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.

 

[GoKaizen]

SH is adding paid marketing placements.

Still don't think this will improve STR.

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

 

[silentg]

I have started submitting names for Premium listing.

Using coins ofcourse since I only had standard listings before.

25 names submitted
- 5 pending review
- 13 accepted
- 7 rejected

For the rejected names, how long before you wait to submit again?

 

[wwwulff]

how long before you wait to submit again?

60 days

 

[wwwulff]

I got a mail from Squadhelp 20.04 local time that they have sold one of my names for $5K and the money for the sale landed in my Paypal account 21.56 - Nice job Squadhelp

 

[KingBilly]

If I pay a coin to submit my Standard Listing to Premium, and it gets rejected... and I've already used up all my appeals for the month (on other domains)... can I just use another coin to re-submit it to Premium? If it's a strong domain (yes I know that's subjective) does it stand a chance of getting approved on the second try? Or are they just gonna see that it was rejected previously and reject it immediately again?

TIA

 

[Dane]

I love the landing pages on SH so this was a tough decision, but I decided to move my names out of SH -- at least for now. I did finally sell a name there (just one) but I sold more names on Afternic in the same period of time. In fact I had to pay a higher commission to Afternic because the names were set to Squadhelp's DNS. I'm hoping the new platform that SH is working on will be something great. I guess we'll see.

 

[KingBilly]

I love the landing pages on SH so this was a tough decision, but I decided to move my names out of SH -- at least for now. I did finally sell a name there (just one) but I sold more names on Afternic in the same period of time. In fact I had to pay a higher commission to Afternic because the names were set to Squadhelp's DNS. I'm hoping the new platform that SH is working on will be something great. I guess we'll see.

Hey how long did you try SH for? I looked at this thread and it seems maybe since April? If so, that's just about 4-5 months, a relatively short timeframe... I get the feeling that our premium domains on SH take about a month to gain "traction" anyway in terms of search relevance and traffic. Just throwing it out there.

You can list on both SH and Afternic, btw. Maybe you knew this already. Plus SH will auto-syndicate out to Sedo as well.

 

[Dane]

Hey how long did you try SH for? I looked at this thread and it seems maybe since April? If so, that's just about 4-5 months, a relatively short timeframe... I get the feeling that our premium domains on SH take about a month to gain "traction" anyway in terms of search relevance and traffic. Just throwing it out there.

You can list on both SH and Afternic, btw. Maybe you knew this already. Plus SH will auto-syndicate out to Sedo as well.

I'm not exactly sure how long, but it's not the first time I've tried SH over the past few years. Regardless, I had other reasons for moving my names out. For example, I don't like the way SH advertises our Premium names. Have you seen their ads? They just display a group of logos -- without any text that says "These domain names are for sale." And since the logos don't have the '.com' on them, it's not even clear that they *are* domain names or that they are for sale (especially to a non-domainer). It's just a group of logos. Why isn't there ANY text in these ads telling the viewer that these are domain names AND that they are available for purchase?

The reason why SH charges such a high commission for premium name sales is (supposedly) because of the above mentioned advertising that they do. But I personally don't think that type of advertising is worth the higher commission rate. And while I like the low 7.5% commission for non-premium names, I'm selling those names on Afternic, not on SH, so it's costing me a higher commission to Afternic since I'm using Squadhelp's DNS. Why are they selling on Afternic but not on Squadhelp? I don't know. But it doesn't make sense to me to leave the names on SH just to pay more to Afternic when they make the sale.

 

[KingBilly]

I'm not exactly sure how long, but it's not the first time I've tried SH over the past few years. Regardless, I had other reasons for moving my names out. For example, I don't like the way SH advertises our Premium names. Have you seen their ads? They just display a group of logos -- without any text that says "These domain names are for sale." And since the logos don't have the '.com' on them, it's not even clear that they *are* domain names or that they are for sale (especially to a non-domainer). It's just a group of logos. Why isn't there ANY text in these ads telling the viewer that these are domain names AND that they are available for purchase?

