Are people on Flippa CRAZY???

by 68 replies
79
How is it possible for a site with:

  • Zero PR
  • Only one backlink
  • Only ~3000 global monthly searches for the domain name keyword
  • Less than a year old domain
  • Zero profit
  • Zero visits
  • Extremely high competiton for the domain name keyword
  • NO ADSENSE OR OTHER ADS
...to have 52 bids and going?


Right now this auction is at $3,900 with 3 hours remaining and I bet the auction will end at around $5000, if not more!

WTF? Why are people bidding for this sh*t?
- Is this because it's mrketed as a "directory"?
- Or is this because it has a com.au domain and covers a locally narrowed down nano niche? If so, what's the point? If you narrow down the total 3000 global monthly hits, you will be left with... only like 500 Australian hits, if not less... Not good, but people are still bidding!

Why is this thing getting so many bids and why are many other similar small sites with super bad SEO properties getting their bids too?
I thought buyers on Flippa were bidding only for high converting sites that get 5,000,000 hits per day? :confused::confused::confused:





#search engine optimization #crazy #flippa #people
  • Banned
    They prabably see high potential for the site
    • [1] reply
    • High potential? This site doesn't cover even the basic SEO requirements.
      Absolutely nothing about this site suggests that it will start to get more hits than it is getting now (~0).
      • [2] replies
  • Banned
    The domain fitnesshouse.com.au has high potential to brand and eatablish itself as an authority site for many many targeted keywords.
    • [1] reply
    • That's the only thing i can think of. Seriously, $5k for 0 revenue and traffic...i am at a loss.

      Makes me wonder why no-one bought my diets101.org...
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Damn, this sucks. I suspect the other low-SEO-value sites that have bids on Flippa are using the same scammy tactics too.
      Poor buyers.

      Like what? Paid advertising? Word of mouth?
      Nothing beats SEO and SEO by far is the main criteria for a site's (future) success.
      • [1] reply
  • By just skimming over it, it looks like the auction is selling a business model which might be why many are interested in it based no the sucess of the other site. I haven't watched the video, so i don't know.

    But I wouldnt bid on this as that seems to be a new flippa user and also bids can be manufactured to artificially raise the price and "activeness" of the auction. It happens.
  • $4000 and going.
    Why did the remaining time increase?
    It was 3 hours til the end of the auction, now it's 4 hours.
    • [1] reply
    • haha, you don't even know how flippa works and you're complaining about it.

      That's a feature of flippa. The winning bid must stand for 4 hours. If any new bids come in during that, the auction time is automatically reset to 4 hours left.
  • Orrrrrrrrrrr someone could buy it and do some seo on it
  • Banned
    LMAO!

    That needs to be a bumper sticker "My other site makes $100K".

    Their bidding on dreams...

    Holy cow the stats. are all based on another site that's not included in the auction.

    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Banned
    BTW, nobody lets go of a real $100k site for $4k, lol.
  • I think it's just a scam, like ericnelsonator suggested
  • Up to 5 grand
    • [1] reply
    • Hi Bulldozer,

      I think folks are bidding to get their hands on the custom CMS source code. It might cost a lot more than they are bidding to write their own system. And they could potentially market the license to use the CMS, based on the transfer of all rights to market the script. There is a huge business opportunity based off just licensing the CMS script.
  • maybe something to do with the Australian fitness market.. or just a scam
  • http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ings-scam.html
  • Sold for $5550 Lol!
  • You do know of something called website development?

    Do you think you can pull a custom CMS out of your ass? Are you comparing this site to any other directory? If you are then quite clearly you haven't even looked at the site.

    If you read the sales thread it states clearly why he is selling the site.

    He doesn't have the time to promote both sites so he's selling this one.

    Not every site for sale is based on some revenue multiple get a clue before you start accusing people are scammers.

    And no I am not the seller on Flippa, I just hate when people talk when they don't know what they're talking about lol.
    • [1] reply
    • PR and the number of backlinks are not the only thing people look at when buying sites on Flippa.

      As other people have mentioned, sometimes getting the CMS is more important. Sometimes people feel that having a fully functional website filled with lots of content ready to promote is well worth the cost.
      • [1] reply
  • ROFLMAO! Either they are crazy or those are fake bids from multiple accounts. Crazy for sure!
  • [DELETED]
  • Interesting - my initial thought was that I could puttogether several great site for $5000 by outsourcing a lot of content. The CMS thing never even entered my mind - so thanks for the education dburk. Kudos
  • Flippa = Great For Sellers, Nightmare for buyers, because the moment sellers list their sites with all the analysis and screenshots of earnings, keywords, traffic etc etc, you'll see dozens of new domains registered and massive competition already for the new owner of the site.
  • There are people who ask other people, friends, group of IM people to bid on a site. They artificially increase the price of the auction.
  • It's pointless to try and rationalize buying and selling activities. There's a sucker born every minute. And some people value things differently. And that's why I won't claim anything is a scam, because I've seen many honest deals that make no business sense.

