So you THOUGHT Flippa was shady?

[S-B]

Sorry in advance, Kevin. Should have had your people leave me alone.

Flippa has been the subject of much controversy over the last 6 months. Speculative talk has ranged from shill bidding to bloated sales reports. Most of the accusations are pure garbage but the company is sketchy as hell.

While you might be thinking that I’m bitter because I haven’t any luck there, you should know that I moved $75,000 of domains in 6 months. At one point, I was the first to go to bat for them all because I try to show some loyalty when someone is taking care of me.

However, I recently had my Super Seller status revoked “due to comments made towards other users.” In fact, this is due to my response to the auction where an individual claimed to have an offer on a 3 day old domain of 10,000 bitcoins — that’s $2,500,000. Apparently, calling out a scammer is grounds for retaliation from the business.

I suppose this is because Flippa values net revenue more than customer satisfaction.

Now that you know my motivation I will move on and share a little bit of insider information.

If you’re paying full price for listing fees and upgrades you have been scammed.

They have gone on the defensive in the past by saying that they “subsidize” upgrades for their top sellers. Subsidize is a cute word for giveaway.

I received somewhere between $3,000 to $5,000 in “subsidies” — as a private seller — over 6 months. At one point, I received $2,000 in credits at one time.

Now I won’t lie, sometimes I had to pay for listings. When I did, I still got hooked up. For every upgrade or listing I purchased I received 2 free.

So when I paid, which was rare, I paid 1/3 of what you’ve been paying. I’m sure you now see why some people make a killing off their platform while others have lost hundreds of dollars per listing.

Oh you thought Editor’s choice was for good domains? Nah. It has been a filter for friends of Flippa.

When I sold on Flippa’s platform, I was given Editor’s Choice for nearly all of my domains. Why? Because I asked.

I know some of you noticed that only 3-5 people showed up when visiting that page. Some might not care but others might understand the value of this.

Domains at Flippa sell for much more when given the Editor’s Choice designation.

Oh so you suspect shilling? I’ve known many users who have shilled their way to a profit. It doesn’t benefit Flippa to eliminate shilling. High sales mean higher success fees.

Simple as that.

Straight up scamming? Yep.

I’ve reported verifiable scams to customer support and I didn’t hear back until after the auction closed. They stated that it was now the buyer’s responsibility to report the sale if something fishy occurred.

Hmmmm.

Would the buyer receive a refund? No. Would the seller be suspended? Yes. Would Flippa still profit? Damn right.

At the end of the day, you can choose to use their platform of boycott them.

I will choose the latter.

P.S.

Have you been curious about what Flippa has been doing?

They are working on adding small business to their platform.

Yeah. Dump money into selling physical business without verifying any of their claims.

That should work. Everyone is honest. Right?

 

[dordomai]

Why on earth would you blame flippa because you didn't due your own research? That's equivalent to blaming the person who sold you the brick inside the new VCR box.
Do you homework and open the box before paying.... Really!

well i had the same thing happen to me and while i should have been more skeptical i don't think it was entirely my fault. That's victim blaming. I did my research and most of the stats including traffic stats were legit but the revenue stats were fake. What can i do about that? There might have been some subtle warning signs in retrospect but I don't have a crystal ball so what can i do?

That was a few years ago and from reading a few blogs this type of scam is still happening and some go as far as saying around 50% of certain listings are scams. I don't doubt this. Just Google "Flippa Scams".

How many scams are there on Namepros? Not that many. I looked back at some of the flippa auctions that i had been watching a few years back and i am surprised how many accounts have been suspended.

In my opinion there is an unusually high percentage of scams on flippa and i didn't get the impression that Flippa would try too hard to stop this or warn their clients about this problem.

IMO the risk could never be eliminated entirely but they could do more to stop this scamming activity but that would make things more complicated and decrease the number of transactions happening.

 

[rocky123]

hey ,
This thread has become so interesting and informative. Learnt a great deal on how to handle criticism and still carry on constructive progress. Kudos to Kevin. Great Marketing lessons.
Come tomorrow I will try to listen to client problems/rants in another perspective.
@Shane Bellone As said by kevin you really speak ur mind and that certainly requires lot of courage.
however as new user I have used flippa to sell 3 websites and found it great.

