BrandBucket Experience

[xtremex]

hello

I am new to BrandBucket. Before getting my hands on this

I wish to experience about brandbucket from my fellow members


Thanks

 

[bazabizo]

Another reason Im thinking to move out is the following research someone made here and preferred not to post himself on the thread :

LeadActor Mkrell
Metrivo Other
TravelForest Mkrell
ReadyApparel Mkrell
Rota Other
OKCollab Mkrell
TargetEngine Mkrell
StartSeating Mkrell
BestSection Mkrell
BrowserData Mkrell
Clenic Mkrell
Abrexo Other
Zenrole Other
ConceptLens Mkrell
GoodRevenue Mkrell
Ultrasy Mkrell
Upbolt Mkrell
Upmoment Mkrell
NimbleGrowth other
Qoaj Other
TipTock Mkrell
Demandsy Mkrell
VeryStable Other
avozy Other
vovec Other
tyvu Other
DesertWood Other
Eexr Other
ApexClub Other
Okary Other
UpMixer Other
RivalForce Mkrell
Cloudogo Other
SpecialIQ Mkrell
BestJudgment Other
VastGrowth Other
LuxeClub Other
Uzfa Other
Quavex Mkrell
Postess Other
HealthyWare Other
fish.ly Other
HauteCrowd Mkrell
Oxka Other
Azjo Other
enab Other
UpBlend Mkrell
CodingDesk Mkrell
StaffPlex Mkrell
SillyNilly Mkrell
LaunchBeast Mkrell
TalkNotes Mkrell
SoundMethod Mkrell
ForgePath Mkrell
CoinCrush Mkrell
HealthProphet Mkrell
Industris Mkrell
Onvoya Mkrell
ForgetNot Mkrell
ShotofEnergy Mkrell
UniteUp Mkrell
HomeLayers Mkrell
CodingCube Mkrell
CoachedUp Mkrell
ThinkScale Mkrell

That was a list of the domain names on the front page of BB. 39 of 65 domains owned by Michael on the front page. Thats 60% of the domains. Michael owns less than 15% of the domains on BB and has 60% of the population on the front page and around 40-50% on the staff picks section. Thats not the BB I know!

Now I am solid. I am moving out.

 

[hookbox]

By the way, I have heard that the majority of the "made-up word" sales in BB are 6Ls.

There are 5,092 6Ls that make up almost 25% of BrandBucket's inventory so the odds that an end user would choose one is pretty high. The only problem with owning 6Ls is you have to compete against those other 5,092 names. End users have patience but not that much patience. If they choose the 6L category do you really think they will search through 98 pages worth of 6 letter domains? There is just way to much competition in that category. If your name isn't on the first 20 pages of the 6L category you're basically fucked unless the end user happens to type in your name and navigate to that exact listing.

 

[Beezy]

It's a little bit more than a year after this interview now:

http://www.domainsherpa.com/michael-krell-mediaplow-interview/

I saw a couple of BB published names in an expiring marketplace but missed grabbing them. I see more and more sales here on namepros. And the general tone of this thread has taken a turn. I assume some people are growing disillusioned with renewals coming up, too.

I have zero sales so far and I'm still submitting, but am happy about all of the rejects i've been able to sell outside of the platform as well.

 

[Nerevar]

If your name isn't on the first 20 pages of the 6L category you're basically f*cked unless the end user happens to type in your name and navigate to that exact listing.

IMO, this is not necessarily so. There are also keywords that shuffle the deck quite a bit.

 

[Rob84]

I don't have much names on BB, but I have noticed that my last listed namse didn't hit the first page on BB.
I have asked about the case on the customer service, here is my email and the reply:

"
Hi,

Can you please tell me why didn't listed subjected names on the first page of BrandBucket?

When I logged in, I saw that they where marked as new names, but they have never been on the first site

Kind Regards
"

Their answer:


Hello,

Thanks for contacting us.

All domains get a chance to be on our home page. Some may remain there longer that others though as it depends on the queue.

