bowskie
Established Member
- Impact
- 234
Upfront Disclaimer: This review is being made in order to take advantage of SH's Free Image Credit offer for sharing the details of my experience. Details of the offer can be found here.
I will however give as objective an opinion as possible.
A little background info
I started submitting names for Premium listing at the SquadHelp (SH) marketplace early Feb 2019 so a little over 2 months now. No sales so far, but I have had one naming contest win (more on this later). I currently have 55 premium listings.
Submission Acceptance Rate
Originally I submitted the whole of my BP portfolio and some BB names. I found there was a very low acceptance rate for these and in my opinion there are a few reasons for this.
1) SH prefers a slightly different "flavour" of brandable domain to other marketplaces
2) SH on the whole prices domains in its marketplace lower than BB and especially BP
3) A combination of the first two factors. SH's submission system requires you to enter your desired listing price (for me at least I roughly followed previous marketplace valuations). SH then rejects names (even those it likes) as it deems the valuation submitted is too far from their own valuation.
Since getting a feel for the type of names SH prefers and listing prices, my approval rating has improved considerably. I have also used the domain appeal feature with success for names that SH felt I overpriced on initial submission.
I have already suggested this to SH, but they should just remove the "Desired Selling Price" field on the submission form and give their own valuation to the domain owner on acceptance of names they like. The alternative is to keep it as it is now, but give feedback on names they like but value lower, it is then up to the domain owner if they want to list or not.
Submission, Listing and Publishing Process
Overall I am very happy with this so far. SH have handled the influx of new domain submissions quite well. Most of the names I submit now are reviewed within a day. Upon accepting commission and pricing terms it takes about another day for the domain to go live in the marketplace.
Logo design at times has been a little slow, but the last few days I have been pleasantly surprised to see names get a logo within a day or two of listing.
Yes you do have to do a bit more work in selecting categories, keywords and writing a short description for the name (which other marketplaces do completely or partially for you), but once you get used to doing this it gets easier and faster.
The Marketplace
In this section I would like to cover a few areas relating to my experience with my domains in the Premium marketplace, the exposure they are getting, traffic, logos, dashboard stats and commissions.
I have only been using SH for a couple of months so it is too soon to form an opinion on how good a marketplace it is for brandables.
On paper it looks promising, traffic to my domains is looking decent, previously published sell through rates are excellent, recently sold names are displayed daily in the dashboard and SH has shown it is ranking highly and should be generating its own leads for domains through its marketing presence.
However, I do take all of the above with a pinch of salt. Traffic when I originally listed names back in February was higher than it is now (maybe this fluctuates depending on marketing activities). I am sure that sell through rates will drop as there has been an influx of sellers and therefore a huge increase in marketplace inventory.
I don't read too much into the shortlist statistic either, as I feel that a lot of the creatives on the site use this feature to shortlist names they like for later submission into contests. It is a nice feature to have, but you have to bear in mind that these are not all end users ticking the shortlist button.
I like the discount feature, but it doesn't work perfectly at the moment. Some more expensive names are only given the option to discount $50-$100. It looks quite silly when you have a domain for sale at $6k+ and you are only able to discount it $100 max whereas other cheaper names you can discount by a much higher percentage.
On the whole I like and appreciate the dashboard statistics, it is a little buggy still (sorting features not working) but I hope that SH will try to improve it and add more data as time goes on.
I think that the logos being designed are on the whole fine. Not as good as BP, but as good as if not better than BB. In any case they are good enough to showcase the name in my opinion. Funnily enough, the main reason for writing this review is to get a free image credit so that I can request a logo change for one of my domains. The domain is one of the more expensive ones in the whole marketplace and I feel that it should really have had a better logo designed initially. So I either pay SH $10 to change it or write a review!
Now the big one, commission. This is a very subjective area to discuss. Some people will just straight up not like or use SH because the commission they can ask for can get very high. I would say that the majority of my names there now are sitting on 35% commission. I personally think that the commission at 35 and 32.5% is very high, but it is too soon for me to know whether this is a deal breaker for keeping names there or not. There are no listing fees, no logo fees and it would seem like SH is spending more on marketing. Is that enough to justify the highest commissions for a brandable marketplace? Only time will tell through sales results.
