BrandBucket Experience

[xtremex]

hello

I am new to BrandBucket. Before getting my hands on this

I wish to experience about brandbucket from my fellow members


Thanks

 

[Justin Matmor]

As I said BB has worked for me. Before I joined BB I couldn't even sell a great name for $300. Now, I sell S**t names on BB for $3000. I'm not trying to convince anyone to join BB: The less sellers/competitors on BB the more sales I make.

 

[Brandworthy]

As I said BB has worked for me. Before I joined BB I couldn't even sell a great name for $300. Now, I sell S**t names on BB for $3000.

It's good to see that you're having success there now, although I know it took time for you to make some sales. Since it works for you it makes sense for you to stay there, but you do yourself a disservice assuming that your experience there is typical. I suspect the overall sales rate is approaching industry standard, and on an average $2.5K sale your're paying approximately 35% commissions when you include the logo fee, which is around twice the industry standard. So for at least some sellers it makes sense not to stay on the BB platform.

Some of the changes I've seen over the last few years on BB:

* A couple of years ago all my sales there were at the listed price, while nowadays I get many requests from BB sales reps for discounts (which mostly come to nothing);
* Continued expansion of inventory levels has seen accompanies by decreases in overall sales %'s;
* I'm not aware of any new marketing activity or campaigns on their part, and in fact I don't believe they've announced anything in this department for a very long time;
* They are now less transparent with sellers than ever, and the move to Slack was a very clever move given that the free version of Slack only retains the last 10K messages so basically history there deletes itself. In fairness they got the discussion out of the public view (here) and into a private community (Slack), so from a business perspective this was a good move;
* Their narrow focus on brands is starting to get diluted with the addition of more generic names which many sellers would not consider to be brandable domains;

I think the industry as a whole, including brandables, is down this year. Perhaps the bumper sales year of 2015 lulled many domainers into a false state of overoptimism about how healthy the industry was.

FWIW I still admire what BB have done from a business perspective, and perhaps with hindsight I might even accept some of their practices as being good business decisions, albeit not in the best interests of sellers. But I'm afraid the gloss has dimmed significantly at this stage, at least for this seller.

YMMV of course.

 

[Sinh]

The stupidest thing in my domaning is to have listed my domains on BB, lost $10$ per name, wasted time and lost chances to sell domains. I have asked them to remove all my domains there.

 

[Justin Matmor]

It's good to see that you're having success there now, although I know it took time for you to make some sales. Since it works for you it makes sense for you to stay there, but you do yourself a disservice assuming that your experience there is typical. I suspect the overall sales rate is approaching industry standard, and on an average $2.5K sale your're paying approximately 35% commissions when you include the logo fee, which is around twice the industry standard. So for at least some sellers it makes sense not to stay on the BB platform.

Some of the changes I've seen over the last few years on BB:

* A couple of years ago all my sales there were at the listed price, while nowadays I get many requests from BB sales reps for discounts (which mostly come to nothing);
* Continued expansion of inventory levels has seen accompanies by decreases in overall sales %'s;
* I'm not aware of any new marketing activity or campaigns on their part, and in fact I don't believe they've announced anything in this department for a very long time;
* They are now less transparent with sellers than ever, and the move to Slack was a very clever move given that the free version of Slack only retains the last 10K messages so basically history there deletes itself. In fairness they got the discussion out of the public view (here) and into a private community (Slack), so from a business perspective this was a good move;
* Their narrow focus on brands is starting to get diluted with the addition of more generic names which many sellers would not consider to be brandable domains;

I think the industry as a whole, including brandables, is down this year. Perhaps the bumper sales year of 2015 lulled many domainers into a false state of overoptimism about how healthy the industry was.

FWIW I still admire what BB have done from a business perspective, and perhaps with hindsight I might even accept some of their practices as being good business decisions, albeit not in the best interests of sellers. But I'm afraid the gloss has dimmed significantly at this stage, at least for this seller.

YMMV of course.

Everything you said makes sense.