    I never pay even $1 for "potential." I'm more of a cold, hard facts guy. If a site has amazing, easy potential, then the current site owner should go take advantage of that and come back and sell me the site for more money.

    On the other hand, many people love to buy on potential. And evidently gladly pay more for unrealized potential.

    My favorite Flippa auction was a guy selling a site with:

    1. Awesome potential for $1000s.
    2. Amazing keyword with low competition and high click value.
    3. Great content.
    4. Site that's a few months old, indexed and ready for the new owner to just slide in with no work.
    5. A million ways to get traffic and make lots of money.

    And the owner had made $0 to date. LOL
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply

    • Yukon... I agree with you. It might not be a scam as they are NOT claiming false revenues. But who knows what junk you are really buying?

      There are a lot of legitimate developers trying to use FLIPPA but most are likely NOT legitimate. The hyping of auctions makes it worse as the values are manipulated; the action alone drawing in the innocent and the greedy.

      I blame FLIPPA itself. The system is flawed because there is no way to report abusive or fraudulent activity. There is NO evidence that they care and that gives the fraudsters a license to steal while they take their % share.

      In contrast The Warrior Forum has made a significant effort to police itself.

      My biggest concern with WSO's has been buying "unbaked items" that were not fully ready for market and then having to wait for the items to be debugged and updated. But generally the $ are small for access to cutting edge ideas and technology. If I am really disappointed, I can post a negative comment and seek a refund; which I have never done.

      FLIPPA has no such mechanism as of my last review. Its why I might would consider selling a site there but would NEVER buy there again. In the end either FLIPPA needs to change or go out of business.







      ipulated.
      • [1] reply
  • hmmmm if it is so easy to make a site like that maybe people should make the same sort of site and put it up for sale.
  • Yes, they are crazy and making full use of new technology, lol
  • I buy sites all the time on Flippa and have never had any major issues with the sites and sellers. Albeit, I do my due diligence concerning "who" I buy from and "what I am buying.

    Being a full-time Internet Marketer and a professional webmaster I have my own service and long standing clients. My main site gets very little traffic and the highest PR was 3 many years ago. Once in a long while I might advertise something for someone else as a favor, but little to no real advertising. However, my income from the site is 6 figures. And I receive 6 figure offers all the time. Its the domain name that people want.

    That being said I just wanted to convey my own opinion that not all websites are valued the same. In my opinion, a strong technical foundation and a strong business foundation "behind" the website is of higher value than the website itself. Take Willie Crawford's websites for example. Regardless of the domain name and technical platform the sites are essentially of low value without Willie. Many marketers have tried to duplicate Willie and his business models, but failed to achieve even an ounce of his success. The real value is the man himself.

    Jeffery 100% :-)
    • [1] reply
    • Hello Jeffery:

      I fully agree with you and many of those who have posted in this thread. I shared my experience not because I made a mistake buying on FLIPPA... but because I did not take steps to protect myself after the purchase. I did not contemplate that the developers would risk their reputations (all fake so it seems now)

      Now you can overpay on FLIPPA (bad) and pay again and again because the site purchased is basically a trojan site.

      I am now frustrated (as is the Economic Crimes unit investigating our case) that FLIPPA will not even respond to inquiries, investigate or even take steps to allow its own members to police itself as the Warrior Forum does.

      I went after the FLIPPA sites mostly for their domain names not so much for their design and I knew they had little or no traffic. I did not bid them for their earning cause it was zero.

      What I did not anticipate was that the developers were crooked and had buried code in the sites that was not detected until months later. Part of the problem was they buried it in the theme which we found and removed but also a modified loop script that buried a backdoor in WP itself and its theme editor.

      They accessed all of our sites and redirected most monetized traffic to dummy accounts offshore in Indonesia. FLIPPA will not even allow us to remove our earlier recommends.

      I have purchased three items on FLIPPA and all three had malignant code. I have looked at several others that friends bought and we found malignant code in several more. What? 100% of my purchases had malignant code?

