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.

 

[NewDayBrand]

We typically do not respond to specific incidents like this in a public forum, however since you have made a public accusation, it is important to set the record straight:

1. The name Genius / Analysis / com was submitted to the Marketplace on April 24 (05:56am CST).

2. Your name Genius / Analyst / com was submitted one day after the above submission on April 25 (11:43am CST).

Based upon the timeline of submissions, there is no possibility that your idea could have been "stolen" by the other seller. Moreover, the other seller in question is NOT an expert reviewer.

We receive several thousand submissions every week, and sometimes there can be coincidences. If you suspect that there is an issue, you are encouraged to report it to our 24/7 support team so that it can be investigated. Of course you are free to post such examples publicly, however we do not believe it is fair for the reviewers to be accused in this fashion without allowing SH the opportunity to investigate.

I would also like to address the broader topic about our review process as well as acceptance rates. As a Marketplace, we have taken a strategic decision to manage our growth in a very controlled fashion. This means that at this point, we are only accepting those names that we believe will resonate very strongly with our customers.

The Expert Reviewers do not have the ability to approve or reject names by themselves. Any names that receive even 4 votes (out of about 20) must be reviewed by the SH team before they can be rejected. Even in case of less than 4 votes, certain names are still reviewed by the SH team before they are rejected. We have been watching this very closely, and in general, if a name receives less than 4 votes, it is likely not a good fit for our Marketplace. However even in those cases, you have the option to request another review, which is done directly by SH internal team.

Brandable domains are very subjective, and it is entirely possible that your name was not accepted in the SH marketplace but it ends up selling for a great price elsewhere. We will definitely not get it right all the time, but we strongly believe that the current process is allowing us to make much better decisions.

My registered names biotyc.com apexbrick.com and togrowup.com got rejected by the experts. When it's SH team who reviews (unregistered) i usually get better approval rate. I will not accuse anybody but i prefer SH to review my registered names also. By the way SH is my brand naming school and thank you for all what you have been teaching me through approval and rejected

 

[NewDayBrand]

@GrantP, there are 3 genuine issues / concerns being raised in this thread (over and above the Rejections and Acceptance Rate debate) with regards to the new Expert Review system:

1. Conflict of Interest: You have addressed and explained the counter-measures used for this in your past responses, which seem reasonable. But still it does not reduce this potential to zero.

2. Carte Blanche for Thievery: This is the issue recently raised by @Footprint789. Whether it happened in this particular case or not, you have to agree its just so easy for the expert reviewers to check for variants of interesting submissions and submitting them themselves. In fact, the whole system seems to give special access and privileges to a select few sellers (the experts) Vs the rest. Don't think there are any measures or checks implemented in this regard either at SH.

3. Cornering the Top 10% or more of the Marketplace Visibility: Here the argument is that by amassing tons of SH coins and points over a month or a year, and with no option to encash them, the only sensible way to spend them would be on Super-boosts and Life-style images thus leading to cornering of the Marketplace visibility by the select few experts. Again this gives the perception that SH intentionally or unintentionally wants to court a select few sellers Vs the rest.

Would love if you could address all 3 concerns individually.

Also would second @Footprint789 motion to increase the review limits. In fact, I had requested the same in my earlier post https://www.namepros.com/threads/squadhelp-marketplace.1120686/page-58#post-7717704

Best Regards,
Crypto

I agree with the 3rd part at 100%
Regarding the 2nd part i disagree because in my opinion nobody needs inspiration from submitted and not yet published names. I think that All marketplaces and SH sold names in the bottom of marketplace dashboard are enough as a source of inspiration. I think There are still many fishes in the sea for everybody. All types of names

 

[ecomslice]

Hey everyone, you should really stop posting your names and whining same time, just makes you look bad.

Domains are subjective sure. agreed. But the truth is if your in your first 1-3 years of domaining, what you think is so good, is probably really crap. this goes for me also in my 2nd year.

just accept it. and push to learn, not complain non stop.

if an idiot like me can be humble often, so can you. in my entire portfolio about 90% of my domains sucked bad first year. and now about 70% of mine suck this year as my second year.

 

[RozasMD]

Regarding this so called Expert review system I can only say one thing.

A couple of years ago there was quite a lot of fuss about the possibility of ambassadors being privileged users and the treat to 'insiders' in BB. Lots of accusations flying around and all that stuff.