The Wholesale Marketplace
I have used the feature to search for wholesale names out of interest more than anything, but have not bought anything so cannot comment on the buying process.
I know that this has been discussed recently on other threads so I won't go into too much detail. I can see both the positives and negatives for having it.
But as a tool for domainers to use it looks decent. There are a couple of things you have to be careful with though. Make sure you select the appropriate tick box on the left hand side when filtering results. Some people are selling names which SH owns and registered and therefore the person listing is only due to receive the smaller percentage of the domain sale. I personally do not see any value in buying these kinds of names.
SH Contests and Premium Domains
In the first couple of weeks having names listed on SH I participated in a fair amount of contests. I even won a contest within the first week. Unfortunately though the contest holder did not buy my premium domain and preferred to register the .net version instead.
I don't mind taking part in contests from time to time and I do see that there can be some benefit of added exposure for domains, but it comes down to whether you feel the time investment is worth it or not.
I personally feel that the majority of contest holders created the contest in the first place because they DO NOT want to spend thousands of dollars for a domain name. Case in point the contest I won, the contest holder liked my name but couldn't stomach paying out for the .com.
I really feel that this is an area that SH needs to work on in order to allow the contest feature to work better for premium domain holders. Right now I don't think it is worth my time to read someone's brief and submit targeted domains, only to get a "No Thank You" or most of the time no rating at all, because the contest holder really has no intention of buying a premium domain.
Maybe there could be a different category of contest where only premium domains can be submitted?
Customer Support
So far this has been another highlight. The CS staff are quick in response and able to assist the vast majority of problems or queries that I have thrown at them.
On occasions when they have had to forward requests or problems to other teams I have had to chase them up.
Overall I am pleased with my experience so far with SH, there are far more positives outweighing the negatives at the moment. SH seem to be shaking up the brandable industry a little which is good.
Hopefully they can keep on improving the marketplace and take on board some of the suggestions that I and others have made to them.
Fingers crossed for my first sale with SH!
I will however give as objective an opinion as possible.
A little background info
I started submitting names for Premium listing at the SquadHelp (SH) marketplace early Feb 2019 so a little over 2 months now. No sales so far, but I have had one naming contest win (more on this later). I currently have 55 premium listings.
Submission Acceptance Rate
Originally I submitted the whole of my BP portfolio and some BB names. I found there was a very low acceptance rate for these and in my opinion there are a few reasons for this.
1) SH prefers a slightly different "flavour" of brandable domain to other marketplaces
2) SH on the whole prices domains in its marketplace lower than BB and especially BP
3) A combination of the first two factors. SH's submission system requires you to enter your desired listing price (for me at least I roughly followed previous marketplace valuations). SH then rejects names (even those it likes) as it deems the valuation submitted is too far from their own valuation.
Since getting a feel for the type of names SH prefers and listing prices, my approval rating has improved considerably. I have also used the domain appeal feature with success for names that SH felt I overpriced on initial submission.
I have already suggested this to SH, but they should just remove the "Desired Selling Price" field on the submission form and give their own valuation to the domain owner on acceptance of names they like. The alternative is to keep it as it is now, but give feedback on names they like but value lower, it is then up to the domain owner if they want to list or not.
Submission, Listing and Publishing Process
Overall I am very happy with this so far. SH have handled the influx of new domain submissions quite well. Most of the names I submit now are reviewed within a day. Upon accepting commission and pricing terms it takes about another day for the domain to go live in the marketplace.
Logo design at times has been a little slow, but the last few days I have been pleasantly surprised to see names get a logo within a day or two of listing.
Yes you do have to do a bit more work in selecting categories, keywords and writing a short description for the name (which other marketplaces do completely or partially for you), but once you get used to doing this it gets easier and faster.
The Marketplace
In this section I would like to cover a few areas relating to my experience with my domains in the Premium marketplace, the exposure they are getting, traffic, logos, dashboard stats and commissions.
