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

 

[JudgeMind]

I really wish brand bucket could be faster with approving names. I currently have almost 31 names in Q and many were submitted on Nov 17th, also have a name pending a logo.

 

[miko137]

My accepted domain is still waiting for logo, 7 weeks after submitted!!!
incredible.
I don't know if they are just skipping my domain or if everything is halted for some reason.
Anybody is getting logos recently?

 

[JudgeMind]

I have a logo in Q. After speaking to BB staff it looks like they have a large list of logos in Q and is also why they are taking so long to approve domains. They need more logo designers.

 

[PowerDN]

about two months ago, I edit one of my published name, then it needed review (pending), and now it's till on queued for publishing.

 

[slimjim270]

Hi All,

I have submitted over 50 domains to BrandBucket and already have over a dozen accepted.

I have over 200+ 5L domains, so thought I might give the site a try with 50 of them.

I don't mind waiting 30 days to be accepted/declined... as I have been sitting on these domains for a while... but after paying $10 for several accepted domains, I am still waiting 41 days from the time of acceptance to receive a logo on 5 of them. Yes, I clicked on the $100 radio button. Going forward I'm going to increase the price slide-rule 10% and click on the $200 logo button to test if that increases the pace of design.

I also noticed that they accept/decline in batches (what I call their Review Cycle). The last Review Cycle occurred for me back on 12/3/2014 (12 days ago). The last RC prior to that was prior to Thanksgiving (14 days). So, I am hopeful they are due... for a review...

I hope you find the below stats helpful... (today is 12/15/2014 as the benchmark)

I am a big fan of transparency, so will post this and other metrics periodically to share with others my experience on the site.

-Jim

BRANDBUCKET METRICS: Date: Delay Today
12/15/2014
Last Review Cycle 12/3/2014 12 days
Oldest Submit w/ Pending Review 11/16/2014 29 days
Oldest Accept w/ Logo Waiting 11/4/2014 41 days

 

[urljunky]

My stats are same as slimjims. last batch that got reviewed was 12/03/2014.
and the latest batch pending review was submitted on 11/18/2014.
So I do think they are do for another cycle.

 

[slimjim270]

Hi All,

'7' appears to be my lucky number.

I recently submitted 54 .com domains to BrandBucket with 14 accepted over the past 30 days.

7L's had the highest rate of Accepts in my initial batch.

Accept Stats: (by domain length)

5L - 2 Accepts
6L - 3 Accepts
7L - 7 Accepts (50% of 14 total Accepts from a recent Review Cycle)
8L - 2 Accepts

* This appears consistent with prior post # 322 by Hookbox. Great post by the way. Very informative. (I've included a quote below of Hookbox's review)

My Observations

1) 5-8 letter names appear to be the "Sweet Spot" for sales and accepts at BrandBucket. I don't have any 4L's to submit, so have no data for 4L submits. 9L + appear to be a waste of time when referring to the 5-8 ratios from Hookbox's review. My initial batch is consistent with the review results.

2) It makes sense BB would accept inventory to where they sell best.

3) BB should provide more stats to motivate/educate their inventory suppliers (sellers). I am a big fan of transparency. "You manage what you measure" is how I operate. Like many of you, I use data to better understand market dynamics and make informed decisions.

4) BB should hire a couple of designers (on a temp basis) to eliminate their logo backlog. Logo's in Q are a lost sale opportunity. Also, this becomes a missed opportunity for their customers (both Buyers & Sellers) while names sit in a Q waiting a logo design. A $1,000 investment for a (temp) designer for 40 hours would provide value for all parties (BB, Buyer, Seller) and would likely knock down the backlog quite a bit.

I hope you find the post helpful...

-Jim

ps: I also recently joined Brandroot and Namerific. I have a low volume of submissions with them at the moment, but will provide a comparison with metrics once I have more submits with each of them and a larger data set to benchmark.

Good info Ray. I was doing analysis on this also and I think one of the most important aspects is the length of the name which you touched on some. Most people here are fixated on what BrandBucket will accept but more important is what will sell if they do accept it. Bottom line the name could be accepted but may never sell based on past performance by length. Here is the complete breakdown of sales by letter length.


