Is Flippa A Complete Scam

We've tried to engage with a couple of these very vocal individuals to resolve their issues, they are usually unresponsive. When we dig deeper into their Flippa activity, we usually uncover one of two scenarios:

1.) They had grossly unrealistic expectations as to the selling price and they are upset when they spend $50-$80+ with us, and their 2-month old autoblog fails to sell for 60x monthly revenue. One person, in particular, has posted the same accusations against us on half a dozen public forums... I've tried to reach out to him, invite him for a phone chat, etc. to resolve the issue but he's ignored our outreach. One complaint, posted a half a dozen times all over the Google search results, is excessive, and it's even more frustrating when they don't respond to our attempts to rectify the issue. Keep in mind, we host over 40,000+ auctions every year, so even if 99% of people have a positive experience with us (and our goal is always 100%), it means that there will be several people who experienced a problem.

The fact is, that over 60% of auctions end with a bid above the reserve price -- and that's after accounting for any non-payment disputes that might occur.

2.) They are complaining because they were banned from Flippa due to fraud against our other users -- so they lash out against us by calling us "racist" or other such nonsense and making ridiculous, and defamatory & false accusations which make absolutely no sense to anyone who bothers to examine them. When someone is making particularly outrageous accusations, it always helps to ask yourself:
-Who is behind that comment
-How reputable are they, and
-What is their motive?

In most cases, when somebody is making completely insane accusations in a vain attempt to get attention, or to get their account(s) restored so they can commit fraud, we don't want to waste time & effort dealing with them and giving further credibility to their voice.

Pictures of the Flippa/SitePoint office in Melbourne and our parties, events & staff are freely available on the web. Just search for "sitepoint office" on Google Images, or check out the SitePoint Facebook Photo album ( http://facebook.com/sitepoint )

 

Thanks for the reply Matt.

So, from what you are saying, what I gather is that you guys are completely innocent, open, honest, sincere and everything else in between.

Still doesn't explain why so many sellers are so pissed off since their sites don't sell at a decent price.

The websites I am selling are over 7 years old, with a very decent track record, with a single owner, and the reserve price was a little over 2 years earnings.

Also, I have a very close friend who has a video which shows that Flippa.com had more people online on Easter Sunday than 5 other websites which are more popular and ranked higher above than Flippa. Which I find quite amusing since we would assume most people would be at home with their families that day or preparing for that day, rather than spending time online on Flippa.

Lastly, if you could explain why Flippa.com dropped to Number 4 for "websites for sale" then that would be really great.

I respect the way you are handling these complaints. But, making comments that all these "sellers" are frauds and so on is quite disturbing.

Care to tell us all why these sellers who are making "156k" and more per year selling autoblog sites are not yet banned?

Seems like they are somehow connected to you directly since there isn't any other explanation.

These so-called premium sellers sell new websites with no traffic or revenue for $200 or more. Would you be kind enough to explain what kind of silly buyers are buying these sites?

 

Quantify "so many sellers are pissed off?"

That's a pretty blatant and unsubstantiated statement. We host 40,000 auctions per year, over 60% of these end in a successful sale (http://flippa.com/just-sold). We're pretty proud of our clearance rate compared to most digital asset marketplaces such as Sedo, GreatDomains or AfterNIC.

No surprise that lots of people were active on Sunday. Flippa is surprisingly active, even during Christmas. Today (Monday) is 50%+ busier than Easter Sunday!

I'm not sure as to your question about Google & I can't possibly begin to summarize the intentions and motivations of thousands of individual buyers & bidders in a short post - they are very varied. We don't ban successful auction holders or sellers, not sure why we would? And we can't verify the statements of any one individual. Like in any business endeavour, there's people who are more successful than others.

 

Hey Matt! Can you piss off some of those FB, Twitter, Traffic Reseller sites - god they shit me... every-time i go to visit or buy a site on Flippa - that is all I find - is those damn sites being sold... and everyone knows (well experienced people) that those sites are scams... and I've always had good experiences when buying on Flippa - no dramas at all... it's not a scam.

 

Hi Matt,
You answered your own question. Congrats.

As per your claimed clearance rate, every 4 out of 10 listings ends unsold!

Then out of the ones that "supposedly" sold, there are 3 out of 6 that remain unpaid.

I don't wish to drag this further since you have clearly revealed how you deal with genuine complaints.

But before I leave this thread I would really like if you put up a list of members online on Flippa just like Warrior Forum and Digital Point does. That way, we can be really sure that you guys are not lying about so many statistics.

Also, I'm sure it hurts when you see your own "baby" slowly going down. So, I don't blame you for not banning those sellers who sell autoblogs and make you guys some quick money.

I am certain if Flippa themselves puts up a post on their blog asking if their "buyers" were happy purchasing those crappy autoblogs then you will really know what is bothering me so much.

