Why I hate Flippa and would much rather be buying/selling sites on DP

I bought a few sites on flippa before I found out about DP back in the day. Here are a few of the reasons why I think both site buyers and sellers should STAY AWAY!

Reasons why I hate flippa:

As a seller:

• They take a fee to list, DP does not.
• They charge $ to upgrade your listing.
• They take a cut of the final sale.
• The comment policy is retarded, people will troll and flame your site before it even has bids.
• They force you to use escrow, which has much bigger fees than paypal, this is beacsue they take a commission everytime escrow is used.
• The feedback system sucks too, get ready for negatives.

As a buyer:

• When you view a site for sale, they keep their branded tool bar up top, making the SEO tool bar useless and I have to manually type in the domain.
• They are owned by sitepoint and love to drive up prices.
• Most of the sites (at least 80%) have rediculous prices that will never be paid, barely any of the sites are actually worth what they are priced at.
• Most of the sites for sale just plain suck and no one will ever buy them.
• A bunch of sites for sale have fake traffic and earnings stats. Some look like they were photoshopped by a 3 year old.
• Tons of sites listed use the same recycled template on a different domain. Only idiots buy auto blogs for more than the reg fee.
• Every site on Flippa has HUGE POTENTIAL. This is the biggest bullshit claim. Not everything has potential to become huge, or any potential at all. Most sites on there that say Huge Potential are plain crap.
• No one will ever make $200 for buying a domain, installing wordpress, picking a theme, and copy pasting a bunch of content, but most Flippa sellers seem to think $200 is a LOW price for one of these copied sites with HUGE POTENTIAL LOLZ.
• The site is just plain ugly and unorganized, I hate it.

I would like to hear what everyone else here on DP has to say. Agree or do you actually like Flippa and have had some success with it?

 

Flippa usually makes me want to do a TABLE FLIP'PA!'

 

Flippa is like an online casino. You see the big wins scored by fake people and hope that with payment of regular listing fees one day you will hit the jackpot too.

Digital Point is far, far more legitimate as a website marketplace than Flippa.

We have been observing how Flippa has robbed people of their listing fees and success fees for autoblog websites for over 7 months now.

The buyers of these autoblog websites regret the purchase and have complained online on several websites, forums, etc. but to no avail.

Infact, the founders of the website have tried to bribe their way out of trouble by giving these innocent people back their listing fees.

It is high time people start realizing that people's emotions are being played with, even manipulated. Prospective buyers are fooled into believing that they are buying a new website which is like a gold mine.

An autoblog which is less than 12 days old and making over $1000 already!!!

These listings have been saved by my team and action is being taken systematically.

Flippa rest in pieces.

 

I couldn't agree more with this. Someone should start a flippasucks dot com or something :3

 

Hi,
It's been an interesting journey over the last few days for me.

Just thought I'd share the real reasons for me going against Flippa so openly on DP and other such forums.

The reason is that I have lost $250+ of listing fees with absolutely zero in return from Flippa.

I have seen fraudulent sellers listing autoblog websites every few hours and claiming thousands of dollars profit in under 20 days which I know for certain is not possible the "legal" way.

These "fraudulent" listings push genuine listings like mine down the drain and get us very little attention and views.

I listed a website on sale which was getting over 100k visitors, and earning $250 a month. But, no one was interested in even bidding for the same, even though I have 30 keywords in the top 10 on Google for that website.

Then I started doing research about Flippa and learned that there were hundreds of people who were fooled, cheated, and scammed on Flippa.

They were fooled into buying these autoblog websites which make $1000 or more every 20 days (sometimes every 7 days) and then they realized that they were completely and utterly scammed.

Most of these buyers never return to Flippa again but the domain and website marketplace is so huge today that Flippa can let these innocent buyers who were fooled by them go.

I am not earning anything by writing all this, neither am I winning any friends. Infact, the founders of Flippa have made fun of all these complaints from me and other people.

They have tried to bribe me by offering me a refund on all my listing fees and invited me and my clients for lunch to their office.

Yesterday, I sent my cousin to their office in Collingwood only to discover that the office was closed and there was absolutely no signage or board stating that the "SITEPOINT" or "FLIPPA" office existed in that building.

I am getting really fed up and irritated that nothing I do is getting ay results. Infact, the scams on Flippa are rising. They have manipulated everything from their global rankings online (visit Quantcast dot com) to pushing in bids themselves.

I calculated how much they possibly made by indulging in these criminal activities.

They make a whopping $3.4 Million Dollars each year through listing fees, featured listings and success fees paid on sales.

