Atom / Atom.com - Marketplace (formerly Squadhelp)

[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.

 

[TBN]

Things still not going well for me on Squadhelp. 0.67% sell through with nearly 700 names now. Not had a single sale since 2021.

I have previously been in touch with Squadhelp on it, to see if they had any advice on anything that could be improved or the reason for no sales. I was advised to ensure the portfolio was optimised, and a few other suggestions. But sadly, still no sales in all this time. It is costing me a lot of money, of course, without any sales. Not sure how much longer to continue like this in terms of hanging on to see if sales increase.

Interested to know how things are for others, so it is also helpful to keep checking this thread to give me an idea on that. Thanks.

 

[NameWell]

I frequently do outbound marketing and drive those potential buyers to my WLM.

@JudgeMind Okay, now it makes sense why you are doing so great in terms of sales. Your outbound efforts are making a difference It inspires me to work more on my outbound strategy and to put more effort into it in general.

Thank's for answering! And best of luck with future sales

 

[silentg]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1638946463152521217

 

[GoKaizen]

That's frustrating. Thanks for sharing.

Things still not going well for me on Squadhelp. 0.67% sell through with nearly 700 names now. Not had a single sale since 2021.

I have previously been in touch with Squadhelp on it, to see if they had any advice on anything that could be improved or the reason for no sales. I was advised to ensure the portfolio was optimised, and a few other suggestions. But sadly, still no sales in all this time. It is costing me a lot of money, of course, without any sales. Not sure how much longer to continue like this in terms of hanging on to see if sales increase.

Interested to know how things are for others, so it is also helpful to keep checking this thread to give me an idea on that. Thanks.

 

[Alex270]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1638946463152521217

Great news! Let's hope they'll use the money to improve the platform (fix bugs, make it faster, better) and to invest even more in ads, to help us sell more domains.

 

[Charybdis]

That is not how it works. That's how it should work, but it's not how it does work.

On SquadHelp you click a button to "request a payout" and they pay you whenever they feel like it. It's bananas.

I like SH but this issue is the one thing that makes me worry about them. I've never used another escrow service that seems to conflate my money with their money more than SquadHelp (although I have heard horror stories about Epik as well). I'm not sure they understand what escrow means - it's my money. I'm not asking.

They make enough sales for me currently that I am willing to tolerate the risk. However I never leave money on their platform for even a moment longer than necessary.

My payout method is PayPal. For me the payout time is instant. I click on the "request payment" button and in a few seconds my funds arrive into my PayPal account. Of course in case of wire transfer it might take longer.

"However I never leave money on their platform for even a moment longer than necessary." - yes good idea in case of every platform out there.

 

[okaydomains]

My payout method is PayPal. For me the payout time is instant.

I'm so glad you've had a good experience. Mine has been different.

For example:
https://www.namepros.com/threads/squadhelp-is-not-processing-withdrawals.1288760/

The "Request Payout" button can be instant - *depending on how many other people are also requesting a payout*. If its "too many" they'll make you wait.

That's disturbing because there shouldn't ever be an issue of not enough cash in their bank accounts to pay everyone who is owed, even if we all request it at once. That's because escrow services should *never* be commingling the proceeds from your sales with their operating capital. Your money should be in a separate bank account specifically for escrow.

And I still haven't ever heard a good reason they don't automatically disperse your funds as the last step of escrow. You know, like every other service does (except Epik, which has predictably gone horribly awry).

Again, the risk/reward ratio still comes out in their favor. I have always gotten paid, eventually. But I really don't like the way they handle this specific issue and I consider it a (tolerable) business risk.

 

[DomainBanana]

That's disturbing because there shouldn't ever be an issue of not enough cash in their bank accounts to pay everyone who is owed, even if we all request it at once. That's because escrow services should *never* be commingling the proceeds from your sales with their operating capital. Your money should be in a separate bank account specifically for escrow.

Do you have any evidence that SH is co-mingling proceeds with their operating capital, or that SH does not have enough cash to pay everyone who is owed?

If so, please share. Otherwise, don't make these strong accusations.

SH's payments are usually instant, which is faster than any other service (afternic, dan, sedo, bb, escrow, etc.)

If there are rare times when they need to take an extra step to verify the payments that are released, that is not really a cause for concern. You said yourself that you have always been paid.

So it seems you're stirring up trouble and making accusations for no good reason.

Show me the evidence.

 

[SuperDudePro]

My payout method is PayPal. For me the payout time is instant. I click on the "request payment" button and in a few seconds my funds arrive into my PayPal account. Of course in case of wire transfer it might take longer.

"However I never leave money on their platform for even a moment longer than necessary." - yes good idea in case of every platform out there.

It is the exact same for me for both full sales and monthly LTO plans. I love when people just refuse to believe that the issue isn't mainly with them/their account and insist everyone else is 'lucky'. I get payments instantly as soon as I request them.

 

[capybara]

What's with the latency for this table?

Had a name sold a month ago but it still shows me stats for that name.

