Are people on Flippa CRAZY???

[Bulldozer]

How is it possible for a site with:

• Zero PR
• Only one backlink
• Only ~3000 global monthly searches for the domain name keyword
• Less than a year old domain
• Zero profit
• Zero visits
• Extremely high competiton for the domain name keyword
• NO ADSENSE OR OTHER ADS

...to have 52 bids and going?


Right now this auction is at $3,900 with 3 hours remaining and I bet the auction will end at around $5000, if not more!

WTF? Why are people bidding for this sh*t?
- Is this because it's mrketed as a "directory"?
- Or is this because it has a com.au domain and covers a locally narrowed down nano niche? If so, what's the point? If you narrow down the total 3000 global monthly hits, you will be left with... only like 500 Australian hits, if not less... Not good, but people are still bidding!

Why is this thing getting so many bids and why are many other similar small sites with super bad SEO properties getting their bids too?
I thought buyers on Flippa were bidding only for high converting sites that get 5,000,000 hits per day?

[lovboa]

They prabably see high potential for the site

[Bulldozer]

Originally Posted by lovboa

They prabably see high potential for the site

High potential? This site doesn't cover even the basic SEO requirements.
Absolutely nothing about this site suggests that it will start to get more hits than it is getting now (~0).

[PatrickP]

Originally Posted by Bulldozer

High potential? This site doesn't cover even the basic SEO requirements.
Absolutely nothing about this site suggests that it will start to get more hits than it is getting now (~0).

So why do you think the site is selling for that much?

[Bulldozer]

Originally Posted by PatrickP

So why do you think the site is selling for that much?

That's the big question, isn't it? And I have no idea what the answer might be.
Definitely a mystery.

What makes things even more strange is that this site is not some sort of unique exception.
There are thousands of low-SEO-value sites like this one that are selling very well on Flippa.

[BlakeM]

Originally Posted by Bulldozer

High potential? This site doesn't cover even the basic SEO requirements.
Absolutely nothing about this site suggests that it will start to get more hits than it is getting now (~0).

SEO isn't the only thing that makes a site succeed. There are many other sources of traffic.

[lovboa]

The domain fitnesshouse.com.au has high potential to brand and eatablish itself as an authority site for many many targeted keywords.

[ericnelsonator]

I've found many scammers on flippa who create multiple accounts or have friends bid on their auctions to increase the price.. its a shame!

This maybe one of such cases and someone might actually buy it seeing all this interest. I havent checked who all are bidding on this one though.

[retsek]

By just skimming over it, it looks like the auction is selling a business model which might be why many are interested in it based no the sucess of the other site. I haven't watched the video, so i don't know.

But I wouldnt bid on this as that seems to be a new flippa user and also bids can be manufactured to artificially raise the price and "activeness" of the auction. It happens.

[Bulldozer]

Originally Posted by ericnelsonator

I've found many scammers on flippa who create multiple accounts or have friends bid on their auctions to increase the price.. its a shame!

This maybe one of such cases and someone might actually buy it seeing all this interest. I havent checked who all are bidding on this one though.

Damn, this sucks. I suspect the other low-SEO-value sites that have bids on Flippa are using the same scammy tactics too.
Poor buyers.

Originally Posted by BlakeM

SEO isn't the only thing that makes a site succeed. There are many other sources of traffic.

Like what? Paid advertising? Word of mouth?
Nothing beats SEO and SEO by far is the main criteria for a site's (future) success.

[Bulldozer]

$4000 and going.
Why did the remaining time increase?
It was 3 hours til the end of the auction, now it's 4 hours.

[retsek]

Originally Posted by Bulldozer

$4000 and going.
Why did the remaining time increase?
It was 3 hours til the end of the auction, now it's 4 hours.

haha, you don't even know how flippa works and you're complaining about it.

That's a feature of flippa. The winning bid must stand for 4 hours. If any new bids come in during that, the auction time is automatically reset to 4 hours left.

[BlakeM]

Like what? Paid advertising? Word of mouth?
Nothing beats SEO and SEO by far is the main criteria for a site's (future) success.

Well, it really depends on the type of site. For a small directory, you're probably right. But from what I saw by quickly glancing at the screenshot, it looks like a pretty high quality site and plenty of people are willing to pay for it. That said, it could just be a WP theme.

The point is, a site can be successful without SEO. The most successful sites don't rely on SEO. I'm not saying I'd buy the site, but there are a lot of factors that make a site valuable to others and SEO is just one of them.

[PatrickP]

Orrrrrrrrrrr someone could buy it and do some seo on it

[yukon]

LMAO!

That needs to be a bumper sticker "My other site makes $100K".

