Introducing Flippa: The New Place to Buy and Sell Web Sites

By | June 10, 2009 | Programming

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The web entrepreneurs amongst you might have noticed that the SitePoint Marketplace development team have been a bit quiet on their blog lately.

There’s a very good reason for their lack of updates: they’ve been quietly slaving away on a brand spanking new version of the marketplace!

I’m very excited to be able to announce that the web site and domain sales on the SitePoint Marketplace will be moving very soon to an entirely new site — introducing flippa.com, the new place to buy and sell web sites! You can check out the site right now (it’s a public beta, containing only fake listings for testing purposes) to see exactly what’s around the corner.

If you’re an existing user of the SitePoint Marketplace, you can use your existing login to create listings, bid on listings, and generally put the site through its paces. The flippa team welcome your attempts to test all of the new features that they’ve created, so that any bugs can be dealt with before the site begins accepting real listings (there will be some — it is a proper beta, after all!).

Long-time users of the marketplace will no doubt have lots of questions. The flippa team have a brand new blog, which will hopefully answer many of them. You can follow to stay in the loop about new features and other updates. They’re also using UserVoice and ZenDesk to handle all customer suggestions and support inquiries, and you can follow the team on Twitter at @flippa.

Go take a look, experiment with the new site, and give the flippa team any feedback you might have — positive or negative. Whilst it’s impossible for big changes like this to please everyone, I’m sure you’ll agree that the simplicity of this new interface is a huge step forward for the marketplace.

Buying and selling a web site has never been easier — visit flippa.com now and let the team know what you think!

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Matthew Magain

Matthew Magain (@mattymcg) is a web and mobile designer from Melbourne who freelances under the name of Useractive. His latest project is UX mastery, an online training resource for user experience designers. He spends his spare time writing and illustrating children's books.

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{ 30 comments }

Anonymously June 24, 2009 at 1:43 am

I think someone (not flippa) is positioned to make a lot of money from the new apparent void in the market.

mycolumbus June 22, 2009 at 9:54 pm

This is bad news. I don’t like this new Flippa site, the layout. And where’s the Established vs Premium websites?

Really, I hope you revert back to the old and successful way.

Skribblez June 22, 2009 at 6:28 pm

I think it’d be better if you got rid of the 5% success fee and instead made the listing fee higher. Easier, less hassle that way.

- Neil
Sydney Webmasters

Scorpiono June 20, 2009 at 10:56 pm

@dannyjohn
I agree, way too much. I’d rather increase the fixed amount for premium websites or so, but don’t take %, it will encourage bypassing the marketplace.

Scorpiono June 19, 2009 at 3:31 am

I had posted a comment a few days ago, you might have not liked it?

I’ll say it again: The current marketplace is perfect, the new one is too much graphic, web2.0-ish and overall bad usability. Don’t take my joy of browsing the marketplace, SitePoint’s current marketplace is one of the most well developed marketplaces out there.

Thank you,
Scorpiono

aspiring June 18, 2009 at 5:51 am

I don’t really care about the site design or that it will be at a new url. But, I don’t understand the rationale for the new pricing structure. The problem with the marketplace is that there is too much crap. I look to buy quality sites with decent content or some value to offer. Moving from a fixed to a proportionate fee system encourages people with low quality sites to list their stuff. If they don’t sell their site, they are only out a relatively small listing fee. I understand that you want to raise prices, but why not just raise the listing fees all around? This will increase the quality of site making the site more valuable to sellers and buyers. Besides, the 5% commission is just too high. That is almost what a realtor charges to sell a house and you aren’t providing anywhere near that level of service.

Matt Mickiewicz June 16, 2009 at 2:54 am

@RenFromPen: Check out the advanced search option. We encourage you to setup your own custom filters for auctions, and then set yourself up to receive email notifications when new listings matching your criteria show up.

As for Premium/Established/Start-up sites, we don’t actively differentiate between those categories, but you’ll find the “filters” for these three options listed under the “Saved Searches” Button.

officmarktrzzc June 15, 2009 at 2:21 pm

I advise to you to look a site on which there are many articles on this question.

http://offic-markt.ru/

dannyjohn June 13, 2009 at 12:51 am

$19 & 5% is way to much..

RenFromPenn June 13, 2009 at 12:22 am

Okay, first off, where are the auctions by category? I don’t see Established Sites, Premium Sites, and Turnkey Sites. It looks like they are all thrown together now.

As for the site itself, it doesn’t feel as professional as the Sitepoint version of the marketplace.

Lastly, I’m surprised that you guys would bother spinning this off. The listings in the marketplace as so terrible that I can’t imagine that there would be a need to create a site solely for the marketplace. I remember when some of the sites in the marketplace used to be quality but now they are pretty much all junk.

sPoT! June 12, 2009 at 8:03 pm

Suggestion:
You should consider making the tab section AJAXified; Why reload the page each time a tab is clicked?

sharon June 12, 2009 at 3:59 am

When it start? $19 listing fee is OK, 5% NO…. 2% is more reasonable.

atsa June 12, 2009 at 2:36 am

I will not point out the technical and other points in my comments as i don’t have much experience in selling websites. I have just purchased one website here at sitepoint marketplace.

