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.

 

[ALDaisy1]

I think the option to have descriptions written for you is intended to benefit sellers without strong English skills while providing a way Creatives can earn money. While the feature is in Beta the descriptions are being written by SH staff, but if you read the full explanation it mentions the possibility that Creatives may be able to apply to work on descriptions at a later date. I'm not saying anyone should or should not pay for the service; I just think the driving force behind the idea is discouragement among the Creatives. The site has grown so rapidly and it is so hard to earn money on a regular basis now.

 

[BrandCollectors.com]

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.

what d u think about
Squirels.com
Kitens.com
Horsess.com
Bullss.com
Brillince.com Brillience.com / scIEnce
Airliness.com
Vehicless.com (driverless)
Millionss.com MILLION$$
informetion.com (getting some traffic)
Corges.com

could sh to accept those names?
thanks

 

[Domain Monk]

Buyer has up to 10 days to make necessary validation on the name after it gets sold, and we can hold on transferring if they would like to check on the name first, such as audience testing or trademark validation.

Seriously ? They should consider removing this option @GrantP

 

[4better]

Buyer has up to 10 days to make necessary validation on the name after it gets sold, and we can hold on transferring if they would like to check on the name first, such as audience testing or trademark validation.

Seriously ? They should consider removing this option @GrantP

I had this experience just recently. A buyer purchased my domain at SH.

Next I was instructed to do the following:

After almost a week, the buyer decided to cancel the purchase. The buyer was refunded.

A lot of time and effort wasted on the part of the seller. No compensation whatsoever.

 

[BrandPlease]

Guys, give them a bit of slack - imagine the same situation but it was with PP or something...and your name was stolen as soon as the buyer opens a (false) complaint, for example.

In worst case you have a solid confirm that the name has interest and has a better chance of selling, that is positive.

When its $$ its gets frustrating - and fast - I always try to think of the same situation in other products / environments. Retail shaps take a beating on "return" costs. That's the best image that helps keeps things a little grounded - but, realistically no less frustrating.

Customers are finicky, and have the right to be, we have to go with their flow.

 

[Recons.Com]

Guys, give them a bit of slack - imagine the same situation but it was with PP or something...and your name was stolen as soon as the buyer opens a (false) complaint, for example.

In worst case you have a solid confirm that the name has interest and has a better chance of selling, that is positive.

When its $$ its gets frustrating - and fast - I always try to think of the same situation in other products / environments. Retail shaps take a beating on "return" costs. That's the best image that helps keeps things a little grounded - but, realistically no less frustrating.

Customers are finicky, and have the right to be, we have to go with their flow.

Couldn't agree more. We all expect that we can a buy product from a Costco and have a right to return it in 60 days with no explanation needed. Yet, when we sell domains, we expect that it must be absolutely firm commitment.

 

[DomainBanana]

Couldn't agree more. We all expect that we can a buy product from a Costco and have a right to return it in 60 days with no explanation needed. Yet, when we sell domains, we expect that it must be absolutely firm commitment.

Maybe due diligence should be done before announcing to the seller the domain has been sold.

This way, the seller's hopes aren't dashed and time is not wasted.

 

[Recons.Com]

Maybe due diligence should be done before announcing to the seller the domain has been sold.

This way, the seller's hopes aren't dashed and time is not wasted.

And then there will be an uproar that seller was not informed in time? And also most buyers want the process started right away. How do they do that?

Look, cancellations might be 5% or less. Trying to eliminate them is not worth double admin effort.

 

[DomainBanana]

And then there will be an uproar that seller was not informed in time? And also most buyers want the process started right away. How do they do that?

Look, cancellations might be 5% or less. Trying to eliminate them is not worth double admin effort.

Of course, you want to move quickly. But I think other marketplaces perform due diligence before communicating with the seller.

Don't bug the seller until due diligence has been performed and the buyer is firm. It's common sense.

 

[Haykay2005]

It's a wrong thing to do. You ought to have done your due diligence before informing me of a sale.

 

[BrandPlease]

keep in mind the seller only has to pay, SH only has to facilitate the transaction --- and the one who could cause a delay (and loss of sale) is the seller. unlock name, get auth, transfer, deal with any mistakes, etc..

There isn't a good way to make it perfect for everyone - except you own landers, you own BIN button, and only you dealing with all aspects of the transaction + transfer.

 

[Atom.com]

Buyer has up to 10 days to make necessary validation on the name after it gets sold, and we can hold on transferring if they would like to check on the name first, such as audience testing or trademark validation.

Seriously ? They should consider removing this option @GrantP

First of all, I am sorry about the recent delays in my responses to several posts. We will maintain a limited presence on NP.