 

[S-B]

I have used flippa to sell 3 websites and found it great.

Great is subjective.

 

[rocky123]

Great is subjective.

Sure. I agree good or bad is definitely relative. As one starts using any platform/ Service expectation increases.
I do understand that u have raised some extremely valid points and concerns from ur perspective of your long association with flippa. Hopefully Flippa listen and bring changes to make it even better

 

[Bes sob]

Their online support is also shady...

 

[FlippaDomains]

If you want to sell on Flippa think twice because they "may" care if they treat you right or not.

Anyone ever go to a club and you have to wait in line and then pay the $20 cover charge to get in. Then you see the bouncer let his buddies cut the line and go right in without paying and you say to yourself "that's some bullsh*t". Now what if that cover charge is $350, but don't worry, now that they've been called out on it they "may" change it.

I guess the one main thing I didn't get across very well is...I agree, it's too expensive, and also became less effective as volume grows, and also won't work if we make it so everyone gets one.

En route to a proper fix of the system, I hope people understand that this is the main reason I took it upon myself to provide sellers help with credits. Credits were given out to pretty much anyone we worked with (those who reached out and started a conversation with us, basically), not just three people, as so many have insinuated.

Because I manage the marketplace, I've taken responsibility of how we essentially curated our more-successful sellers' inventory;

...But:

When you give all your "subsidies" to a new domainer with average sale history, put his listings at the top of others for free, give him ultra premium upgrades for free for domains like cupcakefrosting.com

We didn't. Ali paid his way for awhile before we hired him. No one gets free credits, outright, especially from "hello."

...make him a senior broker giving him more leads, contacts, insider information, when you promote his story and share with all your subscribers, etc, etc

We hired him as our flagship / Senior Broker to launch our in-house brokerage team. Among the contacts and leads you speak of were the thousands of sellers who had inventory to sell but wanted someone else to do the selling. I referred many dozens of these leads to Shane, as well.

How you call this? Why don't you do this for other guys that are starting domaining now and had no success with your platform - loosing a lot of money , after you hooked them up with Ali story? And don't tell me that they haven't asked. If you provide free ultra premium upgrades for anyone with similar domain to cupcakfrosting.com, you won't have a business at all.

We do. I keep repeating myself. We help anyone who is new, asks for credits, who wants to start selling on our platform but needs assistance, whether financial, simple advice or otherwise.

Anyone who's had a bad experience, we aim to make it right - but we're not clairvoyants. We won't know unless someone reaches out.

And in the instance that a new seller doesn't know that their Dogshit.xyz domain is not going to sell for more then the cost of an upgrade, we now urge them to speak to us first. This is something I've also taken upon myself to institute, as again - our domains team is still a handful of people and we cannot preemptively speak to everyone.

Should we? Should we hold every domain auction until we decide, via impartial jury, that it's right for auction or upgrade? What do you think?

Sidenote: CupCakeFrosting.com was not awarded a free upgrade.

First - who says that paying for promoting your platform and your already senior broker is a bribe? It is paid promotion. And I don't believe that somebody who has watched the interview will argue that this is a promotional video of Flippa and Ali. As i stated - it is interview full of lies and manipulation. This is a fact.

How, again, is it paid? Sorry, I'm not following you and these so-called "facts" of yours - Employees of all sorts of companies speak with @DomainSherpa ~ How is this different?

Sure - but these "private sales" can be $500K, $4 Mil. or whatever. And nobody will ever know. We discuss facts.

Lies and misinformation? How you came with this conclusion? Show me where I am lying. I am making statements based on facts and asking questions.

Questions are fine; you deserve answers - of which I've already provided, and as such will be my last jaunt here at this time.

But speaking of facts, here's a reiteration of one: you don't work for us.

I guarantee my professional existence on our sales being legitimate and fully accounted for; that is by far the most ironclad thing I can offer anyone, albeit while being bound by our Terms of Service / client confidentiality agreements where I am disallowed to expose certain sales and their price points.

By the way, when you say "nobody will ever know" and private sales are not facts, then you're basically admitting that more than half of the entire domain industry is suspect. Just saying...

