Atom marketplace (formerly Squadhelp Marketplace)

[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.

 

[JudgeMind]

After 4 weeks I’ve got my first sale through SQUADHELP. Pending completion of installments.

Mudaris (com)
$2299

78 domains listed

 

[VJB]

Moving out my all names from SH
Have been with SH for almost 2 years... Had more than 130 premium names.. Sold only one name that was through afternic and I ended up paying some of my commission to SH...

Not really happy with the way SH is moving ahead...

They are now putting quantity over quality.... Many gullible domainers end up listing hundreds of so called premium names . ....

They know that the law of average applies to brandable domains as well so more the inventory better the $$ volume....

They even removed the SH registered names, why? They have to pay for renewals.... Update: They still do provide option to register premium name via SH

Now they lure domainers via their different tools... What domainers don't reliaze is SH is playing the numbers game... They are not bearing the renewals domainers are... So at the end Many domainers are not happy with not having any sale for so long time myself included and the reason is what I have mentioned above...

SH is doing good as a company, doing good for themselves... For domainers - not so much.


In an nutshell I have this to tell..... SH is playing the numbers game now just like huge domains but the difference is domainers are paying $ for renewals for SH premium names... Whereas SH is charging huge commission for any sale via it's platform....

All the marketing bullshit that they share are absolutely useless if majority of the domainers are going on without a sale....

I don't see a good future for SH....

All the best!
Goodbye

 

[Recons.Com]

I think that our colleague asked about portfolio to know bad sales reason. If you have a good portfolio and no one buys your domains, this is an occasion to think. If the quality of the domains leaves much to be desired, then the rule of 1% sales of the total domain number does not work here. I state that domain sales have fallen all over the world. I have only 400 average quality hand regged domains, but I sold only 2 of them, this is 0.5%, that is, twice as worse than average indicators.

But shouldn't SH know better what sells and what doesn't? And if they do, shouldn't they reject the names that they can't sell even at 1%, which is the STR for the names to sell themselves without even needing a brand marketplace with logos, description and proclaimed extra sales efforts?

Any way you look at it, it is a failure on SH part and is no fluke. It is supposed to provide 1.5%+ STR sitewide (to account for the extra commission and extra work involved with listing and keeping up) and large portfolios of 500+ should get 5-10 sales a year with 95%+ probability. The chance of no sale should be very close to zero for 750 name folio.

What I would recommend to this specific investor is removing around 1/3 of the folio (RANDOM selection) and listing those with Afternic with Dan landers for the whole of 2024. Then compare it with SH sales for 2024 if any.

I did this accidentally, when I had around 110 names approved by SH plus around 45 that were approved but I did not get to writing descriptions, categorizing etc. (you had to do all that manually at the time). And after few months when I finally made time for this, I discovered, to my surprise, that 4 out of 45 sold via Afternic already, while SH had 0 for 65 during that period. So I decided not to list those, while I still kept the listed ones for some time more with just few sales below what I was making for similar names via Afternic. And with that, I just delisted all and left the platform.

 

[JudgeMind]

I’d like to thank everyone for taking part and being active in my thread and thank @GrantP for his continued support in answering everyone’s questions and responding to comments here.

here’s an update. I started 2020 with 273 premium listings at sh. I have been building my portfolio since and now have 407 premium listings.

in January I had no sales at squadhelp. It was being out performed by the other marketplaces I list at. Things changed in February and I had 3 sales totalling $5397. March I had 2 sales totalling $3198 and in April I had 3 sales totalling $6597. So far May has been good with one sale of $2499. I will continue to share updates here every so often.

most recent sh sale for May Harmoni.io $2499
Take care.

 

[JudgeMind]

SH review May20 - June20

- currently listed premium names 428
- sales “zero”
- number of shortlists / day dropping noticeably
- number of views / day dropping noticeably
- number of submissions to contests by other creatives dropping noticeably
- overall exposure of names in the marketplace reduced.

comment on the last bullet. My strategy over the past few months to gain exposure of names in the marketplace was to pay super boost listings. These are now limited to only 4. The results are noticeably negative. While i understand the limits were put in place to give every seller an opportunity to buy super boosts, I strongly feel that the limits should be weighted based on the portfolio size of the seller. I will follow up to this post on July 20 and update my review.

