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Flippa Domains and the Quest for a (Near) Perfect Marketplace

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What's Your Preferred Way to Boost Exposure of Your Auction?

  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.
  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.

FlippaDomains

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Flippa.com Staff
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// Flippa Domains -- FAQs and Feature Requests //

Rules: stay on topic. If you have a valid feature request, it will be added to the original checklist. "Likes" and "Thanks" will help rank things higher. Anything critical that fails to deliver a suggestion for improvement and/or anything off topic or that doesn't stimulate the discussion will be deleted.

Let me be very clear that below are suggestions we've heard or are hearing about currently, and some we are already working on behind the scenes. I mostly want to hear from those I haven't spoken to yet.

///

Upgrades
  • What if we slashed their prices?
  • What if we got rid of them outright?
  • What if a seller had to apply to receive an upgrade?
  • etc
Bidder Aliases
  • Will this expose shill bidders?
Auction Saturation
  • What if we limited the number of auctions?
etc
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Upgrades - Award upgrades to sellers in a tier system: the more sales they complete, the more bonuses they earn.

Bidder aliases - A must! Other mechanisms that can identify related accounts created solely to pump auctions. Not all mechanisms need to be public, but aliases are better than "Bidder1" etc.

Auction saturation - Oversupply isn't the problem as much as commitment to combat potential fraud per above. You can also limit the lifespan of an auction's free relisting, to e.g. 3 months as opposed to perpetually.
 
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In my experience of selling domains on Flippa, there is dearth of visitors to auction page without upgrades.
No reserve auction receive more visitors than reserve auction.
My suggestion is to

1. Increase the starting auction price from $1 to $25 or even $50. It will increase NO reserve auction numbers and seller will at least recover the domain buying and listing cost.
2. Decrease the upgrade price to less than $100.
3. Decrease the auction duration from 30 days to 14 days.
 
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My dissatisfaction with Flippa is as a buyer. Verify bidders and do away with sellers having the ability to decide whether or not to accept bids. Get rid of free relists. So many of the auctions are not true auctions. You have sellers with high reserves who just constantly relist. It might as well just be offer - counter offer. It wastes a lot of buyers' time.

Make Flippa a better place for buyers. There will end up being more buyers which will in turn end up being better for the sellers.
 
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Upgrades - Award upgrades to sellers who do end-user outreach and bring them to the marketplace. This will increase the pool of enduser buyers which is beneficial to all sellers and the marketplace.
 
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Auction Saturation - to qualify for free relists, the relist must have a lower reserve
 
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Auction Saturation - Improve search filters

Right now, no reserve auctions with no bids are impossible to find. Auctions where next bid will hit reserve are also hidden. Filters to display these will increase auction activity and move more domains.

Also add search filters like length of domains (don't just restrict to 5 and below), no of numbers, no of hyphens, no numbers, no hyphens, no characters, no vowels, character pattern (like CVCV, NNNNN etc). There're more attributes I can list, but an improved search filter will negate the issue of auction saturation.

To ride the recent frenzy of liquid domains, even a filter for quad premium LLLL or Chinese premium LLLL, Triple Letter LLLL etc will set Flippa apart from other marketplaces and attract huge number of such investors.

As a seller, I find setting categories a chore. But as a buyer, categories narrow down the list considerably. And better buyer experience will only help sales.
 
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@FlippaDomains
i would only award the option to purchase premium upgrades to sellers who have reached "SUPER SELLER" status, this would take care of the over saturation issue that is happening now on the homepage and the domain marketplace page. Super seller status should be reached after a seller successfully completes X number of sales while receiving positive feedback for each sale. The homepage upgrade and other upgrades would still be available for regular sellers to purchase helping them to gain exposure to their listing.

To keep things fair and not biased towards brokered listings i think that the "editors choice" should be removed. The domains which are being brokered by domain holdings should be listed in a seperate section than regular and upgraded listings, this dilutes exposure to regular listings when they are mixed together in the same page.

I think it would be beneficial to sellers who have multiple domains listed or have a domain catalog if a widget appeared under "THE SELLER" box showcasing a few of the other listings/auctions from that seller.