We also have in place an algorithm that positions the name based on different sets of criteria. So it is not specific on the publishing date per say.
Please note though that more than 90% of sales on BrandBucket happen after a specific keyword search or a category search. So if you're names have the relevant keywords they will show up in the search results.

Hope this clarifies and let us know if we can be of more help.

Best,
"

The funny thing I didn't found the name on the neither the second page nor the third fourth, etc (but the logo was marked as 'NEW')...

 

[Nerevar]

From experience, a name has to be priced at $2,300 or more to have a chance to make it to the first page. Starting from $2,500 the chances are very good.

 

[Rob84]

From experience, a name has to be priced at $2,300 or more to have a chance to make it to the first page. Starting from $2,500 the chances are very good.

"All domains get a chance to be on our home page."

 

[KDN]

"All domains get a chance to be on our home page."

I think what they meant by that was all submitted names have a chance to be accepted and posted on the first page.

 

[Michael M]

All of my approved names have made it to the first page. Though they did not stay very long.

 

[hookbox]

From experience, a name has to be priced at $2,300 or more to have a chance to make it to the first page. Starting from $2,500 the chances are very good.

Not true. Many names get listed on the homepage that are under $2,300. EverAction, StatBoom, Gigada, Beatfully, DeluxeStart, ReadyAdvertise and many more all in the $1,XXX range and all landed on the homepage.

 

[Rob84]

All of my approved names have made it to the first page. Though they did not stay very long.

At least they made it

 

[Nerevar]

Not true. Many names get listed on the homepage that are under $2,300. EverAction, StatBoom, Gigada, Beatfully, DeluxeStart, ReadyAdvertise and many more all in the $1,XXX range and all landed on the homepage.

Well yes, I have seen names under $2,300 at the first page, but they were not mine

 

[hookbox]

BrandBucket Seller's Newsletter - December 2015

Hi.

As we find ourselves in the homestretch of 2015, the entire BrandBucket team would like to say a giant thank you to all of our sellers who have made BrandBucket the community it is today. In my first 6 months as Managing Director, I have been humbled by the amount of patience and goodwill I have received. Thank you!





New Payment & Sales Tracking Features
We’ve made keeping track of your sales and getting paid easier. Our new system allows you to keep track of all of your sales, and request payouts in your seller dashboard. To access your sales and payment information, log into your account and click on “View My Balance Report” in the right sidebar. Check out our FAQ page click to find out more about the ins and outs of the system.



November Sales
November showed a nice uptick in sales over October even with the Thanksgiving Holiday. Keyword and Invented names continue to sell at a healthy balance with the average sales price for a keyword brandable being $2360 and the average sales price of an invented brandable being $3220.

Top Searches
Nothing has changed very much in your top search terms for the month withMoney being the only new keyword in the top 15 searches.

Premium Keyword Brandables Wanted
We are in the middle of a large marketing push geared towards VC firms and incubators and are seeing an increase in requests for premium one word and two word names. If you haven't been able to sell your 5-6 figure names through other platforms, now is a great time to give BrandBucket a shot. Please email me at [email protected] with your names and/or questions about our process.





I'm very excited to be attending my first NamesCon in January. It will be a great opportunity to put faces to names, and connect with others in the industry. I would love to meetup with any of our sellers who will also be attending. Shoot me an email and we can plan on having a drink and talking brandables.

Happy Holidays!

Michael Krell
Managing Director @BrandBucket

 

[decode]

Quick update: Got one of my names accepted on my first small batch of submissions. They have a very professional approach, the site works well, easy to submit, verification and payment is seamless. Worth a try for anyone on the fence. Will update again.

 

[12345]

To give a little perspective on the home page sales rate, I made 15 sales last month and 2 were on the front page during the last 6 months.

We are about to put the stamp-of-approval on a new homepage design and search ui that will shine the light on a larger variety of names on the homepage. With the new payment system in place, this redesign is our top developmental priority.