They are so well connected that they have no fear of guys like me. After all, they are the big fish and I am just a little guy.

I am giving up right now. No one seems to care about all this. People are being cheated every few hours on Flippa but why should you and I care, when we are all so busy with our lives.

Never mind!!

 

Hi,
I would like to share few of over 500 listing thumbnails I have saved from Flippa which makes for highly engaging and interesting analysis....

View attachment 79263 View attachment 79264 View attachment 79265 View attachment 79266 View attachment 79267



I would really appreciate if all DP users see these images and reply with your views on the same.

 

Man I wish I could sell a shitty site for as much as some of those people did. Thanks for sharing the thumbnails, it is really interesting.

 

Interesting research there Wonay.

I once used Flippa to flip my one of the new sites and it didnt go well anyway. But, I had listed out all the contacts to make the business worthwhile. But, past is past.

I can understand your agitation over getting cheated again and again, but you should have realized the same much earlier and planned something which can go and fall straight in the eyes of Flippa admins.

Even now I can see boasted and gloated incomes from crappy sites. It's better to focus on what we are good at and do the job rather than trying to compete with cheaters like these guys on Flippa.

 

They don't force you to use Escrow but I agree: buying sites from Flippa is risky business and selling sites there can be a real pain. It has been months since I last visited the site.

 

I also a active seller in flippa, But I don't have to make fake, so I never sell my site more than $300, But some seller mention they earn $1000 for 10 days and they sell their site $1500 or even more, But to be honest, if you can earn $1000 for 10 days then why you are willing to sell in $1500.

 

I never use flippa to sell my site since I don't like business like this. I get many bad story about flippa as many as I hear good story. That why forum like DP useful for me

 

Flippa is good only if you are selling high value site or big site.
Personally I still perfer DP BST section for website trading because I only involved on those small site

 

This is a great thread guys. I agree totally with everything here. I have WAY more success as a buyer and seller on Digital point, and I have dealt with some high value $xx,xxx sites. Flippa is a horrible cash grab that is a million times worse than ebay imo.

 

I tried buying in flippa and most occasions, I ended up buying bad sites.

I tried selling domain names in flippa, I just wasted my money. You may say that sites/domains might be bad. It is a individual choice.

In all scenario, I think DP is good for me as I purchased as well as sold quite a few domains/sites successfully without having to pay anyone.

 

I feel like flippa is great for major websites but even then i'd much rather approach owners of related websites and offer to sell out to them...

I am not a big fan of DP's forsale forum any more. I used to make a killing there, but now that its been watered down to crappy auto blogs i feel like there's really no point in even listing here as well. I have been waiting to see a new website sale site that is dedicated to quality websites over bad websites.

 

Now in DP, more people are trying to make a killing

If you had sold good websites earlier (eans you didnt sell crappy sites earlier as many people are doing it now as you suggest), why not same buyers are interested in your sales now?

Almost all website sale listings are crappy.

If the sites are really good, why one will sell them at a cheap rate?

 

first site i brought on flippa cost $19, considering the pagerank, and domain name age, i thought it was a good choice.

The seller was "a cranky bum" to put it mildly, didnt give the passwords for the admin panel or anything (now i have the skill to have fixed that), but with the script being old, i ended up blanking the site -> without the admin panel passwords, i couldnt even remove the ads on the site!

It wasnt until later that i realised that the seller would have paid at least $24 to sell that on flippa, so if he had kept that an extra month and then just deleted it, he would have made another months worth of advertising, as well as saved at least $24 in listing fees.

To be honest, i think flippa's customers are mostly idiots. Ive seen people spend over $500 for a free hosting template thats has a domain name that is 2 days old, but they call it a 'company' so people go for it. A $500 investment quickly turns out to be a major lemon, and as the hosting bills pile in, its not long before that $500 investment runs up to a $2000 lemon....

I think long term, the average flippa buyer (for sites less then $1000) is just going to regret the sale, whereas sites sold here will allow the buyer to chat on the forum whenever they need help.

I have sites that it looks like i will be forced to sell, but with the costs of listing on flippa, i might try DP.

 

Because most power users who were buyers are gone, and the internets changed. There's really little to no point to a website unless its ground breaking and innovative, and or a prime niche that offers quality information.

I am still in touch with many of my former buyers and partners. I will admit i miss the prime days of 48 hour website flips where you quadrupled your profit but even when you have a quality website now people by pass it.

The people who buy websites here now want autoblogs and or want something that is a clone... Its just flawed.

 

still love DP BST section

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2446487

 

Hey thanks for the advice. I've browsed flippa quite a bit and always been a bit taken aback by some of the bids placed there