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.

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

A few days back, I got some good 2 words names rejected. Names like InsightKing & EnergyFully(com) rejected when PowerFully(io) & canafully and many more like these are published.

Make no sense to reject names when there're very similar and complete crap ones out there.

Powerfully is one word. It means powerfully.

EnergyFully was probably rejected because it's two words that don't fit well enough together for them. Canna is trending.

 

[Recons.Com]

Powerfully is one word. It means powerfully.

EnergyFully was probably rejected because it's two words that don't fit well enough together for them. Canna is trending.

Agreed. Energetically would be comparable to powerfully, not energyfully...

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

How to now upgrade basic plus to premium?

Request a review and reason 'Upgrade'?

 

[ArielT]

Request a review and reason 'Upgrade'?

It seems that reviews are taken too long

 

[DomainBanana]

How to now upgrade basic plus to premium?

If it was a searchable basic plus with a logo, you should be able to click "Instant Bulk Upgrade to Premium" at the top of the Basic Plus section.

 

[marcreative]

This was my 5th sale via my sh WLM since launching in early July.

How do u promote your wlm ? thank you for your insight and congratulation

 

[marcreative]

many guys are importing thousands of names without internal review

yeahhh whyy? its not fair at all.

 

[JudgeMind]

How do u promote your wlm ? thank you for your insight and congratulation

through social media primarily. I’ve been testing with Squadhelp’s landing pages too

 

[loredan]

This is from the landing page of one of my Tech+word names.

Gotta love the relevance of the other "based on tech" domains.

 

[JudgeMind]

Goodbye 6 month STR %, hello annualized STR

note: We had no sales in September. Comparable, last September we had two sales with half of the inventory. Good luck in October everyone.

 

[loredan]

note: We had no sales in September. Comparable, last September we had two sales with half of the inventory. Good luck in October everyone.

Ouch, I'm sorry to hear, you have like around 500 names listed, right?
You should have a solid 1-3 sales each month, at least this is what it used to be at BB and BR a while back with similar numbers. I never heard of anyone with 500 names not to make a single sale at a brandable marketplace, probably it's just unfortunate...hope you'll get back on track asap.

 

[JudgeMind]

Ouch, I'm sorry to hear, you have like around 500 names listed, right?
You should have a solid 1-3 sales each month, at least this is what it used to be at BB and BR a while back with similar numbers. I never heard of anyone with 500 names not to make a single sale at a brandable marketplace, probably it's just unfortunate...hope you'll get back on track asap.

I now have 558 premium listings.

 

[bazabizo]

I’m very happy with the introduction of annualized sales
At 4% the average of the whole marketplace that’s fantastic for sure
Still I believe these guys listen and have a very high degree of bias for action which is customer obsessed

 

[loredan]

I’m very happy with the introduction of annualized sales
At 4% the average of the whole marketplace that’s fantastic for sure
Still I believe these guys listen and have a very high degree of bias for action which is customer obsessed

At 4% I think @JudgeMind should have had about 20 sales in the last 12 months, right? I wouldn't call that fantastic, I think BB used to be at around 5%-6% a few years back while BR had about 8%-10% (well BR never let everyone and his mom to join the platform).

What I noticed and don't like is that many SH owned names sell for $1,300-$1,400 on the platform and that's clearly undercutting the other sellers. Also they seem to include names sold at Afternic in the equation and this clearly affect the maths. I have a 33.77% STR without selling a single name on SH (well just started to list names in Aug.) how cool is that?

 

[JudgeMind]

At 4% I think @JudgeMind should have had about 20 sales in the last 12 months, right? I wouldn't call that fantastic, I think BB used to be at around 5%-6% a few years back while BR had about 8%-10% (well BR never let everyone and his mom to join the platform).

What I noticed and don't like is that many SH owned names sell for $1,300-$1,400 on the platform and that's clearly undercutting the other sellers. Also they seem to include names sold at Afternic in the equation and this clearly affect the maths. I have a 33.77% STR without selling a single name on SH (well just started to list names in Aug.) how cool is that?

Show attachment 168941

Counting September sales last year I sold 19 premium names in the last 12 months.

I think it would be beneficial for Squadhelp to list and sell their sh owned domains at a higher price point. Setting a higher benchmark for their platform. Most of my names are listed <$2000. I feel if Squadhelp listed most of theirs at $2000-$2500 it would be beneficial to all and those names listed at $1799 by sellers could be increased to $$2199 for example

 

[loredan]

I think it would be beneficial for Squadhelp to list and sell their sh owned domains at a higher price point. Setting a higher benchmark for their platform. Most of my names are listed <$2000. I feel if Squadhelp listed most of theirs at $2000-$2500 it would be beneficial to all and those names listed at $1799 by sellers could be increased to $$2199 for example

Margot has her own domains at BB, Michael used to have his own domains at BR but I have never seen them undercutting the other sellers. What SH is doing by listing own names at $1,200, $1,300 or $1,400 is disgusting imo ... they should keep their domains at the marketplace median price and/or should clearly add an "owned by SquadHelp" label next to their crappy stuff. The quality of their own names is mostly meh and they must have a different review process if any. For instance names like Lomodila (listed at $1,199) would probably never get accepted if submitted by me. If I knew all these before I wouldn't have bothered to list any name with SH.

 

[rayman617]

95% of my submissions go through an internal review meaning they get at least 3 expert review upvotes, yet they always get rejected. I'm guessing it's because they are mostly newly dropped hand regs but a good name is a good name in my opinion. Are poorer names being favored over good ones just due to a higher age?

 

[JudgeMind]

I’ve gone through my whole portfolio at sh and have gotten expert classifications completed on any name that didn’t have an “excellent” completeness. This was following a short discussion I had with darpan Munjal who recommended improving discoverability of domains in my portfolio. I hope sales will pick up by doing this. I’ve also started submitting to contests, which is something I wasn’t doing much of.

 

[DomainBanana]

95% of my submissions go through an internal review meaning they get at least 3 expert review upvotes, yet they always get rejected. I'm guessing it's because they are mostly newly dropped hand regs but a good name is a good name in my opinion. Are poorer names being favored over good ones just due to a higher age?

Agreed, Rayman.

The SH review process continues to be jumbled and inconsistent.

The recent video by Grant @ SH on how to improve one's acceptance rate has some fine branding 101 advice, but SH's actual approval process doesn't seem to follow these standards at all.

There are now at least 4 types of reviews on SH, each with its own standards and biases:

• 'Expert' reviews - based on the opinion of a few competing sellers who are simultaneously trying to sell the same kind of names they're approving/rejecting. We don't see these scores anymore.
• Internal reviews - inconsistent. heavily favors a few top-selling keywords (cana, qore, finiti, etc.)
• Bulk acceptances - where SH makes individual, under-the-table deals and occasionally accepts a large amount of junk from large portfolio holders.
• Combination - 'experts' might unanimously like a name, but then the SH internal team has some extra time and decides to override the 'expert' opinion and reject the name

Most sellers I hear from, here and in Branders Union, say the #1 frustration with SH is the review process.

One thing SH does extremely well, though, is listen to feedback. So over time, I'm hopeful they'll eventually get things right.

 

[brandstablish]

I submitted a domain I own s/t/o/r/k/s/y/./c/o/m to SquadHelp for review. Within hours of my domain being rejected by the SquadHelp internal team (September 30th), they registered a variation of it (storkzi) and 48 hours later the domain is now live complete with a logo on SquadHelp.com.

@GrantP I'd be interested to hear your thoughts regarding why this should be considered anything less than slimy.