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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?

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FlippaDomains

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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.
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 post, 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.
@FlippaDomains
i noticed this as well and now my domain homepage feature which i paid for is nowhere to be seen
 
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My suggestions :
  1. Get rid of the 9$ listing fee : 9$ spent to be buried among ALL the others and get 0 exposure are 9$ wasted
  2. Implementing bid alias for sure. People have the right to see who is bidding on what. Highlight employees, brokers and everyone who is part of Flippa in whatsoever way
  3. Upsells : fewer, cheaper and more effective.
  4. Free domain listing and run some special auction where names are selected ( like sedo does )
  5. Better communication between buyer/sellers and Flippa; just like sedo does. They handle everything and both buyers and sellers have all the info they need via their assigned employee.
  6. Definitely improve verification. The number of non paying buyers, fraudulent sellers, scam websites for sale ( just google it.. ) is too high. People buy on a marketplace and they have to be able to trust that the marketplace is behind what it's sold. They have to see the marketplace as a guarantee.
  7. Adjust the free relisting process. Too many and too often. There are people who relist their names for 1-2 day auctions and keep relisting them continuously.
 
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@FlippaDomains

1) Switch flippa to back to the previous Homepage where domains and websites listing are featured EQUALLY with the Listing Title is Must.
2) Have Fixed Listing Price.
3) Reduce the price of upgrades. Upgrade feature is not an issue. But price is high. Listing price +Some upgrade + Success fees +Domain price one doesn't manage to make profit instead loss occur most of the time.
 
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On Aug 16,2015 I won domain LaboratoryTests.com being auctioned by D.Wells at flippa and promptly paid $405 to flippa for flippa escrow

The Seller wrote to me not to pay to flippa as he wanted to get some issues sorted out with flippa but I had already paid to flippa and told him so.

He sold domain out side of flippa and wrote to me that there was a bug in flippa system which prevented system from proper functioning.

On Aug 20 seller D.Wells wrote to me "Sorry for the inconvenience. This dispute has nothing to do with you. There was an error on Flippa side during the auction. Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you".

On Aug 21 flippa Customer Service wrote to me " The dispute you were involved in for listing #5371068 (LaboratoryTests.com) has been resolved. Sale cancelled, Seller sold to another user who did not bid. Dispute has been found against the seller and they have been suspended for their actions. Please let us know as soon as possible if there are any further problems at [email protected]

On Aug 27 I asked flippa to refund my money.

Kevin,please reply to these 2 questions (followed by suggestions) :

1. Flippa has NOT returned my $ 405 even though I wrote to Custimer Service and to you. Why ?

2. Customer Service wrote that seller D.Wells is being suspended. How come he is still active, has 100% feedback and domain name LaboratoryTests.com is still listed at flippa

I suggest that refund should be made within 1 working day in such cases even if the buyer has not asked for it.

Suspension should not be revoked for such sellers.

Feedback should show true picture.

Best,

Dave
 
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My domains are an investment. I'm not an employee of flippa or their third parties so they have zero need to collect or store my social security number
 
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Hi Kevin

below are some points which i think flippa can consider to apply.

1. For Flippa Home page feature there has to be a time frame that for how much time your listing will be at first page.
2. Free relist option needs to be limited as you can list your domain for free 3-4 times max. it will stop the saturation in marketplace and wipe out the junk domains. i have seen some people who relist their domains just for one day so they can get more views in the ending soon tab.
3. You can give 1 free upgrade to serious sellers once in a 2-3 months.
4. There should be a limit for the maximum number of upgraded listings in a month so sellers can get more views.
5. Editor's choice should be stop as it gives more exposure to others and create confusion for partiality.

Thanks
 
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Hi Kevin,

Let me weigh in on all those issues. As a Super Seller, we have quite some experience.

I disagree with most of what's been said.

Upgrades--What if we slashed their prices?

If anything, raise the price of the $249 premium upgrade. This is the only thing that will get rid of the drivel.

Upgrades--What if we got rid of them outright?

Absolutism rarely produces good results.

Upgrades--What if a seller had to apply to receive an upgrade?

Very bad idea. Would lead to perceived favoritism very quickly.

Bidder Aliases--Will this expose shill bidders?

We're strongly in favor of exposing the bidders' identities. Many seasoned bidders are hesitant to bid against new profiles. However, some bidders prefer concealment for various reasons. If a bidder would like to stay anonymous, he'd have to get the express authorization from the Flippa Domains team.

What if we limited the number of auctions?

Not a good idea. If there are too many auctions, raise your prices.

--- Now to user comments: ---

Increase the starting auction price from $1 to $25 or even $50.