Huh, interesting. For me, it includes the .com extension, and also includes marketing copy indicating they are brand names for sale. Here's a screenshot of the Facebook ads I see: [edit: seems I can't post screenshots or links here unless I upgrade my account]

The reason why SH charges such a high commission for premium name sales is (supposedly) because of the above mentioned advertising that they do. But I personally don't think that type of advertising is worth the higher commission rate. And while I like the low 7.5% commission for non-premium names, I'm selling those names on Afternic, not on SH, so it's costing me a higher commission to Afternic since I'm using Squadhelp's DNS. Why are they selling on Afternic but not on Squadhelp? I don't know. But it doesn't make sense to me to leave the names on SH just to pay more to Afternic when they make the sale.

The other value add that SH provides for the higher commission rate is what they call "discovery". Brandable invented or half-invented names are unlikely to ever get any type-in traffic/searches, so the argument is those names are more easily discovered in a platform like SH.

But yes totally agree that listing Standard domains on SH is kind of pointless, aside from just more exposure.

(only playing devil's advocate on all of the above btw)

 

[Dane]

The other value add that SH provides for the higher commission rate is what they call "discovery". Brandable invented or half-invented names are unlikely to ever get any type-in traffic/searches, so the argument is those names are more easily discovered in a platform like SH.

That's true. Like I said, it was a tough decision. I still love their landing pages and the few employees that seem to work there are nice people, so we'll see what happens down the road.

 

[anwarumair]

I have reached almost 1000 Shortlists and 10k+ Views on SquadHelp. Got 101 domains listed as Premium. So far I have sold one domain (submitted my first domain for review in April 2023). With so many views and shortlists, one would expect to sell a lot more names. What could be the reason for this?

BTW all of my domains are priced between $2000-$3000 (which is minimum). I am curious to know if you guys are seeing similar results. The one sale I got already covered all the expenses incurred so far at SH (including domain renewals). Hoping that I can get at least 2 more sales by the end of this year.

I would really appreciate it if you guys also share your overall results.

P.S. My theory is if you have a lot of domains (say 500), you can expect more consistent sales each month.

 

[Templr]

I'm not exactly sure how long, but it's not the first time I've tried SH over the past few years. Regardless, I had other reasons for moving my names out. For example, I don't like the way SH advertises our Premium names. Have you seen their ads? They just display a group of logos -- without any text that says "These domain names are for sale." And since the logos don't have the '.com' on them, it's not even clear that they *are* domain names or that they are for sale (especially to a non-domainer). It's just a group of logos. Why isn't there ANY text in these ads telling the viewer that these are domain names AND that they are available for purchase?

The reason why SH charges such a high commission for premium name sales is (supposedly) because of the above mentioned advertising that they do. But I personally don't think that type of advertising is worth the higher commission rate. And while I like the low 7.5% commission for non-premium names, I'm selling those names on Afternic, not on SH, so it's costing me a higher commission to Afternic since I'm using Squadhelp's DNS. Why are they selling on Afternic but not on Squadhelp? I don't know. But it doesn't make sense to me to leave the names on SH just to pay more to Afternic when they make the sale.

Isn’t this re-targeting ads. So in theory the user would have visited SH and various names. These names are then re-targeted in the ads on other sites. Therefore, they should be aware of the site without the need of stating .com for sale etc.

 

[Dane]

Isn’t this re-targeting ads. So in theory the user would have visited SH and various names. These names are then re-targeted in the ads on other sites. Therefore, they should be aware of the site without the need of stating .com for sale etc.

Perhaps. But that's not the case in the ads that I saw. I had not looked at any of the "logos" I saw in the ads that were presented to me. Regardless, I think it would be worthwhile to mention that these are domain names and they are available for purchase. Seems pretty reasonable to me. You may not agree.

 

[KingBilly]

I have reached almost 1000 Shortlists and 10k+ Views on SquadHelp. Got 101 domains listed as Premium. So far I have sold one domain (submitted my first domain for review in April 2023). With so many views and shortlists, one would expect to sell a lot more names. What could be the reason for this?

