Avoid the Success Fee Completely

Hello!  It’s hot in Melbourne, so we’ve got the lights off and we’re hard at work on Flippa features!  Here’s a couple for you:

Waive the Success Fee for $99

If you want more certainty around your listing, you can now completely avoid being charged a success fee on a successful sale!  A lot of people wanted this, and now we have it. All you need to do is select and pay for a particular option at the start of your listing:

This is like success fee “insurance”, I guess.  It costs you up-front, but it means that you have absolute certainty about what will happen on a successful sale – no need to worry about success fee invoices.

Net Profit Disclosed on Listings

A few people recently have brought to our attention that we ask sellers for Revenue, but not for Profit – and for some businesses these are completely different things.  So we’ve added this field:

This lets buyers get a better sense of the differences between two listings with the same revenue numbers.  If you set it to zero, it’ll show “No profit claimed”, and this is what all listings show by default.

Usually this field won’t be changeable after the start of an auction, but as a transition measure we’ll let you change it for the next week or so.

Scheduled Maintenance Outage November 11th

Tomorrow, November 11th, Flippa will undergo some under-the-hood maintenance, so we’ll have to take the site down for a period of about half an hour.  This will happen at:

• 3pm Melbourne, Australia
• 4am GMT
• 8pm West Coast US
• 11pm East Coast US

Apologies for any inconvenience caused – but we’ll be back up better than ever!

Purchase Credits in Advance, and the Sale Completion Area

Hello! Another list of features implemented by our hard-working monkeys of code.

More Safety with the Sale Completion Area

We’re always striving to give you more confidence in your transaction, and this is another step on the path:

This area gives you all the flexibility you need in communicating with the other party, and allows the transaction to be transparent so both sides know what’s happening. Most importantly, if there are any unfortunate misunderstandings, Flippa Support will be able to step in and resolve them much more easily.

To get to the Sale Completion Area, go to a listing you’ve won, or a listing of yours which has been won, and follow the link:

You should strive to do as much communication as you can through this mechanism. Both sides then know where they stand – it’s better for everyone.

Buy Credits in Advance

Since we moved over from the SitePoint Marketplace, there hasn’t been any way for you to buy credits in advance. The feature was removed because it was being abused by fraudsters – we were getting a lot of stolen credit card numbers used.

Well, we’ve re-added the feature with some precautions taken. The most obvious of which is that you can only buy credits with a card that you’ve previously used successfully for another transaction. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem for most people. Have a look in the quicklinks at the top of the screen, or on your profile page, to Buy Credits.

So now you’ve got a bit more flexibility as to how and when you pay for your listings and success fees!

Bid Auto-Acceptance

Sellers have asked a few times that they be allowed to automatically accept all bids. We think this is generally a bad idea, as it removes any possibility of doing due diligence on your bidders before the end of the auction.

However, we’ve added the feature. Edit your auction and you’ll see a new option which allows you to automatically accept bids. Check it, and you’ll never need to approve a bid again! (For that auction.) We’re keeping an eye on this, and if it causes too many problems it’ll be removed – but in the mean time, good luck!

This Week: New Features – and Half a Million in Sales!

A big week of sales on Flippa, with half a million dollars changing hands!

Congratulations to all those involved – and many thanks from us. It’s very flattering to have so many great buyers and sellers put their trust in Flippa, and we’re still working hard to make sure it’s the best place to do your business. Here’s some of the more recent changes:

Video Attachments on Listings

If you’re running a listing, go to the Attachment Management page and you’ll notice a new option:

Shows the Attachment Management screen where you add a video attachment to your listing.

That’s right, it’s now possible to add YouTube videos to your listings. These will appear on the listing page looking something like this:

Shows how a video attachment displays when on the listing page.

A click on it will pop up a nice lightbox and allow users to play the video, simple!

What will you use this for? Well, I think it could be really useful for giving more credible proof of revenue or traffic details – if you screencast yourself clicking through your PayPal or Analytics account, buyers will have much more confidence in your figures. But, of course, the possibilities are endless. Maybe you want to pitch your site to potential buyers, or just have a chat to let them know who you are and why you’re here.

