How Would You Improve The Site?

Hello everyone!

Regardig the domain name commissions, here are my 2 cents.
(Pease forgive me if I repeat any suggestion someone else may have already talked about. I didn’t read all the previous posts. Also, forgive my poor English. It’s not my first language, and it shows! :slight_smile: )

First of all I think points are under-rated. I mean, points are valuable, because they are the result of our work and effort. They represent quantity of work and quality of work. They are the result of our time (and time is money), effort, work, creativity, and so on! The “point” (pun intended) is they are valuable and should be more used as a “Creativity Coin”. Considering this and the fact that SH owners must get the rightful profit and return for their investement (I don’t want them to go out of business!) and not only, here are my suggestions:

1 - As someone else mentioned, it would be a great idea if creatives could have the possibility of registering the approved domains, and be entiteled to higher percentegas on the domains they register themselves (after SH approval).

2 - Considering the first point, it would only be reasonable that creatives would pay for each domain submitted, using points(!).

3 - I agree that the scales of the commission percentages are somehow uneven. I understand that the registrant must have a higher percentage, because all the risk is on their side, but a ratio of 80%-20% is discouraging for the other part. I would be more happy to suggest published domains to contests, if the ratio would be more like 60%-40%, for the registrant.

4 - A further idea would be that creatives could negotiate the percentage using their points. For example, SH would set the creatives’ commission at 20%. And the creative could negotiate a higher percentage using his points. For example, he would need to pay 100 points for each 1% increase to the comission.

5 - Regarding the renewals of the domains, I would suggest three options instead of the current 2:
a) Don’t pay anything and get a decrease on the creatives’ percentage (like it currently happens, if I’m not mistaken);
b) Pay an amout of points (for exampe 100 points) and get no change to the commision ratio.
c) Pay the $10 and swap the percentages alltogether with SH (if it was 60%-40%, it would become 40%-60% with this option), considering that now the creative invests as if he would register/renew the domain, so he takes on all the risk for the next year.

6 - Another factor that is important when renewing a domain is the ratio between the number of views and the number of times it was shortlisted. The higher that ratio, the better the domain probably is and that should mean it has a lower risk of not selling. This could be used for both reviewing the domain’s price as well as for the maintaning or increasing of the percentage for the part that hasn’t invested in the domain (registration or renewal).

7 - Another thing that would encourage creatives to submit their published domains to marketplaces (and value their creativity) is to be able to get the sale commision (when the domain sells) as well as the prize of the contest (should it be chosen as winner). After all, “garanteed prize” should mean exactly that. The contest and the domain are two distinct subjects and the creative shoud be rewarded for both if he should be succesful in both.

I hope this helps the discussion. And, please forgive me if my coments are somehow offensive or if they hinder this discussion.

Best regards!
Ruben

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@DNFront thank you for sharing your ideas. There are some excellent points there (pun intended :wink: ) I agree with most of what you said.

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I sure would love to see more clarity around which domains would be acceptable in the brief. I think it is essential to know if the CH requires the .com rather than just a list. If they list .io for example but are not willing to have this without the .com they should be some way to communicate this on the brief. I get several messages stating that they require a .com even though this is not often clearly indicated unless it is the only thing they list.

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@moretal, you seriously do deserve a huge pat on the back. Keep it up!!!

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There are names that require a comment. If I submitted a name with a comment and later on submit the same name to another contest, it would be helpful if the original comment automatically appeared in the comment window.

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Thank you all for your feedback related to the Marketplace. We have created a reply in order to address this issue in a new thread:

I would dearly love to have the ability to put my marketplace names “on sale” on my own like SH does for a self-determined period of time from the dashboard. I know that I can change the price within the SH limits, but what I mean is to be able to temporarily put a name on sale and have it show up that way it the markeplace like SH’s sales do.

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This is a good ideas. We’ll add this feature in the future.