On another note, i think it would be good if sellers could communicate more with buyers who made offers through a domain catalog listing. I have had the following scenario happen a few times now:

Offer received from buyer
offer countered
buyer rejects counter offer
no more contact with buyer

This is not just an issue on flippa but also on sedo and godaddy, i would like to see a "re-open" or "continue" negotiation option with the potential buyer. Many of us are the same, we want the most we can for a domain and always counter high with an incoming offer, this is to see where the potential buyer is with their budget and to ensure we arent leaving too much money on the table. However, many of us would likely sell the domain for the price the buyer offered if we discovered they werent going to come up in their price.
These are just a few of my opinions.
 
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Get rid of free relisting or put them on a time limit as Acro said.. My eyes are starting to bleed from all the same crap that is relisted every few days or weeks and probably won't ever sell..
 
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Get rid of free relisting or put them on a time limit as Acro said.. My eyes are starting to bleed from all the same crap that is relisted every few days or weeks and probably won't ever sell..

i agree, it adds to saturation in the marketplace and if the domain didnt sell the first time it is unlikely it will sell if you relist for free 5 more times after the initial auction.
 
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i think Flippa is in a bit of a catch 22, their model is good for cashflow for them but does not always help the sellers. Could flippa just do away with the standard auction all together? I mean the $9 regular auction, it does not sell domains anyway, all of us know now that without buying an upgrade it is unlikely anyone would even find your auction. I think that the domain catalog should stay and the regular auction should ($9) should be removed, lets face it, your getting the same exposure with a catalog listing as you are with a $9 regular auction. You can still self promote your catalog listings on social media etc. This would help to reduce a lot of the saturation in the marketplace and would make things fair for those buying $249+ upgrades.

I just wanted to add that i am an advocate for Flippa, without flippa it is unlikely i would have been able to move as many names as i have in the past year. I also want to point out that flippa is constantly asking for our opinion on what would work for us as domainers. how many other marketplace reps do you see on here doing that. @FlippaDomains, great job dealing with all of the sharks in the shallow waters on NamePros, keep up the good work, we appreciate you listening to our recommendations.
 
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do away with sellers having the ability to decide whether or not to accept bids.

I have to say that I disagree with this one.. For the domains that I expected that would fetch higher amounts I have vetted each new bidder before accepting their bid. I send them a few questions, start a conversation to see if they are legit or not.. And I have to say that I have rejected a ton of bidders already based on their responses or the lack of response..
 
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1. First of all get rid of giving free upgrades to anybody unless its your birthday... ;)
2. If you give free upgrades to only 'super sellers', they are going to dominate the marketplace and the regular user will still pay full upgrade fee. IMO, Everyone should be equal...You can give "Super Seller" batch which I don't care...
3. Limit the free listing.... Something like 3 or 5 times...I see people relist the domains for every 24 hours...Once the listings are limited, the seller needs to buy standard auction listing($9) again.
4. If their is someone who has purchased an upgrade without prior knowledge about domaining and if he doesn't get any ROI and in fact is in loss, please give them at least half of their upgrade fees to get relaxed and invest in better domains. ;)
5. Slash the upgrade fee if you don't agree on any of the above 4 points...

Thanks,
Messiah
 
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3 things.

1) Bidder aliases should be implemented and if a bidder bids on a sellers domain for a certain # of times (lets say 100) then those 2 accounts should have something that says "possible friends" or something like that. This woul eliminate friends bidding on each others names as well as shill bidding.
2) What is a super seller? i see accounts with $2,000 in sales and they are super seller and i see some with $50,000 in sales and they are not. Super seller should be clearly defined with milestones you have to pass to achieve it. Afterwards you can apply to become a super seller after reaching these milestones.

3) Only 1 re-list should be allowed
 
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Just want to thank you all for incredible feedback thus far.

Proud to say that we're already on top of lots of this. I'll be responding further to each post this coming week.
 
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Great thread, will be adding some points here later on.
 
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Buy Now.

Add Make Offer. I had an ebay business account from 1999 before BN/MO was introduced, but since it was, sales increased especially via Make offer.