BTW all of my domains are priced between $2000-$3000 (which is minimum). I am curious to know if you guys are seeing similar results. The one sale I got already covered all the expenses incurred so far at SH (including domain renewals). Hoping that I can get at least 2 more sales by the end of this year.

I would really appreciate it if you guys also share your overall results.

P.S. My theory is if you have a lot of domains (say 500), you can expect more consistent sales each month.

Show attachment 244938

I'm not an expert, and I haven't made it as far as you. But my understanding is that the Sell-Through Rate they show is for domains that have been listed for over 12 months, and it seems to hover around 5%. So I think that in months 12-24, you could expect that about 5% of your domains will sell by the end of month 24. But the math isn't clear, it's kind of fuzzy and hard to extrapolate.

 

[Templr]

Perhaps. But that's not the case in the ads that I saw. I had not looked at any of the "logos" I saw in the ads that were presented to me. Regardless, I think it would be worthwhile to mention that these are domain names and they are available for purchase. Seems pretty reasonable to me. You may not agree.

Absolutely, agree. Anything for better transparency.

 

[redgoblin]

I was planning on slowly building a branded portfolio on SH but hearing some of the horror stories on here (700 premiums with no sales) I strongly suspect it will be a waste of time trying to get traction with no guarantee of any sales even with that many domains. SHocking ....

 

[Dane]

I was planning on slowly building a branded portfolio on SH...

Been there, done that, years ago. It was painstakingly slow and took forever to complete (their back end system is not the easiest to work with in my opinion) but I was determined. The result? Zero sales. Not one. Huge waste of a lot of my time. I ended up switching to Dan and had better success there, so I gave up on the white-label branded portfolio idea.

 

[DomainBarracksRob]

.

 

[SELMimo]

I was planning on slowly building a branded portfolio on SH but hearing some of the horror stories on here (700 premiums with no sales) I strongly suspect it will be a waste of time trying to get traction with no guarantee of any sales even with that many domains. SHocking ....

I have a shocking data about SH sales.
I was able to track all of the sales reported by SH and I found only 5k names.
I think knowing how much names has been sold at SH over the years is the best way to know for sure either to stick with them or not.

 

[redgoblin]

Been there, done that, years ago. It was painstakingly slow and took forever to complete (their back end system is not the easiest to work with in my opinion) but I was determined. The result? Zero sales. Not one. Huge waste of a lot of my time. I ended up switching to Dan and had better success there, so I gave up on the white-label branded portfolio idea.

How did Dan compare?

 

[KingBilly]

I have a shocking data about SH sales.
I was able to track all of the sales reported by SH and I found only 5k names.
I think knowing how much names has been sold at SH over the years is the best way to know for sure either to stick with them or not.

How did you track all the sales reported by SH? They don't make this info publicly available...

 

[Dane]

How did Dan compare?

Multiple sales on Dan. None on Squadhelp. Note that this was prior to GoDaddy acquiring Dan.

 

[KingBilly]

Been there, done that, years ago. It was painstakingly slow and took forever to complete (their back end system is not the easiest to work with in my opinion) but I was determined. The result? Zero sales. Not one. Huge waste of a lot of my time. I ended up switching to Dan and had better success there, so I gave up on the white-label branded portfolio idea.

Years ago? In this thread, from April of this year, there are multiple comments from you indicating that you were just getting started on SH. You even said "I'm giving SquadHelp a shot" on April 16, 2023... I don't understand how that could be years ago?

 

[Dane]

Years ago? In this thread, from April of this year, there are multiple comments from you indicating that you were just getting started on SH. You even said "I'm giving SquadHelp a shot" on April 16, 2023... I don't understand how that could be years ago?

Well, if we're gonna get technical and go all the way back to April... Did you also see my comment on April 7, 2023, where I said "I had set up a WLM with Squadhelp a while back, but lots of little bugs pushed me away. I'm guessing the bugs have probably been worked out by now so I'm thinking about trying them again." My comment on April 16 was a follow-up to my comment on April 7.

 

[SELMimo]

How did you track all the sales reported by SH? They don't make this info publicly available...

It is publicly available but you should dig a little bit. Some users have access too to sales reports