Getting rid of $1 no-reserve auctions? I don't think so.

Decrease the auction duration from 30 days to 14 days.

Horrendous idea. If this was implemented, we'd probably stop auctioning off our domains on Flippa. Such a change would literally put an end to $1 no-reserve auctions on Flippa.

i would only award the option to purchase premium upgrades to sellers who have reached "SUPER SELLER" status

You aren't being serious, right?

do away with sellers having the ability to decide whether or not to accept bids.

Terrible idea. We always send out a standard message to new bidders asking them various things. If they don't answer or answer inconsequently, we won't let them bid.

Maybe have all domains be voted/appraised on before they can be auctioned on flippa.

Terrible idea. Again, if there are too many auctions, just raise the upgrade prices.

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.

The Most Active list.

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.

Very true.

Switch flippa to back to the previous Homepage where domains and websites listing are featured EQUALLY with the Listing Title is Must.

The current design is much better.

Reduce the price of upgrades. Upgrade feature is not an issue. But price is high. Listing price +Some upgrade + Success fees +Domain price one doesn't manage to make profit instead loss occur most of the time.

If you incur a loss with the upgrades, your domain is not worth listing.


Other issues with the Domains section:

flippa.com/domains/all loads *much slower* than flippa.com/websites/all . This is due to the completely unnecessary use of Ajax. Moreover, it breaks the back button. A terrible design choice in every possible way. (No, our computer isn't slow.)


KEEP IT FREE. KEEP IT FAIR.

/Filip
 
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@FlippaDomains

Bidder Aliases : This will be good. It will help with exposing shill bidders.
I was once bidding in a domajn which was being sold by a broker if flippas new broker business. Few minutes before the final hour, someone with $641 K sales just started upping the price and it was between that person and me. The person wanted the orice to reach certain level only and was not going to buy and I wws certain it was shill bidding with the bidder using their other non brokerage account. I was forced to buy the domain at that price when in fact if that person did not intervene I would have had it for the quarter of the price I paid cause the auction had no reserve and two hours to go with no many people bidding on it.

For me I believe even letting people bid and lettung others see their real account. No such thung as.biddr1 bidder 2 etc.

Forget upgrades, let's just have all auctions run equally. YES. I voted for that. At the end of the day , buyers can choise what they want so scrap the uogrades compeletely.

If you insist on having upgrades then it should be better. For example I more than one time bought. Home page feature a d less than 10 minutes my domain disappeared. When I asked I was told as more people buy upgrades the earlier domains disappear from the homepage. So for $50 a domain it was a waste. How about circulating them so that the earlier domains also get back on the homepage?

I lost more than $300 in home page features and not even a domain stayed there for 30 mins. So I am still with the scraping uogrades thing.

Of course you can provide newsletter and twitter upgrades only but in the site run all auctions equally and rotate them on the home page..say like each 20 domains get on the home page for 30 mins and so on.

Feature request : Let all auctions get logos. At least in the description.

Domain catalog feature : Give us the chance to offer offers to the watchers of a certain domain. The other day I saw that two people were watching a domain that was in my catalog. I want to end it so I can offer them an offer. Once I ended , I was not.able.to reach them at all. I added the domain again to the catalog but they never came back. In normal auctions when I end an auction I have the chance to make offer to the buyers watching.

Those are my thoughts for the mkment
 
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I wish this discussion could help Flippa Team, Developers & Flippa Users to turn flippa into the best user experience guaranteeing platform.
Would be happy to place my opinions soon. Thanks
 
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What if we slashed their prices?
Seems like a business decision for Flippa.

Are you guys not getting enough people opting in for upgrades?

Obviously in the long run I'd like to think Flippa's primary focus is to make the majority of its revenues from commissions, otherwise it will mean that sellers aren't getting results on your platform, and that's not sustainable for a market place.

What might be nice is if you could reduce you upgrade pricing for sellers to promote their domain to a smaller, but more targeted, audience.

Ie, if I was selling a finance domain, I'd be more interested in having an email sent to 3,000 email subscribers that have opted into receiving notifications about "finance" domains at a reasonable rate than paying full price to blast your whole 150,000 email database.

The same goes for location, a lot of domains are specific to locations - if you're selling a .co.uk domain I'd rather the marketing from an upgrade focus on targeting the 5% of the Flippa user base that are UK based.

What if we got rid of them outright?
I think rather than removing them, I feel you just want to be sure that upgrades don't undermine the buyer's user experience of your site or being on your email lists because without those eyeballs it's going to be hard to achieve good results for sellers (which is all sellers really care about).

