Website Flipping - Is Flippa The Only Choice?
The hot topic of conversation on most of the forums seems to be website flipping. It’s quickly working it’s way up the ladder to becoming one of the most popular business models among internet marketers. Site flipping is similar to flipping real estate in that someone takes a piece of property, in this case it’s virtual property, they add value to it and they quickly sell it to someone else. At a profit, of course. And that’s what it’s all about - money.
If you’ve done any kind of site flipping, or even if you’ve just thought about it, then you’ve probably heard about a site called Flippa. They are an online auction service, similar to eBay, for internet properties. They handle listings for blogs and websites, or even just domain names. You go through a simple sign up procedure and then you can flip anything you want. Blogs, websites, domain names, membership sites, eBooks, you name it, you can flip it there.
Their auction system is similar to eBay’s in that you pay a listing fee, you can set time limits on your auctions and you can set minimum bid amounts and reserve limits. They even have some semblance of a feedback system in place to rate buyers and sellers. But that’s about where the similarity ends.
For one thing, Flippa has what they refer to as a verification process in place that my dog could pass. when you register with them, their method of determining that you are who you say you are is to send a code number to your telephone. You then enter that code number into their system and they say, Hey, yeah, it really IS Mickey Mouse. Go ahead, give him an account. Puh-leeze! The only other verification they do during the entire transaction process, is to have you place a file onto the root of the site you’re selling so they know you have access to the database. Now this doesn’t seem all that secure to me, but, hey, I’m not a programmer, so I’ll let this one slide.
This is the point where Flippa and eBay part ways and conducting a transaction on Flippa now becomes a Free For All. Carpetbagging sellers will tell you their site has thousands of visitors a day, 10,000 backlinks and 100 articles floating around cyberspace. A quick check on the domain name will show you that they had the site less than 24 hours! I kid you not! This happened to me! I sold a site at this online auction and stated in my listing that it was a brand new site with no traffic and no sales. Not 24 hours later, the buyer re-listed the site, using my own listing content, copied and pasted word for word, and stated that he had $50 dollars in sales a day and had already established back links with the 100 articles he had published! Where were the Monitors during all this? And this is just one example of the plagiarism and slight of hand that occurs on Flippa on a daily basis.
The Comments and Feedback management at this auction site are a joke, too. Scammers who have been jealously watching you make a few sales find it necessary to start dive bombing you in the comments. You do have the ability to delete these comments, but they has chosen to SHOW that you deleted them, thereby making you look like you, the seller, are trying to hide something. And the inconsiderate buyers, who seem to be mostly teenagers by the sound of their comments and the looks of their grammar, have no qualms about walking away from the sale without leaving feedback. They got what they came for, sorry ’bout your luck.
Their method of ending an auction is frustrating for buyers and sellers alike. Just as you think the auction is ending, someone places a last minute bid, so they extends the auction by another 4 hours! Their explanation for this is that it allows other bidders time to see what the current bid is and if they want to beat it. All this does for me though, is force me to move on. If an auction is never going to end, what’s the point of hanging around?
For a site that, according to their own PR, processes sales totaling well over a hundred thousand dollars a week, you would think that there would also be some control over the transaction. But the are not concerned if the site and the money ever change hands. They got their listing from YOU when you listed the site. They will, at the end of the listing, bill you a slight seller’s fee. But it’s up to the seller to track down the buyer and collect the money. Or it’s up to the buyer to track down the seller and collect his website. Filing a dispute with them over non- payment or non-receipt issues often results in, We’re sorry. Your particular dispute has never been an issue before. We don’t know what to do. Dispute discontinued.
It seems to me, that with the growing interest in site flipping, there should be a better alternative than Flippa. Where is the protection for the sellers? How does a buyer know who to trust? There must be a better way! There are other auction sites out there, but, believe it or not, they are the best alternative for the time being. But I’ve been watching the listings a lot lately and sites are on there for days and days and never get a bid. Are the buyers getting smarter? Maybe. The buyers looking for quality are. But I think the SELLERS are getting smarter. I think the quality sellers are finding better ways to conduct their business and they’re pulling their buyers along with them. I think site flipping is about to move onto a whole new playing field.
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