As a designer i will surely like to point out the design setback. Overall if you ask a normal online visitor it seems okay but if you ask a professional its not upto the latest trends of design as this glossy type look is not upto the current trends of design. I will not go into details but here are few points :

1. Boxy look of the image near the buttons – buy a website is not looking good.
2. Also i feel there is hardly any good combination of green buttons with blue background.
3. Stats should be focused more – total sales, listed auctions etc. etc.
4. Nice Listing Panel.
5. Needs lot of work on the header part..its really needs work.

These are my personal views…let see what other sitepoint lovers think about this. Please don’t take it otherwise.

Thanks,
Atul
Independent Web Designer

palomablanca21 June 12, 2009 at 1:43 am

They must be kidding if they think I’m going to hand over $20 plus another 5 percent of the sale!

mmj June 11, 2009 at 11:48 pm

Congratulations on the new version!

Jeff June 11, 2009 at 11:16 pm

I hope the higher price tag will weed out all those low quality crappy sites list on the start-up section and leave all those crappy site on digitalpoint forum instead.

When it goes LIVE?

Mark Harbottle June 11, 2009 at 4:08 pm

Thanks for your feedback Scott. We’re working on the front page, I agree with your comments there. I disagree with your comment on the fees however. We’re still a lot more cost effective than many of the domain name marketplaces who charge a listing fee and/or 10% commission. If price sensitive sellers choose to list somewhere else there’s a good chance it will be reflected in their end result (if they get a sale at all) because the other marketplaces just don’t attract the caliber of buyers we do. Serious sellers with quality sites will know that, and our buyers will thank us for allowing these sites to become a lot easier to find on flippa.com.

That aside, the business reality is we have to change these fees to sustain and grow the marketplace and provide a professional service at all levels. We’re investing heavily to make this the only place you’d consider selling your web site.

Anonymous June 11, 2009 at 2:35 pm

What? No dolphin logo? :) What’s with the plectrums instead (ie guitar picks)?

sPoT! June 11, 2009 at 1:51 pm

I can understand the desire (not need) to separate and compartmentalize to a new website. But there are some concerns.

As it sits, the color scheme, logo, pretty much everything about the site, abandons the mothership (ie sitepoint); All symmetry is gone. It’s almost as if you are trying to distance yourselves from each other.

On the homepage, 3/4 of the page is dedicated to the header. The header does nothing for me, the user.

The fee structure is very Ebay like and will effectively kill the marketplace. As others have said, listing + percentage + transaction fees is too much. If you were to facilitate the transaction like an escrow service, that might lower the impact, but not by much.

Lastly, it appears that the classified section will stay at sitepoint.com, meaning checking multiple sites instead of one easy up to date listing.

Nice colors though. And the advanced search / expiring soon features are welcome. It’s just too bad you couldn’t integrate the new features into the current marketplace.

Scott

Mark Harbottle June 11, 2009 at 12:22 pm

There are 3 main reasons we decided to separate the marketplace out into a new site:
1. Usability. We can simplify the interface and develop new functionality for buyers and sellers without being constrained by sitepoint.com, which exists for a whole different purpose (i.e. to educate web professionals).

2. Branding. Putting a name on our marketplace (i.e. “Flippa”) will help it to carve out it’s own niche. It will become a lot easier to find, remember, and recommend to others, which will in turn result in more visibility for our sellers who have their sites for sale on flippa.com

3. Focus. We can build a team around the site soly responsible for servicing the needs of buyers and sellers – marketplace users have very different needs to the wider sitepoint.com audience.

I hear your concerns about wanting to have everything under the one roof at sitepoint.com, but we’re not a retail store – you don’t have to get in your car and drive across town to visit us, just punch “flippa.com” into your browser and you’re there! For that small inconvenience (if you call it that) the end experience will be a whole lot nicer!

john June 11, 2009 at 9:39 am

No, I don’t like the web 2.0 graphics, it doesn’t look professional at all. The current one is way better.
odd colors with big font size = ugly

Johnny Sack.. June 11, 2009 at 3:48 am

Why does every company feel like they have to split up their core businesses into a separate websites? Having everything in one place is what makes sitepoint great…

I’m sure its money, because its not ease of use…

Anonymous June 11, 2009 at 3:05 am

I guess if 99designs worked well for them, then maybe yes, this might be the way to go.

Tiger June 11, 2009 at 2:13 am

When the new marketplace will be LIVE?

Whoever June 11, 2009 at 2:04 am

Yes, I guess sitepoint just sold out the mareketplace to some other company privately, that is one of the reason need to be in separate site and of course I don’t like that new $19 + 5% success fee ($10 minimum)at all.

Way too much….

46Bit June 11, 2009 at 1:10 am

To be frank, it’s ugly.

salmon June 11, 2009 at 1:05 am

Although I wish you the best of luck with this new site, I have to agree with charmedlover. I preferred it when it was all condensed into one site.

What’s next? A separate template marketplace? Web hosting marketplace? Is the entire SitePoint marketplace going to be eventually phased out in favor of separate sites?

Alex June 11, 2009 at 12:25 am

I like it. Good branding, solidly simplistic design. Good work.

Alex

charmedlover June 11, 2009 at 12:03 am

Why must I visit three sites to access what was once on one site? I don’t like all this spin-off stuff.

goce.mitevski June 10, 2009 at 11:40 pm

I would have expected more professional logo and web design for as unique service as “Flippa” claims to be. It looks like it’s not finished yet.

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