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.

 

[Samer]

Thanks for sharing your experience, @E-Thunder.

I don't think anyone should put much stock in approvals or rejections from a review process based on superficial polling. A process that, by virtue of the small number of seller-reviewers, is vulnerable to corruption. It's somewhat ingenious of Squadhelp to offload the serious business of reviews onto a few sellers and compensate them with fake currency (points). But, in my view, the process doesn't give submissions the comprehensive and objective analysis they deserve.

Squadhelp does polls, not reviews.

I recently sold a brand for 3x the amount that Squadhelp would have listed it for. The "experts" rejected it with a 2/9 score. In this case, I should be thankful for the bad judgement of the seller-reviewer squad.

Regarding the Squadhelp community, I have found it to be a cult-ish environment with little tolerance for critical thinking and a great deal of under-the-table backstabbing.

In my experience the communities at the other brandable marketplaces are much more civil and intelligent.

Good luck on your journey.

To be fair, they use Slack (sym: WORK) invite-vetting process, like 10 SH Prem qualify expert easiest to attain, loyalty.
Squadhelp forum is public and open to all.

Your willingness to share has been overlooked with innovation. The recent sales are awesome
Know there’s more data (probably) but this amt share “recently sold” front page is the best part

Onward! dont stab; BP higherrate all new acc join after certain date! SH operation viability; they got a good thing going; and by all account they “care”. We’ll see if discussions lead any.

 

[Footprint789]

Is anyone observing a dip in the quality of the support recently ?

One of my names is not visible in the AN Integration partners like GD from 3 months. So The name lost almost 3 months of visibility till now. So, when I noticed and reported it on 22 Apr last month, I thought they would resolve it right away since visibility is not a small issue. But even today (after almost a month since reporting, I see absolutely nothing on it. The fact that customers have to keep track of issues and followup with them from time to time is a bit difficult. I lost count of the number of issues I raised recently to which support replied that its been forwarded to the team only to never get a response back. Infact it's also time consuming to explain the same issue in detail every time to other support personnel (or to the same person if they forgot) when we do a follow-up of the issue. Also, I don't think it's possible to remember and keep track of all issues which is why ticket system is being used worldwide. So, @GrantP if I may kindly request, would it be possible to introduce ticketing system for issues like this ? since SH has grown immensely from the beginnings, today to have so many features. More features leads to more issues.

And someone mistakenly uploaded logo of a completely different name to my name. I have seen quite a few like this in the Marketplace, first for my name though. So, when the logo gets uploaded, wouldn't designer(or whoever uploads) cross-check if the logo is correct or not ? Seems like a pretty basic thing to do. Of course, I do understand sometimes mistakes happen. So, I have reported this myself and followed-up with the support today when I reported another issue. I am yet to receive a response on this which is unusual as can be seen from the image.


Previously, SH had one of the best support anywhere I have seen. Every support personnel was fairly knowledgeable about SH and did great job of addressing the issues. And recently I noticed new staff. Not sure if this is somehow related to the dip in the quality, I hope it's not the case. (Infact recently I had to educate one of the personnel that unregistered names are reviewed by only SH team and not by Experts when they replied to me that my unregistered names might have been reviewed by Experts).
Honestly speaking, I miss some of the SH staff.

The reason for this post is to get to know if this is being faced by only me or anyone else observing the same. If it's only me, may be it's a one-off thing, if not, we will be able to provide some feedback on this to @GrantP & help SH in it's growth however small our contribution may be.

Thanks.

 

[geekjojo]

I really like how SH implements new things but I really want to see a feature to get a minimum % of sales for everyone. I know it all depends on the buyer but I have some people with over 100+ domains and 1 sale while people with 20 domains have got more than 5 sales.

They really should think about the minimum % of the sales for everyone. Just my thoughts.

 

[mzakaib]

I get what your saying. I’m still new there and trying out the platform, but it seems like the same domains get most of the exposure. I paid for the Super Boost on a couple of my domains about 4 days ago, and I’m not seeing them anywhere. Let alone in the top 1-3 pages.

They still seem like a excellent company & platform to be a part of! Hopefully I’ll be coming back soon with good results. I’m submitting more of my portfolio & giving it a good go. Pretty exited & feel that my domains will produce results there at the end.

 

[Samer]

Grant, i accidentally de-listed a name "under review" when I had "4 expert reviews" done.

Is it true i have to wait through the weekend to resolve this?

