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.

 

[Velocity.Now]

Views do not correlate to sales. Using data that has no correlation to sales would be as useful as looking at the weather and trying to gauge if sunny vs cloudy days increase sales. It will do nothing but mislead you.

Views come from bots. Views come from other domainers. Views come from your own views (yup, Atom does not parse those out). Views come from creatives. Views come from spammers. Views do not correlate to sales.

So you are saying there is no way to appraise the performance of the majority of domains on Atom, only the few that have contest likes, above average time spent on lander pages, double visits from bots etc....

How does Atom rate domain performance? what have my domains ranked in top 10% on marketplace achieved to do so?

 

[DomainRecap]

Thanks, but what percentage of your portfolio has been sold or has had offers ? The % that has not will need to be evaluated somehow.

You're free to waste time in whatever way you want (I play video games), but unless you contact a customer directly, you have absolutely no way of truly creating a sale out of thin air by looking through visitor data. It's basically separating gnat shit from pepper.

As long as you know you're wasting your time, and you're having fun, then go for it.

 

[DomainRecap]

So you are saying there is no way to appraise the performance of the majority of domains on Atom

Yes, the domains that received serious offers or have sold were all high-performing domains.

When you are passively selling on a marketplace like Atom, there is no other metric that directly correlates to sales, only the illusion of correlation in order to enhance seller participation and loyalty.

 

[silentg]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1974113373588771326

https://www.atom.com/startup-inspiration

 

[NameGroove]

So you are saying there is no way to appraise the performance of the majority of domains on Atom, only the few that have contest likes, above average time spent on lander pages, double visits from bots etc....

How does Atom rate domain performance? what have my domains ranked in top 10% on marketplace achieved to do so?

The top 10% graphic is irrelevant. Ignore it. Here are a selection of names showing the Top 10% graphic from my acct. Ignore this stat. It has no correlation to popularity on Atom's marketplace. It's likely a left over graphic from early on when the site was more gamified than it is today. It should be updated to truly reflect popularity or it should be removed imho.

 

[URL Stream]

Views come from bots. Views come from other domainers. Views come from your own views (yup, Atom does not parse those out). Views come from creatives. Views come from spammers. Views do not correlate to sales.

Is it really that bad?

If yes, why does repeat visitors indeed correlate to STR as you wrote earlier?

And I thought this was worth something; foolish assumption?

 

[NameGroove]

Is it really that bad?

If yes, why does repeat visitors indeed correlate to STR as you wrote earlier?

And I thought this was worth something; foolish assumption?
Show attachment 284525

Atom announced data specifically on repeat visits that showed correlation. Even though it's obvious many of the repeat visits are bot farms, some are not. Likely those that are not - have a high correlation to sell through. Whereas with views - the denominator is simply too big a number to overcome the one buyer who looked 2x. That's possibly one reason why repeat visits are meaningful while views are not. Now, if Atom cleaned up views (removing all the questionable visitors) it may then be that views become correlative. But until then, they are not. Atom hasn't released any stats showing them to be so. And I believe them.

You can look at the data on repeat visits on #17 here
https://www.namepros.com/blog/17-proven-tips-for-better-domain-sell-through-rates.1349455/

And btw, instead of focusing on views and top 10% graphics, may I suggest focusing on the 17 items that Atom did say correlate to sales. Time much better spent imho

 

[MarkedMarket]

I have to admit that I am very sceptical about Atom's current dashboard, that seems to indicate that the "direct lander visits" are very low (unrealistically low in my opinion), and their "platform discovery views" are very high. Not sure also why it would take so long to adjust to the right numbers.

It gives the impression that Atom might be "exaggerating" the performance of their own platform views to make it look to sellers that lots of people are active on their platform and that listing on Atom is really worth it. I personally don't believe the current numbers...

 

[DomainRecap]

I have to admit that I am very sceptical about Atom's current dashboard, that seems to indicate that the "direct lander visits" are very low (unrealistically low in my opinion), and their "platform discovery views" are very high.

Unless you have your nameservers set to Atom, that's the way the data should be.

"Platform Discovery Views" could come from anywhere - displayed in search results, shown in Atom online promotions, etc. Even in my case, with Atom nameservers used, this week my PDVs have started to outpace my Direct Lander Visits.

 

[love4ever]

So a domain appears for searchers thousands of times !! And nobody thought to click direct on this domain to see the lander info !!!

Strange !! I feel something not logical !!

.

 

[MarkedMarket]

Unless you have your nameservers set to Atom, that's the way the data should be.

"Platform Discovery Views" could come from anywhere - displayed in search results, shown in Atom online promotions, etc. Even in my case, with Atom nameservers used, this week my PDVs have started to outpace my Direct Lander Visits.

My direct lander visits are very low compared to the amount of domains I have listed. Unrealistically low.

So to me it currently looks like Atom does show this to make it look their platform discovery functionality is perceived by sellers as very valuable, and sellers remain loyal to Atom.

Suppose they would show that the total direct lander visits of your domains are 5000, and the platform discovery views are 10. Then you bring a lot of value to Atom as a seller directing all your domains to their platform, while their actual platform doesn't add anything for you. That would likely lead to a lot of people leaving Atom.

So now they create the perception (illusion?) to sellers that their platform really adds a massive amount of value, while I have my sincere doubts about that.

