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.

 

[Peak.Domains]

Heads up -

I had 3 names disappear from my account a couple of weeks ago.

I initially reached out to SH because I was *pretty sure* I had a few more names in my account, than were showing up in the total.

They told me nothing was wrong, there were no signs of names being removed, none of my names had been delisted...

So, I went through and audited every name in my registrar accounts to cross-reference to every name in my SH account, and found that 3 names had, indeed, gone missing from my SH premium listings.

After about 10 days of back and forth and "having our tech team look into it", SH finally asked me what those names were. I had previously told them the names days prior, and they said they were looking into it...

I'm not sure what they could have been looking into for 10 days without even knowing the names in question... but alas...

It turns out that somebody was sending SH fake proof of ownership of domains, and SH was transferring those listings to them without even contacting the rightful owners of these names, and without giving any warning or notification that they were transferring the listings, and without even leaving any type of note or sign that it had happened.

They were just shadow-transferring listings from one account to another, based on one person showing fake ownership.

I don't blame the support staff for the fact that it took so long to sort this out, but it's absolutely ridiculous that Squadhelp will transfer ownership of listings so flippantly, without any warning, without any notice, and without any log that it had even happened.

If someone reaches out and says "Hey, I'm the person who owns this domain, please move the listing to my account," at the VERY LEAST squadhelp needs to contact the current owner of the listing - right? You'd think so!

And if not, at the VERY least, they need to keep some record of this having happened that support staff can easily see when the rightful owner reaches out, right? You'd think so!

And if none of that is possible, at the VERY VERY VERY least, they should send some sort of notification like "We've removed this listing from your account because somebody else provided proof of ownership."

But it turns out, it's none of the above.

The listings just get removed from your account, and if you don't notice it yourself - you're out of luck.

The names that were removed and transfered to another user's portfolio had been purchased by me very recently directly from SH's marketplace, I sent payment to SH for these names, I verified they had been transferred and received, yet all it took for someone else to claim ownership was sending in fake proof of ownership.

Squadhelp has assured me that this won't happen again because the seller who was claiming ownership over other people's names has had "action taken against them," but I don't see what prevents anyone else from doing this to any SH seller, unless the system in place is changed to prevent this from happening.

I suggest that Squadhelp does the following:

- If someone claims ownership of someone else's listing, contact BOTH parties. Don't just communicate with the person claiming ownership, communicate with the person who currently holds the listing.

- NEVER EVER transfer ownership of someone's listing without sending them a heads up, a notification, a quick email. Anything.

- Keep notes about when you're moving names from one account to another based on another seller claiming ownership, so that it doesn't take weeks to get it sorted out.

Be really careful out there folks, especially if you have fast transfer enabled on your names with SH, because if you have a lot of listings and you aren't paying super close attention to ensure that all of your names are still in your account, every single day, then anyone can come along and claim to own your SH listings with a fake screenshot and you might never even notice.

 

[JudgeMind]

Sales update End of April

Only 1 sale at squadhelp in April so far, slowest month ive ever had with sh. I have spent a fair bit of time this month building my squadhelp portfolio. Its getting more difficult everyday to find decent brand names to invest in and the average overall price to pay for these has been going up like the price of lumber in north america . Still hoping to land a decent 5 figure sale with squadhelp. It seems the demand for 4L .com dropped off at squadhelp as soon as i started to list mine last year.

Sold name:

HotLikeMe (c.o.m) $3059

Note: Total sold includes wlm sales

 

[JudgeMind]

I haven’t reported sales in a couple months here due to my time being spent with a new born baby girl. My wife and I are truly blessed with this beautiful miracle.

sales at sh for may and June included:

Trak (co) $3794
CoinBee (io) $3388
Holy (vc) $5922
Muvero (com) $2299
EstateArena (com) $1699
AudioInfluencer (com) $1299 WLM
Zenabia (com) $2199

I purchased many wholesale listings and a close to 100 name portfolio of sh listed names.

my total listings at sh now is just under 800 premium names with 7 pending commission approval.

regards ~ judge

 

[decades80]

Ive been quite concerned about the sales on SH till last week, but have sold 2 domains in a week: Now Watt for 1690 USD and Cash Raffle in king for 4800 USD in installments.

