- Impact
- 32,413
Kevin Fink came back for a second interview and delved into a wide variety of topics. From shill bids, to brokerage, to escrow and more. We hope you enjoy the interview and feel free to ask questions in the comments.
We are sitting down again with Kevin Fink to talk all things Flippa. The first interview was very well received and Flippa has only watched its profile in domain-only sales grow.
1) What do the first and second quarters look like sales wise vs last year ?
q1 2014 = 203k
q2 2014 = 557k
q1+q2 2014 = 760k
q1 2015 = 1.47m
q2 2015 = 1.61m
q1+q2 2015 = 3.08m
We began focusing on Domains in January of 2014, and as such it took a few months of configuring to help ramp things up. As you see from the comparisons, 2015 has been an entirely different story.
This past January we kicked off our in-house brokerage efforts. Ali Zandi, our flagship broker (who has since moved on to sprout his own endeavor) helped us develop an entirely new audience of domain sellers.
We made improvements to the platform all around. We tested free auction relists for domains, which we have since made standard. We improved marketplace integrity, added in-house Escrow and increased our overall reach with high-end buyers and sellers alike.
We did $2.15m in sales in all of 2014, and have since blown right past that in just the first two quarters of 2015, alone.
The domains unit had its best month ever just this past May, with over $800k in sales. Now with Domain Holdings a part of the Flippa family, the sky is the limit.
2) There have been some discussions online, Namepros especially, with regards to shill bids, accounts getting suspended or closed. Some have even called Flippa dirty and not a good place to sell. What do you say to those negative on the platform?
There’s an unfortunate underbelly of scammy people (anywhere online), and despite our ramped-up efforts some still appear throughout our platform.
What I want to stress to those who are still negative on Flippa is that we’re committed to ridding the marketplace of these kinds of buyers and sellers, and have made incredible progress in doing so.
Shill bidding exists everywhere, and no one has found a proper solution to deal with it yet. That does not exonerate any marketplace from that kind of behavior going unchecked.
What’s harder is the dissection of bid patterns. For example: a bidder bids $20, then $300 and then $3200 — that seems suspicious. But sometimes it is simply the bidder testing the reserve price. This bidder knows s/he is below reserve, yet has the budget and wants to buy this domain — so following this example, $3200 is their max / proxy bid.
That said, we are now able to pinpoint much more reliably and easily than ever before when in fact it is a fraudulent bidder. As a result we are seeing this behavior reappear less and less, a clear testament to our top-notch Customer Success and Marketplace Integrity teams.
I’d also like to note that over the past year, the number of disputes have more than halved; this is further proof that the marketplace is now safer and more trustworthy than it’s ever been.
To continue this healthy trajectory, here are some other improvements we’ve recently put in place:
– We just implemented a bidder-authorization system that approve bidders using a credit card pre-authorization of $500. This not a debit or a charge, but rather a verification to ensure a buyer has sufficient funds, prior to their bid hitting.
– Most established websites brought to auction now have to go through an additional due diligence screening process performed by Flippa’s Marketplace Integrity Specialists. We have also implemented a verification process to ensure that ‘new’ bidders within our Editors’ Choice listings are vetted and will certainly be moving forward with these sales should they win.
– We’ve made some technical leaps and bounds to more easily detect duplicate accounts, or those accounts we suspect of rigging bids. We have complex systems in place that detect when a Flippa member may be logging in as “someone else” to place bids on their own auction. Alternatively, if a new member is bidding on multiple auctions in a small window of time, we now intercede to verify their actions.
– Namebio now reports our sales at the end of each business day (which I know you syndicate, Raymond). When I confirm our Just Sold results (for our weekly blog rundown), I’ve started marking those sales I’m not 100% confident in as “Confirmation Pending.” Many are marked simply as a formality (they haven’t hit Escrow yet, etc), and so far when I followup up with these initial batches, there have only been a few reversals — re-reported to both Namebio and your blog. I believe this kind of transparency is important.
