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Flippa Reduced their Fees to Attract Users, so where are people going to sell their site?

Discussion in 'Domain Names' started by misohoni, Jan 13, 2014.

  1. #1
    Seems weird Flippa.com would reduce prices for selling a domain/site...so means there's competition out there - where are people selling/buying sites?
     
    misohoni, Jan 13, 2014 IP
  2. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #2
    Probably a desperation move to deal with more and more people waking up to the fact that this whole buying and selling of domains and sites malarkey is typically little more than nube predation -- just one of the many forms of online scam artist bull.
     
    deathshadow, Jan 13, 2014 IP
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  3. misohoni

    misohoni Notable Member

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    #3
    Also I forgot to note in the small print Flippa increased their commission from 5% to 10% and no cap...wow that's too greedy!
     
    misohoni, Jan 13, 2014 IP
  4. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #4
    I'm confused, have they reduced their fees or not?
     
    sarahk, Jan 13, 2014 IP
  5. misohoni

    misohoni Notable Member

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    #5
    misohoni, Jan 14, 2014 IP
  6. maxauthority

    maxauthority Well-Known Member

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    #6
    Ever notice that some 'successful sales' at Flippa of supposedly live sites have domains that expired months after the deal? Why would someone spend thousands to buy a site only to let the domain expire later?
     
    maxauthority, Jan 14, 2014 IP
  7. Giamatti

    Giamatti Well-Known Member

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    #7
    they are just shifting their income. instead of getting their profit from the fee they now get it from their commisions.
    They might earn less on small sales but alot more on big sales!
     
    Giamatti, Jan 14, 2014 IP
  8. koreancowboy

    koreancowboy Greenhorn

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    #8
    Yeah, my old company used to have a domain brokerage site, and we didn't charge much on the front end (initial fees), so that we could make more on the back end (commissions, but it was a set percentage/no cap).
     
    koreancowboy, Jan 14, 2014 IP
  9. MikeLugar

    MikeLugar Well-Known Member

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    #9
    I've sold a lot of legitimate sites on Flippa over the years, I was glad when they charged higher listing fees. All the spam sites were hurting the legitimate sites that were listed. I haven't used Flippa recently, for established sites I contact businesses who would benefit from the site and usually can sell much easier and for a premium this way.
     
    MikeLugar, Jan 14, 2014 IP
  10. matt_62

    matt_62 Prominent Member

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    #10
    I like that they dropped the fees, however, I think it will have a more negative effect.
    With the higher fees, it would have helped to bring in quality sites, and attract quality buyers. But even with the higher fees, we had clone after clone of the same site, with the same text, and images, (and if they were lazy, same name in the TOS). Now with the lower fees, this will happen more and more, and will likely drown out the more legitimate listings.

    yeah i seen that.
    I have seen that many sites are not "happy sales". Some of the buyers will buy it on income alone. Especially if the site requires moderation / maintenance, it might get slammed in the search engines, and it just dies. Once the site no longer earns an income, it become "worthless" as nearly everyone places large emphasis on a sites income. If you buy a site for $1k, and the income drops down to almost nothing, and you have no skills to fix it, then its a write off.

    I have seen sites I lost the bidding on to someone else, only to see 1 year later its gone, or up for sale again.

    I would really like to know the stats of people that made a purchase and 1 year later were actually still happy with that purchase. I would bet that the sub $1000 market would be the ones that are the least happy with their sites.
     
    matt_62, Jan 14, 2014 IP
  11. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #11
    Easily explained -- people buy from themselves using sock-puppet accounts to increase their alleged reputation -- all it costs them is the fee, which can be made back many times over from one legitimate sale. Usually they can get away with it because the majority of people DUMB ENOUGH to throw away money on scams like buying an existing website don't have enough working brain cells to investigate as deeply as your or I.

    Either that or the new owner drove the site into the ground. Used to be a number of decent tech forums that I've seen that happen to -- original owner sells it off, and the new owner makes changes that drive users away; from crappy themes, changes in policy that drives away anyone who actually knows what they're talking about, hiring "paid posters" that spam endless pointless crap... so on and so forth.

    See "lovingtech.net" and "discussadmin.com"... two sites that used to be halfway decent, but have been taking a dump in their own bed for a few years now through mismanagement by new owners. The latter having been recently flipped on flippa, the former a private sale I believe -- and ... wow, both have gone the way of the Dodo; one is 403 at goDaddy, the other is on a server running Parallels panel with no site set up.

    Oh yes, reselling websites is such a legitimate practice... Just as legitimate as Amway, "Carlton Sheets Make Money Fast in Real Estate", "Video Professor", and the collected works of Kevin Trudeau.
     
    deathshadow, Jan 15, 2014 IP
  12. misohoni

    misohoni Notable Member

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    #12
    Also I had a look at the new pricing model:
    https://flippa.com/pricing

    Actually for new site sales it's 15% commission! The rest are 10%
     
    misohoni, Jan 15, 2014 IP
  13. StratDomain

    StratDomain Member

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    #13
    Wait... people actually expect that just by buying a site they will make money without improving upon it?
     
