Atom.com / Squadhelp sale (2 Viewing)

Congratulations and thanks for sharing. It must have been a .Com I presume. Too bad these guys don't promote .CA's, or have they changed?
 
Congrats. I had my first sale there early on and my next one wasn't until almost 3 years later. Only have about 20 names there so your mileage may vary
 
Congrats!

You can add promotion where they retarget ads for visitors who have already visited your landing page. Commission is higher.
 
Spex said:
Congrats. I had my first sale there early on and my next one wasn't until almost 3 years later. Only have about 20 names there so your mileage may vary
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2 sales in 3 years out of 20 domains is 1 in 30 domain-years. That's equivalent to a 3.33% STR, so its really not bad unless you're selling pretty cheap.
 
dancarls said:
Well a week with Squadhelp /Atom and had my first sale in a while, $5k with 7.5% commission so happy so far!

Dan
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Congrats, that's awesome. Can't complain about that quick of results!

1 sale in 1 week out of 128 domains is like a 40% yearly STR. Clearly a freak anomaly otherwise I could be doing 8 figures in sales per year based on that metric! But I like the thought of it, haha!
 
Sold a couple there, not for me, using bodis with escrow most often.
 
MacMan said:
Sold a couple there, not for me, using bodis with escrow most often.
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I find the BIN / Escrow.com lander at bodis doesn't sell anything (at least not for me), and that the Make-an-offer bodis lander results in the majority of all inquiries to be from morons who fill out the form (including a price!) and hit submit. It's so bad I now have to first respond with a short message asking if you're really interested in buying this domain or not. Most of they time they just ghost or say "sorry, I was looking for a different site" or "I didn't mean to fill out that form". And to combat the ghosting I've started texting their phone numbers, and occasionally that'll get a reply. There's nothing worse then getting an offer and then getting ghosted. You don't know if it was a mistake, did your email end up in their spam folder, etc, etc...211

I got one the other day for something like 18,248 USD which based on the current exchange rate was exactly $25K CAD. I figured that couldn't be random and that it took a bit of thought and effort to come up with that price, so I thought maybe the guy was serious (and it wasn't much lower than what I was willing to sell it for either). So I replied with a "please confirm your interest" email, then a text message and they completely ghosted on both. Ugh.
 
rlm said:
2 sales in 3 years out of 20 domains is 1 in 30 domain-years. That's equivalent to a 3.33% STR, so its really not bad unless you're selling pretty cheap.
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One was for $3k and the other for $5k so $4k average...before the sick 30% commission. But they were brandables that didn't get a sniff at Afternic so Squadhelp's marketing definitely worked
 
Spex said:
One was for $3k and the other for $5k so $4k average...before the sick 30% commission. But they were brandables that didn't get a sniff at Afternic so Squadhelp's marketing definitely worked
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especially if they're fanciful/made-up brandables rather than 1-words, then I can see that atom/squadhelp might be a good option.
 
MapleDots said:
I'm probably one of the few people still paying good money for them during these hard times.

That said, I'm not beyond snagging a bargain once in a while.
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I know, but to me that would still be a lowball. others may be willing to sell less.
 
I was investigating Atom out, if you list a domain for sale on payments (and despite their verbiage saying that there is no fee for payment plans or if so its a small one) it seems there are hefty fees / interest that they describe as a surcharge.

I've worked out the equivalent interest rates for their surcharges:

11.4% @ 4 years = 25%
12.25% @ 3 years = 20%
13.8% @ 2 years = 15%
18.0% @ 1 year = 10%

And here's what their support people said:

Hi there! Ivan here, thanks for the question, Ivan here.
Here is the breakdown of the Atom surcharge on Flexible Payment Plans:

Automatic Surcharge
-Atom automatically adds a surcharge on payment plans of 12 months or higher. The buyer is responsible for this surcharge, which is split between the seller and Atom.
-For ---Seller-owned domains, Atom keeps 35% of the surcharge amount, and the seller receives 65% of the surcharge amount. Here are the rules of how much surcharge is collected,
  • For payment plans of 12 months, buyer pays 10% surcharge
  • For payment plans of 24 months, buyer pays 15% surcharge
  • For payment plans of 36 months, buyer pays 20% surcharge
  • For payment plans of 48 months, buyer pays 25% surcharge.
For example, if you sell a domain priced at $7200 with a 36-month plan, the buyer's base monthly payment will be $200 per month and a monthly surcharge of $40 per month.
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Personally, I offer payment plans as a way to convince people to buy the domain that is typically out of their budget and they're ready to walk away. And I've had good luck doing this without tacking on interest rates. I'd rather lock in a sale that I had no chance of getting by offering free payment plans. I truly WANT to help potential buyers BECOME actual buyers. We all know how long it takes for the next buyer to come along on the average domain. So although I don't like to negotiate down the price to meet them at their budget, but I will negotiate a payment plan that suits the buyer. I find they typically understand the long term value, just not the short term pain of purchasing.

But with the hefty fees Atom is putting on, they are right up there with credit cards for 1-year plans, I don't see that there's much incentive to stretch their budgets and buy a domain on a payment plan that they couldn't already have put on a CC for similar amount (and ultimately OWN the domain immediately rather than later). So maybe this is Atom just making it an incentive to just buy it outright, but to me that defeats the purpose of the payment plan completely... Since 2/3 of the fee goes back to the seller anyways, I'd rather see the seller set the interest rate, not have it forced on us. And for Atom to take 1/3 of the interest rate (in addition to their sales commission that comes out of your pocket), it seems their cut is pretty steep for nothing. So if you sell a $100K domain, over 48 months, that's a 25% surcharge, so the buyer pays $125,000. Atom makes an additional $8750 ($182/mo) off that sale in what is really all perceived by the buyer as interest payments. But Atom doesn't deserve any of it because its not as if they're lending the money. They could charge a $40/mo holding fee or whatever like Escrow.com does for payment plan transactions. That would be justifiable. But I don't think the current policy is.

What do you guys think?

Honestly, since payment plans are a big part of my sales strategy, and since they give no option to change this policy other than to turn payment plans off, it may be a deal breaker for me to listing many domains there.
 
Congratulations man...after this forum and your sales, i will invest in .ca looks very promosing tld.
 
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