

Ask HN: What's Your Experience With Flippa? - slindstr

I'd like to build a website, cultivate it a bit, and then ultimately sell it so I decided to poke around on www.flippa.com today to see what people were actually buying.  For the fun of it, I sorted by price and was looking through some of the sites that sold for around $10K (USD) and I was shocked to see that:<p>- a lot of them didn't seem to be much more than a hastily thrown together Wordpress blog<p>- a lot of the sites claimed high Google page ranks but the only way I could find them was by 
  Googling their actual URL (They didn't specify the keywords they had high ranks for)<p>- a lot of them didn't even claim traffic numbers<p>What do you think is going on with that?  Are there people out there that'll really buy a website no matter what and try to make it big?  Have you ever bought or sold anything on Flippa?  Any tips?<p>Thanks in advance HN!
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byoung2
I sold 2 legitimate sites on Flippa earlier this year. One was a Wordpress
blog that jus published RSS feeds of deals from commission junction and
linkshare. It cost $50 to build and sold for $850, largely because it ranked
well for a few long tail keywords and made a few bucks per month. The other
was an ebook site that cost $250 to make (including the cost to have the ebook
and a dozen blog posts written). I operated the site long enough to break
even, then sold it on Flippa for $300.

From my limited experience, I would say that the lower priced auctions (under
$2000) seem to be legit, but I have a feeling that the big ticket sites
($5000+) that either don't have verifiable histories (traffic, keywords,
revenue) that sell are being sold back and forth between scammers. You can
sell a fake site between 2 or 3 scam accounts for $3000, $5000, $7000 at a
cost of a few hundred $, then sell it to an unsuspecting person for $10000,
pointing to a history of being sold on Flippa as proof that the site is
"legit"

For a legitimate site to sell on Flippa for a decent amount, it should have
healthy organic traffic, preferably a high page rank, and verifiable revenue.
But then the question would be, why would you sell it?

~~~
slindstr
Thanks for the insight. It seemed like something fishy was going on and I'm
glad that you think so too - that means I'm not (that) crazy :)

When you sold your websites was it fairly straightforward with how you had to
transfer all of the materials over to the buyer, or is that something you just
arrange behind the scenes with the buyer?

Also, I'm curious as to how you transferred the commission junction site - did
you make it in such a way that the buyer could just substitute their affiliate
id in for the deals?

~~~
byoung2
Of course I can't prove any of my theory, but there is something wrong when a
3 month old site with no traffic or revenue sells for $50,000.

For the sites I sold, the transfer was super easy. For the wordpress site, I
ran a script to swap out the affiliate codes to the buyer's codes. The domain
transfer was a GoDaddy push which took 3 minutes. I exported the database and
used a login the client gave me to upload it to his hosting.

For the ebook site, I again logged in using credentials given to me by the
client on his hosting and I uploaded the files, created the databases, and the
site was online in 15 mintues.

------
proexploit
I would say there's not a lot of real, valuable sites on Flippa but they do
come through. Sites of lower prices do have a better chance being legit but
there's also a lot of worthless sites created just to sell. If you have a
website with real, verifiable income, you can get $10,000 for it, you just
need to prove it.

If you sell it within the first year, you probably can't get more than 4-6
times monthly revenue (not enough history). If you've got 12 months of revenue
history, the prices start going up and solid sites get 10-12 months revenue
etc.

~~~
byoung2
Good points...the sites I sold were 1 and 2 years old, with a solid record of
revenue (however small). I recently tried to sell a brand new site (I built it
in a weekend to test out a Php framework I wrote) but it was unsuccessful. It
got a bid at $500, but I figured I'd keep it since it is making $50 a month
already. I'll sell it again in a year and see how much I get then.

------
static47
I sold 5 sites on Sitepoint (name before it changed to flippa) same format,
essentially the same site.

I provided complete transparency, with regards to reports, traffic, what I
used for Adwords campaigns, monthly revenues and exact expenses. I also
provided information on how I built/got content for all the sites. I answered
all questions as they came in and even created secondary admin accounts so
users could see statistics etc. in real time. (only if they requested by DM)

My lowest selling site was $800 and my most was $18,500 the user that bought
that site re-skinned it and flipped it 6 months later for $72k, with less
traffic and sales then what I had .. clearly I didn't know what I was selling,
these were "fun" projects for me, that I got bored quickly, i find the fun in
coming up and executing and once it get's to maintenance, I find I lose some
interested. There are perfectly legit sites out there, you just have to dig
and do your research.

for buying, I bought 3 sites, 2 of which were under $500. one site I bought
for $2k was a total scam! The user falsified all the data and I fell for it. I
was able to get my money back through google payments though.

one of the users on here recommended using Escrow, I'd agree.

If your selling a legitimate site and can document all the elements of the
business for users, you should be able to get good value for it. Just be
careful! There are a lot of scammers on the site.

------
ryanto
Does anyone have any experience selling wepapps? Something that sits on a
database, memcache, solr, etc? I've got a few sites that use various
frameworks/technologies that were fun projects that I no longer maintain. I've
always thought about selling them, but have always hesitated due to the fear
of having to spend time supporting them.

Are buyers generally technical? Could I just say, you get a huge performance
boost when you turn on memcache, and they'll know what I mean?

Do they expect me to host the application, or do they want the
code/database/domain all transfered over to them? If transfer, do they expect
help setting it up?

Flippa has always perked my interest, but every time I look at it I just see a
bunch of wordpress blogs that auto generate content. I'd love to hear some
stories that involve apps more sophisticated than content blogs.

~~~
flipfilter
Web Apps do sell, but typically they can end up being undervalued because
people fail to understand the purpose or how they work.

If you do sell your App, remember that whilst buyers may be technical, they
still appreciate clear English. Here's an example of an app listing gone
slightly wrong

<https://flippa.com/auctions/115892/>

The guys seems like an incredible developer, but certainly not one to be let
loose on marketing!

------
coderdude
I'd be careful. I sold jquerylist.com through Flippa for about $1700, but that
was the second time around. The first time I tried to sell it the bids went
higher and sold for $2500 except for the person didn't pay me. So I had to do
it all over again (the first auction was a month long).

Flippa works, but be extremely careful who you accept bids from. There are so
many sellers on there with fake accounts who just want to derail other sellers
because they are mad haters. Also, go through escrow.com. Don't accept any
other form of payment. You will need a third party to ensure you get your
money (same goes for buyers from the other point of view).

------
MisterWebz
Do the buyers care about the technological aspects of the website? What i mean
by this is, do they buy websites that aren't written in PHP?

~~~
static47
You should disclose everything you can about the site, including the
tecnological aspects.

That said there may be items that you feel are your "secret sauce" then let
users know that if they want that information, they need to DM you or you will
tell them what you do generally and then tell them you will provide all the
details/contacts etc. post sale.

