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.

 

[hookbox]

Just had my second name rejected.

• sexkb.com 9th Feb 2018 Niche - we think this domain will be hard to sell

I am sure that aryot,tastish, fitsi, kafur, hiiku and other non-sense domains are easier to sell.

sex = sex
kb = knowledgebase

Enjoy, this was my second and last domain submitted on your site ever.

Thats not a brandable domain.

 

[Jevsim]

Sold my 4th domain at Brandpa. 2 XXX USD. 7 char-s. Based on 1 word. Was quite surprised about this domain sale as IMHO I have much better unsold names. Had even some doubts to renew it.

 

[wwwulff]

My latest sale is 3 weeks ago (a 4 letter), so sales happens

 

[Recons.Com]

Thanks. My biggest challenge is that I did not price them for an impulse purchase and I cannot update the prices for a few months (without removing the listings and waiting 30 days).

Overall, I am not thinking that brandable marketplaces are for me. Too restrictive.

I treat brandable marketplaces as a separate basket, mostly just leave and forget for some time.

I have around 600 names between BP/BB/SH, they probably do around $15K-20K sales annually between themselves, minus $5K for renewals, so still net $10K-15K. Not bad, imo.

 

[pixabrand]

Another Brandpa sale to report! Details below if you're interested:

B o o z e r o (.) c o m

Sale price: $2,904 ($2,178 after fees) - 12 month installments
Sale venue: Brandpa
Purchase price: $19 (GoDaddy expired domain)
Hold time: 5 months
Extra notes: It was auto-appraised at $4495 and that's that's the amount I set it at, with a "lowest price you'll accept" at $2500 with max installments of 6. Brandpa reached out and said a buyer was interested and offered $1900, they negotiated them up to $2900 but the buyer wanted 12 installments. I took it - happy to make the sale

 

[kaposzta]

It seems yesterday two of my domains were sold on Brandpa I cannot disclose the details yet, because the transfer is not done.

About the slowness: I think this is the result of Brandpa's generosity (i.e. letting the domainers submit not yet registered names), but it's over, they do not accept unregistered domains any more, which will definitely improve approval speed.

 

[kaposzta]

According to the Slack channel, they have 2500 names at the moment.
I also don't know the sales rate, but it's very high for me I started at Brandpa last March with a handful of names, and I gradually built up my portfolio up to 74 domains by the end of 2017. I had two sales in January, in two days, so my sales rate on an annual basis must be over 5%.

This is a smaller platform, definitely not crowded, I think the inventory size won't ever exceed 4 figures. The UI is beautiful, I really like the logos (even the minimalistic ones), Jowita is very kind and professional, and they are very keen on always improving the platform. There's been so many improvents in the last couple of weeks... (mostly affecting the seller's dashboard). There's just one thing I regret: I didn't register and submit domains like there's no tomorrow when I had the chance (and when I had >30% approval rate). Now it's very difficult to put any domain to Brandpa...

 

[Shailendra Mishra]

They rejected my $600 purchase Dash/it/dotcom because it has word "shit" in it.
LOL

 

[Yusupbabay]

domains listing in brandpa today :

• Domain name: alegna.com $9,595
• This domain was first registered in February 1997

https://brandpa.com/name/alegna

 

[ResoluteDomains]

My domains seem dead on there as well I was really hoping for a sale at bp but I think they are starting to become overcrowded. Idk its very discouraging. I'm not listing anymore until I make a sale..

I have 15 listed 27 accepted and a 26.6% approval rating.

Hotness score is 0.6

But when they where first listed most names where hot. Now I think they are pushed to the bottom and lost

However -- their own overall hotness score is also quite low.... It used to up around 10 and now is below 1.

Here is my dashboard.

 

[Recons.Com]

Can we stop posting listed names? That is not the purpose of the thread

 

[Recons.Com]

You might agree with their selections or not, but 5-6% sell-through is amazing achievement by them and they have their formula figured out for what works and what doesn't.

I submitted one name that was rejected by both BB and BR and was surprised BP accepted it (I personally liked it) and what do you know, they sold it for $3,700 shortly thereafter. The name even made it into their newsletter of what makes a good name.

Other names that they rejected sold successfully via Afternic, so it is not like I am dropping their rejects, but Afternic gives me about 1-2% sell-through and cannot be compared with 5-6%+ I am seeing with BP.

Oh, and BB is down to 0% for last few months although I have more names listed with them than I have with BP and they had a "first look" at the names.

