was genuinely excited about that irks me the most.

 

[SuperBrander]

@DomainBanana SH accepts some types of names that other marketplaces don't and vice versa. I suggested The Perfectionism dot com and it was accepted as a SH registered name. It currently has 888 views and 34 shortlists. Close to 4%. The site's average is 2.64%. So yeah... you're not right all the time. Since this is a public forum that's indexed in search engines, "shaming" a bunch of domains in public without masking the urls isn't something you should be doing.

 

[DomainBanana]

@SuperBrander Even if that domain sells, I would still say it's a bad brandable.

This is not domain-shaming. The only way to discuss SH's choice of premium names is to give examples.

 

[SuperBrander]

@DomainBanana When you don't mask the urls... it is "shaming" because you're putting down other people's domains in public and potential end users can trace back to this thread. I'm currently the person who's second on the sales' leaderboard at SH. I probably know what I'm doing.

 

[DomainBanana]

@SuperBrander Even you might have a bad name once in a while, it is conceivable.

URLs have been masked.

 

[SuperBrander]

@DomainBanana Thanks for masking the domains. I'm not against discussion about quality. For sure, I also handreg some bad domains sometime. I'm not saying the one you mentioned is my favorite name ever or even close to that for a handreg. Had it been that- I would have registered it myself instead of letting SH do it. And yes, it's not a classic brandable domain.

However, it has a good chance of selling. 'The' + word is a popular combination and perfectionism is something that can lend itself to education, crafts and other fields. I think the relatively high shortlist % probably speaks for itself. BB likely wouldn't have accepted it. But SH is a different type of place.

Had I had a dollar for every name I saw sold on brandable marketplaces that I never in a million years would have thought would sell... I'd be a millionaire. Or at least have some serious spending money. I often scratch my head at names I see and think that I would have never taken them for free let alone handregged them, but that's true to any marketplace. SH seems quite data oriented in their decisions since they have the added metrics from contest wins, Likes and Loves by CHs etc. They slowed down their acceptances at this point so the bar should be higher moving forward.

 

[DomainBanana]

You're right that data analysis can often yield surprises and maybe SH has discovered some suprising, protfitable formulas based on all its contests and clients.

And yes, I am regularly surprised by what sells. But these surprises come as the exception to some fundamentals.

I suspect SH's high STRs are mainly due to marketing efforts, and that STRs would be even higher if the selection was better.

Re: this particular domain:
*it has never been regged before April of this year
*not a single person in the world wanted it before SH accepted it
*it has 16 characters and six syllables
*it falls short of a premium form of "perfect", something I have noticed with many SH names in various ways:

1 - Perfect
2 - Perfects
3 - Perfection
4 - Perfections
5 - Perfectionist
6 - Perfectionists
7 - Perfectionism
8 - Perfectionisms
9 - ThePerfect
10 - ThePerfects
11 - ThePerfection
12 - ThePerfections
13 - ThePerfectionist
14 - ThePerfectionists
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
15 - The Perfectionism
16 - The Perfectionisms

I could see 1-14 selling. Beyond that, it's is a big stretch

Regardless, @SuperBrander, thank you for your openness to discuss.

My goal is certainly not to shame or offend but to encourage quality domaining and continue to learn along the way.

 

[SuperBrander]

@DomainBanana I'm sure you didn't mean to shame anybody. But singling out and criticizing other people's domains in public while posting the domains and not masking the urls... not really a fair thing to do to anyone, even if their domain sucks or in your opinion sucks.

As for the specific domain- the fact that it was never registered in the past was one of the reasons I didn't register it myself. Some of the variants you mentioned are certainly better. However, it's impossible to dispute the fact that this domain is being shortlisted at a significantly higher rate than the site's average. I'm all for short domains with 1-3 syllables that are easy to spell. BB is quite strict about that. SH is less so. An overwhelming majority of my portfolio fits the usual formula. But every rule has exceptions and if I find a domain that I think has potential and I don't even have to pay a cent for it... then why the hell not. Based on the shortlisting rate, it was a good call by SH. I'll update if/when it sells.

 

[Recons.Com]

The/Perfection/ism is perfectly fine. I even like it and can see it taken by a diet/fitness/health/wellness/beauty company...

Names like Avrio/Account/ing or Young/Power/Ment are head-scratchers. In the former, the brand is actually Av/rio and accounting is just the industry. If they accept this, they should accept avrio/construction, avrio/cars etc... You can flood the marketplace with 100K of those names in a week. And the latter is plain bad name. It is either Word+Word or Word+Suffix or Modified word, not everything at the same time. Meaning Young/Power - great, Young/Empowerment or Young/Empowered - good, but Young/Power/ment??? Really???

 

[DomainBanana]

@SuperBrander I will never submit another name for SH to reg due to the commission structure:

You do the work in finding the name, SH gets 65% of the sale. Unless you pay for the renewals (while SH continues to own the name), SH's commissions go up every year and they don't tell you by how much.

This is not honorable compensation. It's a clever way to get domainers to do the heavy-lifting of inventory building while giving them little in return.

 

[SuperBrander]

@DomainBanana Up to you, of course. I kinda like having this option for certain domains.

@Recons.Com Thanks for supporting the perfectionism. Like I said, definitely not the best name ever. But has some potential.

 

[DomainBanana]

The/Perfection/ism is perfectly fine. I even like it and can see it taken by a diet/fitness/health/wellness/beauty company...

Names like Avrio/Account/ing or Young/Power/Ment are head-scratchers. In the former, the brand is actually Av/rio and accounting is just the industry. If they accept this, they should accept avrio/construction, avrio/cars etc... You can flood the marketplace with 100K of those names in a week. And the latter is plain bad name. It is either Word+Word or Word+Suffix or Modified word, not everything at the same time. Meaning Young/Power - great, Young/Empowerment or Young/Empowered - good, but Young/Power/ment??? Really???

@Recons.Com, Oddly enough SH has already been flooded with avrio names:

-accounting
-investment
-mortgage
-advisor
-vantage
-medical
-science
-brands
-beauty
-agency
-global
-growth
-realty
-planet

and more!

All "SH Premium"!

 

[Recons.Com]

@DomainBanana Up to you, of course. I kinda like having this option for certain domains.

@Recons.Com Thanks for supporting the perfectionism. Like I said, definitely not the best name ever. But has some potential.

It doesn't have to be the best. It has a good potential, as it is very positive term. Most would like to see the perfectionism in their service providers, especially in health, beauty etc. Or would like feeling that they see the perfection in you ))

 

[Recons.Com]

@Recons.Com, Oddly enough SH has already been flooded with avrio names:

-accounting
-investment
-mortgage
-advisor
-vantage
-medical
-science
-brands
-beauty
-agency
-global
-growth
-realty
-planet

and more!

All "SH Premium"!

OK, I just checked. There seem to be plenty of companies in the wild that use "Avrio", so checked what the term means. Apparently, it is Greek for "Tomorrow".

The problem with this is that for every greek good word (let's assume there are 2000 of those), you can combine it with another 2000 of great english words, then you are at already 4 million combos.

Then add latin, spanish etc. to the mix, and we are talking tens of millions. So there is little incentive for an end user to buy your listed name, if he can get similar one for hand reg.

So, SH has definitely been following a dead end here. Just because there are hundreds of Avrio+Word names, doesn't make it a good candidate for SH market.