Flippa: Enjoy my $9 because I will not be a returning customer

[saturn60]

I tried them based on a recommendation I received and overall it was a pretty bad experience, not to mention a waist of $9.

The sign up process was confusing and when I tried to find their customer service phone number for assistance with setting up my account, it turns out it doesn't exist, all I could find was a contact form to provide my contact info, not even a live chat option. In my opinion, any website that takes your money should have some form of live support.

During the listing creation process they try to sell you on upgrade options, which would be normal, except their upgrade fees are not $10 or $20, they're hundreds of dollars more!

Once my listing went live, I was surprised to see there was no description summary or thumbnail picture showing up on my listing in the search results. I assumed that my listing would include those features since when you click on "domains" from the homepage, nearly all the listings in the search results have those features. It's clear now that those listings are upgraded, but if you're new to the site, unless you're really paying attention, it's not clear that standard listings don't have those features.

I priced my domain with a starting bid of $10 and a reserve of $299. The domain only got 1 $10 bid and as the auction was about to end, I get a message from Flippa: We suggest you lower the reserve to $11 and if you do that we'll (reward you by) emailing the watchers on your listing. So they're pressuring me to sell the domain for around $11 even though the listing has a $9 listing fee + 10% success fee?

Lets do the math: If the domain sells, even if it's for a ridiculously low price, Flippa can collect the 10% success fee. No sale = No success fee for Flippa.

So the domain ended unsold, but don't worry, they have a backup plan to get more money from me. I am offered the option to "Buy a privacy upgrade". For $20 I can hide my listing from search engines like Google and the general public, for $30 I can make my listing no longer be visible to the public. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think it's pretty sleazy for Flippa to try and monetize the privacy concerns of their paying users.

 

[ramkumaritrvs]

what's the domain name you listed there?

 

[rh2000]

I

I tried them based on a recommendation I received and overall it was a pretty bad experience, not to mention a waist of $9.

The sign up process was confusing and when I tried to find their customer service phone number for assistance with setting up my account, it turns out it doesn't exist, all I could find was a contact form to provide my contact info, not even a live chat option. In my opinion, any website that takes your money should have some form of live support.

During the listing creation process they try to sell you on upgrade options, which would be normal, except their upgrade fees are not $10 or $20, they're hundreds of dollars more!

Once my listing went live, I was surprised to see there was no description summary or thumbnail picture showing up on my listing in the search results. I assumed that my listing would include those features since when you click on "domains" from the homepage, nearly all the listings in the search results have those features. It's clear now that those listings are upgraded, but if you're new to the site, unless you're really paying attention, it's not clear that standard listings don't have those features.

I priced my domain with a starting bid of $10 and a reserve of $299. The domain only got 1 $10 bid and as the auction was about to end, I get a message from Flippa: We suggest you lower the reserve to $11 and if you do that we'll (reward you by) emailing the watchers on your listing. So they're pressuring me to sell the domain for around $11 even though the listing has a $9 listing fee + 10% success fee?

Lets do the math: If the domain sells, even if it's for a ridiculously low price, Flippa can collect the 10% success fee. No sale = No success fee for Flippa.

So the domain ended unsold, but don't worry, they have a backup plan to get more money from me. I am offered the option to "Buy a privacy upgrade". For $20 I can hide my listing from search engines like Google and the general public, for $30 I can make my listing no longer be visible to the public. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think it's pretty sleazy for Flippa to try and monetize the privacy concerns of their paying users.

I agree. Save your money.

 

[saturn60]

what's the domain name you listed there?

I love promoting my domains, but this isn't the thread for it.

 

[Nerevar]

Flippa is not well suited for selling domains without buying upgrades. I do this sometimes, but it is a gamble. Flippa works great when selling valuable domains with premier upgrades.

By the way, they have just about the best email support I have seen, and I prefer it from telephone support. And they allow a free relisting for unsold items.

 

[James Rodman]

you have to study every marketplace (sedo, flippa, godaddy) before you list an item and see what kind of domains sell in those marketplaces. if you posted a lousy domain it doesnt matter what marketplace it is you wont get high price. sorry but its the truth

 

[bonin]

ok, I agree that not everything in Flippa is perfect, but if you do not sell your domain they offer an option to relist your domain again and it's free, also they probably read the costumer feedbacks and reduced the fee which was $29 for each ad to more affordable $9

 

[saturn60]

Flippa is not well suited for selling domains without buying upgrades. I do this sometimes, but it is a gamble. Flippa works great when selling valuable domains with premier upgrades.

Flippa must love you, so you sometimes pay $250 or $350 per listing in upgrade fees?

By the way, they have just about the best email support I have seen, and I prefer it from telephone support. And they allow a free relisting for unsold items.

You're entitled to your opinion but I'd say the best email support is miles behind live phone support.

 

[abaiti]

nice experience!
I tried to sell my domain at Flippa. Arranged 9 dollars listing with 7 days duration. I've got 30 views! When I placed my domain here at this forum, 30 people view my thread within couple of hours.

 

[dnviet]

Free relisting for unsold domain is very good.

