I had a few domains/websites laying around which I cannot maintain right now, and since I was hearing for a loong time about flippa I decided to try it. In fact, a guy I know, bought three websites with no traffic at all for something like 100$ each, which made me think if such sites are bought so easily by people who are not quite familiar with website sales, this could work out great for me. I published a wordpress site which gets little traffic with aged domain, and promised a lot of other benefits in the description much like other experienced sellers do, and so far I'm not really satisfied with the results. Ok, It's been only two days, the website might not be one of the greatest there. I've received a bid of $5 early on, but I so far I have only 28 views on my listing?? I pay a fee for such a low exposure? What is the point? Why wouldn't I simply publish my website here at Digitalpoint or any other forum for free and at least I'll get 100 times more views. I really don't get it. After you pay, they suggest you to promote the listing to your twitter, facebook friends, your website or anywhere you are able to, and that is something like highly recommended by them.. Really?! Why would I pay a fee to THEM to promote my website sale by myself and in the process promote them as well? Am I the only one who can see there's something wrong with this picture? Can anyone explain why the fee for this little exposure to none? I simply published this website as an experiment and see how well it does, didn't really expect to become a millionaire, but this is not even close to what I expected and what I have seen with other sales. This raises my doubts that there could be fake sales as well, just to motivate webmasters to list their websites. I've also contacted their support, as excited as I was after my first bid, to tell them that I will be writing a review on my blog about my experience with flippa, but they didn't quite reply on that one. After I saw that I'm getting too little views on my listing I asked their support about it and I reminded them that I'll be writing a review so maybe they could provide some sort of help. But instead they replied that they can't offer me any kind of upgrade (the lowest "upgrade costs 5$ bold text) and that I should read some guidelines about selling websites, wow! A "miraculous discovery" for me. Anyhow, I'm eager to see how it goes and write my final review. Who knows, maybe a surprise will turn things around for good! UPDATE: I believe my first reaction in this post was somewhat caused by panic and I may have overreacted. I would like to apologize to Andrew and thank him for his great support. He helped me by suggesting a few corrections in my listing and so I sold my website for a decent amount. I'm quite satisfied with the end result.
Most people with smaller sites like that would probably be best served selling them in a bundle. I would reserve Flippa for selling sites that have proven earnings as those seem to get top dollar.
Hi Spiritfly. Andrew here from Flippa.com There are really just one of two reasons that your bids would go low on an auction on Flippa. The first is that the site may simply not be worth more than what the bidding currently is at. If you have nothing remarkable in the way of backlinks, pagerank, traffic, revenue etc then the bidding simply won't go higher. If this is not the case for you, then its simply about making sure you're getting the most out of your listing. To this end, the support guys are right to be pointing you to our guides - our seller guide at https://flippa.com/guides is jam packed with tips on how to do this. It covers everything from auction duration, pricing your site, effective headline creation, description outlines and ensuring your stats are all reflected as accurately as possible. Happy to do a review of your listing for you. Either include it here or PM it to me if you like. Do bear in mind that auctions tend to heat up most towards the last 48 hrs of the auction.
I still learning how to make money from flippa, considering that they charge for listing fee, is it a worth imvestment. Or I just focus on DP for free listing.
It's good seeing customer support from Flippa takes time to reply to issues publicly. Anyway, I recommend selling sites on Flippa that you can expect to get $200 or more for, that it makes it worth the cost of fees. It'd be difficult to hit that point with a site that has no earnings. Otherwise, you might as well try selling them here.
Hello Andrew, I'm really glad that you replied to my thread, it's a little bit encouraging. You see, the reason why this bothers me so much, is that I had a great vision about flippa from all the reviews and guides I've read. I've already seen the future of my business with flippa. My team can produce high quality websites, with original content and unique designs, so I was ready to start listing and selling on flippa as my primary business. I didn't know there was a fee until I've decided to list an experimental website project. So I did it anyway just to see how much should I expect and whether I could create a profitable business. I know the website has low traffic, and it's not really targeted towards any kind of monetization strategy except adsense, but still from what I have seen until now, I'm quite discouraged. I surely don't expect to sell it for the buy it now price, but 5$ is not even close to what I imagined. Maybe you're right about the bid getting heat in the last 48 hours. I sure hope I'm just panicking and this sell will meet if not exceed my expectations, but right now I don't see how this could happen with only 29 views in three days. Actually the low exposure to my listing is my main concern. I sent you the link to my listing by PM. A review and some help would be greatly appreciated. If you could at least share your personal thoughts on what the pros/cons are with this listing and what course it might take that would be very kind. Regards!
I have heard similar advice, you better have some income or great backlinks if you want to sell on flippa.
The domain is aged, and there are a few backlinks, but they're edu. Income is low, but only with one ad. If more are to be set, it could earn more.
It can be hard at first to succeed with Flippa, especially if you don't have experience in flipping or designing sites. Because they charge, you don't always know if your going to get a buyer, so it could be a waste of money.
I do have experience with designing sites and flipping. It's just that I don't have experience with flippa. Maybe you're right. It could be a waste of money after all.