Their bidding on dreams...

Holy cow the stats. are all based on another site that's not included in the auction.

FINANCIAL DETAILS
Wedding House Statistics

Here are some WeddingHouse.com.au statistics from the last 12 months which will give you a good idea of the potential of this website.

• $101,973 Gross Income
• 958 Total Paid Users
• 628 users currently on the free trial

[yukon]

BTW, nobody lets go of a real $100k site for $4k, lol.

[Bulldozer]

I think it's just a scam, like ericnelsonator suggested

[PatrickP]

Up to 5 grand

[seobirk]

maybe something to do with the Australian fitness market.. or just a scam

[dburk]

Hi Bulldozer,

I think folks are bidding to get their hands on the custom CMS source code. It might cost a lot more than they are bidding to write their own system. And they could potentially market the license to use the CMS, based on the transfer of all rights to market the script. There is a huge business opportunity based off just licensing the CMS script.

[PatrickP]

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ings-scam.html

[londoncoffee]

Sold for $5550 Lol!

[dcristo]

You do know of something called website development?

Do you think you can pull a custom CMS out of your ass? Are you comparing this site to any other directory? If you are then quite clearly you haven't even looked at the site.

If you read the sales thread it states clearly why he is selling the site.

He doesn't have the time to promote both sites so he's selling this one.

Not every site for sale is based on some revenue multiple get a clue before you start accusing people are scammers.

And no I am not the seller on Flippa, I just hate when people talk when they don't know what they're talking about lol.

[MikeFriedman]

PR and the number of backlinks are not the only thing people look at when buying sites on Flippa.

As other people have mentioned, sometimes getting the CMS is more important. Sometimes people feel that having a fully functional website filled with lots of content ready to promote is well worth the cost.

[Oranges]

ROFLMAO! Either they are crazy or those are fake bids from multiple accounts. Crazy for sure!

[DarrenHaynes]

Interesting - my initial thought was that I could puttogether several great site for $5000 by outsourcing a lot of content. The CMS thing never even entered my mind - so thanks for the education dburk. Kudos

[clikglobal]

This THREAD make me sick with grief. $5000 is the tip of the iceberg.

I was one of those buyers who wanted to buy semi-built ready to go sites. I learned the hard way to do it yourself.

Flippa is not crazy because its mostly criminal. I am willing to testify that the FLIPPA market is CORRUPT.

Don't waste your time and especially your money on FLIPPA. The owners and managers of FLIPPA charge big fees but offer no buyer support and more importantly have made themselves a vehicle for fraud as they do NOT police their own forum.

I know. Because I have bought two WP sites there within a day or two last February. There have been many problems that would lead to criminal and civil charges if those responsible ever show up in Florida.

Lets start with the fact they sold us WP sites where they did NOT have a developers license and we are ineligible to upgrade the theme and have received threatening letters from the theme owners... The "developers" promised to monetize the sites with my accounts. They added the codes to fake plugins so it appeared on the desktop.

The affiliate and tracking codes were placed in obvious places but we later discovered they were not true links and both sites had buried php code in the site templates that sent all monetized traffic to the developers accounts. One developer also put in a backdoor using the vulnerability that was just corrected in WP 3.2.1 which gave them access to NOT only the corrupted site but all of our sites on the shared server. They and their friends accessed all of our sites and redirected the ad links through their accounts.

We did not discover it until our accounts with adsense, clikbank and others suddenly showed declining revenue while the sites showed increasing traffic. We switched servers and IP addresses at hostgator and the hackers announced their presence by taking the sites offline and planting a new homepage with their flag.

We tracked the code and access back to the Flippa sellers/developers. We contacted Flippa with absolutely NO reply. Flippa does NOT respond to our inquires or demands to investigate. They also would NOT allow us to remove our recommends for the corrupt developers or post warnings. You are NOT able to edit your posts on Flippa.

Neither developers respond to inquires but both continue to use Flippa. Our recommendations are still posted for both.

We spent less than $2500 for both domains but they cost us tens of thousands of dollars as we had to take more than 30 domains offline for a month.

FLIPPA IS CORRUPT AND NOT TO BE TRUSTED. THEY OFFER NO SUPPORT. MORE IMPORTANTLY: They do not police their users and have NO mechanism for allowing other users to police their own.

FLIPPA = BUYER BEWARE. THATS MY OPINION AND I AM STICKING TO IT.

[Oranges]

Flippa = Great For Sellers, Nightmare for buyers, because the moment sellers list their sites with all the analysis and screenshots of earnings, keywords, traffic etc etc, you'll see dozens of new domains registered and massive competition already for the new owner of the site.