 

[Recons.Com]

Well, it is time to pull trigger with SH. While I have just 107 or so names listed with them, they haven't delivered a sale in about a year. That is with quite a low pricing and huge commission that I had agreed at the time, expecting that SH would be beating AN/regular lander performance to justify it. They completely fail in that while having the audacity to demand that names at AN should be listed at higher prices. Basically, admitting that given similar price people would still prefer to buy elsewhere even with the domain pointing to SH.

Regardless, not just for last year, but for the few years that SH sold 5 names for me out of the batch, even Afternic (with no logos and no waiting, picking names and all the hastle) has outperformed them for me, albeit on a bigger sample size. Regardless, few years and 112 names (with sold) is enough for me to draw the conclusion. All that gamification without actual sales delivered is pointless.

I believe SH with all of its oversaturation can still be ok for some, if they are willing to spend lots of time participating in the contests and jumping regularly through all the hoops of boosts and so on. That is if they put zero value on their hours spent.

 

[Croissant]

Hello Everyone,
My feedback:
"NO sales" with 30 nice 4L domains" even with acceptable price.

Spent hell of a time for their descriptions definitions .....

What I also didn't like, more than no sales;
When they make an advertisement on linkedin;
they promote the same names; which means they are trying to sell the same domains / maybe their domains ....
or they dont even spent an effort to modify the advert :D

+1$ per domain per user - nice business =)

I tried but I will never use SH again,

 

[phaethon]

I have just sold an 8 letter SH rejected name for 3K on AN.
I'm mentioning this, because it was quite brandable consisting of two great keywords. I was really surprised that they rejected it.
I don't have any names with them by the way.

 

[GrantP]

Unpleasant experience at Squad Help. Submitted names some got accepted. In the panel there is an approve or reject price button. On 3 names the price they gave was too low to even bother so I hit reject on those 3 names.

Immediately started getting emails telling me to point name servers to squad help after hitting the REJECT button! I contact Squad Help as the 2nd or 3rd email had threatening language in it. No resolution or apology.

About 5 days later I get an automated email telling me my account is temporarily suspended. All this because I hit reject on those three names who’s suggested prices I did not agree with.

Hey @karmaco ,

Thanks for sharing this. The experience you described is unacceptable, and if I were in your shoes, I too would probably think twice about listing my names again with us. Having said that, I will share this with our team and we will dig deeper into why this happened. The name server emails are only sent out in case of names that are approved and live on SH. So in this situation, if you rejected the commission, it is possible that the names automatically went back to a Basic or Basic Plus listing status (if that's how they were originally submitted).

In any case, it is clear that we need to do a better job in handling the communication, and explaining the differences between basic, basic plus and premium listings.

We absolutely do not want sellers to be under any pressure to accept the commission or selling price - which is why we have multiple acceptance steps before a name goes live. Our philosophy is that the sellers should see a clear value in listing their names with us, and if we ever fall short of delivering the value, the sellers should be free to list their names elsewhere.

Thanks again for sharing your feedback, which is very valuable. Our team is working 24/7 to improve our platform and we will take this feedback into account to further improve our platform experience.

 

[JudgeMind]

UPDATE

Almost 9 months since started with SH.

moved 7 names.

Current portfolio size 261 premium names.

Sell thru rate 4.5%

Avg time to sell a name 12 weeks

Portfolio popularity 69%

Total views 422,832

Total shortlists 7,166

SH claims that avg 6 month sell thru is around 10% and 12 month is 20%... so far this is not an accurate estimate imo.

The SH support is by far best I’ve ever had with any marketplace. Always someone available 24/7 to ask questions too and always get a timely response. They are also very open to suggestions for design, options for sellers and buyers etc, some of my suggestions have been implemented into the platform which is great to see!