      I wonder how many FLIPPA customers are using such sites? Still "paying" a developers royalty built into their sites?

      The point is... what good is it to buy a site on its "fundamentals" when you will have to strip it down to nothing? Its easier to buy domains on Godaddy.

      The big problem is now a lack of trust with FLIPPA. They are not earning it because they do not enforce ethical behavior. Worse they are making money from the very fraud occurring on their site. So does that make them an accessory to the crime?

      Right now I give a big thumbs down on all things FLIPPA. I wish it were not so.
  • Hi clikglobal,

    Over the years of doing business online and offline (buying and selling) I have learned that it is best to do business with "who" I know. Example is I only do business with Warriors that I know and never do business with Warriors that I do not know. Also, the small group of Warriors that I am "in company with" have a reciprocal agreement to refer clients to each other under certain terms.

    All of us buy and sell on Flippa after we all have contributed to the product or service. In this way we have a Quality Assurance Program in place "before" the product is released. This insures the buyers of our products will be 100% satisfied and with our unique twists almost all of them become repeat buyers. In all honesty, we are often overwhelmed with too many customers and have to place them on a waiting list and/or refer them to independent webmasters.

    When I/we do buy a site from an unknown source at Flippa it is only because we may be search of a "unique product" or more precisely a person with a unique product that shows potential to scale up our business. Also, the product we buy will always be stripped down leaving only the "unique attributes" that we require. Then the product is created anew with our own resources. This eliminates any chance of hidden back doors, etc.

    The only reason I wrote "all that" (smile) is to possibly give you a small insight to one of the ways some of us do business online. And to give you an idea about how to leverage sites like Flippa other than "buying in the blind."

    To your success and best wishes online,

    Jeffery 100% :-)
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Hi Jeffery,

      Thank you for your post. I appreciate your counsel today but wish I had received it last February. I am no Spring Chicken or Newbie either. I have 32 years experience in International Business. I was based in Hong Kong for more than 12 years doing Turnaround Management and building Telecom Companies. I have been back in the US for several years after the SARS outbreak.

      I have learned that we have to completely isolate all new code on an independent server and review it...

      I am tired of hearing from Investigators, Auditors and pissed off customers about why we cannot do something about FLIPPA and the crooks who are running rampant on it. With my former business contacts in Asia... I can locate the perpetrators in Indonesia fairly easily (they left a banking trail) but then what? They are a bunch of hackers living on the edge.

      I am more upset with FLIPPA who does not respond to any form of communication about ANYTHING. NADA. ZILCH. We are trying to figure out if we have enough evidence to get jurisdiction over them in Florida and sue them. Albeit unlikely.

      Thanks for your advise.

      Craig
  • Hi clikglobal,

    Florida I am moving from Europe to Florida in 4 or 5 weeks. We should stay in touch?

    Jeffery 100% :-)
    • [2] replies
    • I've been watching some of these auctions on Flippa and it seems much like buying real estate. Seems the same rules apply to buying websites as those for buying real estate (or most anything else).

      Number One Rule: Buyer Beware!

      Do your research. Know what you are getting into. How much are you willing to risk? How much do you have at risk going into a deal? What's the worse that can happen? What's it going to take ($) to "fix it up" and get the best return for your money.

      What would you do with the site if you won the auction? What's your plan? Know what you want to with it before you buy it (keep it for monthly income or flip it).

      Bottom line in that auction was somebody there knows something you don't. Is it the buyer ... or is it the seller? I don' know know. But then I'm not the seller or the buyer ... I'm an innocent bystander trying to learn from what's happening so at a later date, I can be the one selling for the nice profit ... or I can be the one buying, the one with a good plan in place to profit from my investment.
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
    • Ok!

      I add you as a contact and sent a Friend Request. Where in Florida are you moving? Currently, I reside near Fort Myers but travel frequently and work in Miami, Orlando and Tampa.

      Safe Trip.

      Craig
  • Interesting post.

    It's something I've always wanted to get into (Flipping) as I've heard there's a lot of money in it but never had time as I'm always working on other projects.

    But I know now if I do, I will be careful.

    James Scholes
  • I wouldn't be surprised if some of those bidders were "shill bidding"
  • Craig, can you share who the offending party was on Flippa? If you dont feel comfortable perhaps you can PM me? I'm working on due diligence and would like to see if there are any red flags I can spot. Would be a good exercise anyway. Perhaps we can discuss here to help others learn?
    • [1] reply
    • I cannot PM but if you can... PM me with your email. I think I have email enabled on my profile...