 

[Justin Matmor]

It's good to see that you're having success there now, although I know it took time for you to make some sales. Since it works for you it makes sense for you to stay there, but you do yourself a disservice assuming that your experience there is typical. I suspect the overall sales rate is approaching industry standard, and on an average $2.5K sale your're paying approximately 35% commissions when you include the logo fee, which is around twice the industry standard. So for at least some sellers it makes sense not to stay on the BB platform.

Some of the changes I've seen over the last few years on BB:

* A couple of years ago all my sales there were at the listed price, while nowadays I get many requests from BB sales reps for discounts (which mostly come to nothing);
* Continued expansion of inventory levels has seen accompanies by decreases in overall sales %'s;
* I'm not aware of any new marketing activity or campaigns on their part, and in fact I don't believe they've announced anything in this department for a very long time;
* They are now less transparent with sellers than ever, and the move to Slack was a very clever move given that the free version of Slack only retains the last 10K messages so basically history there deletes itself. In fairness they got the discussion out of the public view (here) and into a private community (Slack), so from a business perspective this was a good move;
* Their narrow focus on brands is starting to get diluted with the addition of more generic names which many sellers would not consider to be brandable domains;

I think the industry as a whole, including brandables, is down this year. Perhaps the bumper sales year of 2015 lulled many domainers into a false state of overoptimism about how healthy the industry was.

FWIW I still admire what BB have done from a business perspective, and perhaps with hindsight I might even accept some of their practices as being good business decisions, albeit not in the best interests of sellers. But I'm afraid the gloss has dimmed significantly at this stage, at least for this seller.

YMMV of course.

Do you think Margot has lost the passion to exponentially grow Brandbucket since the sale of her husband's business to google?

http://www.socaltech.com/orbitera_acquired_by_google_for_more_than____m/s-0066604.html

http://www.wehoville.com/2016/08/09...ls-cloud-company-google-reported-100-million/

 

[Brandworthy]

Do you think Margot has lost the passion to exponentially grow Brandbucket since the sale of her husband's business to google?

I have no insight into Margot's mindset, and I think at least some sellers know that she and I have not enjoyed a friction-less relationship (she might question "what relationship?").

I did a lot of digging into how their internal search worked, and I was outspoken about what I felt were biases in the results displayed. After I pointed out that she was using privacy on at least some of her portfolio (which made it even more difficult to determine if more of her names were appearing in top results) she promptly changed her portfolio URL. That was a very surprising move I thought, and one which could easily be construed in a negative light IMO. I get that she doesn't like the limelight, but I think her reaction was the point where I lost confidence that their business acted in the best interests of third party sellers.

I don't think her overall business objectives have changed all that much though, and I imagine she still would like to trade successfully, but I think the business direction itself has changed somewhat over the past couple of years.

I still wish her luck regardless. I always like to see others achieve success. But at this time I'm not interested in taking part in any future success they see as I don't think that BB's rising tide will lift all ships equally.

 

[Domains - Wanted]

The stupidest thing in my domaning is to have listed my domains on BB, lost $10$ per name, wasted time and lost chances to sell domains...

How so? Lost chances, I mean. Could you elaborate on that?

 

[Domains - Wanted]

I don't need to be an embasaador to average 1 sale per month. That is all I care about...unlike others here who constantly whinge...because they can't sell.

Interesting. One sale per month on what size portfilio at BB?

 

[Sinh]

How so? Lost chances, I mean. Could you elaborate on that?

The buyers contacted me via Whois email but I couldn't negotiate with them because we have to inform to BB for 30 days in advance to remove the domains or we have to pay 30% of our sales.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

I did a lot of digging into how their internal search worked, and I was outspoken about what I felt were biases in the results displayed. After I pointed out that she was using privacy on at least some of her portfolio (which made it even more difficult to determine if more of her names were appearing in top results) she promptly changed her portfolio URL. That was a very surprising move I thought, and one which could easily be construed in a negative light IMO. I get that she doesn't like the limelight, but I think her reaction was the point where I lost confidence that their business acted in the best interests of third party sellers.

I assume this is now deleted from slack? I would have enjoyed seeing this.