It should go without saying that if you see something scammy, dodgy or questionable — reach out anytime to [email protected] with any questions or concerns.
Read the full interview here
We are sitting down again with Kevin Fink to talk all things Flippa. The first interview was very well received and Flippa has only watched its profile in domain-only sales grow.
1) What do the first and second quarters look like sales wise vs last year ?
q1 2014 = 203k
q2 2014 = 557k
q1+q2 2014 = 760k
q1 2015 = 1.47m
q2 2015 = 1.61m
q1+q2 2015 = 3.08m
We began focusing on Domains in January of 2014, and as such it took a few months of configuring to help ramp things up. As you see from the comparisons, 2015 has been an entirely different story.
This past January we kicked off our in-house brokerage efforts. Ali Zandi, our flagship broker (who has since moved on to sprout his own endeavor) helped us develop an entirely new audience of domain sellers.
We made improvements to the platform all around. We tested free auction relists for domains, which we have since made standard. We improved marketplace integrity, added in-house Escrow and increased our overall reach with high-end buyers and sellers alike.
We did $2.15m in sales in all of 2014, and have since blown right past that in just the first two quarters of 2015, alone.
The domains unit had its best month ever just this past May, with over $800k in sales. Now with Domain Holdings a part of the Flippa family, the sky is the limit.
2) There have been some discussions online, Namepros especially, with regards to shill bids, accounts getting suspended or closed. Some have even called Flippa dirty and not a good place to sell. What do you say to those negative on the platform?
There’s an unfortunate underbelly of scammy people (anywhere online), and despite our ramped-up efforts some still appear throughout our platform.
What I want to stress to those who are still negative on Flippa is that we’re committed to ridding the marketplace of these kinds of buyers and sellers, and have made incredible progress in doing so.
Shill bidding exists everywhere, and no one has found a proper solution to deal with it yet. That does not exonerate any marketplace from that kind of behavior going unchecked.
What’s harder is the dissection of bid patterns. For example: a bidder bids $20, then $300 and then $3200 — that seems suspicious. But sometimes it is simply the bidder testing the reserve price. This bidder knows s/he is below reserve, yet has the budget and wants to buy this domain — so following this example, $3200 is their max / proxy bid.
That said, we are now able to pinpoint much more reliably and easily than ever before when in fact it is a fraudulent bidder. As a result we are seeing this behavior reappear less and less, a clear testament to our top-notch Customer Success and Marketplace Integrity teams.
I’d also like to note that over the past year, the number of disputes have more than halved; this is further proof that the marketplace is now safer and more trustworthy than it’s ever been.
To continue this healthy trajectory, here are some other improvements we’ve recently put in place:
– We just implemented a bidder-authorization system that approve bidders using a credit card pre-authorization of $500. This not a debit or a charge, but rather a verification to ensure a buyer has sufficient funds, prior to their bid hitting.
– Most established websites brought to auction now have to go through an additional due diligence screening process performed by Flippa’s Marketplace Integrity Specialists. We have also implemented a verification process to ensure that ‘new’ bidders within our Editors’ Choice listings are vetted and will certainly be moving forward with these sales should they win.
– We’ve made some technical leaps and bounds to more easily detect duplicate accounts, or those accounts we suspect of rigging bids. We have complex systems in place that detect when a Flippa member may be logging in as “someone else” to place bids on their own auction. Alternatively, if a new member is bidding on multiple auctions in a small window of time, we now intercede to verify their actions.
– Namebio now reports our sales at the end of each business day (which I know you syndicate, Raymond). When I confirm our Just Sold results (for our weekly blog rundown), I’ve started marking those sales I’m not 100% confident in as “Confirmation Pending.” Many are marked simply as a formality (they haven’t hit Escrow yet, etc), and so far when I followup up with these initial batches, there have only been a few reversals — re-reported to both Namebio and your blog. I believe this kind of transparency is important.
It should go without saying that if you see something scammy, dodgy or questionable — reach out anytime to [email protected] with any questions or concerns.
Read the full interview here