 

[AndrewRice]

Today marks a month with zero sales for my 490 domains portfolio on BB. The difference between my last sale and the one before was almost 2 months! I do consider the quality of my portfolio to be amidst the best there. That makes my annual sales roughly at 1 sale every 1.5-2 months. which is less than 2% a year.
I dont get parking revenue as well. Dont get to negotiate with buyers, and get a 30% cut + logo + listing fees.

If I sell 1-1.5% outside BB, I might be in a better financial position!

Some serious decision soon... most probably... and Unfortunately

You have a good portfolio indeed. But most of your names are made up or pure brandables. It looks like KW names have been selling better at the moment, but that could change.

I wouldn't make any big decisions in the middle of the holiday season. I think sales would naturally be slow during November and December and pick up in January and February. We're also in an unprecedented market with the CHiPS affecting the whole industry.

I also know from experience that it's way easier to sell these types of brandables on BrandBucket compared to on your own separate site. Think about all of the things BrandBucket does; Marketing, Sales, Escrow, Logo design, Descripton etc. Do you really want to take on all of that along with domaining? BB is already well established and experienced and has brand awareness.

I get a good percentage of my names listed on the front page and I can confirm that it doesn't make much of a difference, if any, in sales.

 

[bazabizo]

You have a good portfolio indeed. But most of your names are made up or pure brandables. It looks like KW names have been selling better at the moment, but that could change.

I wouldn't make any big decisions in the middle of the holiday season. I think sales would naturally be slow during November and December and pick up in January and February. We're also in an unprecedented market with the CHiPS affecting the whole industry.

I also know from experience that it's way easier to sell these types of brandables on BrandBucket compared to on your own separate site. Think about all of the things BrandBucket does; Marketing, Sales, Escrow, Logo design, Descripton etc. Do you really want to take on all of that along with domaining? BB is already well established and experienced and has brand awareness.

I get a good percentage of my names listed on the front page and I can confirm that it doesn't make much of a difference, if any, in sales.

Thanks a lot for a great reply.

1) All sale rates have dropped, not only made up names. AND IF, KW ones are the ones that sell, why on earth are they accepting 6K 6 letter domains?
2) Chips are for investors, not poeple branding their businesses. Zero effect.
3) My sales rate is very bad since July. Not november and August.
4) If I am a bad guy, I would expose here the stats of people that are willing to leave this december/january. I got pms from a lot of people saying they are already considering the same thing!
5) I finish an entire escrow transaction including payment in a total of less than an hour all in all. Used to that.
6) I dont care if they do Marketing or not, logo or not, Escrow or not. I am a numbers guy, I paid 30% for a better sales rate. I am not getting it, its more feasible elsewhere. End of sales story.

All I see from BB supporters are defensive comments. Once someone starts admitting there are mistakes and works on a resolution, things will be better, never before that! I have a bad gut feeling, its not!
Good Luck again.

 

[campout]

To give a little perspective on the home page sales rate, I made 15 sales last month and 2 were on the front page during the last 6 months.

Cool -- so you will agree to no longer have your names dominate the front page and let us have some of that space, since it doesn't matter anyway

 

[AndrewRice]

Thanks a lot for a great reply.

1) All sale rates have dropped, not only made up names. AND IF, KW ones are the ones that sell, why on earth are they accepting 6K 6 letter domains?
2) Chips are for investors, not poeple branding their businesses. Zero effect.
3) My sales rate is very bad since July. Not november and August.
4) If I am a bad guy, I would expose here the stats of people that are willing to leave this december/january. I got pms from a lot of people saying they are already considering the same thing!
5) I finish an entire escrow transaction including payment in a total of less than an hour all in all. Used to that.
6) I dont care if they do Marketing or not, logo or not, Escrow or not. I am a numbers guy, I paid 30% for a better sales rate. I am not getting it, its more feasible elsewhere. End of sales story.

All I see from BB supporters are defensive comments. Once someone starts admitting there are mistakes and works on a resolution, things will be better, never before that! I have a bad gut feeling, its not!
Good Luck again.

I definitely don't think you are a bad guy and don't mean to sound defensive. To be honest, I don't mind a good debate as I think it's the best way to get to the truth.