 

[NameWell]

I really like how SH implements new things but I really want to see a feature to get a minimum % of sales for everyone. I know it all depends on the buyer but I have some people with over 100+ domains and 1 sale while people with 20 domains have got more than 5 sales.

They really should think about the minimum % of the sales for everyone. Just my thoughts.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Could you please clarify your idea? "minimum % of the sales for everyone" what is that? How would that work?

 

[DomainBanana]

b) The same name is shown to about 20 different reviewers in 20 different randomized polls.

Grant said domains are shown to 20 reviewers to protect against conflicts of interest. Just had a domain reviewed by only 12 reviewers.

This domain received 3 up votes, which meets the 25% threshold. It was still rejected.

My approval rate has gone way down under the new system. Given the higher reject rate, it is now very expensive to list a premium domain on SH.

 

[wwwulff]

Grant said domains are shown to 20 reviewers to protect against conflicts of interest. Just had a domain reviewed by only 12 reviewers.

I have a name still pending approval but it says that the 20 review is completed so where do I see how many have voted it up or down?

 

[Joakim]

I have a name still pending approval but it says that the 20 review is completed so where do I see how many have voted it up or down?

I have several names pending with 20 reviews done, lapsing several days now. Earlier you could see how many up/down votes you got, but not any more. Not sure why it changed, and what is causing the holdup when the review process looks to have finished.

You will get an notification when you receive 5 or more positive reviews though.

 

[DomainBanana]

I have a name still pending approval but it says that the 20 review is completed so where do I see how many have voted it up or down?

If a domain is approved, you do not see how many up/down votes it received.

If it is rejected, you can see votes in the "rejected" panel.

If it's still pending review, you can't see votes.

 

[DomainBanana]

My account has suddenly been configured to bypass the standard review process.

I did not request this.

It is extremely disappointing that Squadhelp has chosen to punish my criticisms of the review process by altering my account without my approval.

This is not professional. It is also not ethical.

Sellers should not be punished for criticizing the marketplace. If Squadhelp is acting against me in this way, how else are they acting against me? And who else are they acting against?

Very disappointed @GrantP, particularly after our phone conversation

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Is anyone here a reviewer at Squadhelp now?

Great question. I was invited but didn't follow up. Maybe everyone was.

 

[Samer]

Squadhelp @GrantP

i accidentally delisted a name in review.

sucks, how did do that? it had 4 expert reviews

Can you please bring a 2nd box pop up for confirmation? I tried contacting support; and surprisingly off weekends

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

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!

Imagine...

1 great domain name submitted for a hygenic product that is needed today by a domainer at a site where other domainers are to be the critical thinkers for the platform.

20 UK/Ireland Moderators
15 positive votes.

20 USA Moderators
9 positive votes.

20 Swedish/German Moderators
2 positive votes.

That's how I see it from my experiences from all of those places. There on the last one we see a mentality that has been given the role of Devils Advocate. That will be the hardest group to crack for many reasons.

Poland/Russia... etc... well my ex wife was Russian.

Add some alcohol into that mix and well...

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

I would never run a business on the blind trust put in others. I see the many pitfalls waiting to happen around me every day.

This is an experiment doomed to fail like when Google et al let everybody choose when they wanted to come in to work. The Culture they were trying to promote, started at work, died. Teams died, and nobody did anything.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

My account has suddenly been configured to bypass the standard review process.

I did not request this.

It is extremely disappointing that Squadhelp has chosen to punish my criticisms of the review process by altering my account without my approval.

This is not professional. It is also not ethical.

Sellers should not be punished for criticizing the marketplace. If Squadhelp is acting against me in this way, how else are they acting against me? And who else are they acting against?

Very disappointed @GrantP, particularly after our phone conversation

Isn't this a good thing?

 

[jk23]

Great question. I was invited but didn't follow up. Maybe everyone was.

How many domains have you sold on SquadHelp?

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

How many domains have you sold on SquadHelp?

Sold for $8000+

Is that why? Hmmm...

Could have sold for more but price negotiations through the platform didn't work out with the buyers. My portfolio stats are high among the visitors and domains are on many shortlists.

 

[jk23]

How many domains?

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Squadhelp @GrantP

i accidentally delisted a name in review.

sucks, how did do that? it had 4 expert reviews

Can you please bring a 2nd box pop up for confirmation? I tried contacting support; and surprisingly off weekends

Support will fix that quick enough.