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.

 

[br1ll1on]

My strategy I was doing which worked for me hasn’t been working lately. No sales to speak of on my end for a few weeks.

If you have a small portfolio, price your names low to sell faster and use that capital to build your portfolio.

I'm not sure if this was a reply to my message but yeah most of my domains are priced low and I add 2-3 domains to my portfolio weekly ,I have had sales on dan but none on SH hence the question I asked earlier ""I have 56 premium on SH , started late November with 64% approval rate right now, but yet to make a sale on SH.
Any advice on how to improve sale chances or do I just need a bigger portfolio""

 

[NameWell]

My strategy I was doing which worked for me hasn’t been working lately. No sales to speak of on my end for a few weeks.

If you have a small portfolio, price your names low to sell faster and use that capital to build your portfolio.

Same here... actually not the same, worse Currently, I have 431 premium domain name on SH. I don't know what happened, but I'm not getting ANY sales for the last three months. Usually, I would have 1 - 3 sales a month. Sometimes I would have one month with 0 sales, but three months with 0 sales is ... WEIRD. All my domain names are priced below $3000. Many at $1999. So I don't think I'm overpricing. And my Portfolio Optimization Score is 93%.

 

[Recons.Com]

Same here... actually not the same, worse Currently, I have 431 premium domain name on SH. I don't know what happened, but I'm not getting ANY sales for the last three months. Usually, I would have 1 - 3 sales a month. Sometimes I would have one month with 0 sales, but three months with 0 sales is ... WEIRD. All my domain names are prices below $3000. A lot at $1999. So I don't think I'm overpricing. And my Portfolio Optimization Score is 93%.

Not strange at all.

SH was able to pull large STR because the portfolio was small and ad/ social media based sales were a huge boost.

Now the portfolio has grown exponentially while the a&sm based sales have grown fractionally.

Example: 20000 names give natural sales of 200, plus 1000 names from paid and social, add up to str of 6%.

Now for 100 000 names, organic sales are 1000, plus paid and social of 1200 (e.g.), combined str is 2.2%.

And if a bigger chunk of that goes to sellers that put lots of hours promoting their names in the system, your str can deep even below 1%.

 

[JudgeMind]

Historically I’ve done well with squadhelp and so have accepted the higher commission rates because I was maintaining a high STR, if the STR is dropping to around 2%, the industry standard, then one could achieve the same STR at another “lower commission” venue.

I’m not jumping ship but have been analyzing this for some time and comparing my STR at afternic, epik, alter, domainify, brandmo etc.

According to my dashboard my current annualized STR is 4.92%, down from 5.88% at the start of this year and down significantly from two years ago.

My portfolio is currently sitting at 692 premium listings.

sales stats to date for 2021:

-12 sales
-1 sale I personally brought the buyer into sh
-3 of the sales were through afternic

to me it seems as though sh advertising budget has not grown as fast as the inventory has. I also wonder if their ad campaigns are weighted heavier to higher priced names.

will continue to monitor things and share success or non-success stats here with you

 

[Ostrados]

Same here... actually not the same, worse Currently, I have 431 premium domain name on SH. I don't know what happened, but I'm not getting ANY sales for the last three months. Usually, I would have 1 - 3 sales a month. Sometimes I would have one month with 0 sales, but three months with 0 sales is ... WEIRD. All my domain names are prices below $3000. A lot at $1999. So I don't think I'm overpricing. And my Portfolio Optimization Score is 93%.

I have worse experience here I am now sitting on 502 premium domains but no sales for me in last 6 months!! Not sure what is wrong with SquadHelp. I will certainly move all my domains out within 1-2 months if things do not improve.

 

[JudgeMind]

‪Some of my colleagues with 200-600 name premium listing portfolios have left squadhelp in the last couple of months. They felt the marketplace was too saturated and they weren’t getting exposure. Exposure = sales.. they had no sales for months.‬

so those who are experiencing slow or no sales are not alone. Hoping sh can work to help sellers get more exposure.

 

[wwwulff]

I have worse experience here I am now sitting on 502 premium domains but no sales for me in last 6 months!!

WOW - That's incomprehensible, sorry for you

 

[Charybdis]

I have worse experience here I am now sitting on 502 premium domains but no sales for me in last 6 months!!

Have you listed all 502 domains on the Afternic Fast Transfer network? Is Fast Transfer turned on for all domains?

 

[synecdoche]

‪Some of my colleagues with 200-600 name premium listing portfolios have left squadhelp in the last couple of months. They felt the marketplace was too saturated and they weren’t getting exposure. Exposure = sales.. they had no sales for months.‬

so those who are experiencing slow or no sales are not alone. Hoping sh can work to help sellers get more exposure.

I am assuming all the SH premium names are already on Afternic FT and already on SEDO (through SH syndication). The only variable to play with is the landing page. What would be the realistic options if one had to take all the names away from SH - my sense is DAN or NS3/NS4 or NS5/NS6 are the only different possibilities. Not sure how much an impact this change will have, considering that names are already on Afternic and SEDO. Maybe pricing can be made more flexible, as an additional lever.