No one likes being distracted by junk be it on websites they visit or in their inbox.

And I'd rather 10 people that are very interested in my domain and highly motivated to be notified about it being on Flippa than it be shoved in front of 10,000 people who aren't interested and annoyed that their attention was stolen.

My biggest pet peeve is the logos and the font size changes in the listings, because it makes the domain listings much less scanable.

I feel an upgrades only job is to draw attention to a listing, an upgrade in itself isn't going to close the deal (the quality of the domain itself and communication with bidders determines that) so grabbing attention beyond a certain point doesn't increase the quality of the sale.

So for me a simple bolding of a domain listing is more than enough to draw my attention, even if it doesn't change my propensity to bid on a domain.


What if a seller had to apply to receive an upgrade
I feel if upgrades didn't offer a logo or font size (other than bolding) they wouldn't be as bothersome and it wouldn't be an issue and it would save Flippa the administrative headache.


What if we limited the number of auctions?
I think the more "genuine auctions" the better for the platform (ie sellers who are eager to "meet the market" of buyers who can commercially utilise the domain).

As long as people browsing the listings have the ability to effectively filter them.

At the end of the day, to build a good marketplace you want to maximizing both the number and value of the sales, and I don't think reducing the number of auctions would improve either of those metrics.

So as long as sellers are encourage to set BINs and reserves that do not waste buyers time, and Flippa is doing its best to ensure its bringing the buyers to its marketplace, I think it's fine.

Maybe offering sellers some incentives to "meet the market" might help?

I don't really have any solutions (just spit-balling) but maybe something like offering sellers a 50% discount on the success fee if they accept a bid that is below reserve in the post auction negotiation would help get more deals across the line?

Maybe offering a 5% success fee for no-reserve auctions?

Maybe offering a lower 7% success fee for seller who sell their domain on the first time they list the domain (and pushing it up to 10% if they relist)?

I also agree that there should be some limits around relisting.

I'll post some other suggestions in individual posts below:
 
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Offer a listing setup service, ie writing domain description etc

Maybe you could offer it for free if the domain has the potential to sell for $1000+.
 
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Make it so sending a counter-offer to an offer received via the portfolio section doesn't rejected the original offer.

Asking for more, isn't the same as saying no.
 
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Make the username of the user making an offer via the portfolio section linkable to their Flippa profile page so we can review if they are reputable.
 
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On Aug 16,2015 I won domain LaboratoryTests.com being auctioned by D.Wells at flippa and promptly paid $405 to flippa for flippa escrow

The Seller wrote to me not to pay to flippa as he wanted to get some issues sorted out with flippa but I had already paid to flippa and told him so.

He sold domain out side of flippa and wrote to me that there was a bug in flippa system which prevented system from proper functioning.

On Aug 20 seller D.Wells wrote to me "Sorry for the inconvenience. This dispute has nothing to do with you. There was an error on Flippa side during the auction. Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you".

On Aug 21 flippa Customer Service wrote to me " The dispute you were involved in for listing #5371068 (LaboratoryTests.com) has been resolved. Sale cancelled, Seller sold to another user who did not bid. Dispute has been found against the seller and they have been suspended for their actions. Please let us know as soon as possible if there are any further problems at [email protected]

On Aug 27 I asked flippa to refund my money.

Kevin,please reply to these 2 questions (followed by suggestions) :

1. Flippa has NOT returned my $ 405 even though I wrote to Custimer Service and to you. Why ?

2. Customer Service wrote that seller D.Wells is being suspended. How come he is still active, has 100% feedback and domain name LaboratoryTests.com is still listed at flippa

I suggest that refund should be made within 1 working day in such cases even if the buyer has not asked for it.

Suspension should not be revoked for such sellers.

Feedback should show true picture.

Best,

Dave


Dave, I had the same problems twice but you should contact escrow@ flippa those are the guys who does the refund. I won two auctions and the swller refused to transfer the domains saying I should pay $5000 since the domakn worths that...he said. Both times.the sellers were not suspended .... They were banned. As for the feedback, yiu are only allowed to leave feesback once transaction is complete and this time no transaction is complete so you can leave fedback and they MUST ban as they always do...not suspend.
 
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Make it so sending a counter-offer to an offer received via the portfolio section doesn't rejected the original offer.

Asking for more, isn't the same as saying no.
Just the idea I wanted to write about then I read the posts and booom...someone wrote it.
 
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This might be ambitious, but having it so a domain parked with Flippa that is pushed to auction would have the auction also run live on the domain itself would make promoting the auction much easy and I think would get a lot more people watching the auction results.

ie, just contact potential buyers telling them they just have to go to domainforsale.com to bid on the auction if they want to buy it, rather than explaining the domain is being auctioned on the Flippa platform.
 
