Flippa just came out with a new set of rules and adjustments for buying and selling web sites on their marketplace. You can read the full page, which is a bit lengthy, or you can read the recap I’ve put together below.
While some people will probably be angered by the price changes, it’s really all just part of the business. For anyone who pays attention to the stock market and has been keeping an eye on NetFlix, the stock has tumbled from $300 a share to $70 a share, since they made a price adjustment to their rental/dvd membership service. I don’t think the changes at Flippa will hurt their business model in the slightest, as they have established themselves as “the player” when it comes to buying and selling web sites, and the new changes will really only effect higher end sales in the $10k+ range. Additionally, the buyers of web sites will not be affected by these changes, as they are mainly listing and feature changes.
Change to Featured Listing Pricing
One of the most attractive features on Flippa when listing a web site, is to go for the main page listing. This cost was previously $40, and now increased to $50 (a 25% increase). This can be looked at in a good and bay way… good because less people may use this feature, which means your listing will stay on the main page longer, and bad because it’s an extra $10 more.
Change to Privacy Upgrades
Outside of buying and selling web sites, Flippa is an amazing resource for information. One a web site is listed and sells, it’s on the web site forever for others to view. That is of course unless you pay an upgrade fee to have the auction listed blocked from search results, removed after the auction ends, or requires a confidentiality agreement.
Flippa has lowered the price for removing auctions after they end from the web site from $100 to $30. To take advantage of this feature, you would select the “Hide Listing from Public View” option during the upgrades process. While the decrease is nice, I think this is one of the least used upgrade features.
Change to the Success Fee Cap
Lastly, we get to the success fee cap and that’s where the majority of price changes have been made. Flippa wants to stress that they are “not changing the success fee”, but instead changing the success fee cap to $2,000, from the original $500 that was in place. When a web site sells, Flippa gets a 5% success fee, which is where they make a profit. Since more web sites are selling on Flippa for over $10,000 it’s only fitting they would put this change in place.
For example, a web site sells on Flippa for $10,000 (Flippa gets a $500 success fee). Under the old plan it didn’t matter if a web site sold for $10,000 or $1,000,000… that success fee would still be $500 for Flippa. With the new change in place, that success fee is now capped at $2,000 instead of $500. If a web site sells for $40,000 or over, you would then have a $2,000 success fee.
Let’s see how this works under a few different scenarios. (From Flippa)
- Website sells for $80 – no change as the minimum success fee remains unchanged at $5.
- Website sells for $8,000 – no change as the existing 5% success fee of $400 is applied
- Website sells for $18,000 – this is beyond the previous cap and the 5% success fee of $900 is applied
- Website sells for $80,000 – this is beyond the new cap so a success fee of $2,000 is applied (ie NOT 5%)
In the end, the price increase is fractional, especially for large web sites. I’m surprised something like this wasn’t put in place earlier, but it makes sense to establish yourself as the premier marketplace for buying and selling web sites before making any big changes. The bigger question is if Flippa will continue to make changes to their web site and if more price changes are coming.
The comments over at Flippa are going both ways, some happy and some angry. In the end, Flippa is still the best place to buy and sell web sites, and unless you are selling sites for over $10,000, nothing is really changing anyway.
If you’d like to learn how to make the most money when buying and selling web site through Flippa, be sure to check out my 140+ page book called “Flip This Web Site“, which also includes bonus videos, case studies, mini niche guides and more.
Everyone remembers MySpace, but no one dares to waste time with it today. What was once one of the top web sites on the internet, MySpace introduced the world to the importance of social networking and having “friends” online. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp company acquired MySpace for a cool $580 million dollars, which many called an early exit by the founders of MySpace. Two years later in 2007, MySpace was offered an insane $12 billion dollars in stock from Yahoo, which Murdoch then turned down. Fast forward to present day and MySpace.com was sold for a lowly $35 million to an investment group by News Corp. In the end, that’s a $580 million dollar investment, with the lost opportunity at $12 billion dollars, then a kick in the pants at the end when Rupert lost his initial investment and walked away with a sad $35 million. The founders of MySpace walked away the winners in this one!
One of these days Twitter will have a business plan and start making money, right? Well, that doesn’t seem to matter, as they are still getting offers to acquire the company. In 2010, Twitter turned down an offer from Google for $10 billion to acquire the company. Twitter is currently now valued at $8.4 billion, but the continuing problems with their business model may put a damper on their overall evaluation and future bids for the company. While Twitter continues to grow in size, so does the competition against Facebook and Google+.
Google loves going after new companies and start-ups that are gaining everyone’s attention. This time they went after the daily deals site Groupon, with a $6 billion dollar offer that was refused! (2010) Instead of jumping at the idea of being an instant billionaire, Groupon founder Andrew Mason is taking his chances with the company and looking to launch their own IPO and go public. Since the initial bid for Groupon by Google, the daily deals industry has had it’s ups and downs on the real valuation of these companies and how effective the companies using daily deals are really benefiting.
The largest social network in the world is still grabbing everyone attention. Now with a valuation of nearly $50 billion dollars, and with a real business model, Facebook is still being sought after by many of the world’s largest internet companies. Microsoft DID invest in Facebook at the level of a $15 billion dollar valuation, but they were not able to acquire the company, like many have tried. Mark Zuckerberg is still in control at Facebook, while the world awaits any future take over and IPO announcements.
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By the time you read this post, another several thousands of iPhone and mobile devices will have downloaded the world famous Angry Birds gaming app. I’ve already written on the app several times now, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything that can slow Angry Bird’s growth down.
Who needs what?
“I have a great idea!” he said. “I am going to sell book mark holders! When you are reading a book you won’t lose your book mark.”
A community forum is a great place to do market research and find out what your target prospects really want.