So what you have a domain with age? Whats your point? Let me ask you this, what is the difference between a day 1 domain, and a 10 yr domain that has done nothing in 10 years? You got it, the only difference is the gap of 10 years...do you think google is going to favor the 10 year domain because it was not active for 10 years? The 10 year domain is nothing more then a day 1 domain that is 10 years old, thats it.... Do you think just because someone sets up an inactive aged domain that it would be instant success? Sorry, I am afraid that it does not work that way, not sure why google would favor some dead domain just because it has aged....wouldnt make much sense.... BTW, I have two 10 year old aged domains, both have been setup for about a year or so, they get very little traffic. If age plays any part at all in anything, then the part it plays is so small you cant see it.... and if you disagree about aged domains, then back up your facts with proof, not what ran across on the internet on some article you read from a friend that got his info from another friend....
As the guy from flippa said, most of the bids come in the last 24-48 hours... I've seen quite some websites going from $1k to $4k+ in the last 24 hours.
You have to be careful buying stuff, even the op said he overpromised...what can you actually promise with an aged domain that has nothing else? You also have wonder about other claims also, people selling 4k sites and over claiming what the site is actually making, just so they can sell the site....
I totally agree that age by itself plays a small part if any at all in google rankings. There is a difference, however, with domains that are already crawled and included in search results, and those who are not. And, as you may know, new domains (1 day) as you said, can't be crawled as aged domains. Even if you manage to call google bots on your new domain, time still has to pass(while updating your site in the meantime) for google bots to start crawling your site regularly. And while it probably is true that age is not an important factor, it DOES play a significant role when selling websites. It's more of a marketing gimmick and if you take the time to examine listings that ended at flippa you'll notice that it works, at least still does there! So that is more what I meant by stating that the domain I'm selling is aged. Oh and by the way, I have never said I overpromised! The domain I listed for sale already has some traffic which is quite steady without doing anything at all, has installed wordpress website already configured with useful plugins, has 64 news articles manually written, and shows some earnings through adsense. It may be low, but all is setup perfectly so all the buyer has to do is continue writing, for which I include a guide on how to write short SEO articles and gain good positions without too much effort. So it definitely is worth more than $5 and the website has much more than an aged domain.
I agree about the marketing gimmick; I guess you want to show of the domain as much as possible, including age I guess... but age alone will never make a domain successful, its alla bout what you have to offer that is so unique that everyone else is not offering, and I am not so sure articles alone would make it a success story, can you imagine the billions of pieces of content uploaded to the internet daily? articles may do very well for the site that already has success, but competing with billions of other articles these days is like setting up a forum and thinking it will take off like a rocket, of course unique content is always important, but I think it will need much more, offer something that people actually want.... but I guess that is up to the buyer on what they do with the domain....articles will get indexed, but they mostly start off at the very bottom, then they will rise in the serps as more, and more visit the site... I guess it all has to start somewhere, but it is easier to sell a site earning $1k/mo then selling a site that is making pennies on the dollar via adsense...If I wanted to make pennies, then I would just find a decent domain and register; If i was looking for a site already making money, then I would go to flippa, but I would not buy a flippa domain that earns like $5/10mo....
Hi Spiritfly. Thanks for PMing your listing. This is why your auction has only 1 bid @ $5: The duration is way too long for such a basic site. Bids won't appear for another 3 weeks You say the site is established but it has no pagerank or backlinks in google. Our due diligence page links to Wayback machine's most recent record - it's Jan 2011 and it shows a sponsored listing or parked page. Was the site really established in June 2008? The content may be unique but it does not seem to be focused on anything (check out the keywords your site ranks for from the SEMrush data on your due diligence page) The domain is not incredibly strong Things that will count in your favor: You've connected your Google Analytics and the traffic looks OK (your listing will still appear when users refine to sites with >200 uniques per month Your content seems to be unique (albeit highly variable subject matter) The bidding is past reserve This is how to fix it: Reduce your auction duration to 5 days (your wasting your time going longer) Fix your headline (highlight what your site is about (I could not work that part out), Remove "Reasonable Price"). Eg "Magazine Blog with unique content and 500 uniques/month. No reserve". Remove your opening disclaimer. Its not a disclaimer and calling it that will ring immediate alarm bells for buyers. Note you cannot change your description/headline as you already have a bid. PM me if you want me to change it for you. I'd expect you should see bidding get to between high 2-figures and low 3-figures. Hope that helps. Congratulations on your engagement ;-)
Over time I've seen flippa slowly go downhill, filled with mostly junk now with the occasional diamond in the rough. Most sites that go on there are ones that actually are performing topdollar.
The only folk I know saying this are the ones who have not tried our advanced search tools - flippa dot com /search You can use metrics such as minimum pagerank or minimum backlinks in google to drill into awesome site for sale.
Very true, indeed. But not everyone tries that Andrew, most of the people just happen to look at the home page only, thats it. Maybe, you should put a tagline somewhere on your site saying, "Using Advanced search will help you to get exactly what you." Adding something like that would encourage people to find accurate results, and therefore, you won't have to listen to comments like, .