Flippa Sucks

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.

12 Months of Running (not running away)

Well, while Shawn Collins is doing his fat blogging from San Fran this week, I am able to announce my running anniversary this week. Last year in April I started to work out on a regular basis, mainly running. The beginning was hard and I was proud to run for 2.5 miles at 5.5 Miles per hour. I was using a older pair of running shoes that was totally worn out and my feet hurt a lot, but I sticked to it. Except for a 3 week stretch in late August/early September and a 1 week involuntary “outage” in December I was able to work out 5-6 times a week. In both cases mentioned before I got really sick and while a cold does not hold me back from working out, these 2 incidents were a little more rough and completely side-lined me.

Anyway, I am working out 5-6 times a week on average and I am still amazed how refreshed and full of energy I feel after a 10K run. In the peak I was able to run a 10K in about 50 minutes, but I have slowed down a bit since then, but added some weight training to the mix. Today I ran a 10K before lunch in 51:36 and then tucked another half a mile on top of that, but with a lower speed. I found out that my sweet spot for working out is in the morning between 10 and noon. I like to run outside as the weather permits, but I think it is easier in Winter than during summer. I bought running clothes for outside and even ran at 15 Degrees F in the snow, but I don’t feel like running outside when the outside temperatures reaches 80 or 90 degrees at 10 AM. So, I guess for summer I will be a treadmill warrior.

I did not keep track of weight loss as that was not the main goal, but I see that my weight has been very stable lately and so I think I kind of leveled out – meaning, I got rid of the excess fat and gained muscle in return. No major changes even if I over-eat every once in a while. I feel the weight loss though and that feels good.

I still eat too much bread (Whole foods has an awesome bakery here and it is so hard for me not buy a fresh loaf of bread) and I think I could easily lose another 5-10 lbs by changing my diet just a little bit. I am handicapped in regards to not being able to eat Cereal anymore. My body just can’t handle the dairyanymore and I get really sick from it. But overall I am doing Ok with 163 lbs at 5’ 10” I would say. I might concentrate on weight loss a little bit over the next 12 months. There is still a little belly fat that bothers me, but my metabolism has slowed down so much over the last 4 years, it really gets harder over time to get rid of the belly fat. And as we get older it does not get easier. I am 41 now and I think it is really best to push towards better health now and to enjoy the benefits of it.

Dry Country

Are these the effects of Global Warming? February has been the driest February on record for Denver. Temperatures are also way above normal and it is actually so dry that we did start watering trees and bushes to keep them alive. Trees are already 4-6 weeks ahead of spring schedule and buds are showing up or even opening up. I am sure we will get a snow storm sometime in March and April (those are the months with the most snow fall for us here) and if the trees will carry leafs by then it will be ugly. Trees will break as spring snow is usually wet an heavy. The increase in water usage is also not that pleasant as it means a higher water bill way before we reach summer.

What am I working on? I bought a site off Sitepoint.com that was supposed to be a solid contender in a specific niche with PPC traffic. The deal was supposed to contain Adwords related keyword data and ad data. The seller is extremely slow to respond and I have received the site and the PPC related stuff, but things are a little fishy. I do not want to say yet that I have been scammed, but at least so far this purchase has left a bitter taste. I still see the potential for the site and PPC traffic, but the shortcut I wanted to take might turn into a long road. The good thing is that I did not pay a huge amount of money and the potential loss is bad, but not significant.

I also bought another forums website and will merge that forum with another that I already have. The topic/niche is not a 100% match, but I would say it comes close and I am willing to take a hit on some of the traffic and members, but see huge potential for my actual main niche. I will merge the 2 forums, then do a 301 redirect to the existing site of mine and just have to wait for the “new” old content to be indexed properly. Website traffic should then increase by (currently) 150-200 visitors per day. Even if only 10-20% of the visitors are a match for my niche, it would provide a significant boost in forums activity and the more activity a forum has, the better it’ll be. The 301 redirect should also have a good impact long term. The acquired website carries a PR2 and over 2000 back links. My existing site is PR0 and has only  ~1000 back links, but boosts much higher traffic volume. I do not care about the PR, but the traffic and how targeted the traffic is.

I also opened another web hosting account – with Hostgator. I got to say that I am very impressed with them at this point. Very fast ticket response times and best of all – my custom software that has specific requirements to a host works right out of the box (did not work at JaguarPC and another web host). So, if you need a solid web host, I recommend Hostgator Web Hosting. Consider  this part of the posting a hostgator review.

XM Radio – What is your Problem?

A while ago I wrote about Yahoo Launchcast’s service being discontinued and that I was looking for alternatives. I wanted to try XM Radio Internet Radio for $7.99 but their website was giving me the boot several times. At one point I was almost done subscribing just to be kicked off the site with a server 500 internal error. However, apparently my credit card information still made it through, because they charged me $7.99.

I contacted customer service immediately (via email) and was ignored for a week or so. Then they emailed me with some standard information. I was still not able to login and so I asked for a refund. Again I was ignored for a few days. Then finally another response to send them my customer ID. I emailed back I would not have one because their website died on me before I was given that information.

Well, several emails back and forth and again I am receiving a stupid response from XM Radio that they understand I am having problems and bla bla bla – complety ignoring the existing information I had given them. So, I emailed them back giving them 48 hours to initiate a refund or I would call my credit card company and do it myself.

I hope XM Radio is monitoring the blogoshpere and maybe is man enough to respond.

Anyway – I am surprised about the slow response times – especially given the financial problems XM Radio and Sirius Satelite Radio have (the 2 companies merged and have severe financial difficulties). Oh, well – American Express will take care of the problem for me if I really need to call them up.

Windy ….

Man, it was windy here today. I went for my daily run (5-6 Miles) and the wind was nasty. At one point the gusts were so strong it was difficult to breath. That really sucked, but I held onto it and ran through it. It feels good when you enter the home stretch on a day like that.

Do you run or exercise frequently? I do – I try to go for a run 5-6 times a week. It’s fun and the time you spend out there really helps. I think through many problems or issues or how I can improve my business. I always got my iPod Shuffle with me and listen to some good music (mainly Classic Rock). Running is fun and I am so full of energy afterwards – it’s amazing. I try to run outside whenever I can and have the appropriate clothing even for below freezing temperatures.

What am I working on? I moved almost all my sites off my dedicated server and are ready to turn it in. So, that will save me about $275 per month for now. I am also writing a lot of articles and post them to www.articlemarketer.com for re-distrbution. I have a quarterly subscription and I hope to see improved traffic results soon.

Quick Update on Hostgator

After my post yesterday I contacted Hostgator through their blog and about 12 hours later they contacted me. We worked the sign up issue and they were extremely helpful and really made up for the inconvenience. I have to say that I am impressed with them now. Not many companies grab an issue that fast and run with it until it is a non-issue to make up for the inconvenience and to please the customer. They also told me that they are working on a better solution to avoid these issues in the future.

So, Kudos to Hostgator for the quick action and the great communication. I am now an affiliate with them and will place their links on my web hosting related websites.

Read this what I wrote about Hostgator yesterday and what triggered today’s posting. Hostgator also fixed some of the issues already, with others probably coming in the near future.

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