How Would You Improve The Site?

Just give us the option once approved to register ourselves. I too massively respect SH but feel like they’ve got me by the balls when they take a huge portion of my could be profit simply because they spent the $10 and I didn’t. I’m more than happy to pay the $10 as long as I know they’re gonna approve the domain. If they don’t, I’m stuck with a domain that I can only use in an occasional contest, and that’s only if I see the contest and am eligible to enter. And getting approved is not an exact science…I could end up spending alot and getting next to nothing approved…and that’s a reality. All because of a $10 difference. It doesn’t make since to me that our profit is drastically cut over a $10 fee. Rather I reg it or SH does you still put the logo and marketing efforts in. Not to mention if I ever choose not to renew a SH owned domain, that name is essentially lost to me and SH forever!!!

Just to recap…for me, the problem would be solved if you’d let me register AFTER you’ve given me approval, if I so choose.

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I agree with all the comments that have been made and hope that this is an issue that is revisited soon and hopefully balanced better, much like it was early on. As far as renewals, I don’t mind covering the renewal cost on a domain I want to keep in the market (well once the issue is fixed that has some paying the renewal and still having their rates cut, which I know is being addressed) - I’m not fond of the current structure that has some paying more than the actual cost to renew the domain however, it feels a little like salt in an open wound with the current rate cuts.

Only half joking I sometimes cringe looking at updates, I have a slight fear that if things keep changing as they are I might actually end up owing someone money if a domain sells.

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I think what this all really boils down to is this:

If we get a name approved on SH (SH buys it) and after a year we opt for SH to renew it, the amount we would get if it sold is so little that it would take 10 ‘sales’ here to equal just 1 sale elsewhere.

You can understand why we don’t think this is fair. We’re are all very tactfully trying to say that we feel abused by the situation.

We all love SH and want to support it. We’re not asking for the same terms, we understand that SH is different from other places, we’re just asking for SH to understand our side of the situation, and take some steps to compromise a little.

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@AbleBrands @Chasity2ku @ LynnPark great points! I agree completely.

When Squadhelp introduced the marketplace I was very excited. I still think that it was one of their best decisions as it provides a great value to the clients, the company and us, creatives.

When Squadhelp introduced variable commission rates I was also under an impression that it would sometimes be in the favor of Squadhelp and sometimes in the favor of a creative (higher commissions than before). Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The commissions were ALWAYS in the favor of Squadhelp.

At the beginning the proportion of what Squadhelp gets and what the creative gets felt fair. Now, with reduced commissions, renewal fees and withdrawal fee when Squadhelp is making over a $1000 a creative is making just over $200 (just to clarify, I’m not discussing specific rates offered to me, just the general tendency). I’m sorry, but this proportion doesn’t seem fair anymore (actually, this solely has pushed me to explore other marketplaces). To pay renewal fees for one extra year for my current domains would most likely cost me somewhere between $600 - $800 (depends on the sales in that period). While it’s not much for a successful company, it’s a lot for an individual. If I’m investing this much in the domains I don’t even own the importance of the commission rates becomes even more significant.

For these reasons could you please consider the following:

  • It would be great if you would approve our submissions first and then let us choose whether to register them ourselves and get higher commissions or let Squadhelp register the name and agree to lower commissions.

  • In the case when a creative is paying the $10 renewal fee, their commission rate should go up, because they are taking this financial burden from you to themselves.

Thank you for your consideration. In addition I want to ensure that these suggestions were proposed solely with best intentions.

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Here’s my input about renewals for SH registered domains from a domainer’s perspective: The whole point of renewals, whether you own one domain or a lot of domains, is to make sure that the cost of renewal is worth it based on the income you project you can get from that domain or your overall portfolio and the likelihood of that domain or domains selling. Paying $10 to renew a domain when it’s exclusively listed in one place, effectively owned by another entity that gets most of the profit from it and the max income you can make from it is $200-$300 is a bad investment.

If a creative pays $10 to renew a domain SH registered- the creative’s commission for that domain should go up because they’re now invested in it financially in exactly the same way SH is. If another year passes and the creative renews again- they’ll be even more invested in it than SH. The commission can’t stay the same as day one when SH bought the domain. Because if it stays the same- what a creative is basically doing is financing a domain that’s owned by someone else for a small cut of the possible profit. That’s a bad situation to be in for a single domain, let alone a big portfolio.

So I wholeheartedly agree with @EliCreative about the two proposals she’s making. If that’s done and the commissions get back to the realm of reason- I think the situation will be great.

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It would be helpful to have a list of your best rated entries, for example,

  1. GreatName.com submitted to 50 contests, 15% love it, 10% like it…
  2. NiceName.com submitted to 34 contests, 0% love it, 10% like it

If I am reading everything correctly, they approved your listings, and then changed the terms after the fact? I was going to give it a go but now I am not too sure.

No, @brandmeme, the original terms were not changed. SH never does that. What they do is change policy moving forward. So do not worry about that.

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What @Commulinks says is true, however, if your domain is owned by SH and it comes time to renew your domain, the commission terms WILL change if you have SH cover the renewal fee. This will decrease your commission rate. If you cover the renewal fee the terms won’t change.

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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.