Do you think FreeMarket.com can take over Flippa or Sedo?

not getting so many pageviews on my listings... which is not to good

Pro of freemarket is that even if it takes time to reash customer service they are nice and polite and not utterly rude, condescending know it alls like flippa.
Perhaps because Freemarket is diverse and has global nationalities helping.
Unlike Flippa.

Not unless there's some major changes. There's simply too many idiots that list their websites and domains for thousands of dollars (or hundreds of thousands, or even millions) that I wouldn't take if you gave them to me. In an earlier post I suggested charging a $5 non-refundable fee for a listing over $500-$1000.

Now I change that to charge a non-refundable fee for ANY listing, and the higher the BIN, the higher the listing fee (within reason of course). There are just too many garbage listings - I rarely check it out any more, there's just too much crap to have to go through if you're looking for a decent listing.

Free isn't always a good thing. Being free has also had an affect on the WF overall. The quality of the site has gone down considerably, IMO.

Jenny

The paid listings filter out junk.
Looked at FreeMarket for 2 minutes and there's a lot of that.

If they changed their biz model it would make the difference.

Until they do, it will be plagued with too many listings.

Few of value (if any) and unlikely anyone will take the time to go through them all.

What I would do is charge for those listings, and undercut Flippa on pricing.

Might mean they have to abandon "FreeMarket" name.
Hopefully they didn't pay a lot to acquire.

Or - leave as is, and start another marketplace with paid listings on new domain

But the free listings is a path to a slow death. It will be the new digitalpoint.

NOTE:
Not charge after a sale - charge up front. There is a big difference.

If its going to work, you need to be more than another marketplace to attract sellers.
Don't do it on price - do it for value to the seller

Then you'll attract sellers and quality listings, and buyers will follower.

It would be of value to sellers if (when they list at reasonable prices) there's a good chance it sells

That will likely happen through partnerships.
DomainTools, etc - get some distribution via partners to create sales opps for sellers

The interface needs to be sorted. I don't find it as clear as Flippa. Also I tried to list once before the official launch. The listing went live but it was even hard for me to read it.

Paragraphs in my description disappeared like it was never there. Limiting it to 5000 characters was not pleasant for me and there was no screenshot of my listing (you need a feature listing to get it). Without screenshot of my site, it was less appealing. That made my free listing worthless.

The last but not the least, no potential buyers were there to buy my site. I did not expect it to be sold but there were almost zero views (rather than me viewing my own listing without logging in!).

Will give it another shot when I see it has started functioning as a marketplace (as for now I don't see any potential bids on other featured or non featured listings.)

No.

Andy

Too many ridiculous listings showing up on the front page is destroying its credibility.

The average Joe Buyer won't take the site seriously after viewing that and won't return.

So no, it has ZERO chance of "taking over" Flippa or Sedo, short term, as it currently stands.

But these guys are smart enough...they can change the situation by simply getting rid of those stupid listings and improving the user interface. Doing that will help get things kick-started in the right direction...so long term, who knows?

I think they have damaged their credibility already by releasing too early. They need serious changes to bring a lot of people back. Just my opinion. Who's to say there is even anything they could actually do. I know I was disappointed with the entire experience and I paid for the premium listing. To be fair, maybe my domain name wasn't a very good one. I have different opinions about it.

It shouldn't be THAT hard to clone Flippa's model and improve it. It's been 6-7 weeks and nothing has been done to bring FM up to snuff.
Been very patient but it's worn thin at this point.

My Opinion is that Freemarket needs to do alot of work to be better then Flippa or Sedo..

I don't like anything about Freemarket..

I have listed over 20 websites for sale on Freemarket and not one of them sold... I took the same 20 websites and listed them on Flippa and have already sold 14 of them...

Yes you can list your site for sale free on Freemarket ,,, but the saying goes... Good Things Are Seldom Cheap and Cheap Things Are Seldon Good...

I will stick to paying 19 bucks to Flippa for listing my websites,,, My chances of selling is greater..

Free listing of sites as you mention can be a big plus as well as a big minus point. The reason is that since it is free many people may try to list their sites which increases competition for sellers who may not get much pageviews to their listings. Moreover since it is free to list, people may list even crappy websites which can earn the marketplace a bad name if there are too many bad websites. Interested buyers may find it difficult to find good websites among the junk.

One more thing I noticed, lets have a different section for established, new and verr premium sites (1 million $+) More Easy to filter sites based on requirements.

Do a needs assessment of the product.
Develop user profiles and personas first.

Create exceptional filtering options to sort the garbage from the gems.

Provide an assortment of metrics for prospective users, let them choose.
DA, TF, PR, Moz, Alexa, Compete, etc (ya, PR might be dead, don't turn into a discussion)
Other - revenue, traffic, price, bids, etc

Add a Finance category, and not lump it all in with business.
A category that has high revenue generating interest (finance, health, law, etc) should be represented.
Not just as a subcategory in this case.

It would probably be better in the long run if there was a small charge for even basic listings.
Not on the end of the sale, but up front. Free attracts volumes of crap. Even $10.