 

[MarkedMarket]

So a domain appears for searchers thousands of times !! And nobody thought to click direct on this domain to see the lander info !!!

Strange !! I feel something not logical !!

Show attachment 284530

.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make in my post(s) before. I don't trust these numbers and think Atom only shows this to make it seem that their platform is more valuable than it actually really is (and to keep their sellers loyal to use their platform and nameservers).

 

[NameGroove]

I have to admit that I am very sceptical about Atom's current dashboard, that seems to indicate that the "direct lander visits" are very low (unrealistically low in my opinion), and their "platform discovery views" are very high. Not sure also why it would take so long to adjust to the right numbers.

It gives the impression that Atom might be "exaggerating" the performance of their own platform views to make it look to sellers that lots of people are active on their platform and that listing on Atom is really worth it. I personally don't believe the current numbers...

So a domain appears for searchers thousands of times !! And nobody thought to click direct on this domain to see the lander info !!!

Strange !! I feel something not logical !!

Show attachment 284530

I disagree, I do not think Atom is nefariously massaging stats.

See photo - that is a discovery view. Your name is buried inside that jumble of 100 names per page. And you think people should be clicking on a single name within your folio when they search? Assuming the name was simply averagely popular it'd get <1% click through to your lander (because the buyer can click none, search differently, go to the nav bar, click on the footer, etc).

Further, note how some of these names have absolutely nothing to do with the searched term "click now". What does 4pm.com have to do with it? And therein is another issue - all those discovery views aren't necessarily appropriate. Your names could be appearing next to searches and yet have no synergy whatsoever with the buyers search (and thus receive appropriately no or limited clicks)

My avg name gets .2% - 1.75% click through (hard to say exactly cause the platform views keep dramatically changing due to promotions). But <1% is generally what you'd expect for an avg name.

Crappy names get no clicks. But many crappy names get discovery views. Now that is data you can potentially use.

 

[DomainRecap]

So a domain appears for searchers thousands of times !! And nobody thought to click direct on this domain to see the lander info !!!

Maybe. Lots of domains with popular keywords will show up in search, but won't fit the needs of 99.999999% of potential buyers so they won't click.

Now, if you're referring to a brandable with no discernible keywords or linkage to English words, then yes, you may have a point.

 

[love4ever]

So a domain appears for searchers thousands of times !! And nobody thought to click direct on this domain to see the lander info !!!

Strange !! I feel something not logical !!

Show attachment 284530

.

in comparison with stats from spaceship, i just felt the direct visits ( Zero ) in atom not logical !!

** Platform Discovery Views in atom, Means Search Views in spaceship
** Direct Lander Visits in atom, Means Page Views in spaceship

* Maybe someone will argue that don't compare a registrar visitors to a domains marketplace visitors !!
OK but here we are talking about landers visitors ! and seeing it ZERO is confusing !!
OR maybe spaceship exaggerating/lying with their lander visitors numbers !!? COULD BE !!

.

 

[Velocity.Now]

Talking about stats, how is everyone's only important stat ? My ASTR is 1.66% , has been heading south lately. I don't have any official ASTR on BrandBucket but I calculate it be 3.75%.

 

[MarkedMarket]

I disagree, I do not think Atom is nefariously massaging stats.

See photo - that is a discovery view. Your name is buried inside that jumble of 100 names per page. And you think people should be clicking on a single name within your folio when they search? Assuming the name was simply averagely popular it'd get <1% click through to your lander (because the buyer can click none, search differently, go to the nav bar, click on the footer, etc).

Further, note how some of these names have absolutely nothing to do with the searched term "click now". What does 4pm.com have to do with it? And therein is another issue - all those discovery views aren't necessarily appropriate. Your names could be appearing next to searches and yet have no synergy whatsoever with the buyers search (and thus receive appropriately no or limited clicks)

My avg name gets .2% - 1.75% click through (hard to say exactly cause the platform views keep dramatically changing due to promotions). But <1% is generally what you'd expect for an avg name.

Crappy names get no clicks. But many crappy names get discovery views. Now that is data you can potentially use.

Show attachment 284535

You say the following: "And therein is another issue - all those discovery views aren't necessarily appropriate."

That in itself could be viewed as "massaging stats". Atom wants sellers to show that there are lots of people looking at your names, and therefore they have likely used the broadest sort of scope to justify any sort of "platform discovery view".

And they can tell any investors that they have a billions of views on their combined domains, but they have not provided us with the exact way their algorithm counts these views. Most of these "views" are (likely) completely unrelevant and therefore shouldn't be included.

Add to this the fact that the "direct lander visits" are very very low and you can see that Atom might have had an agenda to present sellers with these sort of statistics.

 

[NYJimbo]

** Platform Discovery Views in atom, Means Search Views in spaceship

Is this true ? I thought this was just your name is part of the displayed names when you key in a search word on Atom. I thought it was an exact match search on Spaceship.

 

[DomainRecap]

* Maybe someone will argue that don't compare a registrar visitors to a domains marketplace visitors !!
OK but here we are talking about landers visitors ! and seeing it ZERO is confusing !!

Just to be clear, where are your nameservers right now?

 

[love4ever]

Just to be clear, where are your nameservers right now?

This stats NOT for same domains , different collection of domains with same extension , premiums pointed to atom and others pointed to spaceship .
My point is when search views reach to thousands, then direct visitors illogical to be ZERO .

.