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.

 

[accuname]

I can understand brandables can be quite subjective but when I see this approved:
YourKidding

I just scratch my head.

 

[auctionpop]

nvm

 

[Sinbad]

Thanks for the info.
Just wanted to say MoneyBall is my one of the Favorite movies.

I would like to address some comments related to quality of names. As many would agree, the quality of brandable names is subjective. Since the onset of our Marketplace, we decided that we wanted to leverage something that was truly unique to our platform:

• Wealth of data in the form of direct end user feedback on more than 6 million names submitted to our Platform
• Thousands of one on one interactions with end users where our branding consultants have spent over 5000 hours of phone calls to understand the brand requirements of end users.

Since then, we have built some fairly comprehensive predictive analytics models that take into account more than 15 data-points about names. They not only analyze physical aspects of names (e.g. length, syllables, keywords used, name styles etc) but also take into account end user based signals (e.g. likes received in contests, winning history in contests, shortlists in marketplace etc).

Every name that is submitted to our Marketplace goes through these predictive models as a first step and is assigned an overall score to "predict" the likelihood of sale. In the end, the decision to accept or reject a name finally lies with a human however this score is one of the important factors considered by the person reviewing the names.

Just to be clear, no predictive algorithm can be right all the time - and this is especially the case with brandable names. However, we believe this algorithm significantly helps increase the odds that the name will resonate with our potential buyers.

The ultimate measure of success of any such algorithm is the sell through rate. Every month, we adjust this algorithm and our acceptance criteria based upon our additional learnings. Therefore, we may have accepted certain styles of names in the past, but it is possible that we may no longer accept them. Infact, we are now only accepting about 6% of names submitted to the Marketplace.

If you have watched the movie Moneyball, you might agree that using data and predictive analytics can sometimes bring a different perspective to the selection process. While a majority of our names in the marketplace will never sell, we do believe that our data driven approach will allow us to maintain the highest level of sell through rate in the industry.

 

[karmaco]

We don’t need any predictives to know what the bottom line is. SH specialty is bargain basement prices and with that comes low quality names. People holding high quality names would not accept the 1990s pricing model SH uses and take their names elsewhere if they are smart.

All the analytics tell us is bargain domain shoppers do not have a grasp of what quality branding is and that price is the most important thing for them when making a decision. Just because it sells doesn’t mean its a quality name.

For example, who would want a “Qore” name when they should be wanting the correctly spelled Core? SH has a ton of mispelled knockoffs like that.

 

[Laguna]

What's is the highest amount of shortlists you have on a single name that has not sold yet ?

 

[NameWell]

What's is the highest amount of shortlists you have on a single name that has not sold yet ?

213...

 

[Laguna]

213...

Wow

 

[SuperBrander]

@NameWell Got me beat. Mine has 191.

 

[Laguna]

@NameWell Got me beat. Mine has 191.

That's a lot guys

 

[SuperBrander]

@Laguna Nope.

 

[NameWell]

We don’t need any predictives to know what the bottom line is. SH specialty is bargain basement prices and with that comes low quality names. People holding high quality names would not accept the 1990s pricing model SH uses and take their names elsewhere if they are smart.

All the analytics tell us is bargain domain shoppers do not have a grasp of what quality branding is and that price is the most important thing for them when making a decision. Just because it sells doesn’t mean its a quality name.

For example, who would want a “Qore” name when they should be wanting the correctly spelled Core? SH has a ton of mispelled knockoffs like that.

Why would anyone name their brand "Lyft" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "Lift"?
"Netflix" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "NetFlicks"?
"Flickr" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "Flicker"?
"Reddit" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "ReadIt"?
"Fiverr" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "Fiver"?

Should I continue? Misspelled words make stylish, modern and fun brand names.

 

[Laguna]

213...

I thought that when someone shortlists your name, it means they may be considering buying it. But when those shortlists go into the hundreds, it makes me sceptical as to whether they are genuine or not

 

[NameWell]

@NameWell Got me beat. Mine has 191.

I think I might be running for a record here :D

 

[karmaco]

Why would anyone name their brand "Lyft" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "Lift"?
"Netflix" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "NetFlicks"?
"Flickr" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "Flicker"?
"Reddit" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "ReadIt"?
"Fiverr" when they should be wanting the correctly spelled "Fiver"?