New Preset Searches – Entry Level up to High-End

A picture speaks a thousand words:

Shows the search bar on Flippa with the new preset searches in place.

You’ll have noticed the new presets that we’ve put into the search bar. These came out of repeated requests for a category system similar to the “Startup/Established/Premium” that used to exist on SitePoint. Now we have Entry Level, Mid-Range and High End searches.

However, these are better than the Marketplace ones were. These search directly on the Reserve Price or Minimum Offer. The only way to get your site into the High End search is to have a Reserve Price set over $10,000. Sure, you can cheat by setting your reserve higher than you expect to get – but then you’re unlikely to sell your site.

Let us know how these are working for you, but we think it’s a big improvement for both buyers and sellers.

Search for “Most Active”

Also in the above image, you can see the Most Active preset search. This is another much requested feature. It allows you to see quickly where all the action is – just in case you should also be checking out the sites that everyone else is bidding on…

Option: Don’t Automatically Relist as Private Sale

Most sellers seem to like the fact that if their auction doesn’t sell, it’s automatically relisted as a Private Sale listing, which gives them exposure. Private Sales are selling really well – about 20% of our sales – but some people want more control over their listing. So, now sellers have the option of saying “don’t relist my listing automatically”.

Show the Revenue Source Information

We’ve always collected information from sellers on where their revenue comes from, but we weren’t previously displaying that information. Why not? Honestly, I’m not sure! It was an oversight – one which we’ve now corrected:

We also added in the “Affiliate Income” revenue source, as that’s an important one which we weren’t previously capturing. Thanks again to all those people who let us know of our oversight!

Minor Makeover – and Flippa Is Hiring!

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that the main pages of Flippa have a slightly new look – we’ve had a bit of a tidy up!

We think it’s a fair bit easier to browse through the listings you want to see now. You can skip straight to the Ending Soon listings to see what you’re about to miss out on, or see the Ended Unsold listings to get a sense of where there might be opportunities for bargains. Just Sold shows you what’s finding buyers in case you’re wondering about what to create next!

Let us know at Support (support@flippa.com) if you have any issues with the new layout, but we like it.

Other changes this week:

Sellers Can Show Minimum Offer on Private Sales

The problem with private sales is that they don’t show much information, so buyers have no real way of knowing whether or not their valuation of the site is close to the seller’s. We’ve added an option to allow sellers of private sales to show their minimum offer. This isn’t necessarily the number that they’ll accept for the site, but it gives you an idea of the ballpark. Turning this on, as a seller, means that you give people more reason to look at your listing!

Listing View Counts Ignore the Owner

Listing view counts were pretty misleading, because they’d count all the times that you went to the listing. We’ve changed that so that seller isn’t counted when they view their own listing. We hope that makes the view count a bit more useful for sellers.

Flippa Is Hiring!

We’re always on the lookout for gun PHP developers and innovative front-end designer/coders to help us improve the site. If you’re in sunny Melbourne, Australia (which is currently in the middle of a rain storm) or you feel like moving here, and you want to work on some great web development in a comfortable environment, you should definitely email us and we’ll have a chat:

jobs@flippa.com

New Trust Ratings and Tweet Listing on @flippa Upgrade!

Exciting changes on Flippa!

New Trust Ratings

So, what’s happened to my 100% trust rating? That’s a very good question!

We’ve changed the system with trust ratings. Honestly, the way it used to work wasn’t much use. They were all either 60% or 100% – that doesn’t give you as users much information to work with when deciding if you should do business with someone.

We went right back to scratch and thought about what the trust ratings are for. We’re constantly checking for fraud and for duplicate accounts, and the trust ratings need to give you a sense of how confident we are in the identity of the person you’re dealing with. The more confident we are, the more confident you can be that they’ll deal openly and honestly – or at least that if they are dishonest we’ll ban them permanently. Having more information makes this much easier for everyone!

So we’ve moved the trust ratings to an open-ended system. At the moment there are a few items considered – phone verification, feedback, etc – but we intend to add many more. And here’s the first of them:

Use Facebook Connect to Increase Trust

A new way to increase your trust rating is to link your Facebook account to Flippa! This gives us another form of ID that we can verify about you.

