BrandPa.com Experience (Brandable Domain Marketplace)

[Chris Hydrick]

BrandPa.com has announced their presence on NamePros...

Hi there! I'm sorry your experience with BB wasn't pleasant :/ If you'd like to try our marketplace please don't hesitate to do so We're new in the domaining industry but very eager to learn! Let me know what you think or if you have any questions This is us: https://brandpa.com/ (or if you'd like to read about the sellers' rules visit this page: https://brandpa.com/start-selling)

Look forward to hearing from you!

Granted, the above post is from the BrandBucket experience thread, and will likely be deleted for being off topic / wrong thread, it was the first time I heard of them. The founder, @Jowita Emberton, had introduced herself in an earlier thread:

Hi guys! NamePros is a great website to get invaluable information about the domaining industry. As a reader, I'm here pretty much every day. As a writer, I'm starting today

I'm the founder of Brandpa (brandpa.com), a domain name marketplace similar to BB, BR or Namerific. We use AI and human knowledge to create and judge the names’ value according to how easy to pronounce and catchy they are.

I'm here to learn, get to know you and your recent experiences with other brandable name marketplaces We're still developing the business so any insight on our site (brandpa.com) or anything you're missing from other marketplaces will be very useful

Thanks!

I'm creating this thread to discuss their marketplace, and for those who have experiences with them.

Here's what I know so far:

The founder, @Jowita Emberton, runs two other online businesses according to her LinkedIn page.

Delighten.co.uk - Web / brand design firm.

Weddination.com - Polish wedding services

According to her LinkedIn, she has been operating BrandPa since August 2016. Though, the last cached Archive.org screenshot is a server error on October 4, 2016 HERE

BrandPa.com (2006) is registered to Oliver Emberton, founder and managing director of SilkTide.com.

Currently, there are 562 domains published / listed on BrandPa. It appears most domains listed are handregged by the owners. Not 100% on this; I will run a check when my program is working again.

After reviewing their listings, I found two errors.

The domain regged is MonoRaptor.com, but the text reads ManoRaptor.com

The domain regged is UnknownVenues.com, but the text reads UnknownVenus.com

At first look:

Pros

• No Listing Fee
• FREE Logos
• Domain Owner sets price ($1,000+)
• Forwards all offers for sellers consideration
• Brandpa is a pretty memorable / catchy brandable domain.
• Select 'On-Sale' marketing section

Cons

• Low Alexa Ranking (4,557,819)

• New site. Assuming low organic traffic, and low type-in traffic due to quality and quantity of inventory.
• Piggy-back branding off BrandBucket in site footer see below

• Reviews are all from .co.uk domains, yet BrandPa doesn't sell any .co.uk domains. A quick glance at other domains owned by the reviewers and I wasn't able to verify any brandable .com's with history tracing back to BrandPa.

Personal thoughts: I respect that they "allow the seller to submit more domain names" by not charging a listing fee. To me this shows they are willing to work for your exclusivity. Should they gain popularity, I wonder if they'll sustain this business model and/or if their logo / listing quality will decrease over time when resources are spread across the masses.

@Jowita Emberton = Feel free to comment / fill in any of the blanks.

 

[varmuk]

Very happy to announce ,sold 1st name on Brandpa :-
Domain name : VoltN^com
Sale Price : 1495$
Received 1121.5$ on paypal after 25% brandpa commission
Purchase price = 4.99$ namesilo promo
Hold period- 6 month

 

[Jowita Emberton]

Wow this is impressive @Grilled! Thanks Let me comment on a few things:

1. "A quick glance at other domains owned by the reviewers and I wasn't able to verify any brandable .com's with history tracing back to BrandPa … Reviews are all from .co.uk domains, yet BrandPa doesn't sell any .co.uk domains"

That's right. My husband and I were selling domain names offline before we officially launched Brandpa.com – these domain names were sold before then.

2. "Piggy-back branding off BrandBucket in site footer"

I think this is a fair way to attract people who are searching for alternatives to BrandBucket. It's designed to rank in search engines, e.g. we're 1st on Google for "alternative to BrandBucket" in the US and UK right now.

3. Thanks for spotting the domain name errors! They've been fixed now.

4. "Cons: Low Alexa Ranking".

We're less than 6 months old and clearly have less traffic than BB and some other marketplaces. However, I can say our traffic is growing fast, and that Alexa is definitely playing catch up (check again in a month or so). By way of credibility, my husband has built some pretty high traffic sites:

• Silktide.com is ranked 35,804th, above BrandBucket
• Insites.com is 186,801st (and was unranked around April last year)
• OliverEmberton.com is 305,482nd even though it hasn't been updated in 2 years

To grow Brandpa's traffic we have free tools (e.g. https://brandpa.com/idea-explorer), high quality blog content (e.g. https://brandpa.com/resources/how-to-name-your-startup) and a lot more coming in the near future.