Flippa is shady as hell ! Bought a $2k website long ago which was supposed to have a lot of traffic but.. it was all FAKE stats!

I did my research and most of the stats including traffic stats were legit but the revenue stats were fake.

IMO the risk could never be eliminated entirely but they could do more to stop this scamming activity but that would make things more complicated and decrease the number of transactions happening.

In my opinion there is an unusually high percentage of scams on flippa and i didn't get the impression that Flippa would try too hard to stop this or warn their clients about this problem.

Except that's exactly what we're doing - those listings with unverified stats are marked as such. Those that are verified are prioritized in both view and notation of verification.

I looked back at some of the flippa auctions that i had been watching a few years back and i am surprised how many accounts have been suspended.

Because we've ramped-up our efforts to curb this kind of activity...

Need help? Want advice? Smell something dodgy? Need a Websites expert to help you do your due diligence?

[email protected] + [email protected]

 

[UXela]

Flippa is full of shill bidding...
When I wanted to have 2 accounts (one personal and one business) and openly admitted this they cancelled my account.
When I wanted to buy some domain that wouldn't possible be wanted by someone else than the owner of the .com (me) I got what I believe is shill bidding.
Nobody there cares about the customers. They just care about their share in the sales.

 

[discobull]

I'm a marketer, bro. Nothing more and nothing less.

The same could be said about that individual whose flippa listing you made a giant stink about -- he's just a marketer. But, according to you, his lie about the 10,000 bitcoin offer merits our condemnation while your deceptions should be recognized as the tactics of a smart business man. Do you see anything inconsistent about that?

 

[S-B]

The same could be said about that individual whose flippa listing you made a giant stink about -- he's just a marketer. But, according to you, his lie about the 10,000 bitcoin offer merits our condemnation while your deceptions should be recognized as the tactics of a smart business man. Do you see anything inconsistent about that?

I omitted information. He lied.

@PugDomains actually spent time going through my posts to find discrepancies. He proved, with facts, that I'm a hypocrite. Honestly, I give him credit for that. He remembered a point I made months ago, he researched the topic, and he even ripped a quote out of context to close his post. Pretty awesome in my opinion.

The rest of you sling accusations around like amateurs.

 

[DomainGist]

his lie about the 10,000 bitcoin offer merits our condemnation

It is a pretty damn big lie though isn't it, in fairness, he claimed he'd had an offer worth over $2.27m for a 3 day old domain most of us wouldn't pay reg fee for.

Imagine being that dude who paid 10000 bitcoins for a pizza, I wonder whether he'll ever stop hating himself?

 

[iAchilles]

Need help? Want advice? Smell something dodgy? Need a Websites expert to help you do your due diligence?

[email protected] + [email protected]

On two occasions I mailed support regarding advice on purchasing upgrades, both mails were flat out ignored (these domains were not pigeon shit). On three other separate occasions support issues regarding catalogs and listing errors, some were ignored and others were initially responded to and then simply forgotten. Your support team has dropped the ball on 5 occasions at this point (one issue was on a 3k transaction) and due to this I'll never list on Flippa again (at auction). The support I have received thus far at Flippa has been abysmal.

 

[DomainGist]

I understand that.
But, honestly, - would you pay $10K BIN for a domain with no reserve in this situation? I won't.
I am just saying that it is not "pretty normal". Nothing more. Shane made a great sale. The buyer made a bad decision. And the fact that he is trying to sell the domain 6 months after that - unsuccessfully - proves it.

I wouldn't pay $10k for that domain full stop..... but then I've never paid over $600 for a computer, I'm still using an iPhone 4 because I like to save a fortune on 'sim only' contracts by purchasing a phone outright, and I wear my jumpers until holes appear in the armpits.

I know just as many financially irresponsible people as I do fiscally conservative people though, and domains are highly subjective, wealth is relative, $10k is a lot of money to me but not a lot of money to a neurosurgeon.

It does seem a bit odd that somebody would purchase ITmagazine.com for $10000, which is basically a top end user price (or close to it), and then attempt to resell it on flippa..... although it wouldn't be expensive if somebody had devised a clear fully costed business plan to create an IT magazine and had a sufficient budget for a category killer domain.