Squadhelp has grown immensely over the past 12-18 months. The competition in the marketplace is fierce. We have seen the same thing happen with brand bucket, brandroot, brandpa etc over the years. The marketplaces grow fast and sellers STR suffer. Quick growth is great for the site owner but not for sellers. Unfortunately I think we will see our sell thru rates drop drastically and soon be in line with other marketplaces at 2-4%, a far cry from the 20% STR that was publicly reported by SH just over a year ago.

thank you all for continuing to take part in my review thread.

 

[h2o]

I just posted this on the NP Sales thread but it's relevant here too:

ShieldSilver dotcom Sold for 2499

Date: Sale Notified to me by Sedo on May 20

Platform: Sedo MLS Buy it Now

Take home Commission:1999

Registered on 4/11/20 for 7.99

Hold time: About 40 Days

Fun Fact: I submitted Shield Silver to SquadHelp on April 25 as a Premium Submission and got DENIED. Also I personally do really like this name and may have used it myself if I didn't sell within a reasonable time.


Bottom line for those deflated by SH's Expert Reviews - Don’t' get discouraged, especially if you know you have domains that appeal to end users. SH is just one opinion and not really the all knowing authoritative voice of brandable names.

A bit of luck doesn't hurt too

 

[JudgeMind]

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I wanted to share some strategies you may want to consider adopting in 2021.

1. Ensure every domain is classified targeting its niche. Add a detailed description that will connect your name to that niche and make it clear to a buyer what the brand represents. Include keywords in the description as well as 3 strong root keywords. Choose appropriate categories that connect to your keywords and description.


2. Price names competitively with other similar names listed in the marketplace.


3. Ensure each name has an appealing logo that will catch the attention of perspective buyers.


4. Offer discounts to make your names more appealing to a buyer. When a discount is applied, potential buyers who shortlisted your name will be notified of the discount via email if they did not previously receive an email alert about a price change


5. Apply super boosts to your names weekly.


6. Submit names to contests frequently.


7. Promote your names, public profile or WLM on social media.


8. If you have keyword rich domains you can reach out to companies that may be interested to inform them your name is listed at Squadhelp.


9. Include your names in the Afternic listing program.


Since Squadhelp’s ai system shows buyers names based on their recorded interests; the keywords, descriptions and categories are extremely important to be filled out completely and in as much detail as possible.


There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle and it takes a big investment in ones time to ensure your portfolio is getting in front of as many potential buyers as possible. Hard work, dedication and attention to detail is the recipe for my success.

 

[JudgeMind]

Hi @JudgeMind glad to see you back in this thread! I used to really enjoy your monthly reviews and I missed them when you left. So like I said, glad to have you back

My current portfolio size is 552 premium domain names. I've been on SH since the very beginning of the marketplace and it feels like now it's in its lowest place somehow. I haven't had any sales for the last several months and no offers. Nothing. I'm deciding what to do next.

Also, several weeks ago I had an issue where my domain name did not come up in the search results even when that exact name was typed in. Squadhelp recognized the issue, solved it and gave me one free super boost, but I'm wondering how many of my other domain names have had the same issue or maybe are having it right now?

sh search algorithm isn't normal. I have Gaming.xyz listed on there and when searching the term "gaming" my listing didn't show up until the 7th page until i complained and they changed something.

As far as the slowness... i too have been with sh since the start, i left to test another marketplace just once but now am back trying sh again. I had 24% STR at one point, now it seems sh has grown so large that sellers are starting to see a 2-3% str.. the question a seller needs to ask themselves is.. "is it still worth paying an extra 15% commission when i can get close to the same str elsewhere"?

 

[JudgeMind]

Some interesting stats in squadhelp marketing compared to other brandable marketplaces

 

[JudgeMind]

Happy to Report the sale of DigitalXpress.com for $3399 at squadhelp. I really liked this name. Hoping this sale will refuel the engine and the squadhelp gods will shower me in riches for july and august.

 

[Gabriel360]

Why do I have to pay $2 for SquadHelp to allow me sell my domain names on Afternic?

That's totally absurd given the fact that they still get 10% commission for a sale they had nothing to do with.

 

[JimJammy]

I mean as a whole on squadhelp. My STR is def lower right now on sh. 9 weeks now with no sale.

This is probably why

 

[TBN]

I have more than 700 names on Squadhelp. One sale since 2021 (a SH registered one that I suggested). I am editing this post, because I missed that from my list in error, so it needs to be corrected. So, 1 small sale since 2021. I like their people, their platform and the innovations, but it is costing me a lot of money in renewals and I am making a considerable loss. I am hanging on, hoping things improve soon, though there is quite a bit of catching up to do, to even cover my costs, let alone make any profit.