4 letter 48 sales
5 letter 145 sales
6 letter 198 sales
7 letter 149 sales
8 letter 92 sales
9 letter 31 sales
10 letter 8 sales
11 letter 4 sales
12 letter 4 sales
13 letter 0 sales

53% of all 4 letters listed sold
32% of all 5 letters listed sold
23% of all 6 letters listed sold

As you can see from this analysis most of the names that BrandBucket sells are made up one word style names because they are less in length. Two word names sell some but based on track record you can see that its not so often based on length since most two word names are 8 letters or longer. Also you can see from this that the shorter the name the easier it is to sell which constitutes higher prices from end users. You can also see the dramatic drop off from 7 letters to 8 letters and beyond when it comes to sales. Hope this helps some.

 

[PowerDN]

Sold two names today at BB

 

[wwwulff]

Congrat - Which names?

 

[wwwulff]

Just sold SureWorth at BB

 

[advaita]

Congrats Rizki - how many names do you have with them? How long they been listed?

 

[12345]

Congrats on the sales!

I've sold these four over the last couple of weeks...

A D S P I K E
Y I E L D L Y
S T Y L E C L O U D
H E A L T H S I G N A L

 

[PowerDN]

One is 14 months and the other is 6 months.

Congrats Rizki - how many names do you have with them? How long they been listed?

 

[slimjim270]

Hi All,

Will there be a continuous need for "brandable" domains?

I have thought long and hard about this topic and searched for non-bias data to support my response. I believe the answer to be "yes" based on data and trending statistics I recently consolidated.

As some of you know, I am a Data Analyst by trade, so this morning I built a spreadsheet of historical Trademark applications from the US Patent & Trade Office over the past 100+ years. (Raw Data Source: uspto.gov)

An interesting trend...

Decade Filed Registered
1880's 36 36
1890's 324 305
1900's 2,410 2,264
1910's 2,479 2,338
1920's 10,759 10,468
1930's 9,832 9,945
1940's 28,095 19,036
1950's 44,616 48,238
1960's 124,310 112,984
1970's 212,876 235,925
1980's 592,291 441,828
1990's 1,582,308 720,510
2000's 2,612,607 1,422,580

* Less than 50 years ago ~10,000 applications/year were submitted (filed) with the USPTO. Today over 320,000 applications/year are submitted (filed) with the USPTO.


What drove the spike?

The invention of a 2 new technologies (radio and television) provided an opportunity for companies to promote their products nationally. While promoting their products, companies wanted "their" beer not just "any beer" to be purchased and the USPTO went on a hiring binge of attorneys to accommodate the surge in Trademark applications as modern day differentiation of products (branding) exploded.

The recent spike in the last 2 decades (199X & 200X) was due to another new technology... the internet.

By the way, in the 1st 5 years of 201X, there have already been over 1.8M trademark applications.


How does this relate to BrandBucket?

Economics.

With the supply of .com's available for handreg quickly diminishing and the demand for Trademarks increasing at a fast pace, I believe the pricing of .com's in our inventory will rise (a good investment) and the need for a marketplace to acquire .com's will continue to grow (a sales channel).

I don't personally know the founders of these marketplaces, but I believe Margot (BrandBucket), Michael (Brandroot), and Zane (Namerific) have made a good decision to build marketplaces for pre-screened .com's to assist business owners with acquiring the asset they need to build a brand; a .com being one of those assets.

I also believe, based on the above chart, that .com's are a reasonable investment as the supply is regulated (only 456,976 4L char .com's will ever exist) much like only ~500,000 1955 double die pennies will ever exist as the supply was regulated (accidentally) by the US Mint.

I hope you find the above chart and post interesting...

-Jim

 

[hookbox]

I love data and always appreciate when someone takes the time to do stuff like this.

Interesting that during the great depression era was the only time that trademarks decreased throughout the timeline.

One problem with this data is that you can't take into account the fact that during the early years it was extremely difficult to register a trademark. Now it is very easy to go online and register one. Trademark criteria also has become very lax over the years which you can't put into your formula either.

I also don't see much of a spike in the number of trademarks registered. Every year since the beginning of time the numbers basically doubled every 10 years. That's not a spike that is normal progression.

I think the ease of filing an application and being able to log on to the USPTO.gov and do all your own research and instantly be able to apply for a trademark has led to the increase in applications lately.