Ultimately there must have been more than one highly motivated buyer for it to reach that price. The purchaser may have made an expensive mistake by buying on impulse without such a clear plan, but perhaps the other parties involved in bidding the domain up had more solid objectives and the buyer thought that the best chance he had of recouping the purchase price was to put it back in front of the nose of those other bidders.

 

[S-B]

I wouldn't pay $10k for that domain full stop..... but then I've never paid over $600 for a computer, I'm still using an iPhone 4 because I like to save a fortune on 'sim only' contracts by purchasing a phone outright, and I wear my jumpers until holes appear in the armpits.

I know just as many financially irresponsible people as I do fiscally conservative people though, and domains are highly subjective, wealth is relative, $10k is a lot of money to me but not a lot of money to a neurosurgeon.

It does seem a bit odd that somebody would purchase ITmagazine.com for $10000, which is basically a top end user price (or close to it), and then attempt to resell it on flippa..... although it wouldn't be expensive if somebody had devised a clear fully costed business plan to create an IT magazine and had a sufficient budget for a category killer domain.

Ultimately there must have been more than one highly motivated buyer for it to reach that price. The purchaser may have made an expensive mistake by buying on impulse without such a clear plan, but perhaps the other parties involved in bidding the domain up had more solid objectives and the buyer thought that the best chance he had of recouping the purchase price was to put it back in front of the nose of those other bidders.

The owner was making $30,000 - $60,000 per month in Adsense. He was the owner of the site that hacked iCloud accounts.

He likely put it back up for auction because Google finally banned him and Apple probably sued him.

 

[DomainGist]

I omitted information. He lied.

@PugDomains actually spent time going through my posts to find discrepancies. He proved, with facts, that I'm a hypocrite. Honestly, I give him credit for that. He remembered a point I made months ago, he researched the topic, and he even ripped a quote out of context to close his post. Pretty awesome in my opinion.

The rest of you sling accusations around like amateurs.

Plus I'm just a guy who likes playing devil's advocate, I haven't actually got any major issues with you or flippa, just fancied stoking the flames a bit.... like somebody hyping up a school yard fight (known in the UK as "sh*t stirring").

Was a bit of an anti-climax, wasn't the super fight I thought it would be, the large circle of spectators chanting "fight, fight, fight" soon dispersed, nobody landed a knock out blow, won't go down in history as an epic.

Still time for a rematch though

 

[DomainGist]

The owner was making $30,000 - $60,000 per month in Adsense. He was the owner of the site that hacked iCloud accounts.

He likely put it back up for auction because Google finally banned him and Apple probably sued him.

Looks like they are actually developing it though, probably growing traffic and revenue data to resell as a website rather than a domain?

 

[Jen-Sin]

@Shane Bellone , I see a common trait in your argument: you love to accuse others without proof but when you were caught out in your lies, you claimed that it's business or it's omission of information or it's amateur accusations.

Everyone else is wrong and you are always right.

I wish luck to all who do business with you.

The platform is dead because there are more sellers than buyers. When we first started listing Flippa wasn't primarily a domain auction house. Their bread and butter was the website side of the business. When you have more sellers than bidders you are competing for attention. Unfortunately, it's a pay to play game. 6+ months ago DropCatcher.com would have done $10k+ without question. However, it did $5,000 post-auction. The scary part is I dropped about $1.5k in subsidizes upgrades on that sucker.

Happy now?

Blame the marketplace when sales in Flippa has been increasing:

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.

I suspect the main reason why you stopped using Flippa and declared that the platform dead is due to the following:

so the number of high-volume sellers that get discounts that you used to receive has dropped to zero.

You have been in the industry long enough to know that there are far more domain sellers than buyers, and that is true for all domain marketplaces. Were there more domain buyers than sellers when Flippa was primarily a website auction house?

 

[discobull]

I omitted information. He lied.

Allow me to educate you.

Lies of omission:

Also known as a continuing misrepresentation, a lie by omission occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception.

So yeah, you also lied.

Here's another definition that comes to mind.

Shill:

noun
1.
a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating, as at a gambling house, auction, confidence game, etc.
2.
a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty.