Well, to me SH has created this same problem out of nothing by implementing this system. As a seller it's not that easy to ignore the potential problems and conflict of interest.

SH staff and 'Experts' may prefer to ignore it and call all of us a bunch of paranoids. But the potential issues are there and have been perfectly explained and reasoned. It's a legitimate complaint.

I feel I'm playing in disadvantage compared to the Big Boys/Girls in SH. Now they have the power to decide what names compete against theirs, and they can boost all their names by earning loads of points, twisting the system to their favor. And as they have literally thousands of names, they will just fill the top positions for virtually every search, cornering all weaker -I mean regular- competitors.

Yes, I know... Just trust the system, everything will be fine. It will just be great for everyone. But that's a matter of faith.

Sorry, I don't like this situation. Don't like it at all.

 

[Arjun Oli]

I listed two names. thanks, SH
TrueLibrary.com
RealGrocery.com

 

[Atom.com]

Would love if you could address all 3 concerns individually.

Sharing my responses below:

1. Conflict of Interest: You have addressed and explained the counter-measures used for this in your past responses, which seem reasonable. But still it does not reduce this potential to zero.

Potential for conflict of interest can never be reduced to zero - by any platform. There can also be a theoretical conflict of interest with internal staff members reviewing your names, especially if some of those reviewers happen to be domain investors. Our goal as a platform is to build checks and balances that allow us to mitigate these risks and build enough redundancy to minimize any negative impact. We believe the following steps collectively address this issue:

a) All reviews are fully randomized
b) The same name is shown to about 20 different reviewers in 20 different randomized polls.
c) Even if some people end up downvoting a good name on purpose, that action has no implication on the final domain approval or rejection. In order for a good name to be rejected due to this conflict of interest, at least 17 different reviewers would need to downvote the same name in bad faith. Even in that theoretical scenario, you have a recourse to request another review from SH internal team.
d) We monitor stats internally that can easily flag a pattern of misuse by any reviewer.

2. Carte Blanche for Thievery: This is the issue recently raised by @Footprint789. Whether it happened in this particular case or not, you have to agree its just so easy for the expert reviewers to check for variants of interesting submissions and submitting them themselves. In fact, the whole system seems to give special access and privileges to a select few sellers (the experts) Vs the rest. Don't think there are any measures or checks implemented in this regard either at SH.

All sellers have access to published and recently sold names on the platform. You can also view names that recently won in naming contests. The only domains that are not publicly visible are rejected domains. We do not believe that reviewers get any special advantage by having visibility to names that do not end up getting listed on SH. Closely analyzing recently sold names and winning contest names would be a much more productive use of anyone's time than spending time to analyze rejected domains.

3. Cornering the Top 10% or more of the Marketplace Visibility: Here the argument is that by amassing tons of SH coins and points over a month or a year, and with no option to encash them, the only sensible way to spend them would be on Super-boosts and Life-style images thus leading to cornering of the Marketplace visibility by the select few experts. Again this gives the perception that SH intentionally or unintentionally wants to court a select few sellers Vs the rest.

The expert reviewers are being compensated for their time. Some of that compensation is with points and some with token cash awards when their voted name is purchased. There are several ways to earn points on our platform. In addition, we recently announced a Tiered Based Benefit program, which provides complimentary benefits such as coins, super boosts, logo redesigns to sellers based upon number of listed domains. We are also working on adding a new feature in the near future which will allow sellers to earn significant points for their participation.

Finally, I would like to state that as a curated Marketplace, it is in our best interest to accept the best domains to our platform. Therefore, if we truly saw any evidence of good names getting rejected due to potential conflict of interest, we would not allow such a process to continue. We have never hesitated from making changes to our platform if a certain feature is not working as expected and we will continue to evaluate all features with the same philosophy.

 

[NewDayBrand]

Hey everyone, you should really stop posting your names and whining same time, just makes you look bad.

Domains are subjective sure. agreed. But the truth is if your in your first 1-3 years of domaining, what you think is so good, is probably really crap. this goes for me also in my 2nd year.

just accept it. and push to learn, not complain non stop.

if an idiot like me can be humble often, so can you. in my entire portfolio about 90% of my domains sucked bad first year. and now about 70% of mine suck this year as my second year.

I liked your post because you are right. Brand naming is a process of learning. But i'm sorry, 'experts reviews' is a bad idea for many reasons. If they were not selling also there will not be any conflict of interest. But they are.