 

[Recons.Com]

@Recons.Com you mentioned earlier that these marketplaces can "hurt" your sales long term:
- is it because their listings are in the hundreds of thousands
- the Godaddy vs SH lander ( trust factor)
- is it due to the price markup you need to add to the Afternic listings and this very same fact creates confusion with buyers.

At the end of the day, it is about your total revenue and the hours/effort you have to put into it. Plus, scaleability, if that is important for you.

I left SH, BB, BP even before the 15%/25% Afternic commission discrepancy and I believe after that staying makes even less sense except for few sellers that might get better exposure, are willing to jump through the hoops of regularly doing stuff there (contests, boosts, etc.). My last drop with SH was them demanding that I set higher bin at Afternic. My name, my rules. The max they can demand is the same price. Plus, it also meant that they are willing to change the rules on the fly, which makes the partner unpredictable for me and, thus, unreliable, not worthy.

Now, point by point:

- Revenue. SH just was not providing me sufficient sales as compared to what I am making from similar names with simply listing at Afternic. And that is with lower commission, higher bins, no jumping through the hoops with submitting, listing, logos, approvals etc. Why SH performance was subpar is a different question and not my problem. But if you want to discuss that, here is my view. They have too many subpar names that takes away from the exposure of good names and throws off potential buyers. Also, there is only so much of "magic" they can do via ads, promos, social, repeat buys. That number can only be in 500-1000 sales a year range with 90% probability. While the normal STR of non-SH network+lander conversion will still be in 0%-1% range depending on quality. So, that 500-1000 domains were creating the huge STR effect when spread over 10000 names (5%-10% extra) and even with 100000 names it was ok (0.5%-1% extra), but spread over 250000 names, it is just 0.2%-0.4% extra which doesn't even justify the higher commission, not speaking of probable lower conversion of the landers.

- Hours/Efforts. Again, with Afternic, it is just list, change NS and forget. Now compare that with the things you have to do with SH.

- Scaleability. And this is huge for me. If your focus is buying names that are good for SH, BB taste and are probable to get approved there, plus you are wasting time with everything else there, you can't really grow fast. It also throws off your sense of what is a really good domain. I regularly see offers of SH wholesale portfolios and looking through those lists gives me nausea. How did someone think that buying/renewing those names was good idea and how did SH agree that they were good names?!!!

 

[JudgeMind]

SH marketplace update for August 2020

Pending the unlikeliness that a sale comes in in the next day, August was the first month in 2020 I did not complete a sale on the Squadhelp marketplace. Although my portfolio of premium marketplace listings is over 500, the sh marketplace has grown immensely. Sell through rates continue to decline and imo will soon be in line with the STR of other marketplaces 2-3%. In August views and short lists on my names dropped to 0% in the second and third week but went back up a little bit towards the end of the month. Despite purchasing 6 super boosts each week , views and short lists dropped. In the past, purchasing super boosts would bump my names to the first page. In August something changed, I no longer see my super boosted names on the first page of the marketplace.

While August was my worst month of the year for me, july was one of the best with 3 decent SH marketplace sales.

I did close one sale in the BrandAim.com WLM for $1,049. This was my 5th sale via my sh WLM since launching in early July.

Had three other sales in August, each were afternic fast transfer. One for $899 one for $5000 and one for $1999

 

[JudgeMind]

SH Sales report November 2020

The beginning of November was quite slow but towards the end of the month things picked up. In October i reduced pricing <$2000 for a number of my listings that had been for sale at sh for > 12 months. Currently i have 591 premium listings. Here are sales from November.

Lumeto / com
ExpandPay / com
BitDirect / io
JobArc / com
Yonovo / com - this was sold at afternic

4 of the sales were <$2000
1 sale was a 12 month instalment plan

In 2019 i had 13 total sales on squadhelp with approximately 250 premium listings. To date in 2020 with a portfolio more than twice the size, am sitting at 22 sales.

 

[JudgeMind]

Managed to squeeze in one sale at the very end of the month at Squadhelp. July was a very slow month on Squadhelp compared to afternic.

sold Qanva dot c/o/m $2549

best of luck to everyone in august!

 

[JudgeMind]

Happy February!