And if you have something relevant to add (along with some real proof) then please post a reply here. I ain't going anywhere even though dealing with you has taught me to stay as far away from Flippa as possible.

 

That's my point, Auto Blogs and Traffic/Social resellers, both of these are rampant... but at the same time it's the buyers fault for demanding the shit products, webmasters are lazy and want automated - when ever I sell a site the number one question is "can this be automated" or "is this automated"... I have even thought about going into these fields myself - just to rip people off... it's harder to make an honest dollar... there's so many suckers out there wanting to be sucked in...

 

I am using flippa from last 3 month i never found any issue. Please contact Flippa thay will resolve your problem

 

i dont believe flippa is a scam, you use it properly and you get results, i used it once but i was a total noob so i got nothing. i think that a normal listing on flippa is not enough because your listing will simply drop to the bottom since others will add other features like highlighted listing or bold text.

 

So, basically you are asking me to spend $50+ to feature it on the front page of flippa.com and waste more money on these guys.

For your information, the 4 sites I listed the first 4 times were featured listings and none of them sold!!!

So, I basically spent $250+ for those listings and got peanuts in exchange.

And, all those sites were ranked Number 1 on Google at the time of the auction and were earning money as well.

The listing I currently have online "right now" on Flippa is also a top ranked website with over 80k visitors each month mainly from USA.

The website is over 7 years old, has been consistently ranked on page 1 for the last 4 years, and earnings reasonably well as per the visitor ratio.

What is truly shocking is that out of "5500" people ONLINE on Flippa yesterday only 15 people came to view this listing.

Wonder WHY??

 

Hey, It seems like a big conversation here! I would like to give Matt a humble suggestion after reading the whole thing.

To me the whole issue seems to be caused by the high listing rates charged by Flippa. If it is correctly mentioned here that is $50+ then its really shocking. Because here on DP we dont have to pay a single penny to list anything neither any success fees, which is the greatest thing about DP and I am thankful to them for it. Though I have never been on Flippa personally but if I have to pay heavy charges to do business there, I would never visit it in the future as well.

Listing fee to me is unacceptable because it is paid even before I have earned anything. And it automatically increases the rate of the site also by that much amount, which makes it difficult for the buyer to pay.

So to conclude if you could make lesser fee/free to list would attract much more sellers on your site and satisfaction as well. Thats what I feel. Now I dont about your logic behind the high fees. But it would definitely wont let all this to happen.

 

Every single post you have made in this thread would lead me to the conclusion that it's poor website quality or unstable traffic sources which result in you not achieving what you (quite possibly unrealistically) expect to sell for. My last two Flippa listings sold for 32x and 14x monthly revenue respectively- both of which were around the ballparks I expected based on the website niche and long term potential.

There is a reason why people are willing to pay Flippas fees to list there- it's because with the right site, it's the only logical place to list. I've dabbled with selling websites here on DP, and the experience has been disappointing to say the least. (Side Note:That's not necessarily a bad thing- DP is a broad community and website sales make up such a small percentage of what DP does. It competes very strongly in many other areas.)

People pay those prices because of the exposure you receive. Ask yourself, if the prices really are too high- why is Flippa the largest website marketplace on the internet today? I've paid hundreds of dollars in Flippa success fees in the past, and I do so gladly for the service. Fees can only be too high if they don't make selling their worthwhile. As I stated above, the DP marketplace is not the place to sell a serious website- hence you will very really see a sales thread here for a website worth more than low $x,xxx. Without sounding too stereotypical, a large percentage of the DP member base are not the type of people you want viewing your auction anyway- they aren't your target market.

Why would they do that? They are already the largest website marketplace on the net and the overwhelming majority of buyers and sellers have no issues with the current fees.

They are only too expensive for those of us who are looking to sell substandard, short term websites.

WebDev

 

Hi WebDev,
Care to share the website listing on Flippa that you sold so convincingly?

I would really like to learn from guys like you how to sell.

As far as your comments about FLIPPA being way better than other website and domain marketplaces....

All I can say is that those are ridiculous assumptions that Flippa is anywhere even close to the league of SEDO, GODADDY, AFTERNIC and DP when it comes to buying and selling websites.

For that matter, even WarriorForum is way, way ahead of Flippa when it comes to selling autoblogs, startup websites and so on.

Flippa has dropped to 800 odd in the Alexa rankings in the last 4 months from her earlier rankings of 612.

But, anyway, it's quite pointless letting this all go on. There is far too much evidence piling up against Flippa and too less for.

I am still laughing about your comments that Flippa is the Number 1 marketplace for website sales. LOL.

 

In terms of value of websites sold, Flippa is the industry leader- feel free to research that and educate yourself. $660,000 worth of WEBSITE sales were completed on Flippa in the last 7 days- please tell me you are wise enough to realise this is by far and away a much higher figure than Warrior/Namepros/Digitalpoint COMBINED in soley website sales in the last 7 days. The fact you mention Alexa is also concerning, it's almost as if you aren't aware how awfully inaccurate their ranking algorithms are?