      My attorneys will not let me mention the offending parties by name publicly as it is an active investigation. However, block Indonesia and China and most of my problems go away except for one guy near Sarasota Florida... but I know where to find him.

      (Actually... I used to live and work in SE Asia for more than a decade... and I have contacts in Indonesia and China and we will probably be able to locate the offenders there.)

      My rant has been more about FLIPPA's surprising lack of cooperation or investigation... there is an almost, total lack of Buyer Safeguards.

      Sellers... If you are a good Seller - God Bless You; keep up the good work on FLIPPA... but if I was a Seller on FLIPPA I would want FLIPPA to protect my marketplace...(thats what they are paid for... right?)

      As it stands now... there is almost NO CHANCE I would ever buy on FLIPPA again.

      Respectfully,

      Craig
  • wow so how much do you think i can sell mine?

    number 2 on page 1 of G
    over 12k searches a month for 1 keyword
    PR 2
    keyword on the domain name

    if someone can help me i'll appreciate it

    thanks, Alex
    • [1] reply
    • Whats the income? thats the main thing.

      usually 6-10 times the monthly figures.

      But not always I had a site up there last week that's earned over $1250 so far it was an established clickbank product averaging probably $50 per month over the past 2 years . The account had $170 in the clickbank account. The highest bid was....$315 I sold one the week before with no income for over $400

      There is no rhyme or reason at Flippa


  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply

    • Because most people look ofr under optimized sites..it makes sense to get something that you can easily fix
  • I've realized about 10 transaction on Flippa (as both a buyer and a seller) and I've had no issues so far.. I've used Escrow.com every single time.. Flippa is just a platform to find buyers/sellers, you shouldn't expect them to do the due diligence for you.. You have to do that on your own..
    • [1] reply
    • To be honest... I am tired of having people telling me how great FLIPPA is.

      My comments in this thread are pretty clear: In my experience... EVERY SUCCESSFUL BUYER ON FLIPPA HAS BEEN LUCKY because there is NO SECURITY OR ABILITY TO COMMENT on fraudulent transactions.

      FLIPPA WILL NOT OPENLY COOPERATE WITH PRIVATE OR PUBLIC INVESTIGATIONS. TRY TO GET A REFUND.... MAYBE IF YOU BUY THROUGH PAYPAL THEY WILL HELP YOU?

      1) Our problem never stemmed from closing or paying for the transaction. But remember, Escrow will NOT save you from fraud or defective software.

      2) You have to do your own due diligence - YES! But in an auction format this is almost impossible.

      3) The Seller rankings CANNOT BE RELIED UPON. FLIPPA will block or remove negative feedback or in our case... will not report fraud discovered later.

      4) There is NO MEMBER SUPPORT, INVESTIGATION OR BLOCKING of FRAUDULENT SELLERS. FLIPPA makes money on good and fraudulent sales - THEY DON'T CARE.

      Our fraud was not discovered until MONTHS after the transaction when the Indonesian programmers activated a hidden script that broke Hostgator's security.

      (We now have an IP Block on Indonesia and China attempting to keep them from having ANY access to our websites)

      They did not destroy the sites.... they diverted income to their accounts by reprogramming most of our monetized scripts and user codes. Maybe I should replace the word 'FRAUD" with "THEFT."??

      There are good deals on FLIPPA and the platform is nice... but the management and policies do NOT protect the trust of the members. Always remember FLIPPA and the Fraudsters always get their money first...

      In contrast the WARRIOR FORUM tries hard to self police itself and to keep fraud to a minimum. The biggest problem I have experienced here has been "vaporware;" Meaning over promised products that don't fully materialize until after they have been sold then debugged.

      Some of the WSO's are really alpha or beta versions that are sold cheap and then debugged based upon the Warrior "Test" Market. I can live with that.

      Today, I might be a seller on FLIPPA but never a buyer.
      What kind of market is that??

      Respectfully,


      Craig
  • If you're an honest seller on Flippa and have a site for sale with revenue you can get quite a bit of attention. There are so many sites for sale from sketchy sellers with sketchy claims that it's pretty easy to stand out from the pack.

    We've been doing quite a few Flippa sales over the last 6 months and have gotten a ton of action on our listings...totally worth it. Even with the fees...we get quite a bit of exposure to our main site, so I think the fees are totally covered when you take that into consideration.
  • Banned
    the thing is flippa is the website auctioning site. Where people are looking for cheap websites. There'll always be scammers of these types of websites and you have to use common sense. when dealing people with on the Internet.
    • [2] replies
    • True... and we knew that;

      What we did not know; was buying 2 websites on FLIPPA would, 6 months later, cause almost the total collapse of more than 30 monetized sites. None of those sites were purchase on FLIPPA but they were hosted on the same server account at Hostgator.