Should I continue? Misspelled words make stylish, modern and fun brand names.

Your suggestions don’t apply to what I meant. Lyft is a 4 letter word and Flickr is a 6 letter word ending in R which are both intrinsically more valuable. I am talking about the numerous two word domains that have mispelled words like “Qore” and “Cana” etc . SH is loaded with this kind of garbage. Its good they slowed acceptance down because they accept nonsense.

 

[NYJimbo]

I thought that when someone shortlists your name, it means they may be considering buying it. But when those shortlists go into the hundreds, it makes me sceptical as to whether they are genuine or not

Pretty sure most people are just clicking it as "likes".

 

[Laguna]

Pretty sure most people are just clicking it as "likes".

That's the impression I get too but I hope I'm wrong

 

[ALDaisy1]

@karmaco Trends in naming are constantly changing, though. A lot of contest holders on the site view names like "Flickr" as dated. I don't care for "Qore" either but multiple contests have been won with this letter substitution in the past year. Since SH takes contest ratings into consideration, that's most likely why they are being approved. And it absolutely does come down to price; people would rather constantly spell out "Qore" to their customers then pay hundreds or thousands more for the correct spelling.
@Laguna The shortlists are pretty meaningless, imo. My highest is 190 but I have quite a few over 150. It just lets you know the name is being seen.

 

[Dave]

Your suggestions don’t apply to what I meant. Lyft is a 4 letter word and Flickr is a 6 letter word ending in R which are both intrinsically more valuable. I am talking about the numerous two word domains that have mispelled words like “Qore” and “Cana” etc . SH is loaded with this kind of garbage. Its good they slowed acceptance down because they accept nonsense.

You're absolutely right.

I hope I don't sound rude here but even most of SH featured premium names on their home page are bad. I wonder who owns these domains, and what SH have to gain by promoting such rubbish?

Here's the trouble. Let's say someone is seeking a name for their new startup/site and they see an advert from SquadHelp.. They think "cool I'll give this guys a try"and when they visit they see messages like "branding experts" or whatever. This is someone who isn't well versed in branding or domains. They see these names and think "so these type of names are good"? And then they're persuaded by the psychology of it all to buy one of these awful names because they're seemingly getting a great price.

These misguided people are choosing awful names because they're told they are good, and likely killing their startup or business before it's even begun.

 

[griff]

Who honestly thinks domains like roqket or PayStud are good names. These are just two examples of the many bizarre ones that have sold, in my opinion. And they're the sort of names that get visibly shown to their audience time and again, not the actual quality ones that are buried away on their marketplace.

It's odd seeing those kind consistently listed/sold for $4k+, everything I attempt to list at high 1$$$/low 2$$$ (e.g. v/u/p/l/a or d/u/v/i/r) is quickly rejected with no feedback (rejection is fine ofc but wouldn't mind an auto-reason message from a dropdown as I'm paying to try). I guess I'd just like to know exactly what it is they're looking for because it seems to be specific types of brandables

 

[karmaco]

@karmaco Trends in naming are constantly changing, though. A lot of contest holders on the site view names like "Flickr" as dated. I don't care for "Qore" either but multiple contests have been won with this letter substitution in the past year. Since SH takes contest ratings into consideration, that's most likely why they are being approved. And it absolutely does come down to price; people would rather constantly spell out "Qore" to their customers then pay hundreds or thousands more for the correct spelling.
@Laguna The shortlists are pretty meaningless, imo. My highest is 190 but I have quite a few over 150. It just lets you know the name is being seen.

And there in lies the problem. People who want names for $100 to $300 in the contests don’t want quality names— they want a hack or knockoff. This further supports my theory that SH is appealing to the lowest common denominator— Very cheap and very not funded.

Future problems can arise if the correctly spelled core or canna name is developed or becomes developed or just plain old takes their traffic. SH should be raising the bar not lowering it. They should be educating buyers not placating. They are definitely not pro domainer just pro whatever our target audience with very low budgets want (even to their detriment). Nobody will be taken seriously with a bad name.