Last thought - filter by domain extension option too. Some only want .com. Or .com, net, org.
And some will gamble on EMD of new extensions to sit on.
Such as forum.sexy or whatever

edit -
I would also look at what others are doing, what's missing, and what can be done better

We can use another solution, if it offers value.

It would be good to be able to search for listing that have a revenue starting from $100 rather then the minimum $300 as many people are looking for smaller sites to start with.

I don't see anyone posting proof of revenue or traffic stats. Maybe it's just the few listings I looked at but I certainly wouldn't buy without any analytics or proof of income. Flippa makes it easy to connect with analytics, add screenshots, etc. Is this something that Freemarket can implement?

Thanks a lot for your response. I agree with you, and will be releasing better filtering options soon.



Thanks for your response - we now have attachments so I'm hoping to see more people providing proof of their claims. If you're interested in a listing, I would comment to see the seller can upload proof. Regarding the analytics, we have this coming soon, next couple of months.

In order to even become successful, let alone take over Flippa you NEED to do the following:

1) Filter a lot of the nonsense listings
2) Offer an escrow service and at a better rate

I'd love to see this grow.

I would suggest a free escrow service, something no one offers

I think, it will take time to reach at the level of the Flippa or Sedo because they are already the bug free and having awesome features to help the buyers and sellers.

I think, as mentioned here several times, if Freemarket can improve their features their big advantage over Flippa could be having decent,polite, friendly and helpful customer service. As said here flippa is just condesending and arrogant, they are quite shocking actually. I would love to see freemarket hit those guys hard.

i like this coz i am online marketer .

Any success stories here? I have a killer set of websites that I want to offload, but I browsed Freemarket.com and it appears that any and every website or domain name is allowed to be sold so, if I was a buyer, I would tire of wading through the trash in hopes of a pearl.

Any insight into this?

I think it's possible for Freemarket to become number one because I am sure they are working on the interface and adding more features such as the following:
- hyperlinked usernames that take you to the seller's profile
- a PM system
- verified stats like you have on flippa
- a search bar on every page
- a "watch this" button
- etc
At the moment the interface is too minimalistic. The filters are awesome by the way. In fact the results table is a great work of coding in my humble opinion (not a great programmer myself)

"JUST SOLD"..Good for research!

Not getting so many page views on my listings... which is not to good

I just saw. It was a cool website. It takes dedication, but it will succeed, because the interface is a good website

I have listed over 20 sites on Freemarket .. Yes it is easy to list a website on Freemarket. but the rest of the site in my opinion SUCKS...

There is no way to track the views of your listing... and lets say someone clicks the Buy It Now Button and never pays for the site.. then its hard to relist the website because there is no dispute section..

I have had nothing but fake buyers and fake bidders..

I do hope so, flippa success fees are way to much. They are getting to big for their boots, someone needs to knock them down a peg or 2

Should be in the know, websites like flippa need to grow 5 years for success.

Why so long?
The problem that always arises is:

Users, many users do not understand the function of the website, so you have to make it work better for the user.

Customers, customers need trust to the company.
They will check right around the forums and the internet to find the reviews of your company.

Advertising, the most important part of marketing, that you can not promote itself.
You have to buy a package of advertising, to the growth of the brand and traffic.

Biggest mistake is usually located on the server.
Fast growing website, you should see the trend of the development, so that the website is not down and interfere with the user and their beliefs.


Never give up, it's your capital

The last time i posted a website for sale, no one looked at it. But that was during it's launch. I believe it will grow with time and suceed.

Is there any record anywhere of domain sales on Freemarket?

finally found some great website where i can easily sell and buy domains with low commissions pay off

thanks for the useful post.

F is so desperate that they used their 6 year birthday as reason to give BOGO (Buy one , get one free listings/upgrades the other day)
Seems dead over there IMHO.

Freemarket is picking up.

When I get emails from freemarket it looks like a spam, they just anyhow send me updates like that so i unsubscribe. no proper introduction

Need to splash some cash on advertising FreeMarket.
Real ads to casual end users.
TV ads and branding really helped GoDaddy get big.

Free market huh? free listing, FREE things are not given much seriousness, i guess that's why the experience is this way, I had listed my site on Freemarket for sale too, I did it just the way site's that have sold on Flippa did, yet i got no buyer.

Flippa is the market leader but their service and the way they are talking to new sellers will bring them down very fast. The market is no open to new platforms, most are viral for selling domains and websites.

Freemarket.com is a great site, the only shortfall is the user base. There are not many buyers / bidders and i anticipate that because the business is backed by freelancer that in the future Freemarket.com will have ample new buyers ready to snap up our deals we offer. Right now im still with flippa and will list my websites on freemarket in order to provide the website with quality domains and websites so that freemarket may acquire new buyers.

Am i imagining or has the the sales on flippa dropped because of freemarket?

I don't think they have much of a chance unless they make some major improvements...Though I do like the idea of lower commissions. Flippa's fees have gotten pretty ridiculous over the years.

no it would not be possible flippa and sedo are making improvement in there system. it is not easy for compitetor.

Flippa has been in the game for a long time and has good strategies. I don't think it'll be so easy to beat Flipps but nothing is impossible. Thanks :-)