 

[Samer]

@GrantP can we allow some filtering .com in Wholesale?

and can we please stop accepting mispelled "Canna"?

Fire those "experts" even if CanaMeds(.)com sold for $x,xxx

 

[Crypto2020]

Thanks for your detailed response, @GrantP

You did miss or ignored the request to increase review limits completely

As for your responses, here are my quick follow-ups:

1. No follow-up here. Your answers as well as the checks and balances seem strong enough (at least theoretically) to me.

2. The main issue here was the Window of time from the start of submission to either acceptance or rejection. In this Window the experts have undue advantage and exclusive access to variations of potentially very attractive names. That's the main concern. Does not seem like you addressed this specifically in your response.

3. Here I feel you totally ignored and/or side-stepped the main concern (maybe you do agree its a genuine and highly probable concern?). Providing more ways of earning coins and points equitably by all, does not negate the exclusive access enjoyed by the experts. One way could be to provide all rewards to the experts in cash only or redeemable-to-cash SH credit. They could still use it to boost their domains but so could they from sale proceeds of one of their own sales. At-least they won't be forced to use the rewards only to boost their own domains.

It might or might not be evident from my posts, but I am a big fan of SH (and its always experimenting, always innovating culture) and want it to flourish and all of us with it. So please take my posts as constructive criticism and not as finger pointing.

Best Regards,
Crypto

 

[RozasMD]

Just to be clear: you might have the best of the intentions and still make a big mistake.

I don't mean to suggest there's any bad faith on implementing this system. But even if the intentions were great, the outcome is not. At least for me as a small seller.

It's not just criticising out of being bored during quarantine.I try to point the reasons why this system looks that bad to me. Because it really looks bad to me.

Obviously, I hope SH does it the best possible, but also the best possible for me. I still have a portfolio there, no reason for me to wish anything but the best for the business.

 

[DomainBanana]

Even if some people end up downvoting a good name on purpose, that action has no implication on the final domain approval or rejection. In order for a good name to be rejected due to this conflict of interest, at least 17 different reviewers would need to downvote the same name in bad faith.

No domains get 17/17 votes. Most domains that are approved are approved by 1 or 2 votes.

So under the current system, it would only take one vote to skew the result from approve to disapprove.

Take one of my recent submissions as an example.

It got 3/14 votes.

If just one voter (who is competing against me for sales on the marketplace) has a similar name or doesn't like me personally and decided to down vote it, this would have shifted the score from 4/14 to (29%, an auto-approve) to 3/14 (21%, an auto-reject).

When domains are approved at a score of 25% or higher, giving each seller-reviewer the power to shift the score by 8 points is too great of an influence to be comfortable.

This is why expanding the reviewer pool would help mitigate the conflict.

@GrantP

 

[Commulinks]

I have no worries or suspicions whatsoever about the domain review process on Squadhelp, be it SH staff or the expert reviewers. I've submitted hundreds of names on SH and thanks to those reviewing who selected the most sellable names, I have also sold many domains. I also trust SH's decisions on who can be reviewers, because the vast majority of the best sellers on SH have also been really helpful domainers willing to share wisdom as many do here. And, judging from much feedback posted on the SH forum, the reviewers are really working hard in this process.

Sometimes I go to the marketplace to search my names to see what the new competition is for my names. I often see names similar to mine as are many on BB and others. Some are just one letter different. Ultimately, it is up to the customer to decide which name is best for them. We all know we will likely never sell our entire portfolios.

Competition isn't a bad thing. We can all learn from it. I think SH is doing a great job.

 

[Footprint789]

:

All sellers have access to published and recently sold names on the platform. You can also view names that recently won in naming contests. The only domains that are not publicly visible are rejected domains. We do not believe that reviewers get any special advantage by having visibility to names that do not end up getting listed on SH. Closely analyzing recently sold names and winning contest names would be a much more productive use of anyone's time than spending time to analyze rejected domains.

Thanks @GrantP for your responses. Sorry to say this, but this is not about rejected names, this is about good interesting name ideas which are in the process of expert review system and are shown to them first before they are even approved".

