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.

 

[NameGroove]

It is not that hard to do the scientific comparison and to know for sure. I have had enough negative experience not to bother and the last drop for me was SH's removal of my names from the "promotion" whatever that included for me not increasing my prices at Afternic above SH prices.

Also, for names 2499 and under, it is actually +20%.

You want to factually prove to public or just to yourself that SH is doing better than the bland AN/Dan landers, do the A/B test I proposed above.

AN is delivering around 1% STR for me with 35k+ names and 15% commission. I can list EVERY proper name within minutes, don't have to get approvals, wait weeks or months, pay to list, lose freedom of setting your own prices, jump through the hoops to get promos. So less administration, less time required. But, even ignoring that, SH would need to sell at 1.3% just to breakeven with that.

I highly doubt SH can deliver that, even if it were to choose top 30% of my names based on its algorithms and group of "experts".

And do they? Does Atom get 1.3% STR? You can see their top 15 sellers get >1.3% (although all of these sellers have <150 names - so perhaps it's quality over quantity over there).

When you look at their top sales leaderboard, you can see sellers with up to 500 names and their STRs are more like 1.6% (they don't give the avg, just eyeballing it). So I can see where the extra .3% STR wouldn't be worth it for someone with a portfolio of 35k names. The work would be tremendously cumbersome. But for a small group of curated names (250-500) that lean very brandable it could be of assistance to you. But obv the time to manage the other 34,500 names simply wouldn't allow much time for that experiment.

 

[Recons.Com]

And do they? Does Atom get 1.3% STR? You can see their top 15 sellers get >1.3% (although all of these sellers have <150 names - so perhaps it's quality over quantity over there).

When you look at their top sales leaderboard, you can see sellers with up to 500 names and their STRs are more like 1.6% (they don't give the avg, just eyeballing it). So I can see where the extra .3% STR wouldn't be worth it for someone with a portfolio of 35k names. The work would be tremendously cumbersome. But for a small group of curated names (250-500) that lean very brandable it could be of assistance to you. But obv the time to manage the other 34,500 names simply wouldn't allow much time for that experiment.

Right. I like your thinking. I brought my total with marketplaces to around 750 and let it stay like that for few years, while growing the unaffiliated folio multifold.

I had the chance to compare the performance and consistence and it wasn't worth for me. I am sure there are some people and some kind of names for which it is worthy.

I am just providing the math behind to help people make informed decisions and know what to look for.

In few years, I will have more names in my folio than all SH combined, so for me it doesn't make sense from that point as well.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

More than likely, because I would like to be able to browse the marketplace.

Brad

This is the answer I received:

Spoiler: Answer

If you would like to transfer your domains to another domain investor, you have few options:

1. You can list and sell them individually via Atom Wholesale Marketplace.
2. You can list them as a portfolio package and sell the entire portfolio for a fixed price
3. You can transfer the domain to another Atom user via the Transfer Domain option (if you are handling the payment outside Atom)

For the first two cases, we handle the payment process and the listings are transferred automatically to the buyer's premium portfolio once they confirm they have received the domains in their registrar account. For the third option, you would need to transfer the listings individually via the Transfer Domain feature. In all above cases, the listings retain a premium status as well as all the stats.

Since you mentioned that the recipient is a new user, they would first need to add the minimum number of required listings in order to be able to receive domains in this fashion

Seems like they want you to:

(1) Commit 10 domains to Atom from your existing portfolio. No need to buy coins, but you may be throttled in the amount you can have pending for free.
(Or)
(2) Buy coins and/or gain atom points to submit unregistered domains, then register/list what gets accepted for you to organically get to 10 yourself, rather than offering the option for one to buy their way in.

*Atom has tools such as their domain insight score that can help give an indication of metrics such as Tlds regged/developed, AI descriptions, and a domain score that is likely (but -- not guaranteed as it glitches -- to indicate estimated chance of approval.)

https://www.atom.com/domain-insights/

This is in addition to their AI domain grading tool that operates via SH points.

https://www.atom.com/users/upload/grade-domains

 

[bmugford]

This is the answer I received:

Spoiler: Answer

If you would like to transfer your domains to another domain investor, you have few options:

1. You can list and sell them individually via Atom Wholesale Marketplace.
2. You can list them as a portfolio package and sell the entire portfolio for a fixed price
3. You can transfer the domain to another Atom user via the Transfer Domain option (if you are handling the payment outside Atom)

For the first two cases, we handle the payment process and the listings are transferred automatically to the buyer's premium portfolio once they confirm they have received the domains in their registrar account. For the third option, you would need to transfer the listings individually via the Transfer Domain feature. In all above cases, the listings retain a premium status as well as all the stats.

Since you mentioned that the recipient is a new user, they would first need to add the minimum number of required listings in order to be able to receive domains in this fashion

Seems like they want you to:

(1) Commit 10 domains to Atom from your existing portfolio. No need to buy coins, but you may be throttled in the amount you can have pending for free.
(Or)
(2) Buy coins and/or gain atom points to submit unregistered domains, then register/list what gets accepted for you to organically get to 10 yourself, rather than offering the option for one to buy their way in.

*Atom has tools such as their domain insight score that can help give an indication of metrics such as Tlds regged/developed, AI descriptions, and a domain score that is likely (but -- not guaranteed as it glitches -- to indicate estimated chance of approval.)

https://www.atom.com/domain-insights/

This is in addition to their AI domain grading tool that operates via SH points.

https://www.atom.com/users/upload/grade-domains

I just want to be able to access the wholesale marketplace.

They are making it too complex.

Brad

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Simple questions:

1) Is the 10% higher price requirement applicable to premium only or also standard listings?
2) When submitting your names to Atom.com, do you point the NameServers to them while awaiting approval? Even for the standard listings, there still appears to be an approval process.
3) Do all of your Atom.com landers allow for the seller's choice for camel casing? This is important sometimes to help readily clarify the meaning of a domain name.

The Atom.com landers appear very reliable and, for the ones I checked, appeared free of any SSL or adblocking issues. Feel free to add any comments about the landers as well.

 

[NameGroove]

Simple questions:

1) Is the 10% higher price requirement applicable to premium only or also standard listings?
2) When submitting your names to Atom.com, do you point the NameServers to them while awaiting approval? Even for the standard listings, there still appears to be an approval process.
3) Do all of your Atom.com landers allow for the seller's choice for camel casing? This is important sometimes to help readily clarify the meaning of a domain name.

The Atom.com landers appear very reliable and, for the ones I checked, appeared free of any SSL or adblocking issues. Feel free to add any comments about the landers as well.

Re #2 - for premium, you are not required to - but I understand it helps the % approved. For standard, there is no approval process but names must be pointed to Atom to list (although you can change NS after - although not sure why you'd want to do that).
Re #3 - Atom always allows modifications to CamelCase.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Re #3 - Atom always allows modifications to CamelCase.

Yes, and it's exciting to see a marketplace that educates their domain sellers on the SEO benefits of the capitalizations.

Atom Capitalization Tips
This is because our search algorithm only matches words when they are capitalized. This is to avoid any "false positives". For example, we do not want "TopAcumen.com" to show in search results when someone searches for the word "Men" but we do want it to appear when you search for Top or Acumen.

 

[silentg]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1794850998097211655

 

[Future Sensors]

but names must be pointed to Atom to list

Indeed, domains must be verified when added. But it's also possible to use a TXT record for this, instead of changing NS to them.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

Any 2-step verification available on Atom.com?
Also, has anyone used their chat feature recently? Is this usually reliable? Or is email or phone best for support there?