I’ve read quite a bit about Squadhelp and its domain name marketplace. I like what I can see they are doing, and I enjoy reading the insights shared on Twitter by CEO Darpan Munjal. I also trust Hilco Digital’s Andrew Miller, and if his company is backing Squadhelp, I like their chances of continued growth.
In particular, I like that the Squadhelp target audience seems to be people and businesses looking for a brand name rather than people who are simply looking for a domain name. Domain registrars and domain sales platforms compete for customers searching for domain names, and I like that Squadhelp seems to primarily target people who are seeking out a brand identity – and a domain name is a big part of that.
During some downtime last weekend, I submitted 100 domain names to Squadhelp for its Premium review. The domain names I submitted were call to action + keyword .com domain names. By way of example, I submitted, GetStandard.com with “get” being the call to action and “standard” being the keyword. The names I submitted, in my opinion, have very broad keywords (like Standard, Delta, and Clover) where the brand match .com would either be impossible to acquire or super expensive. I think most of these call to action keyword names are empty vessels that can be used for virtually anything.
I don’t love the commission structure at Squadhelp. Paying 30% commission for sales under $5,000 is a significant chunk of change. I am able to justify this because my acquisition costs are fairly low on these particular domain names. In addition, my hope is that Squadhelp is bringing prospective buyers that may never have considered my domain name if it wasn’t for the platform.
I am not sure how much I can or will share related to any sales I am able to close on the platform – if any. I know Squadhelp asks people to keep sales private, and I also hardly every share my sales. That being said, I will be happy to submit more and/or better inventory if things go well.
I have many questions related to listings and enhancements, so if you have any advice for a Squadhelp newbie, please share below. I also have a Zoom scheduled with an account manager for tomorrow to learn how I can optimize my listings to give them the best chance of selling.
Hi Elliot,
Way to go. I’m just curious what your submissions success rate was? I heard that they only accept 10% to 15% of total submissions.
I have 54 approved Premium listings. Quite a few of the listings are at adjusted (lower) prices. I think I declined one or two approvals.
I don’t like the fact that if they don’t sell and you sell it elsewhere they still want a commission.
What?
I removed these listings on Dan, Afternic, and Sedo.
SH has great potential, but still has work to do:
Adopt the three or four-element-data-field structure that has distinguished Afternic’s price listing format as one of the best places to list high-value domains that are likely to prompt a lengthy price-negotiation process. SH needs to re-think their process-flow diagrams for how sales processes can work for high-value inventory, i.e., >$25k. Your ideas and experience could be helpful here.
Other tasks:
Support IDNs;
Syndicate inventory to third parties, including standard listings, which may require adjusting SH’s commission structure;
Market their syndication opportunities;
Formalize SH’s CRM process with a ticket system;
Expand the number of TLDs SH handles;
Localize landers based on visitors’ browser-language settings;
Eliminate confusion over their references to camelCase and headline case being equivalent to PascalCase;
Improve their search processes, which they appear committed to doing. SH’s existing syndetic structures for classifying/tagging domain listings are awkward and time consuming. In future, they may move more toward the IEEE classified catalog model, which is more tiered than the structure SH uses now.
Squadhelp premium listing and Standard listing + market exposure auto synchronize domains on Sedo MLS. And if you submitted the domains with coins, you can also list them on Dan and Afternic. Or after approval, you pay 2 coins for approval to submit on Afternic.
How can I have a conversation with you IRL? I can trade learning and connections.
Is there anyway I can have a dialogue with you? I’ll trade learning and connections.
This was aimed at @Anthony Mitchell.