 

[Justin Matmor]

The buyers contacted me via Whois email but I couldn't negotiate with them because we have to inform to BB for 30 days in advance to remove the domains or we have to pay 30% of our sales.

Only reason why they contacted you directly is to try to buy the domain cheaper. If your name wasn't published on BB they would not have discovered your domain.

 

[Justin Matmor]

Interesting. One sale per month on what size portfilio at BB?

Now have around 120 BB names. Been a member for 12 months. In the first 6 months I had less than 20 names. All my sales have been made in the past 6 months.

 

[BrandClub.com]

Only reason why they contacted you directly is to try to buy the domain cheaper. If your name wasn't published on BB they would not have discovered your domain.

If you setup your own landing page, potential buyers discover your domain the same way they do it on BB: Direct Navigation / Type In!

 

[Justin Matmor]

If you setup your own landing page, potential buyers discover your domain the same way they do it on BB: Direct Navigation / Type In!

You are forgetting one important thing. BB gets alot of organic traffic from end users. Highly unlikely your site gets anywhere near as much organic traffic.

 

[BrandClub.com]

You are forgetting one important thing. BB gets alot of organic traffic from end users. Highly unlikely your site gets anywhere near as much organic traffic.

BB get´s traffic because they get all the organic traffic from all the domains using their servers; which means you are sending them traffic to sell their own domains ...

 

[Sinh]

Only reason why they contacted you directly is to try to buy the domain cheaper. If your name wasn't published on BB they would not have discovered your domain.

NO, they didn't know what BB was, all my domains there are premium names 4L .com, the lowest is near $6k.

 

[boker]

You are forgetting one important thing. BB gets alot of organic traffic from end users. Highly unlikely your site gets anywhere near as much organic traffic.

It's fairly easy to check, most of BB traffic is coming through direct type in. I had names listed at BB and others listed at all big marketplaces, like sedo, godaddy, flippa and afternic and still 80% sales are coming through private email.

 

[Justin Matmor]

A buyer feels much safer buying from BB than an unknown site (eg an efty site)...particularly for names worth more than $2K.

 

[BrandClub.com]

A buyer feels much safer buying from BB than an unknown site (eg an efty site)...particularly for names worth more than $2K.

Absolutely WRONG. All others are using TRUSTED third party escrow companies ... Way more TRUSTED tan BB!

 

[boker]

A buyer feels much safer buying from BB than an unknown site (eg an efty site)...particularly for names worth more than $2K.

I don't know why you are implying that end users should know BB, 99% of them never heard of BB...they barely know how to do a forward...there are other domainers who own more than 40k domains or other brokers with over 100k domains, do you think that somebody who is not a domainer knows anything about them?

 

[Justin Matmor]

99% of end users wouldn't know what an escrow company is.

A buyer would feel more comfortable buying from BB from a valuation point of view than buying from a private seller. End users would feel less ripped off buying from BB.

 

[Sinh]

Absolutely WRONG. All others are using TRUSTED third party escrow companies ... Way more TRUSTED tan BB!

Yes, you are right.

 

[Arca]

@Brandworthy - What motivates you to continue being a BB seller, despite all the issues you have brought up, and despite lacking sales results?

Do you think BB offers the best channel for you to sell the nearly 1000 names you have listed with them, even with all the issues that affect their platform today?

Since your BB portfolio is still up, I assume you find the positive aspects of their platform to outweigh the many negatives you have highlighted. Would be interested in hearing your reasoning behind still being a BB seller (rather than moving your portfolio to other sales channels).

 

[hookbox]

When you have a portfolio that is stacked with a ton of 6 letter names you have no choice but to stay with one of the marketplaces. That junk will never sell consistently on its own. I just dropped close to 1,000 of them in the past couple months. Over 2 million possible CVCVCV combinations is way to many choices to be profitable. If it doesn't have a keyword or partial keyword it will probably never ever sell without BB or BR.

 

[BrandClub.com]

99% of end users wouldn't know what an escrow company is.

99% of my buyers know who Escrow.com is and 99% of my buyers never ever heard about BB ...