For illustration, Let's suppose I submitted UniqueIdea/com to expert review process on day 1, After 24 hrs, I will get a message that it is approved. so, in the meantime I will be waiting to see it's approval, after receiving it, I decide the style seems cool and suits , let's submit more of that style eg UniqueIdeah" but experts have that extra access time to interesting name styles which create scope for registration and submitting the many other variations of it.

I hope this was clear in letting you know the issue. This issue could be alienating non-expert sellers by giving an impression that the process is biased towards experts. Hope you give a thought about that. Anyway, Thanks for your response.

I hope this feedback is taken constructively. Some of the world's biggest reputed companies are what they are today because of the feedback they encourage from their customers and improving them. SH has already done some amazing improvements and open to feedback. That is the only reason people are giving feedback here. I dont give any feedback or discuss about some company if I would not care for it or if they don't encourage feedback. Infact SH is my favorite marketplace but that does not mean we cannot raise an issue when it feels like an issue is there. I really wish SH to grow a lot more and wishing you all the very best for everyone at SH who is working so hard to make it a fantastic platform.

 

[Commulinks]

@GrantP - thanks for the extremely thorough response. It is really helpful.

 

[JudgeMind]

Is anyone here a reviewer at Squadhelp now?

 

[Commulinks]

Is anyone here a reviewer at Squadhelp now?

It would come as no surprise that probably the majority of those successful domainers on SH are also on this site.

Suffice to say that if they are here on NamePros, they have read this string and for the same reasons people are accusing them, many would never reveal if they are reviewers so as not to be independently influenced by anyone. As it should be. I trust they all know and understand this and will not respond to your question.

However, they will know what people have falsely accused them of...

 

[DomainBanana]

The new system has sown a great deal of discord and animosity.

It is tearing the seller community apart, pitting us against each other. The conflicted seller community is a symbol of the conflict of interest inherently baked into the new system. All of this is a big red flag that things aren't right.

I have been personally attacked multiple times simply for asking questions and trying to objectively evaluate the system. I have even lost a domaining friend (one of the new seller-reviewers) over the matter. All of this hurts. I don't need the conflict or the insults. I have enough trouble in life. I only persist because I believe in the pursuit of justice.

Questioning the system does not mean I accuse Squadhelp or individual reviewers of anything. I repeat that I have great admiration and respect for Squadhelp and its reviewer team.

Many sellers, like me, have legitimate concerns. Solutions are on the table.

@GrantP says Squadhelp is monitoring the situation and will make changes in the policy as necessary.

The time to make these changes is now.
_____________________________________________________________________

Note: Once more, my post has been downvoted by a fellow Squadhelp seller who is likely a reviewer. By failing to engage with me in a constructive dialogue and trying to negate my comments with downvotes, she only proves my point that the new system sows discord.

The individuals who downvote my comments here could also downvote my domains on Squadhelp -- a scary prospect, and one that sellers shouldn't have to worry about.

 

[gblasting]

If I'm one of the expert reviewer, I will also reject all of these names.

This is exactly why I asked that people post some of their rejected names. Sometimes, we are too invested in our names to see anything wrong with them but outsiders can call it as it is and hopefully help us improve our name-picking skills.

To test the popular comment that rejection rates have increased significantly since the implementation of the expert system, I took up SH's new policy to resubmit previously rejected names.So I resubmitted 7 of my names that were previously rejected by SH internal review team for experts review. This is apples to apples.

If we are to go by comments here, these names should be quickly rejected as people believe the experts are rejecting names that would have been accepted by SH internal team, much less names that have already been rejected by the same internal SH team.

Another reason why my experts rejection rates should be higher is that they do not get to see the carefully-worded descriptions explaining the potential of the name and possible uses while SH team read this and still rejected the names.

Below are the names I submitted and the experts verdict:

Other than ᎡhеⅿаΗеаⅼth, all other rejected names were previously listed on BB. If my experience has shown anything, it is that SH internal team has passed on many names that have potentials. It was strange that Оոуха.com was rejected while Оոухοr.соm was listed.

 

[farouk20]

Just to be clear: you might have the best of the intentions and still make a big mistake.

I don't mean to suggest there's any bad faith on implementing this system. But even if the intentions were great, the outcome is not. At least for me as a small seller.

It's not just criticising out of being bored during quarantine.I try to point the reasons why this system looks that bad to me. Because it really looks bad to me.

Obviously, I hope SH does it the best possible, but also the best possible for me. I still have a portfolio there, no reason for me to wish anything but the best for the business.