It’s really easy to do and takes about two minutes. Go to your account and click on the Trust Manager link. At the bottom of the page you’ll see an item for Facebook Connect. Follow the instructions there, which will prompt you to log in to Facebook and then accept the connection to Flippa.

Simple! And then you’ll be a bit more trusted.

New Upgrade – Tweet Your Listing to @flippa

Also in the last few hours we’ve added a new upgrade for listings – your listing can be auto-Tweeted to @flippa, the Flippa Twitter account.

This one’s really good for those sellers who have high quality product and want to get more eyeballs checking it out. You keep asking us for more ways to promote your listing, because who knows where your buyer will come from?

We don’t want this upgrade to be used too much – we’re not one of those sites which Tweets crap fifty times a day. This will be used for the best quality product on the site. The front page upgrade is $29 and that means you can see better than average quality listings there. Well, the “Tweet This to @flippa” upgrade is $50, so it’s the next level of quality. And the price will increase if it’s being used too much.

So if you’re a buyer looking for premium sites, you need to be seeing these Tweets: follow @flippa here.

And if you’re a seller looking to get your site seen – consider this upgrade another tool in your arsenal.

No Sale? No Success Fee, Free Relisting!

Once in a while, unfortunately, there’s a problem with a sale.

Maybe a site is sold but there’s a disagreement between the parties as to what the goods are. Maybe a personal issue arises and one party can’t go through with the sale. Maybe one party is less than fully honest, and disappears before the sale can be completed.

You want to avoid being involved in these situations, and we want to make sure that in the odd occasion they occur, they’re cleaned up quickly and easily. So:

Flippa Dispute Procedure

We now have a straightforward dispute procedure which lets you tell Flippa Support when there’s a problem with a transaction. (Have a look in the Action Box of a won listing that you own or have won to find it.)

Once you enter the procedure, we’ll collect both sides of the story and make a decision on what’s happened. Occasionally this will mean that someone gets suspended—for instance, if we send you an email asking for your input to the procedure, and you don’t answer in 72 hours. But if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.

At the end of the process, if everything turns out OK, we’ll waive the success fee.

And if you were the seller, your listing will be automatically relisted for free. This is a non-negotiable part of the procedure. We want to get you a sale, as that’s when our success fee kicks in.

That’s about it! Simple, really.

Keep in mind that anyone abusing the Dispute Procedure to smear another user, or to avoid fees, will be dealt with appropriately. This should be a matter of last resort, because it’s a painful procedure for all involved.

We know this won’t happen too often!

Compete.com Stats and Double-Page Screenshots

The boys have slipped some great features in to Flippa in the last few days, and there’s more coming!

Flippa on Twitter

Followers of Flippa on Twitter know that this week we’re rolling out a great feature, a dispute procedure which gives you more certainty when a sale doesn’t go through. Want to have the success fee waived and a free relisting when the buyer or seller is dodgy? Have a look on Twitter! You should follow us on there because that’s where new feature announcements pop up first.

More Listing Stats

A couple of switched-on users let us know last week that Compete can be a great source for stats about a site. Guess what? They were right! So we took a few hours to incorporate the Compete public API into Flippa. Now you’ll see stats direct from Compete when you view listings on Flippa. It’s all gonna help buyers make more informed decisions about their purchases. (Coming soon is the ability to filter and sort on these stats.)

Thanks heaps to those Flippa users! If there’s anything you use when assessing a site which could feasibly be incorporated into Flippa, don’t hesitate to let us know. We’re all about getting you as much information as possible. (You might even end up with a handful of credits for your trouble…) Either let us know at the Flippa UserVoice or email us at Flippa Support if you have any brainwaves.

Double-Page Screenshots

Another interesting feature is that we now have double-page screenshots on new listings. This is a bit of visual sugar for your listing page. For an example of what I’m talking about, have a look at the Twollow listing:

Twollow For Sale on Flippa

Pretty? Or useless? Let us know!