Seems that the majority of contest holders are not interested in paying premium prices for their brands. Although the contest holders do have an option to state they are not interested in marketplace names, most don’t. This wastes a lot of time for sellers submitting names only to have them rejected because the CH is not interested in paying premium price. I get these messages all the time from CH.. I wish sh would make it’s mandatory selection for CH to choose if they are interested in premiums.

 

[brandsly]

Hi what I find interesting is my rejected names at SH generally get picked up by one or both of the other two BB or BP.
Latest examples PuraSight, DuraFeel and TotalRogue .coms SH rejects BB accepted.
Just pays to spread your names around I think If you believe in them. I also note that SH puts a lower value sometimes nearly half on the ones they do accept. Cheers.

It's very easy to doubt your names and drop them when these marketplaces reject them. I agree that you should try to submit to other marketplaces, or even try to sell them yourself by listing on Afternic/Sedo and pointing to Dan.

Just a few months ago, SH rejected L u m i r i . com and it was sold literally a couple of weeks later for $2195. I'm sure there are plenty of examples like this.

I also think that SH prices are lower than other marketplaces in general. I don't blame them because the contests allow the customers to get a handregged brand for just a couple of hundred dollars. It would be much harder to sell premium listings if prices are too high. The sweet spot on the site seems to be under or around $2K (of course this excludes and does not apply to liquid domains, dictionary words etc), rather than the usual sweet spot of 2k-3500. Similar quality of brandable names are being priced and sold higher on BB and even my own personal portfolio overall. Sure, you can adjust the prices higher, but with so many similar names listed on the site at lower prices, the chance of your names getting sold would become lower if you price your names higher than the rest.

If their sell through rate makes up for it, great. However, that is one piece of statistics that no one will ever know. So my view is to not let their rejection and undervaluation dominate your decisions over your names.

When they reject your names, it might be difficult to and might take some time and practice to be able to swallow them down, move on and continue to believe in your names, but it has paid off many times in my own case.

If you think they undervalued your name, it only costs you a few dollars to renew it for another year and give it a shot to sell for higher prices yourself. Just have patience, wait for a bit, if later you are sure that you cannot sell it yourself, then you can list the name at the lower suggested price. This doesn't just apply to SH. I have a ton of approved but unpublished names in BB account too because of undervaluation. Just the other day, I looked back at my submissions over the years, I've sold a ton of the unpublished ones at much higher prices myself since I refused to list them at their approved prices.

I've also paused submitting names to SH at the moment even though I still have close to 600 SH coin balance. They seem to be in this experimenting stage trying all kinds of things...I'll wait till their process stabilizes and matures to consider resume submissions.

 

[GrantP]

I would like to address some of the recent comments.

1. Of the 60,000+ names listed in SH marketplace, we currently have 1 name that is solely owned by SH. All other names are either owned by sellers, or are registered by SH on behalf of other sellers who receive a commission when the name sells.

2. None of the SH discovery algorithms (e.g. sorting, AI) differentiate names based on registration type or commission rates. In other words, a name does not achieve a higher ranking in the Marketplace because it is registered by SH (where SH commission is higher).

3. We price most recent hand-regs in the $1699 to $2000 price range - this pricing applies to SH owned domains as well as seller owned domains. This is not meant to undercut anyone - we just find this range to be the optimal price point for most hand-reg names. Over time, as we collect additional analytics, we do increase the pricing for several SH registered domains. Sellers also have the flexibility to make some adjustments to those prices (higher or lower) for both seller owned and SH registered domains.

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.

I looked into this specific domain. Your domain, s/t/o/r/k/s/y/./c/o/m was submitted to SH on Sep 30, at 7:38AM CST, and was rejected on Sep 30, at 6:06pm CST.

