BrandBucket VS BrandRoot - Which one do you think is better?

[Justin Matmor]

The best way to find out if BR or BB are a good playform to sell your domains, approach them as an end user and see how quickly they respond, how hard they try to sell you a domain, and whether or not they are professional.

 

[Abdillahi Abdillahi]

You had 7,000 names in March, now (May) you have over 9,000.



BBs Alexa is around 32K, BRs is at 71K. They are smashing you on traffic! If you know Alexa, half your figure doesn't mean double the traffic, it's more likely 5-10 times your traffic. You've mentioned in earlier posts that most of your traffic comes from search engines, BB talks about relationships with agencies and their marketing efforts. Do you do anything other than rely on search engines and attending domain events?

They clearly don't accept everything and anything. They had 28,000 names on site in March. Now they have 29,500. So they accepted less than you... and you accepted their rejects.

Poor sales rate? 841 sales last year, $2.4million in sales, average sale price of almost $3,000. I don't believe you've shared your figures?



This is something I can 100% understand! Several people have spent many months causing 'trouble' in the BB thread. NP members that had few or no names listed on BB, demanding information. They drained BBs time and resources, leaving them less time to concentrate on business. But, you've recently accepted them...

I know there are others here that have openly stated that they would never list their domains with you (for various reasons) and I'm really not in that camp. I just can't see the benefits of moving my 600+ portfolio over to you:

Same listing fees.
Same commission fees.
Your average sale price is less.
You don't provide any financial information to your sellers (only this week did you disclose that you own 11%+ of the domains on your marketplace).
You don't provide any information on what your users are searching for.
You charge extra for featured listings.
You accept stale unsold stock from another marketplace.
You don't respond to seller applications.
No evidence of actively seeking buyers list since all of your traffic comes from search engines.
And for the second time, your userbase real life names, their usernames and their email address has been distributed amongst your members recently.

You nailed it. Now a true company with great vision and commitment to stellar service would take note of your points and my points and use them as a base to reach even 80% of the level of BB :D

 

[NameOffice.]

BBs Alexa is around 32K, BRs is at 71K. They are smashing you on traffic! If you know Alexa, half your figure doesn't mean double the traffic, it's more likely 5-10 times your traffic. You've mentioned in earlier posts that most of your traffic comes from search engines, BB talks about relationships with agencies and their marketing efforts. Do you do anything other than rely on search engines and attending domain events?

This doesn't account for the number of domains removed from their platform, and I also mentioned that this recent growth is intentional. We have to keep up with our buyers.

They clearly don't accept everything and anything. They had 28,000 names on site in March. Now they have 29,500. So they accepted less than you... and you accepted their rejects.

Poor sales rate? 841 sales last year, $2.4million in sales, average sale price of almost $3,000. I don't believe you've shared your figures?

Alexa is an awful tool to use. Someone recently posted screenshots on how high our organic traffic numbers are compared to BB's. Of course with almost 30k names they are getting more traffic but comparatively we are ahead of BB on almost all metrics.

Of course we don't just rely on search engines. We don't have almost 9,000 Facebook followers, 6,000 email subscribers, and tons of online reviews on various sites for doing nothing. Actually Margot asked me about my success with subscribers then soon included the feature herself on BB. We also often spend thousands per month on advertising and marketing. Very recently, no, because we are working hard on first improving the site on mobile devices.

In 2015 we sold 289 names out of about 6,000 (maybe less) published names at the END of the year (so realistically the sales rate is higher). That's a 4.8% sales rate overall (2016 looking even better). Let's just say BB had an estimated 22,000 names listed by the end of 2015. That's 3.8% with your 841 sales report.

And as mentioned, our average sale price is around $2,000, BB's being higher because this is including a couple very high sales in the $XXX,XXX range.

Not to mention, we have way, WAY fewer sellers than BB. So the 289 sales we had went to a handful of people as opposed to their 841 being spread across who knows how many, all just reaping a small reward, perhaps a couple scraping out of living, like Mr. Krell.

I know there are others here that have openly stated that they would never list their domains with you (for various reasons) and I'm really not in that camp. I just can't see the benefits of moving my 600+ portfolio over to you:

Same listing fees.
Same commission fees.
Your average sale price is less.
You don't provide any financial information to your sellers (only this week did you disclose that you own 11%+ of the domains on your marketplace).
You don't provide any information on what your users are searching for.
You charge extra for featured listings.
You accept stale unsold stock from another marketplace.
You don't respond to seller applications.
No evidence of actively seeking buyers list since all of your traffic comes from search engines.
And for the second time, your userbase real life names, their usernames and their email address has been distributed amongst your members recently.