Reduce Listing Duration

Auction owners sometimes need to change their listing’s end time. It’s always been possible to finish a listing early, but not to shorten it. We won’t be letting sellers lengthen listings as that’s dodgy—buyers deserve to know what they’re bidding on. But it’s now possible to reduce the duration of a listing, down to at least a day from the current time. Have a look on your listing page in the owner action box to do this.

See “Watching” Count

Sellers can now see how many people have their listing on their watchlist—have a look in the top right corner of your listing page near the view count. This was requested by a few people. Let’s hope it helps you gauge interest in your listing!

Verify Google Analytics Attachments

Everyone uses Google Analytics for site stats, right?

Most listings have a bunch of Analytics screenshots and PDFs uploaded as attachments. But how much can a buyer trust a PNG or even a PDF which the seller has uploaded themselves? Most sellers are completely legit, but there’s a minority who can, shall we say, push the boundaries a little.

No-one wants this, so Flippa now helps both buyers and sellers to trust each other.

Sellers, follow the instructions through the Add Analytics Stats link on your listing to send an email from your Analytics account to Flippa. Once this is done we’ll upload the attachment to your listing.

As a buyer, you should look for attachments which have the Flippa logo and big text saying Verified. We’ve done checks on these and we’re almost completely certain that they come directly from Google to us, so you can trust the data in them.

A small disclaimer: as you all know, email isn’t designed to be 100% secure, so we can’t give a complete guarantee. However, we’ve done a heap of work to ensure that these emails can’t be forged, and we’ll be quickly banning any seller we detect attempting forgery—as we do for any attempted fraud.

Other features too!

Minimum Bid Increment

Everyone hates an annoying $1 increase in price when your auction is sitting over $1000. We’ve fixed up the bid increments so that now there’s a minimum increment. It’s a complicated formula, but basically, if your listing is over $100 the minimum increase is $10, if it’s over $1000 then $100, and so forth. This will be good for both buyers and sellers. Sellers don’t have to deal with tiny bids which don’t actually get them anything, and buyers don’t have to worry about being outbid by $1 right near the end of the auction.

Action Box

If you’re participating in a listing, and especially if your the seller or the winner, you can now see an Action Box on the listing page. This pops up near the top of the listing and gives you quick links to everything you need to do related to that listing, including leaving feedback, contacting the other party and paying the success fee. It’s a one stop shop which should help you keep better track of where you are in the process.

Confirm Before Accepting Offer

Private Sale listings were a new feature on Flippa, and they’re working really well with a lot of good sales coming through this mechanism. However, sellers who are used to Auctions can be confused when they get a free Private Sale listing, and might accidentally accept the first offer coming in, thinking it’s like a bid. We want to avoid this, so now you need to confirm that you know what you’re doing before accepting an offer and ending your listing.

Free Private Sale Relisting

You might have noticed an increase in the number of Private Sales on Flippa in the last few days?

We’ve always given you a free Private Sale listing if your Auction ends without a winner. Well, we’re still doing that, but now instead of magically turning your listing into an auction, it creates a new listing. This sounds technical, I know, but it has benefits for everyone!

It’s good for sellers because it gives you more exposure for your listing. Yeah, it ended without a winner, but now people will have another look at it, and hopefully throw you some great offers! We’ve already seen sales made for exactly this reason.

It’s good for buyers because it lets more listings drop in front of your eyes on a daily basis, so that you have more chance of finding that gem you’re looking for. Remember, Private Sale listings can be a great way of finding an overlooked bargain—you can see the potential that others might have overlooked!

Also in changes this week:

Enable and Disable Upgrades

Many people requested this—often you’ll buy an upgrade like the private listing upgrade, and then realise that it was a bad idea. Instead of having to go all the way to Support to get the upgrade removed, you can now go to the “Upgrades” page of your listing and do it quickly yourself. And then if you change your mind again later, you can re-enable it. Should make things a lot more simple for sellers managing their listings. This applies to every upgrade except the Front Page upgrade—which, remember, you can re-purchase to bump your listing up the front page!

Thanks for stopping by! An announcement coming next week…