Just wanted to post a monthly update about how January was for me at squadhelp.

I added approximately 70 new squadhelp names to my portfolio in January. My goal is to hopefully reach 2000 premium listings or close to that by the end of 2023. Here are some of the new names that got added:

Sales in January were consistent. We sold our first name on January 1st for $2,022 to a cheeky buyer who likely wanted to show that on their books haha. We had 4 total sales in January, 3 of which were lease to own sales.

Jan 1st - Libaris (com) - $2,022
Jan 9th - LTO $3132
Jan 19th - LTO $3126
Jan 27th - LTO $3234

The LTO were purchased on flexible financing plans and the monthly surcharge added to the total sale price. I have found good activity with LTO in the $3,000-$3,500 range.

Account wise, We have increased our total premium listings to 1,087. Our views are getting close to 2,000,000.

Sell through rates both annualized and portfolio % 12+ month increased a little but but still close to same figures as start of the year.

Gotta figure out how to get the time to sell below site average.

 

[JudgeMind]

Happy March everyone. I hope you all had a great February. I would like to share how sales and portfolio building went for me in February.

I added approximately 70 new squadhelp names to my portfolio in February. Here are some of the new names that got added:

Sales in February were slower than January. I had 2 total sales in February, 1 of which was lease to own sale.

Feb 13 - LTO $3542 - a .com name i had listed just 4 weeks earlier.
Feb 21 - Boostie (c.o.m) - Negotiated price $7500

The LTO was purchased on flexible financing plan and the monthly surcharge added to the total sale price. I have found good activity with LTO in the $3,000-$3,500 range.

Account wise, We have increased our total premium listings to 1,107. Our views are getting close to 2,000,000.

My time to sell stats are still worse than the site average and my shortlist.views % is lower than site average as well. Hoping to figure out how to get these stats better, but in the end the only stat that really matters is the STR %.

BEST OF LUCK TO ALL IN MARCH. THANKS.

 

[JudgeMind]

As i approach 3 months without a sale at squadhelp, i question if everyone else is experiencing similar results. Currently i have 1263 premium listings at SH and the last sale was on June 17th (sale originated from afternic).


How have things been for you at sh and what is your premium portfolio size?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1700906004358263284

Here are a few stats from my sh account to share

 

[DomainBanana]

A few thoughts on the review policy:

Squadhelp has been doing some amazing things over the past few months that have, in my view, made them the premiere brandable marketplace.

The Afternic, Sedo, and Flippa integrations. The rewards program that provides incentives for listing more domains with them. The aggressive marketing spend. Etc.

The speed at which they innovate is encouraging and I give them a great deal of credit for always being available (24/7 customer support) and listening to seller feedback.

This being said, I think the new review policy is problematic as it currently stands:

1) Allowing a small group of competing sellers to review domains presents a conflict of interest. Even though there are attempts to mitigate this by having multiple reviewers (currently about 16 per domain) and monitoring reviewers' activity, something doesn't sit right when a tiny group of competing sellers is allowed to control what gains acceptance onto the marketplace. To be clear, I know and respect some of these reviewers. But the small number of reviewers presents too much of a potential conflict of interest in my view for this to be comfortable.

Possible solution: increase the number of seller-reviewers to at least 30

2) Reviews are now conducted by quick multiple choice polls (which name do you like best?). Reviewers do not see descriptions. I believe the review process should involve more than a superficial polling process. Domaining involves some subjectivity, but it's more than just "I like this, I don't like that".

Possible solution: Stop the multiple choice polls and encourage domains to be evaluated carefully, one at a time

3) Seller-reviewers get large rewards that help them keep their domains at the top of the marketplace. These rewards include 10 points per domain reviewed plus 100 points per domain they review that is approved. That is 110 points per domain that makes it onto the marketplace.

Suppose reviewers review 100 domains per day and suppose 10% of those make it onto the marketplace. That's 2,000 points per day (100 points x 10 points per review plus 100 points x 10 domains approved).

In just two months, reviewers will have earned 120,000 points, equal to 60 super-boosts, 240 standard boosts, or 120 lifestyle images.

In a year, seller-reviewers will have earned 720,000 points, equal to 360 super-boosts, 1440 standard boosts, or 720 lifestyle images.