 

[bonin]

nice experience!
I tried to sell my domain at Flippa. Arranged 9 dollars listing with 7 days duration. I've got 30 views! When I placed my domain here at this forum, 30 people view my thread within couple of hours.

yes, I think this is a problem in Flippa and do not know what is the reason, sometimes it happens with new ad for the first 24 hours to get 100 views and 3 Bids, and for the next 72 hours only 35 views - amazing a

 

[saturn60]

Free relisting for unsold domain is very good.

No, it's not very good. When you have to pay hundreds of dollars in upgrade fees to get real interest in your domain that's a problem. I paid $9 to list the domain and it hardly got any views, the free relist isn't going to fix that.

 

[bonin]

sometimes we just missed the right moment

 

[Templr]

Firstly, the privacy upgrade is a 'novel' way to garner more money from the customer.

From my insight, Flippa is geared for more ex - premium names, and can appear quite elitist in this way with a whopping $350 upgrade listing. Obviously fine for $2000++++ domains that are a dead cert.

However, the platform does have a specific market. For instance, good marijuana/weed names don't appear to sell well or receive much interest. Also, good brandable .com's, such as the one would see selling on the brand boutique sites for $1500-$2000+ are of not much interest.

Flippa have also recently changed their domain listing interface; I have sent 2 support messages, but this was unanswered. I think it's a glitch actually, as the time setting has been removed and once submitted you have to complete the summary and price etc. Although they did tell me the categories have been removed from the domains. I guess this just removes options for the basic listing and 'pushes' you to upgrade.

That being said, I have been selling via $9, not sure what the usual average of clicks per 30 days but I'm getting around 250-500 per auction.

I never sell by NR. Always by reserve or by setting the bid at a higher amount to remove the low ball bidders etc. Only once did I set a NR, with no bids at week 3, I set a higher start. Although unsold, after a few days I received an offer higher than opening.


You can start selling on Flippa with true 'premium' names or excellent domains and buy the upgrade with not much problem, however, you will notice that many really good names that were set with NR have actually sold for less than market value.


For domainers that have decent names but have had no luck on Flippa, have you looked into Freemarket.com ? It's an alternative. I think the site is in it's early stages, and really needs to pull up with a few things for the customer and site infrastructure. Not sure on the buyer aspect at the moment, have sold one domain after listing a few.

Probably a better option than Bido which has not changed in years.

 

[Hidigo]

I agree with you, they treat their clients very bad.

 

[donname]

I think it should lower the value of the upgrades in half, so you would have a double positive effect, the client (us), we can access a premium listing and promote our domains more effectively having more exposure and would get Flippa better results because this price reduction is offset by increased demand.

 

[biggie]

When I placed my domain here at this forum, 30 people view my thread within couple of hours.

and how much did you pay for those viewers?

 

[abaiti]

zero, you know

 

[jdab]

Personally I disagree with your opinion, but thankyou for sharing it.

They have these optional extras for your listings, just like eBay and any other marketplace do. These are marketed for high end domain names which will sell at a much larger profit - in these cases the upgrades are worth it.

All auction sites have a success fee, and all auction sites have purchaseable ungrades, it's just the way it goes. If no-one wants your domain, you're going to make a loss.

From personal experience I find that the majority of the domain sales tend to be $xxx and upwards, which makes the listing fee seem fairly cheap.

Like @James Rodman said, you have to study your market. If it's a $50.00 domain, you're probably better off listing it on a forum or even eBay - the fees will be cheaper/non-existant and you're more likely to find the buyer you want.

 

[starizec]

I don't understand the problem.
You are mad because you didn't sold name and that you need to pay listing fee??

 

[abaiti]

@jdab In your domain name catalog on Flippa all units are under $100. So you keep in mind that flippa has good facilities for "$50 domains"?

 

[Electric-Shadow]

I've also received excellent E-Mail support from Flippa and I'm generally a happy customer even if my domains don't always sell. I particularly like the free catalog listing, which I've actually sold through and of course the free re-listing if the domain doesn't sell.

Whilst I agree that their system maybe be a bit too upgrade oriented and perhaps more could be done to market regular listings; Flippa, like any marketplace is always going to be hit and miss in terms of successful sales. Of course, it also depends a lot on the domain itself, some people have gone Full Monty with their upgrades and not recouped their costs. Success is never guaranteed!

 

[James Rodman]

how much attention do you think you will get on places like sedo and godaddy? every marketplace is the same. the more you pay the more attention you will get. simple. unless its a top notch domain you have to pay to get attention

 

[JudgeMind]

As with any paid service I would recommend doing your homework before purchasing anything.

All of the info is there about selling and listing and what upgrades include what features.

I do agree that flippa is more geared towards selling with upgrades. With domain sales flippa is looking to make a name for itself so they want to show reported sales of premium names that have sold in 4 figures. A good example of a marketplace that failed to make a good name for themselves is bido. The quality of the names being sold there is very low. I would suggest unless you are selling high valued names or single word names that you sell somewhere other than flippa. I've had good luck on flippa and bad luck it's really an art to determine which names will attract most bidders.

Perhaps people should experiment a bit. It's cheaper to buy upgrades on godaddy but they have a lot of names so the exposure is limited, sedo offers upgrades which I have used in the past and sold names.

Better to list your names in flippas free domain catalogue. If you are getting lots of offers for a particular name you may consider sending to auction and buying an upgrade.

 

[James Rodman]

very well said JudgeMind