    StratDomain, Jan 15, 2014 IP
  14. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #14
    Of course, that's 99% of the people DUMB ENOUGH to buy an existing site. Anyone with the skills to maintain or improve it would just build their own their damned selves, instead of throwing money away on sites like Flippa and the scam artists who sleaze out cookie-cutter sites, fake their value (easily enough done) and blindly hope to find another nube to take advantage of.
     
    deathshadow, Jan 15, 2014 IP
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  15. matt_62

    matt_62 Prominent Member

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    #15
    (keep in mind that I cannot speak for everyone, neither do I know othe percentage of webmasters vs complete noobs on flippa)

    yes. A number of the buyers that are buying websites, almost as if they were commercial items such as shoes. In fact, alot of this market I feel comes from crappy "get rich" or at least "earn online" ebooks. As more people lose work / or need a way to supplement their income (or a way to earn enough each week to eat), then more and more people come online trying to earn money. Truth is, more to be made from this group, then there is to be made by this group.

    I think this group comes to buy sites when they are financially stressed and desperate and then they read about how everyone online earns $100k a week from adsense from sites, forums, blogs, etc. They hear about snapchat (a company losing money but suddenly worth a minimum of $3billion), and they want to start somewhere trying to build up their own site network.
    Depending on how you look at it, buying an established site for $1k (provided it is earning $100 per month or there abouts) is a better investment then trying to build the same site from scratch. Easy to spend more then this on SEO for a new site (and this doesnt cover the costs of domain, hosting, etc).

    I provide web hosting, so I do meet alot of noobs, who do not understand the basics of domain names -> let alone having the skills to be running a website. Right now, I am hosting sites for multiple clients where the domain has expired! But if they are not earning enough to cover the domain name per year, then they need to walk away and something where they borrowed funds to invest in something that they hoped would pay for itself, eventually becomes a major liability that can bleed them until they give up.

    I would like to think that SOME of the buyers on flippa would be webmasters that really wanted a site in that niche, and cost to build vs the cost to buy established site, and sometimes it is cheaper to buy established site. (ie, a site on flippa that I really want was $5k start bid, but I know cost to build, and get it to where it is now would be large $xx,xxx) BUT everywhere you go, you see people heavily repeating income x months = price, and saying sites are too high, and for me this is something more critically important to a noob investor, rather then a skilled webmaster, who can see and appreciate the work and costs that have already been outlayed to start such as site. Case in point, had twitter or snapchat been sold on here, all the trolls would have said "income x 12months" -> seeing as both run at a loss, both would have been offered $5-$50 on DP, Maybe even $500 on flippa.
    For most of the sites I buy, I also use forumla's, but when you view flippa, or DP and see comments like "price too high for income", you need to understand, that this is a noob investor, and not an expert webmaster.

    I probly should clarify that I also do sell some of my unused domains (on flippa and forums) and some of my websites that I no longer wish to work on (but not on flippa, but on webmaster forums where I am hoping is mainly webmasters who can improve it to the next level).
     
    matt_62, Jan 15, 2014 IP
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  16. matt_62

    matt_62 Prominent Member

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    #16
    I have seen gigs on fiverr where sellers can buy fake bids which is ridiculous (if not illegal). I have heard of some sellers buying traffic for 3 months to fake it, but I think a few sites there are legit.

    For example, if you had enough of looking after some of your sites, and wanted to devote more time to completing your own CMS (i dunno if you are still working on that), then liquidating your sites is a great way to free up time and resources that you can dedicate elsewhere, so I really believe that a number of sites for sale, and a number of the sellers are legit. BUT the legite sales will be drowned out by those cookie-cutter sites.
     
    matt_62, Jan 15, 2014 IP
  17. averyz

    averyz Well-Known Member

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    #17
    Last time I looked at flippa it was full of cookie cutter sites with fake traffic and earnings.

    My guess is a good percentage of buyers are noobs who just buy it based on fake earnings then realize after a week or 2 it is completely worthless and they got screwed.
    I also think another percentage of buyers are sellers with fake accts driving up prices and if they end up buying one by mistake they toss it and write it off as advertizing and market price fixing.

    Many of the sites I saw in there probably took less then $20 and an hour to build and they claimed to make $300 a mo with 500hits a day. With 1 page and 250 words of spun content and 15 ads ?
    Yeah sure. lol
     
    averyz, Jan 15, 2014 IP
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  18. StratDomain

    StratDomain Member

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    #18
    @matt_62, that is one of the most well-thought-out posts I've ever read and I hope others will provide you with the "like" that I am unable to.

    It's extremely perturbing to think that the economically depressed have been pushed into these situations, especially considering that these people with their inexperience, or hopelessness, may not factor in the costs of hosting (and other website-related costs) and other opportunity costs (time spent on figuring out affiliate programs and Google AdSense versus finding a more solid financial opportunity).

    I mean, I'm a relative newcomer, but I at the very least considered these issues and thought of my current web project as a learning experience, not as a guarantee to get rich. It took me over a year to finally get approval on my AdSense account and that was a complicated process that apparently few people experience (I actually never received a response in the affirmative or negative from Google about my application even though I was following the instructions).

    Do you know whether most of domains on Flippa are sold with or without a website?
     
    StratDomain, Jan 15, 2014 IP
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  19. matt_62

    matt_62 Prominent Member

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    #19
    this thread here: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/thr...mes-programer-org-and-programers-org.2680616/

    Highlights the "expert seller" vs the "noob investor", and just goes to show how some of the buyers on flippa think.(or fail to think as the case may be)

    I honestly do not know.

    But I have seen many times, domain + site + traffic + low earnings = low sale. Whereas domain by itself with no income, no site, no traffic = good sale.

    Doesnt make sense.
     
    matt_62, Jan 15, 2014 IP
  20. averyz

    averyz Well-Known Member

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    #20
    averyz, Jan 15, 2014 IP