 

[BrandVenue]

Nice,

I would love to see how many domains are getting sold on average. I especially want to know about BP sales.

I have been active on their slack channel before the 35 domain published rule & I hardly found one sale in months reported by a member, I am here following the "Report your sales thread" from the beginning I hardly found one or two BP sales in months reported by a member. The last I remember is someone reported their 2018 sales on "Report your domain sales thread".

The question begs lots of attention as I previous month got an email from BP claiming a 5% or 5.6% sales through rate but again I asked myself where is the data?

I will appreciate your effort for this.

You are not seeing many sellers not reporting their sales probably because Brandpa doesn’t allow reporting sales on public forum. Even in Slack I've seen sellers were asked to mask the domain name when reporting a sale. This is probably the reason many sellers have stopped reporting their sales.

In the past I'd also published couple of my Brandpa sales at Namepros but after seeing they don’t allow this I have stopped reporting my sales. Personally I've sold 3 domains this year ( out of 125 names portfolio ) at Brandpa with approx total sale value of $16k. You are not seeing any reported sales but that doesn’t mean nobody is getting sale there.

 

[DomainsMaven]

Post the name. Otherwise, I doubt things changed in just the last few weeks.

I sold Jump/lo.com

Hope you can breath now.

Peace

 

[BrandPlease]

The real problem I think there is for BP, now... Is they dont have the kind of traffic and customer base/volume of transactions as their 2 "main" competitors. Why would the new model bring more buyers?

It looks they are not trying for $ generated from selling and commissions - they want an "easier" 5 bucks from domainers and know that once aid the names will be listed forever,, or until they remove it.

I wouldn't recommend anyone - including me - pay them a penny more to list names - they are not advertising it or doing anything now, at all for 5.

Look they are stepping back from actively managing the brandable market -. I have about 200 names listed with them, time to start submitting to others, I guess. What a waste of money at BP, great.

 

[Jevsim]

As I remember 2 of them You bought from me:
EQOPE and Zeventa

Glad tham my handregs have found an end-user.
Evidence that my handreg strategy works.

So far i have sold 7 domains on BP but the last one was closed in june 2018.
8 sale has not been completed as the buyer returned the domain after 3 installments out of 12.

 

[kaposzta]

It took me 150 days to sell a domain (actually, I sold two domains on the same day).

 

[Dave]

Had an offer come through today. Only been using Brandpa for about a month now. Jowita sent me an email directly to inform me and ask how I'd like to proceed. I replied back with a counter. Now waiting for a response from the potential buyer.

Excellent customer service from Brandpa so far, especially by engaging with me directly like that. You can tell they're really passionate and care about their users. Well done to the Brandpa team, keep up the terrific work.

 

[Oliver Emberton]

I should clarify – all domains are seen by at least two people, at least one of whom is senior.

The first person uses an appraisal tool we've developed in-house to classify the domain and gather relevant information (comparable sales, search volume, etc). They then make a call on whether they think we should accept, at what price, what are likely uses, etc.

The second person is more senior, and reviews these decisions. Most of the time they'll agree, but if they don't, our system automatically passes feedback to the first person so they can learn.

It's working pretty well so far. The aim is to allow us to reduce the bottleneck of time required by more senior staff, without losing control of quality. As our new staff get more experienced, they should become senior appraisers themselves.

 

[Haykay2005]

Hot doesn't mean much of you shared Url here, which you did. Clicks from NP can make the difference from my experience. Favorites will be a better indicator.

I have 24 listed and 3 underway. 0 sales. 3 of my names have favourite for more than a week now. Hoping they sell soon

 

[AuctionBio]

I submitted my first 5 domains, and one is accepted @ 36500, in couple of days i will be on there

 

[MitchH]

Here is the Fuzzlee logo that BrandPa designed... wasn't entirely expecting that haha

 

[MitchH]

LHUB is now listed at BrandPa for $16,995.
https://brandpa.com/name/lhub

Stay tuned, I just had another domain accepted today. I'll post when completed.

 

[anantj]

Forgot to mention: Had another sale at BP for ~$2XXX last week. Still awaiting the payment but the domain has been transferred

 

[Recons.Com]

It's simple, only big whale are welcome other small seller not even allowed in slack channel

You might try to have more positive attitude.

Jowita and Brandpa are doing great job. They need their slack channel to be manageable and tight enough. They don't anyone who have added few names to have access to what is being discussed or going on.

You don't need to be a big fish to be able to have enough names with Brandpa.