Domain Extension Search.

General search for all domain extensions in the search bar to resolve all possible names available. And/or expand the clickable search for more extentions.


Description.

Add image/video to descriptions.


Cheers.
 
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Maybe have all domains be voted/appraised on before they can be auctioned on flippa. If a domain gets no votes or reg fee appraisals refuse to auction it. That would surely get rid of any saturation issue.

I also feel every domain listed as an auction should have a logo that shows up (like what brandroot/brandbucket does). I wonder how many people may see more potential in a domain if there was a logo made for it that sparks something in them to bid or purchase it.
 
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Buy Now.

Add Make Offer. I had an ebay business account from 1999 before BN/MO was introduced, but since it was, sales increased especially via Make offer.


Domain Extension Search.

General search for all domain extensions in the search bar to resolve all possible names available. And/or expand the clickable search for more extentions.


Description.

Add image/video to descriptions.


Cheers.

I really like the make offer option
 
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Current standard or pro buyer verification could be revised and improved, so the buyer at least is verified with a paypal account or credit card.
 
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I'd like the wording /terminology changed to not show us things as "a bid on your listing" --- when it's not really OUR listing but meerly one we are watching or following...
 
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I think one of the biggest problems right now has to do with the market saturation caused by the flood of auctions, as one member mentioned previously on a separate thread, there's more supply than demand, ie. more sellers than buyers (at least from my perspective). Running all auctions equally would probably exacerbate the flooding problems, and there'd be no chance to stand out in front of thousands of other "equal" auctions. At the same time, the few that do stand out would be because of the actual value of a domain and market interest instead of say, paid upgrades for added visibility and promotion tools.

Personally, i like the idea where seller's would have to apply for an upgrade because it would eliminate all the mediocre domains having an undeserving spotlight, and all the ones that are actually valuable would soar and go for big numbers at auction, since let's be honest; anyone right now (whether new domainer or seasoned) can afford to pay $349 whether their domain is Cars.com or Best-Cars-In-The-Market.com. So i think sellers applying for upgrades would be a more viable option in order to control and regulate the market and flooding of not-so-worthy domains that's present right now.

Just my 2 cents, i really like Flippa, from the user interface to their support team, i've never had an issue unresolved and they've gone the extra mile to ensure my transactions have gone smoothly and safely. However, i would like to see them evolve and improve as a platform. The suggestions from the other members above are great, looking forward to keep hearing more ideas.
 
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Right now, I'm concerned more about the performance of site functions and support rather than tracking what domain someone else is attempting to buy. What I'm bidding on is not anyone's business outside of Flippa and a seller. Policing shill bids is something that needs to be handled internally, not by nosey, outside casual observers.

Search results, from my recent experience are a mess. Unexpected results, like those that are irrelevant or no search results at all for auctions that I know are currently active and have a match to the searched keyword.

Active auction listings are also randomly mixed with catalog domains in search results, often with dozens of catalog domains listed before active auctions. Even premium upgraded auctions can be preceded by many catalog names and/or hard to find in search results. This is very confusing and unfair. I think a separation between active auction listings and catalog listings should be plainly visible.

Most of all, keyword searches in auctions should give accurate results for "any and all" active auctions that have a title which contains a match to that keyword. Duh!
 
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Sellers Applying for an "Upgrade review"

Love the ideas already posted about this, however to keep everyone from just flooding your customer service/domain reviewer team with all the domains they forward to you guys, there could be an option for a non-refundable or "added to your premium listing total if accepted" total charge before hand. Maybe $40 or 50?
This will keep many domain owners if not all from considering that if they themselves know the domain is not worth that. I'm sure your domain team would know which domains are worth accepting and which are not.

Had a lot more ideas, but somehow at this time it's just not crossing my mind.

On a different note, i recently noticed, when you click on the websites page, it takes you to Flippa.com/websites however when you click the domains page it takes you to Flippa.com/domains/all

Not sure if it's an error or that's how it's meant to be, however that's a great dis-advantage to sellers who have bought the 50 bucks upgrade. (I also bought it yesterday and to surprise barely saw any difference) thus noticing this.
 
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