5. I'd like to add a few pros (I'm biased of course! )

• We put a LOT more design effort into making names look great, e.g. take a look at https://brandpa.com/name/askhr or https://brandpa.com/name/gorillum and compare with other marketplaces
• A smaller inventory means more attention per visitor. It's easy to get lost in 40,000 names.
• We have more to prove and we're willing to work hard for it

Really appreciate the feedback and I look forward to showing you great things in the future!

—

P.S: We spell it "Brandpa" and "Silktide". Not "BrandPa" and "SilkTide"

 

[Haykay2005]

Just got Tokentower.com Listed for $26k
https://brandpa.com/name/tokentower

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Dashboard stats are a waste of time, on all platforms, they are nothing but a shiny object to keep you busy why you wait for sales. No correlation between stats and sales. The formula for success is to get quality names and price them at reasonable levels, ready for an impulse purchase.

 

[Haykay2005]

I just had my second sale at Brandpa.
Price $3,070
Both in this month of July
Niche : crypto

 

[MitchH]

Very happy to announce that I finalized my first sale with BrandPa today!

BrandPa was fantastic throughout the process. Being my first domain sale ever, I did not have the best understanding on the process of selling and transferring a domain. BrandPa helped me step-by-step, no issues at all. High quality content and even better customer service!

 

[rubencouto]

I sold my first domain on Brandpa!

Back in March this year I hand registered a dropped domain suitable for a company in the gaming industry (undisclosed name). Using a FastHosts promo at the time, I payed around $1,60. I then submitted this name to BrandBucket, Namerific and BrandDo. All rejected it. A couple of months later I learned about Brandpa, here on NamePros. I decided to give it a shot. I submitted this domain and it was accepted. Back then, I payed no listing fee and the domain was published with a sale price of $1390.

A few days ago, I got an email from @Jowita Emberton (Brandpa’s director), saying a potential buyer had made an offer on this name. I asked her to negotiate with the buyer and let her know for how low I would be happy to sell it. A day after, I got another email from Jowita saying the buyer had accepted my terms and had agreed to buy the domain. The final sale was for $1100. I was very happy with this sale, as you may imagine, because even after deducting Brandpa’s 25% commission, I ended up with a ROI of over 50.000%, which is excellent in my opinion, considering it was dropped domain!!

My overall experience with Brandpa is very good! The submission process is very easy; usually their decision is quite fast (1-3 days); the current listing fee of $5 is very affordable; the logo creation is free (included in the $5 listing fee); the communication with me as a seller has been spotless; and it seems their search engine ranking is increasing!

As a suggestion for improvement, I would say the seller dashboard needs some type of financial summary where we can see our past sales, commissions and listing fees payed, dates of payments and so on. Maybe it is already in their plans. I would also like to see some stats of views/hits on my domains (same problem with other marketplaces).

Overall, so far, I am very pleased with Brandpa for providing a hassle-free brandable marketplace and a very smooth communication with me as a seller!

 

[BrandVenue]

Brandpa is the only non curated brandable marketplace I know that requires exclusivity, you can list any name you want, but you have to point your names to their site all the time also you can't list your names on other marketplaces like Sedo / Afternic. After that if a name sells they take 25% commission.

BrandBucket lists all their names to Sedo,
SquadHelp lists their names to Sedo also allow sellers to list on Afternic.

So when it comes to maximum exposure Brandpa provides the lowest of all.

I was one of the first sellers to join in Brandpa when there was no listing fee ( even they used to do free logo design for all approved names in the begining), built 200+ Brandpa approved names portfolio, sold total around $50k worth of names there but when they decided not to curate the marketplace I didnt see any benifit of competing my names with non curated inventory so I removed all of my names except few which I don't plan to renew.

I think it was around this time last year when Brandpa decided to not curate the marketplace allowing anyone to list any name. It's been nearly a year. Since then I see less and less Brandpa reoorted sells, less and less talk about Brandpa everywhere, less and less Slack channel activity.

It's sad to see an innovative and modern brandable marketplace like Brandpa slowly becoming next Namerific.

 

[Haroon Basha]

Has anyone here sold anything on BrandPa in the last few months?

I mean, I'm sure plenty of domains are being sold at BP monthly, but I was wondering if NP users have had sales.

Yes I sold at Brandpa.com last month.
Domain name: PENSIBLE.COM
Sale price: $ 1650
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-784#post-7708469

 

[leftfielder]

Here's my experience:

6 domains submitted 01/16/18 + 1 domain submitted later that night = 7 total.
3 rejected, 4 accepted 01/21/18
3 listed on 02/05/2018, 1 listed on 02/07/18
Lowest to Highest Price $2050 - $4450

10 domains submitted 01/18/18
6 rejected, 4 accepted 01/24/2018
Lowest to Highest Price $2150 - $2950
Not yet Listed

5 domains submitted 01/25/18
3 rejected, 2 accepted 02/02/2018
Lowest to Highest Price $3450 & $3450
2 accepted at BB for almost half the price
Not yet listed

2 domains submitted 02/02/18
1 rejected 02/05/2018, 1 rejected 02/07/18
1 of these accepted at BB for $2495

2 domain submitted 02/05/18
1 rejected 02/09/18, 1 accepted 02/09/18
Price $5850 also accepted at BB for $1,495
Not yet listed

2 domains submitted 02/07/18
TBA

Trying my best to keep track but approximately

• 13 rejected, 7 accepte, 4 listed
• 1 deleted, 1 submission pending
• 47% acceptance rate and about 80% of my brandpa accepted names are flat out rejected at BB

From experience, expect 3-4 WEEKS to turn a submission into a listing.
From research, expect up to 6 months for a sale, less for a "HOT" name.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

Just sold one. Listed 17 days. Ecotelligent (com) Domain is pushed and in BP account yesterday (Feb-14). Waiting on wire payment to my account.