You're absolutely right.

@GrantP you may have the best of intentions but absolute power corrupts abolutely.

This was the same stuff BB came up with called “ambassador” that gave some folks undue advantage over others. Resulting to fights , accusations and counter accusations.

It beats my imagination that squadhelp is not learning from history.

I have no qualms motivating the expert rewiew guys with stipends from names they approved “ iF it sells “. However giving them such huge points and other benefits will unbalance the marketplace.

How can we compete if our fellow sellers are always cornering the top spots on each search page ?? Week in, Week out

I’ll kindly advice that you review this . We are all comepetitors irrespective of being friends on namepros. We all need sales. We all need to progress.

I’m happy with the kind of names accepted now (currently) BUT i want the powers of the EXPERT REVIEWERS whittled down.

Thanks

Ps: I know SH is still work in progress and personally i have enjoyed a fruitful relationship with you guys. I hope it stays that way. Cheers. Happy new mnth

 

[SuperBrander]

Here's my two cents' worth as an ex-reviewer who was doing it for about a week:

1. Acceptance to one marketplace doesn't mean a domain will be accepted elsewhere, especially when we're talking about unregistered or recently handregged domains. BB is full of low quality domains that likely shouldn't have been accepted. SH is too. Falling in love with low quality domains isn't beneficial and the sooner domainers get over their genius naming abilities, they're able to evaluate domains better and get the right perspective on their own domains and other people's domains.

2. Inspiration- no offense, but if you or me or anyone else handregged a domain lately or submitted an unregistered one for consideration- it's not the best domain out there by a long shot (unless it's a brand new trend that just emerged and you managed to catch a relevant domain early). Domains that people are so scared will be ripped off have been available for anyone to register for awhile and sometimes were never registered before. In 99.9% of the cases these domains aren't registered in any other extension. People who have been domaining for a long time don't need to be inspired by submissions- they can see which names sold and which names were recently added to the marketplace if they're really into getting relevant data and/or inspiration from others. Everybody has access to that data. And being inspired by submissions that haven't even been approved yet doesn't make much sense to me. If they're aftermarket domains- you can't tweak them and get something equivalent. If they're low end domains- it's very likely nobody with exeperience in domaining cares about them. Similar domains get submitted/registered all the time due to the limited amount of meaningful keywords and prefixes/suffixes. Even while submitting, I'm sure most if not everybody can see that many times other people already submitted their idea. People who have been in the industry for awhile can likely find better handregged domains than less experienced domainers and don't need to get inspired by them- so again, don't fall in love with your low end domains and accept them for what they are- lottery tickets that can be easily replaced. Personally I find it hard to believe that a reviewer will get 4 random domains to choose from and then take the time to go check who owns one and then decide not to choose it because he hates the owner. Or not choose it because it somehow competes with one of their own domains. I mean... it's only 1 vote out of 20 anyway in the worst case scenario. And reviewers are being monitored. Don't know. Seems OK to me. No solution can ever be perfect when humans are involved. Mistakes will always be made. But at least now submissions are reviewed super quickly without cost to sellers.

3. I'm not saying that the system is perfect and since people have concerns- the system should be tweaked to address that. That's the good thing about SH. They're attentive to sellers and often make changes based on feedback. People who feel like they're being dealt a lesser hand always speak out, especially when so called "insiders" are involved and are perceivably getting unfair advantages. It's been like that with BB. It's like that with SH. And that's fine. Hell, I also criticized BB and SH for a lot of things and I understand where people are coming from. I'm not a reviewer anymore so I'm in the same boat as the rest of the sellers. My acceptance rate is fine. Even higher than before, if I'm not mistaken. But either way, at least from my own experience, I think the power attributed to reviewers and the value of these benefits is somewhat exaggerated. Reading some of what people say- I could almost feel like an idiot for quitting being a reviewer after a week. The truth is, once the compensation switched from coins to points- it wasn't worth my time. Going over so many low end domains is super boring. $5 per sold name is renewal money for a few domains, at the best case scenario. As for points- I've had a lot of points I got the old fashioned ways and I continue to accumulate them like that so I always have enough. Personally, up till now I think I used points for one boost when the feature first came out and for one lifestyle image when that became available. I got some complimentary images automatically for some of the higher quality domains, as other sellers with domains that are priced high get.

Anyway... this post is waaaay too long so I'll wrap it up!