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@Grant, could you please clarify something? I had a domain (finance niche) approved for the marketplace in mid July. A few days ago I submitted it to the contest (finance niche too) and today I received a love it rating (yay), but was surprised to see a little green flag next to my entry saying “The entry is conflicted with trademark” (boo). My question is, do you run a quick trademark check before approving names for the marketplace (at least in its primary category and for USA only)? If you do, does my entry being marked as conflicting with trademark simply means that it was trademarked sometime after it was approved for the marketplace? I’m just curious how things work.

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Hello!
I don’t know if anyone has suggested this, so here it goes: When submitting a Premium Domain (from the marketplace) we should be able to access them using some kind of drop-down list (with only our published domains).
Thanks!

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Due to the complexity of Trademarking, we are unable to check the Trademark status of Marketplace names before we have a potential buyer with a business or business plan.

Thank you for clarifying.

I would love for Squadhelp (with all of us brainstorming) to come up with an article or two for Contest Holders about how and WHY to “break out” of old ideas or being stuck on wanting something that’s not good for them.

We creatives see a lot of the same things over and over again. Ideas that are really now passe. Ideas that are trying to copy other brands that just are not possible. Ideas that are boring. CHs come here wanting hashed over ideas sometimes, is what I am saying. How can WE get them to break free??? How can SH become the place where breaking free happens?

It is really hard, after you’ve been doing this a while, to create something mind-blowing when a CH is looking for a name that is just like literally thousands of other companies. (Example is ______stone). There’s also concepts like Nike…

Sometimes I get stuck on these contests - spend a really really long time trying to find that next great story-driven name or yet another _______stone or … and end up subbing nothing when what I really want is to give them something truly different.

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I would love to help write something like this.

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Sometimes a simple, easily understood and familiar concept works very well. The stones and oaks and leaves will be here long after the latest fads have gone, because they are rooted in nature and concepts everybody easily gets. What may be boring and passe to some, may be well known, easily understood and comforting to others. Hence we should not always be taken in by the lure of things innovative, exotic, new and flowery.

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When a domain is approved for the marketplace I’d like to have the opportunity to add the phonetic spelling and voice option when I fill in the other details before it goes live. I also wish I could hear the voice options before I pick one. To my knowledge you have to select it, save it, go to the landing page, listen, then do it all over again if you don’t like it. Is there a better way?? I’ve never actually changed the voice because every time I try it tells me I can’t have more than 5 keywords. I’m not going to delete keywords that I think are relevant just to change the voice so I always just leave it. Which brings me to my next issue. If I can select more than 5 keywords during initial set up, why once I save it and it goes live can I not edit without having 5 or less?

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I know a lot of the focus is on the marketplace right now but would it be possible to have more clarity in the brief regarding what domains are mandatory to the CH and which they are willing to accept. I always try to get the .com but often when I try for other domains listed I get a message saying the .com is preferred or Mandatory.
Speaking for myself this would save a lot of time and effort for me and the CH as well. I don’t know if others are finding the same thing??? Thanks

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I would like to have the option of deleting past entries (on the my entries page)such as not accepted/not labeled within the marketplace.Lots are just sitting there of no use.Thanks!

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I would appreciate if you could add one extra tab to the dashboard of our marketplace listing showing the percentage of views vs shortlists (what part of those who viewed the name has shortlisted it). Also, it would be great if we could sort our listings by this percentage (views vs shortlists), views, shortcuts and expected commissions. This would be very helpful in seeing which names are best performers and thus worth renewing.

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@Commulinks - We do have some information related to branding and naming that is shared with the CH throughout the process, and we will keep this in mind as we continue to improve and hone this content. However, we have to remain open in our naming philosophy - meaning we cannot take the stance that all brands need outside the box names. Our goal is to provide a large breadth of name styles and types for the CH to review and choose from.

@ChristyMay - This is a good point. We will add more clarification within the brief down the road. For now, we recommend, in these situations to do your best to submit domains that are available in all extensions, especially if the CH has indicated an interest in a .com.

@Marye5 - Unfortunately, we are unable to allow domain deletions from the My Entries page for audit reasons.

@EliCreative - This is a good idea. We will add it in the near future.

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