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My suggestions :
  1. Get rid of the 9$ listing fee : 9$ spent to be buried among ALL the others and get 0 exposure are 9$ wasted
  2. Implementing bid alias for sure. People have the right to see who is bidding on what. Highlight employees, brokers and everyone who is part of Flippa in whatsoever way
  3. Upsells : fewer, cheaper and more effective.
  4. Free domain listing and run some special auction where names are selected ( like sedo does )
  5. Better communication between buyer/sellers and Flippa; just like sedo does. They handle everything and both buyers and sellers have all the info they need via their assigned employee.
  6. Definitely improve verification. The number of non paying buyers, fraudulent sellers, scam websites for sale ( just google it.. ) is too high. People buy on a marketplace and they have to be able to trust that the marketplace is behind what it's sold. They have to see the marketplace as a guarantee.
  7. Adjust the free relisting process. Too many and too often. There are people who relist their names for 1-2 day auctions and keep relisting them continuously.
As always, great ideas. I completely agree with you.
 
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I notice that Flippa promotes an ebook about buying and selling websites.

Maybe you guys could create an ebook about the value of premium domain names for the users that sign up after they make an offer via one of the domain sales pages.

Many businesses owners, the obvious buyers for premium domain names, don't understand the value of premium domain names and often need to be educated on how they can use premium domains to grow their businesses anyway.

If you need a list of key benefits of buying premium, would be happy to contribute to the ebook, but there is no doubt loads of benefits lists on NamePros itself.
 
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Kevin, I just don't like those stock photos that you're using. You obviously didn't buy them from me :)

(Kevin Yank would've! LOL)
 
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It would be nice to be able to contact the users (via either email or phone) who have made offers previously for domains that you have recently reduced your price on or whom you may have a new buyer for.
 
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It would be nice to be able to contact the users (via either email or phone) who have made offers previously for domains that you have recently reduced your price on or whom you may have a new buyer for.
Priceless suggestions that will indeed make the marketplace better.
 
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Improve the “seller to buyer” communication process - to date I've never had someone reply to an email that I've sent via the Flippa platform in response to their offer they sent via the Flippa portfolio listings!

That's extremely unusual for me.

People that contact me via a parked page with Domain Name Sales for example (DNS gives the buyers full contact information), reply at least 90%+ of the time.

Makes me a little concerned that while it would seem in Flippa's interest to "control the conversation" by not giving the contact details of the buyer to the seller, they may be stifling deals with a difficult responding process and overly formatted emails.

If you guys don't want to just give the contact information to the sellers, is it at least possible to design the communication system so buyers and sellers can respond to eachothers messages by replying via their own email clients rather than needing to log into the Flippa platform to reply to messages?

I'm not sure if Flippa is primarily concerned that sellers might try and avoid the 10% success fee by giving out contact details, but my sense is that if Flippa was a domain registrar itself and could fully manage the domain hosting, transfer and escrow side of things then the vast majority of sellers would find that process FAR to convenient to want to the 10% fee so protecting the contact information from sellers wouldn't be necessary.
 
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  • Upgrade prices have to be slashed
  • Re-list for free? I paid $350 to list my domain and my free re-list is only worth $9 (I have to be honest Kevin, I feel scammed at this point)
  • You take 10% of a sale, Give me a premium upgrade for free and take 20-25% of the final sale.
  • Bidder alias should be shown to everyone.
  • Automatically accept bids from super sellers or bidders/buyers with good feedback (100%) and been using the platform for a long time.
  • Maybe sellers should have to apply for an upgrade? except super sellers, this would definitely get rid of some of the garbage you see on the home page if the domain has to vetted and is worthy of home page exposure.
I do enjoy flippa, but with the bad publicity on here, I feel as though something has to happen to restore my faith in the platform.

Domainivate
 
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I feel with many premium generic domains names, keyword search volumes, CPC and advertiser competition are very important determiners of value.

Being able to filter and sort domains based on "search volume/CPC/competition above a certain amounts” is probably more relevant than things like "domain age" and would reflect better value categories than things like “brandable” and "domain hacks".
 
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Not sure if this would be a easy fix or not, but allowing sellers to set the currency that the auction is run in (ie currencies other than USD) may be useful if the likely buyers are not based in the US, ie if your are selling UK, Canadian, Australian, domains etc the likely buyers will from those areas and may make the process seem less complicated if they are able to GBP, CAD or AUD.

Or allowing bidders to elect the currency they are bidding in and Flippa doing the conversion automatically.
 
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