What Do You Guys Think of Flippa?

I am a HUGE fan of SitePoint.com. They are one of the top sites online for website designers and programmers, plus they have tons of information on most anything web related. I highly recommend that you check them out, if you haven’t already. I have been a member  since their early days and I actually wrote an article for them back in 2001 called, “Turn Your Parked Domains into Profit Machines“. Yes, I was ahead of my time

Well earlier this year, I read about Website Flipping and thought it sounded like a pretty easy way to make some money, so I gave it a shot. I ended up flipping about 8 sites in a couple months and it was pretty profitable.

I sold all my sites through SitePoint’s Marketplace under the Start-Up Sites category. It was great because it only cost $10 to auction off a site and that was it. If your site did not sell, you would have to pay another $10 to re-list it, but that wasn’t too bad.

Well I guess SitePoint has been pretty successful with their Marketplace so they decided to create a spin-off company called FLIPPA… just for buying and selling websites. They removed those two services from SitePoint and moved it all over to Flippa, so you cannot buy and sell domain anymore on SitePoint.

Now I have not tried them yet, as the pricing structure has changed quite a bit and with the small margins I made flipping start-up sites, I am not sure if it is worth it.

Instead of the $10 I was paying before, they now charge $19 to list a site. On top of that… they have a new 5%  “Success Fee” (capped at $498) which you have to pay if your site sells.

Now if I were selling sites that sold for several thousand dollars, those fees would not be as big of a deal, but for selling start-up sites, where you are lucky to get a few hundred dollars (if that), that really digs into your profits. Especially if you have to re-list them one or two times.

Now I am not here to say anything bad about Flippa, as I have not tried them yet. I would love to hear the opinions of those of you that have used their new service, or hear your thoughts on their new pricing structure.

Please leave your thoughts in the “Comments Section” below…