Just a quick example of how hard it is to sell brandables outside of BB:

About a month ago I tried selling one of my BB rejects D/I/G/I/O/C/O on Flippa.com. The name has quite a bit going for it, it has 'dig' which is short for 'digital', 'co' short for company not to mention 'gioco' means game in Italian, it gets quite a bit of type in traffic and had a $9700 estibot value at the time ( the estibot value actually went up during the listing to $30,000). I think the name is a great brandable.

I did a ton of outbound, hundreds of emails, took out ads, paid the $350 flippa premium listings and my final auction price didn't even cover costs, it was like high 200s.

My point is that it's not easy to sell brandables. I used to have my names listed on my own site Brandiogo.com and I had hard time making a sale. Could be I was doing something wrong, but I figure I'm better suited specializing at just finding domains. I talked to VC guy the other day and he agreed that BB was really great at selling hand reg brandables.

If anyone comes up with a better way to sell these types of names for $XXXX then I'm all ears.

@Nat Hunt
I'd have a hard time finding a flaw in your logic. As someone who gets a good percentage of my names listed on the front page, I wouldn't feel much of any kind of loss if less of my names made the front page.

 

[bazabizo]

Flippa is for investors. Irrelevant comparison a 100%! A domain I own didnt meet the 300 reserve on flippa and sold 2 months ago for 2.5K
irrelevant comparison.

 

[Brandworthy]

I tried selling one of my BB rejects D/I/G/I/O/C/O on Flippa.com

No matter how I put this it will sound negative, but I think that's a pretty low quality name. Reading that word my brain has difficulty with both pronunciation and spelling, and I still cant quite grasp the correct phonetic. That leaves me thinking English-speaking users/customers would would also have difficulties.

Not knocking your attempt to sell it, but I think a better name would have done much better in the same circumstances.

 

[Leopard]

Its really really hard to sell made-up fancy names, especially more so outside of BrandBucket or such sites.
Those are end-user domains and its going to be hard finding them.

Keyword domains would sell even if they are BB rejects. I have sold 13 BB rejects so far but all keyword, 2-word domains. No misspellings.

I think overall one might have to keep a distributed portfolio on BB, BR, Namerific and other keyword marketplaces. All platforms have their + and -. You cant completely depend on 1 platform or completely leave them out either. Balance is key.


- Leopard

 

[Doron Vermaat]

I definitely don't think you are a bad guy and don't mean to sound defensive. To be honest, I don't mind a good debate as I think it's the best way to get to the truth.

Just a quick example of how hard it is to sell brandables outside of BB:

About a month ago I tried selling one of my BB rejects D/I/G/I/O/C/O on Flippa.com. The name has quite a bit going for it, it has 'dig' which is short for 'digital', 'co' short for company not to mention 'gioco' means game in Italian, it gets quite a bit of type in traffic and had a $9700 estibot value at the time ( the estibot value actually went up during the listing to $30,000). I think the name is a great brandable.

I did a ton of outbound, hundreds of emails, took out ads, paid the $350 flippa premium listings and my final auction price didn't even cover costs, it was like high 200s.

My point is that it's not easy to sell brandables. I used to have my names listed on my own site Brandiogo.com and I had hard time making a sale. Could be I was doing something wrong, but I figure I'm better suited specializing at just finding domains. I talked to VC guy the other day and he agreed that BB was really great at selling hand reg brandables.

If anyone comes up with a better way to sell these types of names for $XXXX then I'm all ears.

@Nat Hunt
I'd have a hard time finding a flaw in your logic. As someone who gets a good percentage of my names listed on the front page, I wouldn't feel much of any kind of loss if less of my names made the front page.

Sorry Andrew but you couldn't have given a worse example. Trying to sell a made-up pronounceable on Flippa plus spending money on upgrades and time on outreach is kinda silly.

You can't really "go out" and sell brandables. You have to sit on them and if your names are any good (maybe that's the key question in this whole thing since a BB accepted name isn't automatically a good name imo) an end-user will come knocking on your door sooner or later. If you have them listed on BB then they will knock on BB's door instead of yours.