The other domain, s/t/o/r/k/z/i.com was submitted as an unregistered domain by another seller on Sep 25 at 8:26 pm (5 days before your submission). It was approved by SH on Sep 29th at 6:07pm CST (1 day before your submission) and registered by SH on behalf of other creative on Sep 29th at 8:47pm CST. (still 1 day before your submission). This can also be verified via Whois info in case you are interested.

As a background, we get more than 200,000 unregistered domain submissions per month to SH contests (in addition to several thousand unregistered marketplace submissions). It would be unethical for us to take seller's or creative's ideas and then register our own names based on those ideas.

We understand that it can take time to build trust with a marketplace or any business for that matter. We have a 24x7 support team that can help answer any such concerns. You can certainly disagree with our approval or rejection criteria. However, please use your best judgement before implying a business may be engaging in unethical or "slimy" practices.

 

[JudgeMind]

Happy new year everyone and best of luck to all of you in 2021 with your sales at squadhelp!

December 2020 Squadhelp sales report

Premium sales
Bevaria.com - $1450
ForeverNest.com - $1899 - Afternic sold SH premium
PropertyFX.com - $1999

WLM sale
CoThinker.com - $1199

Squadhelp Stats (as of 1-05-2021)
606 premium listings

2020 sales review

Total premium sold - 24
Total WLM sold - 9
Sold on payment plan - 8
Total contests won - 2
Total contests entries - 426

 

[JudgeMind]

SH sales report February 2021

February was very slow for SH “marketplace” sold names. In fact, I didn’t sell any in February. Afternic again was the best option, two of my sh listed premium names sold via afternic.

inlay.io $3099
BloomBiotics.com $1999

continuing to try to find ways to increase exposure of names in the SH marketplace.

 

[JudgeMind]

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)

 

[tiletalk]

i have to say i am disappointed to the time it is taking for domain reviews to take place even after paying the "coin"

used to take 2-3 days but now seems to take over 10 days... makes me regret buying coins to mass submit names...

 

[TBN]

I have over 650 domains with Squadhelp, but I must admit I am starting to get a bit concerned. I really like the platform, but it has been around 7 months, I think, since the last sale.

 

[NameWell]

A few days ago I had a second sale this month. So two sales in September and 0 sales from March till September (5 months) with a portfolio of 560 premium domain names. Also, I got an offer of $1300 for a domain name priced at $2299. SH declined the offer and the buyer disappeared. I would have rather accepted that offer since it was a random brandable domain name, but oh well. Let's see what October will bring .

 

[TBN]

Mine are really bad, more than 650 names, one sale the entire year. Squadhelp is losing me money, a considerable amount, but I really do like them, and the platform, I just keep waiting for sales to improve. It was only 5 sales the year before that though.

Things are looking sad on SH. No sales in October and no sales so far in November. Within the last 7 and a half months, I had only two sales and that is NOT a great result. My portfolio size - 567 premium names.

How are your sales?

 

[Dane]

Yes, it is only for names using their nameservers:

https://helpdesk.squadhelp.com/en/articles/7861270-ai-based-domain-assessment-beta

Do you automatically check this for all Standard Listings?

At this stage, we only do the AI assessment for Standard Listings pointing to SH name servers. If the Standard Listings are not pointing to SH or haven't yet been verified, they will likely be excluded from AI assessment.

Thanks. One would think that if SH is able to determine which names will likely qualify for Premium status that they would allow the seller to upgrade at no cost. After all, it means potentially MUCH more money for SH if the name sells. The reason for charging $1 was because if it was free, everyone would submit all their crappy names. But if SH's system determines that the name is good enough in their opinion for Premium, why should we still have to pay to submit it?

 

[TBN]

@TBN,
I disagree. 700 domains is way .. as in, waay over the number of domains most of us have with SH. It is a high number to be considered a good metric.

I only had around 10-15 domains or so at BB and around half had been sold. Those are old stats but still...

Thanks. Yes. Actually, I totally agree with you on that. I am very concerned myself. I am just aware there are others doing better. I appreciate the insight. I have been unsure how long to hold on for, given the amount of money I am losing.

