More Flexibility in Review Process, PLUS longer installment plans

Announcements
#1

We are pleased to announce additional changes to the Marketplace:

1. Flexibility in Review Process

In addition to our standard Expert Review Process, you now have additional choices regarding how your premium submissions are reviewed. You can opt to completely bypass the Expert Review process, or choose to have SH team review all the names before they are accepted or rejected. You can change this preference at any time from your Seller Preferences page.

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While we continue to believe that the Expert Review process is the best (and fastest) review method, we have added the additional options to ensure that the sellers have flexibility in deciding that works best in their situation.

2. Longer Installment Plans

We are finding that the longer installment plan options can help improve the likelihood of domain sales. As a result, we now allow up-to 24 months of installment plans based upon the selling price of your domains. You can now select these options directly from your Seller Preferences page.

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5 Likes
#2

@grant That’s some really good change to avoid possible ‘biasing’ in the review process.
Thanks a ton!

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#3

I will stay with the expert reviews option, because in my experience their approval rate is higher than SH internal team.

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#4

Curious: Are other domainers here interested in 2 year installments?

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#5

From a logistics point of view it’s a lot of work for us to check installments have been paid every month and cross reference this every month for each domain. I have all mine set for 6 months installments but SH recently negotiated a sale on my behalf for 9 months installments. So on that note the buyers in the current climate must be asking for longer installments and if SH is seeing this on their end I would be willing to increase mine to 12 months. I personally wouldn’t add 24 months for my domains its way to long to manage payments.

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#6

I just have to say - there’s a reason credit card companies charge interest. Waiting for 2 years to get paid should mean interest is added. But this is why buyers are choosing installments - so they don’t have to pay interest on money they owe us. Two years interest free for them while our money is held up.

Boy, this bothers me. Especially if tons of people decide to do this and I am one of the few who feels I need to draw a line somewhere.

I guess this is how it is done - but I sure am not very comfortable with it. Especially because I now do have a buyer who has defaulted and the ten days end tomorrow. My name was held up from another buyer for a month for a very small payment.

Feeling kind of … I dunno … cranky… about installments

7 Likes
#7

Just to clarify, the 24 month option is available for domains priced $10,000 or above. For lower priced domains, you can only pick a max of 12 months.

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#8

Thank you for responding, Grant. I am glad to know that because I did not realize that fully.

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#9

Just some feedback: I think #1 is just a very weird feature. You want your names to sell, not have as many listings on SH as possible. That should always be the goal and it’s up to SquadHelp management to make sure that the approval process fits that standard and that they ONLY accept names that will sell. Everybody loses when too many names are in the marketplace and the Expert Review team may have a good idea, it should be ultimately the responsibility of the SH team to accept names or not. I feel this is one of the many, not really thought out changes that have been plaguing the marketplace for the last month just diluting the dashboard and making things way more complicated than they should. For example, two months ago I ordered around 20 logos for my Standard domains because it said it makes them eligible for retargeting ads. Then two weeks ago I find a new function on my domains to add Marketing exposure ($8 or increased commission) which ALSO adds retargeting ads. In the meanwhile it still says my domains will be in the retargeting campaigns when I order a logo: so what is going on? I asked this to the team one month ago, including a couple of reminders, but the answer is still pending. Also, this Add Marketing Exposure add on means that without it my domains cannot be submitted to naming contests etc… but isn’t your goal to bring creatives together so everybody benefits and create a cohesive (combined) workflow with as few friction as possible? When I listened to a podcast with your founder, I reallly got this idea, but when I look at what is happening at the marketplace in the last months, I see the opposite. More friction, confusing add ons that should be free and many many additions without giving it the time to rest and analyze.

#10

Now, this led me to think…

What if I want to run down my names through SH team only, the names that may have been formerly rejected by experts only?

3 Likes
#11

The other possible issue about long installment plans, is the same that some of the domain leasing companies ran into. A domain gets leased for a year or so and used for any kind of purpose.There’s no guarantee that when the lease expires (or installment plan tanks) that the domain that’s returned isn’t going to be compromised / Google fail-listed, or whatever, in some sort of way that lowers its re-sale value. Even without a definitive fail-listing, a quick Archive*org or screenshot check of a domain’s less-than-stellar past usage could put some eventual re-purchasers off.

7 Likes
#12

I’m also not too sure who would agree to a 24 instalments plan. Maybe someone selling a 48k+ domain name - 2k per month - so they don’t lose a good customer?

I’ve kept my settings as 12 months max for the precise reason @canswift mentions. I feel the use of the domain could be given after 50% is paid. That way we know almost for sure that neither the deal will fall through nor will the domain be compromised and returned.

Maybe the ability to only forward the domain to another URL can be provided till 50% is paid.

2 Likes
#13

do unregistered domains also go through expert review process instead of sh? since i saw several times domain which available went through expert review selection.

1 Like