      We had to remove all WordPress 3.1 websites and rebuild them on 3.2

      There was a hack using the WP 3.1 template editor and a single modified loop.php file that allowed them undetected access to ALL WP sites on the server.

      We wondered why our traffic was going up but our revenues down... to ZERO. We blamed Google, CJ and others but only discovered the hacks when we changed to a fixed IP and added security.

      Still have only restored 10% of the sites after 6 weeks. FLIPPA? HAS NO COMMENT and will NOT respond to investigators. The missing money... tracked to the original developers and their friends... All still have 100% rated accounts on FLIPPA.

      The investigator thinks ALL of their clients have similar problems we were getting milked like a cow but they got too greedy in our case and we found out.


      Regards

      Craig
    • There have been A LOT of big money sites sold that have NO economic basis for their values... that is what started this thread in the first place

      We did not spend a lot of money on FLIPPA... we were buying the domain name(s) as they were very good; and evaluating the site designs as they were not too bad either.

      We mistakenly put the sites up on our production server... Now we continue to pay... everyday in lost revenue. Thousands and Thousands of dollars.

      Regards

      Craig
  • I don't have any idea Here !!!
    maybe scam ? !
  • Hey Craig,

    VERY sorry to hear what happened to you. I am VERY new to all this.

    Perhaps you could explain how to avoid others have this happen to them.

    It sounds like there were a number of sites that you purchased which were 'infected' for a better term.

    And also detail what it was that happened when you put the sites up on Host Gator?
    • [1] reply
    • Hey Patrick... If you read the whole of this thread you will have a pretty good understanding of what happened. We only bought 3 items on FLIPPA. All three had problems but one caused the big problems.

      We did not know there was a security hole in WP 3.1 until long after 3.2 came out. Ever wonder why they have been pushing 3.2? Well I know now.

      As to FLIPPA... several people don't like my criticism of FLIPPA. They love it. Well I loved it until it cost me 30+ websites and untold thousands of dollars.

      The bad news... is the only way to avoid the FLIPPA problem is to avoid FLIPPA. PERIOD. Thats it at this moment. FLIPPA appears to not have any buyer protections or self policing mechanisms. They are making money off good and bad transactions and they will not allow on site complaints or alerts to be posted especially about the high volume sellers.

      There was NO due diligence that could be done. The programmer remains a FLIPPA regular with a PERFECT FLIPPA seller reputation despite complaints filed elsewhere. Why? Cause they don't activate their scripts until after the site is established and the buyer has posted positive feedback.

      The programmers were very upset because we wanted to "give up the free hosting" on their servers and move the site to hostgator. They delayed us for some time.

      They were doubly mad because we had NOT given them positive feedback on FLIPPA. Unfortunately, we did and FLIPPA has not allowed us to correct it.

      Finally we could not detect the script because it was activated by a defect in Wordpress itself and was buried in a customized loop.php script.

      If I were to buy a site again... I would move it to a secure test server and firewall it until it could be inspected and tested. I would use a separate set of affiliate accounts not associated with my production servers.

      Better yet... develop your own team of designers and programmers... test and verify and then take out business interruption insurance.

      C'est la vie!

      Thanks for a good question. Thanks!

      Craig
  • this is really crazy, i can make better sites with better keyword, exact match domain, site positioned on the third page after week of launching etc..and will be happy to sell it for some hundred bucks, i will definitely try to flip some of my sites later on.
  • This thread should give people lesson. If website with nothing can be sold for $3900, why don't you try flipping website business?
    • [1] reply
    • If I could build a website like that I would consider it.

      Can you create a website like that?
  • A sales copy can change everything.
    • [1] reply
    • What do you mean? :confused: Or are you just making a post to get a backlink to your WSO's?
  • I would think he is saying that the price a website goes for can be increased if good sales copy is in the auction.
  • I am going to guess that some folks saw value / potential in the domain name more than anything.

    I mean an Australian gym might like that name for their business and could easily brand with it & earn their investment back.
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    Are people on Flippa CRAZY???

    How is it possible for a site with: Zero PR Only one backlink Only ~3000 global monthly searches for the domain name keyword Less than a year old domain Zero profit Zero visits Extremely high competiton for the domain name keyword NO ADSENSE OR OTHER ADS ...to have 52 bids and going?