Anyways, similar boat here, 130 premium names at SH, and my last sale was in October 2020. The only action I have taken is stopped adding names and pointing any new names to DAN.

 

[Charybdis]

I am assuming all the SH premium names are already on Afternic FT

No, you have to manually add your domains to Afternic (before authorizing them first on Squadhelp for Afternic listing).

Only SH-owned domains are syndicated to Afternic by default, although I checked my SH-owned names and not all of them were on the Fast Transfer network.

 

[Ostrados]

Have you listed all 502 domains on the Afternic Fast Transfer network? Is Fast Transfer turned on for all domains?

Yes all listed at Afternic.. the funny thing is that I get regular sales at Afternic and I have to pay SH commission on these sales!

So I have no sales from SH platform for the last 6 months but I still pay commission on my SH domains sold at Afternic during that period. Which means SH for me now is more a liability, they are just lowering my net profit without contributing to my sales. It is obvious that nothing will improve and I think it is time to leave SH.

 

[Ostrados]

WOW - That's incomprehensible, sorry for you

Yup I think my yearly STR now is lower than 1% which is unbelievable!

 

[Charybdis]

Yes all listed at Afternic.. the funny thing is that I get regular sales at Afternic and I have to pay SH commission on these sales!

So I have no sales from SH platform for the last 6 months but I still pay commission on my SH domains sold at Afternic during that period. Which means SH for me now is more a liability, they are just lowering my net profit without contributing to my sales. It is obvious that nothing will improve and I think it is time to leave SH.

I read that if you have 501 or more domains at Squadhelp, then they offer this service for free: "Complimentary Portfolio/ Best Practices Review by SH Marketplace Consultant" - have you tried this? Is it any useful?

 

[Ostrados]

I read that if you have 501 or more domains at Squadhelp, then they offer this service for free: "Complimentary Portfolio/ Best Practices Review by SH Marketplace Consultant" - have you tried this? Is it any useful?

No I didn't try because I already know the best practises, I have everything 100% optimized including: description, root words, possible uses, visual images..etc.

SH worked for me very well in the past using same strategy, the reason it is stopped working is over saturation in the marketplace, and sadly there is no cure or workaround for that problem.

 

[Charybdis]

No I didn't try because I already know the best practises, I have everything 100% optimized including: description, root words, possible uses, visual images..etc.

SH worked for me very well in the past using same strategy, the reason it is stopped working is over saturation in the marketplace, and sadly there is no cure or workaround for that problem.

But if it's really free, then it couldn't hurt to try. Maybe they could share some statistics with you which are not available in your account. I guess you don't need to follow their advice if you don't agree with them.

And maybe the competition is fierce now and if other sellers publish similar names like yours but at lower rates, then you should lower your rates too, or wait longer to sell the domains.

 

[NameWell]

But if it's really free, then it couldn't hurt to try. Maybe they could share some statistics with you which are not available in your account. I guess you don't need to follow their advice if you don't agree with them.

And maybe the competition is fierce now and if other sellers publish similar names like yours but at lower rates, then you should lower your rates too, or wait longer to sell the domains.

I'm curious about that too, but I need to grow my portfolio a bit more before I'll be able to use it So if you'll decide to try it please share your experience here.

 

[Recons.Com]

But if it's really free, then it couldn't hurt to try. Maybe they could share some statistics with you which are not available in your account. I guess you don't need to follow their advice if you don't agree with them.

And maybe the competition is fierce now and if other sellers publish similar names like yours but at lower rates, then you should lower your rates too, or wait longer to sell the domains.

In theory, it could hurt if you consider that the owner could be better at it than the hired staff that probably doesn't have any formal education or super qualifications in the field and that the owner has way higher skin in the game. Plus he knows his names better. That is the reason he bought them.

 

[Charybdis]

In theory, it could hurt if you consider that the owner could be better at it than the hired staff that probably doesn't have any formal education or super qualifications in the field and that the owner has way higher skin in the game. Plus he knows his names better. That is the reason he bought them.

Maybe the SH consultant can see all the previous sales data on the Squadhelp platform and maybe the consultant could suggest to lower the prices, I don't know. If the consultant has access to a larger dataset then he could offer unique insights.

Anyway, if the service is free, then it shouldn't hurt to try it.

 

[Ariff BD]

March Squadhelp/afternic Sales

.com

BlueTriton $1999 - afternic (squadhelp listed)
NutriQore - $2199 SH premium
JadeAndRose - $2429 SH premium
SharpHawk - $1699 SH premium
urfashionstore - $499 - Sedo SH WLM

.ly

Start - $6799 SH premium

.ca
VitaminShop $3300 (WLM)

Show attachment 187368

You Sold .ca in squadhelp? Standard Listing?

 

[Recons.Com]

Maybe the SH consultant can see all the previous sales data on the Squadhelp platform and maybe the consultant could suggest to lower the prices, I don't know. If the consultant has access to a larger dataset then he could offer unique insights.

Anyway, if the service is free, then it shouldn't hurt to try it.

Yeah, people who could understand branding to that level and handle data analytics like that would command salaries way higher than a small company like SH can afford.

And lowering prices is not desirable given that they probably priced many names lower and they take 30-35% of the money.