Why you are even mentioning SEDO when they are predominantly domain sales is beyond me, we are talking websites here. You can view 2 of my more recent sales both here, and here. However, you seem eager to blame your own failures on others so I wouldn't be confident in you actually taking any of the information on board that I have offered you in this thread.

WebDev

 

Hey WebDev,
Thanks for the listings. Have saved them and will get back to you if I need any of your "expert" help.

I am spending far too much time on this thread for now so give me a day and I will respond to you on a few things you've mentioned here.

By the way, it's been over a year since both SEDO and GoDaddy have been selling high end websites as well as startup websites with content.

And for once, can you give me a reliable source where anyone can verify beyond doubt what Flippa claims on their homepage every day.

There is no website (with no connection to Flippa) that mentions anything about them being the largest marketplace for domains and websites.

I can be certain that had links.com been listed on SEDO for sale then it would get twice the price it's getting on Flippa as I write this.

 

Why don't you just look at the completed listings on Flippa? Unless of course you are sticking to the idea that a large majority of these are shill auctions.

WebDev

 

To Webdev,
You might be that rich to pay someone dollar $50+ before even earning a penny from the transaction, while selling its always not possible to have the rate of 100% selling. Some times you might go through a sale and some times you cant sell inspite of having a good site, may be because the targeted buyers were not available but you are still losing the money.

I had not really heard of them before this thread I only knew SEDO, GODADDY, AFTERNIC, NAMEGET and of course DP. So the so called "largest website marketplace" I was not even aware of.

I dont know how do you define "substandard website"? And anyways the biggest sales on the net always make news on the whole internet I have not really heard that some site called Flippa was the medium for the sale. For e.g. the INSTAGRAM app. is bought by Face book today itself for 1Billion and I know it as well.

 

What a terrible example. Instagram wasn't sold through a marketplace in any shape or form- sales of that size are privately brokered with law teams on both sides - so how is it possibly relevant to this thread? Flippa has sold various web properties for six figure sums however- something DP nor Warrior will ever achieve (And nor should they, it's not their primary focus- probably because they recognise there are already businesses out there that do a good enough job.)

Moving on to some of your other points- If you weren't aware of Flippa then I struggle to imagine you are particularly successful online- at least not at the moment. Finally, you mention some people can't afford to spend... have you never become accustomed with the phrase "you've got to spend money to make money"? If you can't afford $50 to list a website that will sell for 4 or 5 figures (assuming you are indeed capable of creating such quality), then you are pursuing the wrong profession. Furthermore, if you would expect to fetch such a price for your website, one would naturally assume you are earning considerable monthly revenue, making $50 a drop in the ocean, do you see why?

The only time I could agree with you is if you are looking to sell websites for low $xxx - at which point Flippa fees would seem quite expensive. To be totally upfront and honest though- if the sites value is only a few hundred dollars then it's going to be the type of substandard website that no one wants to buy anyway.

I'm failing to see how my points can really be argued when we are discussing Flippa, a marketplace which has generated over $75,000,000 dollars in sales since launch. If the majority didn't agree with the sites pricing structure, they simply wouldn't list there... it's as simple as that. Only the minority complain, and these are usually the members you see trying to sell poor websites with misleading pitches and false promises.

To summarise, if you don't agree with the site policies, nobody is forcing you to list your website there. Just move along.

WebDev

 

Honestly I don't care about their office or how the owners look. Have sold 2 sites on Flippa last year and another one didn't get sold since I wasn't OK with the price. Sold it to a client for a better price, so it was OK. The system works OK, but you'll get as much as people are willing to pay for your site. if the site is enticing, you'll have people 'fight' for it, if not, you'll have 2 bidders or none as I did. It really depends on the site in the end and how many details you provided. Accusing one of the biggest and respected site marketplaces of being a scam is a little far fetched. Yes, you didn't get a good result, it doesn't mean someone scammed you.

 

OP it sounds like no matter how Matt answers you'll still construe a negative conotation back. To answer your question simply:

"and the reserve price was a little over 2 years earnings."

You're asking people to start bidding at double the current industry average pf the FINAL sale price. If you had done your research you would know that on average the sites that start with no reserve sell the highest.

Swallow the loss and move on.

 

I'm really far fetched.
I accuse Flippa of being a totally worthless not respected site marketplace that is probably about as good as warriorforums. The majority of sites for sale are completely bogus and the prices are skyrocketed so high.
I know that most people would say its not their fault, but that's not true. The site management sets the atmosphere completely and can control it anytime.

Flippa is GRADE A Worthless. Its good for nothing to a buyer. Its about as good an an Ebook.