 

[mwzd]

I'd like to be able to assure it never happens - anywhere. Do you have a perfect solution as to how to stop it? I'm all ears. As for bidder aliases, I'm going to start a new thread about that.

I think this thread is about flippa, so let's just keep it about that.

Here are my questions:
1. Are you aware of shill bidding (in the past or present) on Flippa?
2. What action did Flippa take against shill bidders?
3. Are Flippa employees/affiliates/contractors allowed to bid on auctions, specially those of other employeesaffiliates/contractors?

Doesn't matter to me personally, I've not done any business / paid for upgrades on flippa at all, but it's important to have these questions answered.

 

[S-B]

@Shane Bellone , I see a common trait in your argument: you love to accuse others without proof but when you were caught out in your lies, you claimed that it's business or it's omission of information or it's amateur accusations.

Everyone else is wrong and you are always right.

I wish luck to all who do business with you.



Blame the marketplace when sales in Flippa has been increasing:



I suspect the main reason why you stopped using Flippa and declared that the platform dead is due to the following:



You have been in the industry long enough to know that there are far more domain sellers than buyers, and that is true for all domain marketplaces. Were there more domain buyers than sellers when Flippa was primarily a website auction house?

I accuse others without proof? I haven't accused anyone.

You just accused me of lying about why I quit using Flippa. Hypocrite (funny coming from me).

And I stopped using Flippa because my domains weren't earning as much as they could have through other mediums. Flippa sales may be up but you should realize domains are ONE arm of the business.

Allow me to educate you.

Lies of omission:

Also known as a continuing misrepresentation, a lie by omission occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception.

So yeah, you also lied.

Here's another definition that comes to mind.

Shill:

noun
1.
a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating, as at a gambling house, auction, confidence game, etc.
2.
a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty.

Heh. Insinuate I'm a shiller all you want. You claims are patently false and you have no proof. That makes what you just wrote libel. Such ignorance.

Just another example of someone hiding behind their keyboard.

 

[aditya agrawal]

My avatar has a beard maybe I will become a pro now :D

If that's the case, then this is how a PRO with horsesh*t domains would look like

 

[imadoer]

If that's the case, then this is how a PRO with horsesh*t domains would look like

Give it some more time for the beard to kick in he might make some sales

 

[DomainGist]

@Shane Bellone
I suspect the main reason why you stopped using Flippa and declared that the platform dead is due to the following:

There's a slight contradiction in your argument. If it is true that Shane has sacked off flippa as a result of no longer being handed free upgrades / subsidised premium listings, then that really does nothing but support the claims he has made in his OP....

..... That he believes $350 premium listing upgrades are not value for money, and that his success was largely contingent on subsidisation.

The reality here appears to be that flippa is sufficiently profitable for Shane when he was paying for only 1 in every 3 upgrades, but not sufficiently profitable when paying for every upgrade.

Now, there are valid arguments to be made about what he was effectively willing to do in exchange for those free upgrades (basically tell the world how good paid upgrades are, despite believing otherwise), but his decision not to continue to pay for upgrades after having these perks taken away only serves to show that he was at least being honest in the OP.

The alternative position would be to tell the world that people who pay for premium upgrades are being scammed, whilst continuing to pay for them, which would be bizarre....

 

[Nazz]

Will the real slim shady please stand up,,, please stand up!

 

[kemjika11]

I think this thread is about flippa, so let's just keep it about that.
.

Really? No, because in any accusation you also have to investigate the accuser(good example is rape). So Shane should come out stating negative stuff about flippa and we shouldn't also question him or his motives? I dont think thats complete assesment. The thread alone shows that its not only flippa that deserves scrutiny. I agree with that too.

 

[JayJay]

Really? No, because in any accusation you also have to investigate the accuser

To a certain extent sure, but once Kevin basically admitted that what most of Shane said was true the focus should have been back on flippa instead of trying to beat a dead horse discussing the ethics of the accuser. It got a bit carried away don't you think? Unless Shane or one of the sherpas came to my house and forced me to pay for an upgrade (or to even use flippa at all) really I only have myself to blame in my opinion.