The alternative for selling outside of BB is very simple. To start with you make sure you put up a great landing page so you can tackle inquiries and offers directly yourself without paying a dollar in commission. Then you do like everyone else and make sure the domain is listed with Sedo, Afternic and on GoDaddy (which is were millions of end-users start their search for a business name). Yes, you can set up your own marketplace but as you already pointed out chances are that's going to be a lot of hard work and most of us here don't even have the time and/or knowledge for that.

With this approach you're 100% in control over your inventory and you can negotiate directly with buyers and have the freedom to sell a name for a thousand or even $500 bucks if you need to.

Don't get me wrong, I like BB and I also have a sweet spot for their competitor BR. I have sold 8 names with BB alone this year on a relatively small portfolio (112 listed at the moment) and I have a similar sales rate at BR (sold 6 out of 70 listed in 1,5 year). I just would never list my entire portfolio of names with any of these sites. It's not smart business sense to do so.

Sellers with such large portfolios on BB such as yourself, @bazabizo and @Brandworthy made a big gamble by building such large portfolios exclusively on BB and when sales start to slow down BB really has you by the balls because there's nothing you can do besides wait and hope for a couple sales so you can pay your bills or get your portfolio out of there with a 30/days wait time. Because those sellers have invested so much time and money in building their BB portfolios this last option is a very difficult one to make.

 

[KDN]

Its really really hard to sell made-up fancy names, especially more so outside of BrandBucket or such sites.
Those are end-user domains and its going to be hard finding them.

Keyword domains would sell even if they are BB rejects. I have sold 13 BB rejects so far but all keyword, 2-word domains. No misspellings.

I think overall one might have to keep a distributed portfolio on BB, BR, Namerific and other keyword marketplaces. All platforms have their + and -. You cant completely depend on 1 platform or completely leave them out either. Balance is key.


- Leopard

I agree with you. That's the reason why I focus on keyword names now.

 

[AndrewRice]

Sorry Andrew but you couldn't have given a worse example. Trying to sell a made-up pronounceable on Flippa plus spending money on upgrades and time on outreach is kinda silly.

You can't really "go out" and sell brandables. You have to sit on them and if your names are any good (maybe that's the key question in this whole thing since a BB accepted name isn't automatically a good name imo) an end-user will come knocking on your door sooner or later. If you have them listed on BB then they will knock on BB's door instead of yours.

The alternative for selling outside of BB is very simple. To start with you make sure you put up a great landing page so you can tackle inquiries and offers directly yourself without paying a dollar in commission. Then you do like everyone else and make sure the domain is listed with Sedo, Afternic and on GoDaddy (which is were millions of end-users start their search for a business name). Yes, you can set up your own marketplace but as you already pointed out changes are that's going to be a lot of hard work and most of us here don't even have the time and/or knowledge for that.

With this approach you're 100% in control over your inventory and you can negotiate directly with buyers and have the freedom to sell a name for a thousand or even $500 bucks if you need to.

Don't get me wrong, I like BB and I also have a sweet spot for their competitor BR. I have sold 8 names with BB alone this year on a relatively small portfolio (112 listed at the moment) and I have a similar sales rate at BR (sold 6 out of 70 listed in 1,5 year). I just would never list my entire portfolio of names with any of these sites. It's not smart business sense to do so.

Sellers with such large portfolios on BB such as yourself, @bazabizo and @Brandworthy made a big gamble by building such large portfolios exclusively on BB and when sales start to slow down BB really has you by the balls because there's nothing you can do besides wait and hope for a couple sales so you can pay your bills or get your portfolio out of there with a 30/days wait time. Because those sellers have invested so much time and money in building their BB portfolios this last option is a very difficult one to make.

Nice post. It's good to see some honest debate and educational info on this thread.

I agree, selling a brandable like that on Flippa is tough. It was a great learning experience and I don't regret it at all.

I may actually try listing a few domains as you described, I had thought of it previously. It would be interesting to see how the sales rates would compare to BB and BR.