Everything went smoothly so far from the first offer to request to push domain.

Only suggestion I have, thus far, is to create a status page that shows where in the sales process each domain is. So when your name sells you can go to their page https://brandpa.com/dashboard/domains#s and click on that name and see different status (for example): offer made, offer accepted, payment pending, please push domain to brandpa, payment made, completed, etc Clicking on a status would provide instructions or an invoice if completed, etc.

The more information that can be provided means less sellers (and buyers) having to email and ask them what the latest status is.

Looking forward to more sales!

 

[Oliver Emberton]

I see they have a 2 step review process. If you make it to step 2, are your chances greater for approval or is that just the standard process? Thanks.

All domains go through two stages:

1. The domain is appraised
2. A senior appraiser reviews the appraisal

We've introduced this so we can hire new staff to appraise domains (step 1), while ensuring we don't slip in quality (step 2).

 

[Haykay2005]

I just sold one of my names @ brandpa

 

[wwwulff]

I have been on BP for 15 months and have 48 names listed now - I have sold 6 names

 

[Yusupbabay]

Has anyone here sold anything on BrandPa in the last few months?

I mean, I'm sure plenty of domains are being sold at BP monthly, but I was wondering if NP users have had sales.

this is my sales at BP the last few months
esqro.com
zeventa.com
eqope.com

 

[Oliver Emberton]

@Grilled Not sure where you're getting those sales figures, but off-hand I know we sold a domain yesterday from a seller on his second sale, so that can't be right.

Brandpa has 135 sellers, of which 66 have currently names publicly for sale - the rest either haven't had their names approved, or those names are in the process of being listed.

This week we have have almost 100 names submitted a day - in the past, we've sometimes had over 1,800 names submitted in one day. For each name, we do research on similar names, keywords, market value, and if approved we make notes so that a logo can be designed. We also write a short explanation for every name we reject.

The most time consuming part is logo design, which we believe we do significantly better than other marketplaces. We also have to write the listings, which are more substantial than other marketplaces to maximise our SEO.

So although you might only see a small number of domains each day ending up on our public website, there's a lot more going on below the surface. The listing fee has helped, as we expected, to both decrease the number of names being submitted and to increase the quality of those names. At the moment we think that's the right call, but we'll always be willing to review it as circumstances change.

Grilled said "please think of Brandpa as a long term play, rather than some get rich quick play". I can assure you it costs us more to list a name than we're paid for it. The whole company is a long term play. We're investing into the brand and into new technology that we believe will grow Brandpa into something vastly ahead of current marketplaces. Fully realising that will take us years, and we're fully committed to that.

 

[AuctionBio]

Wow... What's the domain?

MetroService.com

This domain is damn good, as already taken in about 15 categories, 15 odd years old and has a wide scope,
What I believe, it can even hit xxx,xxx if properly brokered (its only my appraisal, I do not know what you or other think), as I am not very good marketer so going to put on brandpa and will see if can hit BIN with in some months. btw I can only hope.

There is chance on branded domain platform for this domain to be sold quickly. I also own the .net version of this domain

 

[freety85]

Just had my first sale at Brandpa. 15 domains listed, this particular two word name was sold after 36 days on BP. Been asked not to mention details. Very smooth transaction, Jowita was helpful and professional. Great experience.
Hope more to come...

 

[karmaco]

Sold a name tonight just in time for Thanksgiving. Will reveal more on Slack channel after deal is done.

 

[creataweb]

I too just sold my 1st name with Brandpa. I submitted about 6 names I believe from different categories. 1 was accepted. This was last month or so... just sold it on Brandpa and will be submitting more names soon.

 

[Recons.Com]

I have about 35 listed, 1 sold, 5 underway. 19.5% approved.

 

[godolphin]

I think instead of rotating the Historical sales on the Home Page at BrandPa, they should only show Freshly closed sales on their homepage like BrandRoot does. This way, the sellers will know how the sales are going on at BrandPa.

 

[Domain Monk]

i removed almost 400 names from brandpa , iam done after their update

 

[yikun]

Sold my fist name on Brandpa last week.

Got an offer awhile ago, accepted it, but it didn't go though(assuming the buyer pulled out).
Last week the same name sold at original price.

@Grilled it's been two months since your last update on Brandpa. Have you run any new analysis? I'm curious how Brandpa is doing and will appreciate your report. TIA.