I have only been using SH for a couple of months so it is too soon to form an opinion on how good a marketplace it is for brandables.
On paper it looks promising, traffic to my domains is looking decent, previously published sell through rates are excellent, recently sold names are displayed daily in the dashboard and SH has shown it is ranking highly and should be generating its own leads for domains through its marketing presence.
However, I do take all of the above with a pinch of salt. Traffic when I originally listed names back in February was higher than it is now (maybe this fluctuates depending on marketing activities). I am sure that sell through rates will drop as there has been an influx of sellers and therefore a huge increase in marketplace inventory.
I don't read too much into the shortlist statistic either, as I feel that a lot of the creatives on the site use this feature to shortlist names they like for later submission into contests. It is a nice feature to have, but you have to bear in mind that these are not all end users ticking the shortlist button.
I like the discount feature, but it doesn't work perfectly at the moment. Some more expensive names are only given the option to discount $50-$100. It looks quite silly when you have a domain for sale at $6k+ and you are only able to discount it $100 max whereas other cheaper names you can discount by a much higher percentage.
On the whole I like and appreciate the dashboard statistics, it is a little buggy still (sorting features not working) but I hope that SH will try to improve it and add more data as time goes on.
I think that the logos being designed are on the whole fine. Not as good as BP, but as good as if not better than BB. In any case they are good enough to showcase the name in my opinion. Funnily enough, the main reason for writing this review is to get a free image credit so that I can request a logo change for one of my domains. The domain is one of the more expensive ones in the whole marketplace and I feel that it should really have had a better logo designed initially. So I either pay SH $10 to change it or write a review!
Now the big one, commission. This is a very subjective area to discuss. Some people will just straight up not like or use SH because the commission they can ask for can get very high. I would say that the majority of my names there now are sitting on 35% commission. I personally think that the commission at 35 and 32.5% is very high, but it is too soon for me to know whether this is a deal breaker for keeping names there or not. There are no listing fees, no logo fees and it would seem like SH is spending more on marketing. Is that enough to justify the highest commissions for a brandable marketplace? Only time will tell through sales results.
The Wholesale Marketplace
I have used the feature to search for wholesale names out of interest more than anything, but have not bought anything so cannot comment on the buying process.
I know that this has been discussed recently on other threads so I won't go into too much detail. I can see both the positives and negatives for having it.
But as a tool for domainers to use it looks decent. There are a couple of things you have to be careful with though. Make sure you select the appropriate tick box on the left hand side when filtering results. Some people are selling names which SH owns and registered and therefore the person listing is only due to receive the smaller percentage of the domain sale. I personally do not see any value in buying these kinds of names.
SH Contests and Premium Domains
In the first couple of weeks having names listed on SH I participated in a fair amount of contests. I even won a contest within the first week. Unfortunately though the contest holder did not buy my premium domain and preferred to register the .net version instead.
I don't mind taking part in contests from time to time and I do see that there can be some benefit of added exposure for domains, but it comes down to whether you feel the time investment is worth it or not.
I personally feel that the majority of contest holders created the contest in the first place because they DO NOT want to spend thousands of dollars for a domain name. Case in point the contest I won, the contest holder liked my name but couldn't stomach paying out for the .com.
I really feel that this is an area that SH needs to work on in order to allow the contest feature to work better for premium domain holders. Right now I don't think it is worth my time to read someone's brief and submit targeted domains, only to get a "No Thank You" or most of the time no rating at all, because the contest holder really has no intention of buying a premium domain.
Maybe there could be a different category of contest where only premium domains can be submitted?
Customer Support
So far this has been another highlight. The CS staff are quick in response and able to assist the vast majority of problems or queries that I have thrown at them.
On occasions when they have had to forward requests or problems to other teams I have had to chase them up.
Overall I am pleased with my experience so far with SH, there are far more positives outweighing the negatives at the moment. SH seem to be shaking up the brandable industry a little which is good.
Hopefully they can keep on improving the marketplace and take on board some of the suggestions that I and others have made to them.
Fingers crossed for my first sale with SH!