For any platform changes or policy related suggestions I also encourage everyone to participate on SH discussion forum so that other members of our platform can also weigh in with their feedback. Majority of our product roadmap, platform and policy changes are based upon direct input from SH community.

Regarding the refund policy, we believe it actually helps sales than hurts sales. Our philosophy is that we must minimize any barriers or hurdles for buyers when making a purchase, while offering the critical tools that they might need to validate the name.

Imagine a seller finds a name that they are in love with, but they are unsure about the Trademark conflicts. Without this policy in place, they would be on their own to do all the research upfront before making the purchase. At the same time, they would be worried about losing the domain to someone else since it remains available for sale while they are spending time and money in doing the research.

We believe that expecting buyers to do the research on their own adds additional doubts in their mind especially when many of them don't even know how to check for Trademark conflicts. More importantly, it adds more days before they actually commit to the actual purchase. We have found that as more time passes, the less likely the buyer is to purchase that name.

Our current policy allows the buyers to commit to the sale and gives them a clearly defined time window in which they can do any due diligence with support from our team of Licensed Trademark attorneys. Since they have already purchased the name, they are significantly more invested in moving forward with the sale.

Not disclosing a sale to the sellers until the buyer has done the due diligence would not be very transparent in our opinion. Sellers like to be informed about page views, shortlists or any other signals of interest in their name - so why should they not be informed when someone has actually taken the final step to make the purchase? Even if the sale gets cancelled (which is rare), it provides a wealth of information about the quality and potential interest in the name.

To put things in perspective, less than 2% of our sales are actually cancelled during this 10 day refundable window.

 

[Kamaldeen]

Pls what does this mean?

 

[Haykay2005]

Pls what does this mean?Show attachment 139446

That's the notification on names you have liked in the past. Click on it to see

 

[Kamaldeen]

That's the notification on names you have liked in the past. Click on it to see

Exactly

 

[JudgeMind]

After a slow couple of months with no sales squadhelp has started to re-align. 3 sales in December include:

Vetovia.com
Thredly.com
Accoria.com

I was considering moving my names from the platform but so long as these types of results continue forth I will build on my current portfolio.

 

[DomainBanana]

Well, @JudgeMind got sales. I guess we can all relax now.

 

[Grilled]

SquadHelp just released a new update...

https://rule_violation/t/december-20th-updates-to-marketplace/5388

We are announcing few additional updates in order to improve the Marketplace experience for sellers as well as buyers:

1. Much Greater Pricing Flexibility

If you have more than 50 premium listings in the Marketplace, you now have much more flexibility to change selling price of your approved domains, straight from your dashboard.

For domains priced below $5000, you can increase the price up-to 2X of the originally approved price. For example, if your domain was approved for $2399, you should be able to increase the price all the way to $4699 directly from your dashboard.

For domains priced above $5000, you can increase the price by 50% or 25%, depending upon the current selling price.

You also have more flexibility in reducing the selling price below originally approved price.
The pricing flexibility applies to both seller owned domains as well as SH registered domains.

2. Classification & Navigation

We have simplified our category structure by merging the “keywords” with categories. You will no longer be able to select “Keywords” for your domains but you will be able to find more options in “possible uses” and “primary category” selection.

In addition, we previously allowed more than 3 “Emotions” and “Possible Uses” to be selected for each domain. In order to improve discovery of domains, and ensure a level playing field for all domains, we no longer accept more than 3 Emotions and more than 3 possible uses.

Some of the domains have 10+ possible uses and 10+ Emotions - which hurts the discoverability of relevant domains in the Marketplace.If you had previously selected more than 3 Emotions or possible uses for any of your domains, we request that you remove the additional options and only keep the top 3 options that are most relevant. Starting January, our system will only recognize 3 possible uses and 3 emotions from your domains even if you had more options selected.

3. Syllables and Pronounceability

We are working on few Beta projects that allow customers to filter and sort names based upon number of syllables as well as the pronounceability of domains. These options will offer more ways for customers to discover great names, helping improve the overall discovery and visibility of names. Some of these options are currently being A/B tested, and therefore only visible to a subset of users browsing the Marketplace.

 

[bourbon]

After a slow couple of months with no sales squadhelp has started to re-align. 3 sales in December include:

Vetovia.com
Thredly.com
Accoria.com

I was considering moving my names from the platform but so long as these types of results continue forth I will build on my current portfolio.

Congratulations! Seeing your sales, I think I understand a bit more about what does well.

 

[Haykay2005]

SquadHelp just released a new update...

https://rule_violation/t/december-20th-updates-to-marketplace/5388

There should be a limit to the number of names sellers can increase their prices, may be 10 to 15% of the entire portfolio, same way you peg make offer. Otherwise, sellers will misuse the opportunity and every crap will be priced at 5k and above. You know the result of such action @GrantP