 

[TopBrandsForSale]

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:


Show attachment 233613


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.

Show attachment 233614
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 %.

Show attachment 233615
BEST OF LUCK TO ALL IN MARCH. THANKS.

Hi @JudgeMind and congratulations on your achievements!
Do you only own PREMIUM DOMAINS at SH, or STANDARD LISTINGS as well?

I have just 20 PREMIUMS, and just listed all my other domains as standard listings, since I wanted to try the SH WLM. Do you use it? Any advice or stats about the overall STR with the standard listings and WLM?

Thanks!

 

[TopBrandsForSale]

@gericsb That's wrong info.

I have a lot of SH Standard Listings and I didn't need to spend coins to list.

hi @GoKaizen how is going with your standard listings? I just created my SH WLM and listed all my domains as standard listings to try this new setup. Any luck for you?

 

[JudgeMind]

Happy April everyone.

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

I added only 7 new squadhelp names to my portfolio in March. Here are some of the new names that got added:

Sales in March were slower than February. I had only 1 sale in March for $2249.

NOTE: 2 monthly sales in this price range are needed to cover costs. Losing money at only 1 sale per month with this portfolio size.

Account wise, We have increased our total premium listings to 1,114. I think there are probably lots of sellers at squadhelp with over 1k premium listings now.

BEST OF LUCK TO ALL IN APRIL. THANKS.

 

[Dane]

I had set up a WLM with Squadhelp a while back, but lots of little bugs pushed me away. I'm guessing the bugs have probably been worked out by now so I'm thinking about trying them again. For those that are currently using Squadhelp, how are they these days?

 

[karmaco]

I had set up a WLM with Squadhelp a while back, but lots of little bugs pushed me away. I'm guessing the bugs have probably been worked out by now so I'm thinking about trying them again. For those that are currently using Squadhelp, how are they these days?

Its just as easy to just list them as standard listings. The only thing more WLM provides is a lander with your name on it.

 

[Dane]

Its just as easy to just list them as standard listings. The only thing more WLM provides is a lander with your name on it.

I see. Thanks. So are you happy with them? Also, is Squadhelp exclusive? Should names be removed from Afternic before listing them on Squadhelp, or ??

 

[karmaco]

I see. Thanks. So are you happy with them? Also, is Squadhelp exclusive? Should names be removed from Afternic before listing them on Squadhelp, or ??

https://helpdesk.squadhelp.com/en/articles/4466451-what-are-standard-and-premium-listings

 

[Embrand]

Does anyone know if you can downgrade Premium Listings to Standard Listings? The reason is that I have some premium names that I would prefer to be able to negotiate for without restrictions in the future.

 

[GoKaizen]

That will be viewed as a Delisting.

I would ask SH though. @Embrand

 

[Embrand]

That will be viewed as a Delisting.

I would ask SH though. @Embrand

Yes, I guess so. So there would be a 30 day notice if listing at Afternic is enabled. Maybe I will just leave them as Premium Listings then.

 

[silentg]

Darpan is looking for feedback on what could be improved / new features:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1645949037844000768

 

[Alex270]

Darpan is looking for feedback on what could be improved / new features:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1645949037844000768

Some ideas that I'll write down here because there isn't enough space on Twitter:

1. Develop a new website, written from scratch with minimal code and external requests: Squadhelp 2.0/3.0. It should combine the usability of Dan with the simplicity of Alter. The current website is problematic, with a new menu added on top of the old one, numerous unaddressed bugs, and an outdated appearance.

2. Transition from Amazon Cloud to Google Cloud. Moving to Cloudflare has already improved loading speed and security, but switching to Google Cloud can take things to the next level.

3. Increase visibility and fairness in the marketplace for all users. For instance, include a feature to highlight our best domain name, which would display higher in search results, possibly on the first page.

4. Give more authority to the initial support team. Currently, they are like automated answering machines without much power, and it takes days for the Chicago team to respond. Also, increase the size of the Chicago HQ team.

5. At some point, I recall seeing that Squadhelp shifted from lower quality but higher traffic ads to more expensive ads with fewer visitors but higher quality, in order to sell domains for more money. This coincided with a decrease in domain sales for all of us. Perhaps it's worth investigating what happened then.

That's all I can think of for now (it's almost 5 AM here) that needs addressing for Squadhelp to move forward. If I come up with new ideas, I'll be sure to share them.

Best of luck in making Squadhelp even better so we can all make more money with you!

 

[silentg]

Posted the link to the thread on Twitter.

 

[November]

Great ideas from @Alex270 I have nothing to add.

 

[CS85]

I think it’s about time SH had a major cull of their inventory. How can you describe yourself as a ‘curator of premium brand names’ if you have 170,000+ listed for sale?

How many of that number are truly premium? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but perform your own search of the marketplace and you’ll see what I mean.

This isn’t the sort of feedback Darpan was looking for, but I do hope that returning SH to its premium roots is on the agenda - that will aid buyer and seller alike.