You had 7,000 names in March, now (May) you have over 9,000.

We never asked you to move over your 600+ domains. Most of the people that have moved over are people who have reached out to us. Actually I think we only successfully recruited 2 people from BB and that was a long time ago when we sent out that "aggressive" email. The others have all come to us asking to move their domains. We have asked a few people recently with no success though.

Anyway, to address those items:

• For our special and partner accounts they pay only $8
• Yes, same commission. I believe it's the lowest sustainable number. Not sure how a marketplace could make it by asking for less. We made that mistake earlier on when we lowered the commission for a select few.
• I think you would find that your sales are no higher than the sales of our sellers. Around 80% of our sales are at full asking price. Browse our marketplace and let me know if you feel our prices are overall lower than BB's
• We have shared financial information. Several times actually. I can't keep up with every thread and every request for financial data. We also have sent out this info to our sellers privately.
• We do provide information on what is being searched by our visitors. In fact, when publishing a name you are provided with keywords to select from that our visitors are searching for. We've taken the time to document the top 400+ (and growing) keywords searched, and use that strategically for search engines and CTR and sales. Each of these keywords has their own unique page with a short description. And this is just the start of how we handle searches.
• Nearly all of the current Spotlight names you see on Brandroot were free upgrades. We very often upgrade the names of our sellers for free. Not only because we need to keep featured sections full but we offer these as incentives and as appreciation positions.
• I'm not sure what you mean by stale, unsold stock. For whatever reason this stale, unsold stock is selling better at Brandroot, which is why so many have moved over recently.
• We do respond to seller applications but not as often as our applicants would like. We regulate our inventory, as I explained in a previous post.
• We not only market heavily to our market, especially on Facebook, but we also advertise and market in the most unlikely of places, like to various kinds of investors. I can't begin to explain to you the depth and stretch of our marketing. Search engine traffic is a great traffic resource for our new visitors but for the 20%+ return visitors and repeat buyers we don't depend on this alone, not by a long shot. What evidence are you looking for?
• Every company, even the largest in the world, make mistakes. When you're a target of relentless cyber attacks something is bound to break. We do know that this same mistake won't happen again. I don't want to name any names but we have made some folks pretty upset lately. Where you find success you'll often find it's jealous counterpart. There's not a lot you can do about that.

 

[Billy Wagner]

several independent contractors that we pay monthly

How do I apply for a job? :D

 

[JimJammy]

Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is appreciated.

This doesn't account for the number of domains removed from their platform

Yes, you are right. Thank you.

Of course with almost 30k names they are getting more traffic but comparatively we are ahead of BB on almost all metrics.

You keep stating (in various ways) that BB has plummeted out of the search engines. This is clearly not the case, nor are you ahead on almost all metrics.

In 2015 we sold 289 names out of about 6,000 (maybe less) published names at the END of the year (so realistically the sales rate is higher). That's a 4.8% sales rate overall (2016 looking even better). Let's just say BB had an estimated 22,000 names listed by the end of 2015. That's 3.8% with your 841 sales report.

Isn't this twisting your figures to suit?
Shouldn't it be the average number of domains listed through the year divided by the number of sales?

Or we can work it out your way properly:
BR - 289 sales x $2K average price = $578,000 / 6,000 domains = average domain sales value is $96
BB - 841 sales x $3K average price = $2,400,000 / 22,000 = average domain sales value is $109

So I'd still be better off listing at BB your way, as my average domain sales value is 13% higher.

And as mentioned, our average sale price is around $2,000, BB's being higher because this is including a couple very high sales in the $XXX,XXX range.

.
Yes, they had a big sale that they published here But only 9 of their last 40 sales were under your $2K average. The others were over. That's where their $3K average sales price per domain comes from. See attached.

The fact you've been open about favoring some, but not other, members with acceptance into your site, reduced listing fees and featured listings is admirable, but un-nerves me.

Again, I appreciate that you've taken the time to respond but I feel I'm much better off exactly where I am. Best of luck with your business

 

[NameOffice.]

Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is appreciated.

Again, I appreciate that you've taken the time to respond but I feel I'm much better off exactly where I am. Best of luck with your business

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And I'm sure you're right. Many BB sellers are perfectly fine where they are. We've turned down several requests from individuals to move names to Brandroot. We don't want them all. My response wasn't to excite you over. We have more than enough submissions to deal with. Lately we can hardly keep up.