This reward system ensures reviewers will keep their domains at the top of the marketplace and will make it much harder for non-reviewers to compete.
​

Possible solution: give sellers a larger number of points for listing an approved domain to help balance out the massive points that reviewers are accruing, or allow anyone who wants to be a reviewer to become a reviewer and weight reviewer scores based on variables like STR and contest ranking

4) Seller-reviewers have access to data that other sellers don't and can take inspiration from others' submissions. A related example:

A 9-letter invented domain has been listed on SH for a couple years:
-------us.com ($1799)

One of the reviewers recently listed the same domain with a slightly different ending:
-------um.com ($1999)​

This new listing was likely inspired by the old one. It didn't come from the new review process, as the older listing has been on the market for about two years, but it's an example of how reviewers could easily take inspiration from submissions.

Reviewers have special access to submission data. They see most names that pass through the marketplace (accepts and rejects) and can easily monitor trends and submit similar names if they want. Not every reviewer will do this, but it will undoubtedly happen. This asymmetric access to submission data is troubling.
​

Possible solution: make this data transparent for all sellers.

To be clear: I am not accusing SH or seller-reviewers of anything underhanded here. Over the past year, seeing what SH has accomplished, I have come to have a great deal of respect for the organization and I understand that they believe the new review policy will help to create a better curated marketplace. Watching the latest approvals, I believe this is true -- the quality of approved domains has been much higher lately and I'm grateful to SH and the reviewers for this.

So, while I don't question SH's motives or the reviewers' motives, I feel the policy as it stands gives a disproportionate advantage to seller-reviewers and I hope this can be addressed.

Until then, I will try to become a seller-reviewer myself :D

 

[GrantP]

I would like to address the concerns raised recently with the new process, and share SH perspective and some updates.

1. Expert Review Votes

We believe this process is working very well and the collective feedback from the domain reviewers is leading to a high quality, fair and efficient curation process. We understand that few sellers still believe that there is a possibility of a conflict of interest. With all the checks and balances we have in place, we strongly believe that this process is being handled very fairly, however we respect everyone's opinions.

Therefore, going forward, if you would like to opt out of the Auto Acceptance/ Auto Rejection process, please let us know via chat or email and we will set up your account for a manual review. Even though your names may still receive votes from reviewers, the final approval or rejection will always be done by SH in that case. If you opt out of the standard process, please note the following:

• Your submission limits will be lower. You may be able to submit 3-5 domains at a time depending upon your overall approval rates.
• The approval/rejection time frame will be significantly longer compared to the current review process.
• You will likely not see a better approval rate by opting out of the current process. Based upon our analysis of the recent/past data, your approval rate may in fact see a slight drop compared to the current process (since our team may decide to reject certain names even if they receive high votes, due to other factors e.g. existence of similar names in Marketplace).
• If you opt out of the standard process, you will need to wait 30 days to switch it back to the standard review process. This is because this change will need to be done directly by our engineering team for individual accounts and we would like to minimize any disruption to their work e.g .new feature development.

To summarize, we do not recommend opting out of the current process, however you now have this option available in case you strongly feel against the current process.

2. Points & Rewards

As a background, Gamification concepts (such as points, badges, leaderboards etc) are core to the SH platform. We will continue to offer points for various activities on the platform.

The expert review process is one of several different ways to earn points on the platform. In fact, there are currently thousands of users on the platform who have accumulated a vast number of points via other means. Today, we have announced a new Discovery Curation process that will further improve our AI based search/ discovery experience for Buyers. Participation in this new program will allow many of our sellers to earn a significant number of points every day.

We do not expect those who have earned significant points to occupy the top results in our Marketplace. The top results in our Marketplace are determined based upon several factors. Going forward, the Discovery curation process will also influence the ranking of the results. Moreover, as announced on Friday, points can now only be used for one Superboost in a week.

Our goal is to continue to offer new benefits for points, however we will continue to ensure that these benefits can not be disproportionally misused for a specific feature on the platform.

 

[Nametree]

Today I was browsing SH recently sold names and saw this name "CIever / Invest / com" sold for $1,599 And my first thought was that why would such name sell for this low? after checking the whois it turns out the second letter of the first word to be an "i" instead of an "L" so it's ciever not clever. I'm not sure if that already means something, but that would be funny if the buyer was thinking he got a good deal

This is actually terrible. If SH is allowing folks to do this, it’s just really poor taste at best and an outright scam at worst. Looking at the landing/sale page for that domain it seems like everything about it makes you believe you are buying CLEVERINVEST. This is a big red flag for me.

 

[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.