 

[Sirkarl]

Sold these names over the last two weeks...

T A P S L Y
S C O U T R O C K E T
U P F O C U S
T E C H F U L L Y

How much actual time and money do you spend promoting these domains. I am relatively new.

 

[12345]

How much actual time and money do you spend promoting these domains. I am relatively new.

Hi. I didn't do anything besides putting them on BB. These four were probably up there for around 6-8 months.

 

[slimjim270]

Hi All,

This past week I spoke with (3) local graphics designers, each has 10+ years experience in the business.

Why?

Because when I see a problem, I like to better understand the root cause.

Problem:

I have been time stamping BrandBucket's response time along their publishing path for listing domains. My review indicates that BrandBucket (Margot) attempts to keep their Review Cycle under 15 days. Additionally, it appears they make an effort to keep Pending Reviews under 30 days. Both Review Cycle and Pending Reviews timeline benchmarks appear consistent over the past 60 days. However, the Logo Design delay benchmark continues to grow and is currently at 48 days (from the day of a name Accept to no design yet). I have included my tracking at the bottom of this post.

Root Cause:

As domain investors, we are receptive to risk. We observe a market, collect data, and make investment decisions weighing risk/reward.

From my conversations this past week with the 3 local designers, something became apparent. When I told them the payment system for designers, all (3) said "$100 and I only get paid if/when the domain sells? If only 10% of the domains sell per year, that means I'm only making an average of $10 per logo I design. I currently have billable clients willing to pay me $350 - $750 for a logo design. And they pay me within 30 days, not 6-12 months out. Why would I spend time on this?"

Good point.

The designers I spoke with were a risk adverse group, running their own business and cash-flow sensitive (as most business owners are). Especially cautious when their risk/reward was imbalanced to their current billing rate.

I asked each if they would consider hiring a college intern to do the work and they monitor the work. Only (1) said "I'll think about it, but that means I'd have to bankroll the expense - possibly for 6-12 months before being reimbursed - I'm not overly keen on the idea".

And there's the rub.

Solution:

I see 4 solutions.

1) BrandBucket (Margot) hires a full time graphics artist to address the process bottleneck.

2) I (we) personally hire graphics artist to do our own designs, apply to BrandBucket for a Designer account, and submit the logos under our own Designer account. I (we) carry the cash-flow burden of paying up front and waiting for "winner" logo payments to off-set our out of pocket for the logos.

3) I (we) wait patiently for the logos to be designed under the current timeline.

4) I (we) consider other marketplaces. [sales, not emotions, will dictate my direction - I am testing 3 marketplaces over the next 6 months - BrandBucket/Brandroot/Namerific - then will adjust my submission volume proportionately to the one that sells the highest sales rate, will receive a higher % percentage of submissions]


This is a business decision.

I am not complaining. I am trying to better understand the market and how to best receive a return on my investment (domain portfolio).

I would appreciate your thoughts on the topic?

Thanks,

-Jim

------------------

BRANDBUCKET METRICS: Date Delay
12/22/2014
Last Review Cycle 12/16/2014 6 days
Oldest Submit w/ Pending Review 11/18/2014 34 days
Oldest Accept w/ Pending Logo 11/4/2014 48 days

 

[JudgeMind]

I still have domains pending review from nov 17th, I agree it would be better if bb hired a full time designer as it would speed up the process. As for doing our own designs, I have applied and been denied.

 

[MrHappy101]

The logo design is only part of the problem.

10% of domains sell per year and they keep adding more to earn income from the submission fees.

8164 names currently and how do they market them? Via social media and emails, but all they do is list them. That's not selling, that's not grabbing a potential buyer's attention. That's being lazy! With the amount of submissions too, you'll see a domain once on these forms of media and they'll get buried within a couple of days by the following domains being submitted.

Continuing this point, I'll be interested to see what % of followers to social media and subscribers to emails are domain sellers and what % are businesses actively seeking domain names. Why is a start-up company going to sit on their backside and wait for Brandbucket to email them a bunch of random names in the hope that they like it enough to buy it. People actively seek names to secure them for their business and that fits in with what they are potentially doing. I don't see how listing them on a couple of channels is an effective marketing strategy and it is evident by the % of sales it seems.