 

[Maged Khatab]

Hi

Any suggestions to improve our SH sales are more than welcome.

Thx!

Sure, my first question was about "Invented Brandable" domains. The problem with these kind of names is that most of them are worthless. And unfortunately, I've seen lots of portfolios with a huge portion of these domains.

I understand that some are building portfolios only for brandable platforms. In this case, it's fine but if most of your domains or your main portfolio is at SH or other brandable platforms then I think it would be wise not to fall for the trap of getting as many "Invented Brandable" domains into your portfolio but build a portfolio that sells everywhere even on simple DAN landing page with no logo or retargeting ads.

Based on my previous questions here are some recommendations to build/boost your portfolio:

- Reduce the percentage of "Invented Brandable" domains to 10 or 15% max, and invest in names that passes radio test only. 4L and short names are the best.
*Good examples: Daka, Senta, Planto.. etc.
*Bad examples: Qrinzett, Pikkza, Bartcle.. etc.

- "Blended Brandable" are even better option than "Invented Brandable" domains.
*Good examples: Microsoft, Instagram, Playformance.. etc.
*Bad examples: Nothing in particular but a blend that doesn't make sense like Fridayellow.

- Focus more on "Compound Brandable" domains in your portfolio "Should be the majority of your names if you're building a separate portfolio for brandable platforms".
*Good examples: GoodPlace, NiceCar, RapidCare.. etc.
*Bad examples: WoodenSky, HomesFancy, YellowModernGates.. etc.

- Focus more on "Exact Match" and "Generic" domain names "Should be around half of your portfolio if you're selling on or off brandable platforms".
*Good examples: Ocean, CarRental, WeightLoss.. etc.
*Bad examples: Nothing in particular but any keyword with rare usage or not a proper use case like Impignorate

- Hand-registered domains are not bad but they work better with new trends and brandables. Closeouts and Auctioned domains are not always the best but you can definitely get real premium aged and valuable names based on many factors.

- .com domains should be the majority of most portfolios.

- "Lease to own" option is a great choice for recurring payments and helps with cash flow.

- Afternic Network syndication is a must as it exposes your names on hundreds of registrars and platforms over the web.

One more thing if your portfolio is loaded with these kinds of invented names, you might also try to re-design some logos and participate in SH contests where you can propose your names and hopefully generate sales.

I understand that some might disagree with any of the above points but that's fine. We're here to share our experiences and learn from each other. I hope I was helpful and please feel free to correct, add to the above points, or ask me anything regarding this topic.

 

[GoKaizen]

SH is adding paid marketing placements.

Still don't think this will improve STR.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1689624447005691904

 

[anwarumair]

Have you guys noticed that SquadHelp's Time to Sell metric keeps getting longer and longer? It's now at 186 weeks. What could be driving this? I don't think it has anything to do with the number of listings, as it only takes into account the domains that have been sold. A large amount of old domain sales maybe, but unsure how that might happen.

Also, I think it's only a matter of time for SquadHelp to reach half a million listings. Would that mean less exposure for everyone? Have you guys noticed a decrease in daily views? Would love to hear what you guys think, especially those who are doing well on SqaudHelp.

 

[aZooZa]

I've just skim-read this thread. People sitting on hundreds of domains for years - you need to get outbounding - it's not that hard. As for SH, that name alone is some of the worst branding I've seen. Their concept of curation is also very flawed. YMMV, IMHO.

 

[okaydomains]

Worth noting, @JudgeMind has quit SH after being one of the top 10 sellers on their platform for several years.

https://nitter.net/BrandAimCom/status/1729989896016916536

He had posted here in Sept that his SH sales this year had suddenly dried up. I was wondering if it had improved.

As i approach 3 months without a sale at squadhelp, i question if everyone else is experiencing similar results. Currently i have 1263 premium listings at SH and the last sale was on June 17th (sale originated from afternic).