If you are a frequent reader of this blog you know that I mentioned the Sitepoint.com marketplace as a great place to buy high quality websites. Well, the website buy and sell section of Sitepoint.com does no longer exist. The owners decided to move the website buy and sell section to a separate website – called flippa.com.
Well, let me be blunt: Flippa.com simply sucks.
You would think that anything that comes from sitepoint.com is of high quality, but you would be surprised how bad the flippa.com implementation turned out. Users cried foul and there are lengthy forum discussions about how bad flippa is. It starts with complaints about the design, functionality, and does not stop with pricing. Speaking of – the greed has reached the owners of sitepoint and they implemented a rather hefty fee structure (5% sales fee). Don’t get me wrong, I do not mind paying for quality. As a matter of fact, I learned my lesson many years ago when going cheap all the time. You get what you pay for, but what flippa is doing is just wrong. 5% is pretty hefty in my opinion and will make it difficult for that website to survive.
So, I have been monitoring the new marketplace for a while now and it seems like the number of listings went down and whatever is listed, is just crap. Flippa is scrambling to listen to user feedback, but whatever changes I have seen yet, does not make up for the shitty design and for the greedy price structure.
My suggestions for flippa.com would be to listen more to their users. I would also recommend to rethink the pricing and to come up with a better pricing structure. Right now they are charging a premium, but only giving you a low-end solution.
I bought and sold several websites through the Sitepoint.com marketplace, but I will refrain from using Flippa.com (exception: unless there is a real gem, but so far it looks more like a landfill ….).
Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion about flippa.com. Your mileage might vary.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
yep, flippa.com really suck.
Yes, and it STILL sucks – I used to love the Sitepoint marketplace, never even go to Sitepoint at all anymore. Went to Flippa today; full of garbage sites and no quick way to skim through the listings. Just awful.