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.

 

[Future Sensors]

I noticed that it's waiting for some mouse movement, perhaps to check if you're a human. When mouse movement (or scrolling) is detected, it shows immediately. But yes, it's strange, and looks like there's something wrong with server capacity.

@Atom.com This is still happening. An empty frame is shown without any Pricing info or Buy button. Could you please fix this?

When not clicking or scrolling, the Pricing info and Buy button will only appear after 8 seconds. What's happening? The contents of this block should show immediately. In your own words:

"Speed is more than a luxury; it’s a dealbreaker. In a world of shrinking attention spans, users expect instant access. If your site drags, they’re gone."

 

[ran_doank]

Do you guys know when this empty price bug started happening? Was it after the "server upgrade" or after the track price feature was enabled?

 

[NameGroove]

@Atom.com - on another thread (where I tagged you) we've been having a discussion about whether indexing is important for sales. Some believe it is very important.

@Atom.com since you monitor clicks to STR (via your for sale Google indexed pages) would you be willing to share what % of sales happen from indexed Google names?

If not - can you share generally whether this is a substantive portion of sales (that is, is it important to have domains for sale indexed?) For example, if google changed their algo and all your for sale indexed names disappeared, would sales be materially impacted? Or are they a small part of sales mix?

EDIT NOTE: GoDaddy's response "...Following testing, it's something we monitored closely - this hasn’t negatively affected sales or overall traffic on the platform. While seeing your own domains in search results may look reassuring, in practice, SEO indexing of landers hasn’t proven to be a meaningful source of leads, and can ultimately harm any marketplace's ability to show up at all..." (bolding emphasis mine)
https://www.namepros.com/threads/afternic-official-thread.1295231/post-9404913

@Atom.com - it'd still like to know if your data corroborates or differs.

 

[Optimal Names]

Right in the middle of submitting domains for premium consideration.



<GATEWAY TIMEOUT - CLOUD FLARE>

For whatever reason, all of the submissions that I sent to be considered for premium got to where they were supposed to go! So the timeout either didnt affect it or my request made it a nick of time right before the timeout.

I didnt check until this morning.

 

[Exot]

@Atom.com In some retargeting ads, I'm seeing really old logos being used for the domains. Logos that are no longer active. Please use the most current logo for the domain.

Did you try clearing cache on the individual names in your listings dashboard?

 

[Future Sensors]

Did you try clearing cache on the individual names in your listings dashboard?

No, and I don't have to do that. The logo shown on the lander shows correctly. In retargeting ads, a logo from >6 months old was visible. Not even on my device, but saw it on a device of a guest that was browsing on my internal wifi network.

 

[Exot]

No, and I don't have to do that. The logo shown on the lander shows correctly. In retargeting ads, a logo from >6 months old was visible. Not even on my device, but saw it on a device of a guest that was browsing on my internal wifi network.

I know the logo eventually updates on the landers. Not sure how their caching mechanism works but maybe theres an internal trigger to re-render all logo states saved on their end - worth a try. Maybe the ad logos don't get re-rendered automatically.

 

[Future Sensors]

I know the logo eventually updates on the landers. Not sure how their caching mechanism works but maybe theres an internal trigger to re-render all logo states saved on their end - worth a try. Maybe the ad logos don't get re-rendered automatically.

This is just about 6 or 8 combined logos (my domain and domains from other Atom customers) in one Google Ad. It's not really about caching here.

 

[DomainRecap]

Jesus, why are some of my Atom domains suddenly cycling back into "Pending Verification"?

I was searching the traffic stats and noticed some of my domains were in 'Pending Verification", then when I refreshed there were more.... then less... then more...

Whatever is happening at Atom is freaking me out and I'm having "get out of Dodge" vibes.

 

[Dane]

I'm having "get out of Dodge" vibes.

Get on the bandwagon. Or the chuck-wagon. Either way.

(** to clarify, I've already started driving out)

 

[NorthernDomains]

Get on the bandwagon. Or the chuck-wagon. Either way.

(** to clarify, I've already started driving out)

I reluctantly notified (30-day notice) Atom that I was moving away. I say reluctantly because I do like the platform. Sales being the measuring stick, I'm coming up short over there.

 

[Dane]

I say reluctantly because I do like the platform.

I'm in the same boat. I like what they're doing, and I like the people, but I keep having random issues that leave me not trusting the system overall. I also gave them 30 day notice on the premium names and today I started moving out a bunch of standard and plus names. Hopefully things will be fixed (once and for all) and I can move them back at some point.

 

[DomainRecap]

Personally, I think that Atom is trying to do too much, too soon, and is applying updates without sufficient understanding of how these could affect other parts of the site - like the hidden prices issue on mobile.

There are all these flashy updates constantly hitting the site that seem to be adversely affecting core functionality, and that's now how it's supposed to work. No amount of flash and dash is worth losing customers, offers and sales.

When I moved to Atom near the end of February, I was quite pleased and was getting very good results, but over the past month or so, the overall experience has been rapidly going downhill.

 

[D Haynes]

Personally I'm very pleased with Atom. I don't have any premium listings (a conscious decision) and haven't noticed any real issues with landers etc (using their WLM). Might be a numbers game. I have around 170 names listed so am a lot less likely to experience issues than if you have a few thousand names.

 

[King]

I am now getting

domains are pending verification. Please verify the ownership to improve exposure.

I am a trusted seller...

Still seeing

Since you are a trusted seller, you can skip domain ownership verification for your domains

 

[DomainRecap]

I am now getting

Are these on old or new domains?

If they're old, I had some in my account cycling today as well.

If they're new, these may currently be listed on Atom by someone else, and trusted or not, you will need to authorize them.

 

[Name2go]

Are these on old or new domains?

If they're old, I had some in my account cycling today as well.

If they're new, these may currently be listed on Atom by someone else, and trusted or not, you will need to authorize them.

The same thing happens to me today. I'm a trusted seller and have to verify ownership for four new handregs. I took one domain shortly after the drop (registrar Spaceship). The other domains were never taken historically (registrar Dynadot).

 

[Future Sensors]

@Atom.com Sorting on WLM sites stopped working today (Relevance/Popular/New/High/Low). I've tried several browsers and devices. Please have a look at it, thanks.

Just filed a new bug report. Sorting on Price isn't working correctly in both directions on WLM.

 

[Dane]

Just filed a new bug report.

Bugs, bugs and more bugs. Such a shame.

 

[NameGroove]

Wanted to let everyone know I recently sold an Atom Premium name on Afternic.

Atom verified my AN payout and paid the $300 via their Commission Match Guarantee
https://helpdesk.atom.com/en/articles/9737210-atom-com-commission-match-guarantee

In the past some in the thread had issues collecting, but it went smoothly for me.
Just thought I'd add that data point.

Even though it sold on Afternic - my gut feeling is that it was due to Atom's marketing (although obv I can't be sure). You can read about the interesting history of this name here.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1932784942330556615