[goodmast3r]

There are people who ask other people, friends, group of IM people to bid on a site. They artificially increase the price of the auction.

[JMartin]

It's pointless to try and rationalize buying and selling activities. There's a sucker born every minute. And some people value things differently. And that's why I won't claim anything is a scam, because I've seen many honest deals that make no business sense.

I never pay even $1 for "potential." I'm more of a cold, hard facts guy. If a site has amazing, easy potential, then the current site owner should go take advantage of that and come back and sell me the site for more money.

On the other hand, many people love to buy on potential. And evidently gladly pay more for unrealized potential.

My favorite Flippa auction was a guy selling a site with:

1. Awesome potential for $1000s.
2. Amazing keyword with low competition and high click value.
3. Great content.
4. Site that's a few months old, indexed and ready for the new owner to just slide in with no work.
5. A million ways to get traffic and make lots of money.

And the owner had made $0 to date. LOL

[clikglobal]

Originally Posted by yukon

I just want to make it clear that I don't think the seller of this auction was running a scam (he wasn't).

The seller was 100% upfront & saying the site he is selling makes $0.00, per month.

Flippa is one of those things, you just have to dig deep for the good deals.

Yukon... I agree with you. It might not be a scam as they are NOT claiming false revenues. But who knows what junk you are really buying?

There are a lot of legitimate developers trying to use FLIPPA but most are likely NOT legitimate. The hyping of auctions makes it worse as the values are manipulated; the action alone drawing in the innocent and the greedy.

I blame FLIPPA itself. The system is flawed because there is no way to report abusive or fraudulent activity. There is NO evidence that they care and that gives the fraudsters a license to steal while they take their % share.

In contrast The Warrior Forum has made a significant effort to police itself.

My biggest concern with WSO's has been buying "unbaked items" that were not fully ready for market and then having to wait for the items to be debugged and updated. But generally the $ are small for access to cutting edge ideas and technology. If I am really disappointed, I can post a negative comment and seek a refund; which I have never done.

FLIPPA has no such mechanism as of my last review. Its why I might would consider selling a site there but would NEVER buy there again. In the end either FLIPPA needs to change or go out of business.







ipulated.

[PatrickP]

hmmmm if it is so easy to make a site like that maybe people should make the same sort of site and put it up for sale.

[retsek]

Originally Posted by clikglobal

Yukon... I agree with you. It might not be a scam as they are NOT claiming false revenues. But who knows what junk you are really buying?

There are a lot of legitimate developers trying to use FLIPPA but most are likely NOT legitimate. The hyping of auctions makes it worse as the values are manipulated; the action alone drawing in the innocent and the greedy.

I blame FLIPPA itself. The system is flawed because there is no way to report abusive or fraudulent activity. There is NO evidence that they care and that gives the fraudsters a license to steal while they take their % share.

In contrast The Warrior Forum has made a significant effort to police itself.

My biggest concern with WSO's has been buying "unbaked items" that were not fully ready for market and then having to wait for the items to be debugged and updated. But generally the $ are small for access to cutting edge ideas and technology. If I am really disappointed, I can post a negative comment and seek a refund; which I have never done.

FLIPPA has no such mechanism as of my last review. Its why I might would consider selling a site there but would NEVER buy there again. In the end either FLIPPA needs to change or go out of business.







ipulated.

It is up to you to protect yourself. You can't count on Flippa.
Yes there are tons of scammers everywhere on the internet. Yes there is alot of hype. It is your job to see through all that. Don't expect someone to do it for you.

I, myself, was scammed on Flippa. But guess what? Instead issuing blame to the marketplace as a whole, I learnt from that experience and I continued using Flippa. Since then I've snatched up gold mines from Flippa -- literally sites that sold from for 12 months revenue that immediately started earning that much in 1 month after I optimized and improved them to their true potential.

Flippa's fees are ridiculous though. But I now realize that if it were lower, the place would get much much more worse than it is now.

[syedsohaib]

Yes, they are crazy and making full use of new technology, lol

[Jeffery]

I buy sites all the time on Flippa and have never had any major issues with the sites and sellers. Albeit, I do my due diligence concerning "who" I buy from and "what I am buying.

Being a full-time Internet Marketer and a professional webmaster I have my own service and long standing clients. My main site gets very little traffic and the highest PR was 3 many years ago. Once in a long while I might advertise something for someone else as a favor, but little to no real advertising. However, my income from the site is 6 figures. And I receive 6 figure offers all the time. Its the domain name that people want.

That being said I just wanted to convey my own opinion that not all websites are valued the same. In my opinion, a strong technical foundation and a strong business foundation "behind" the website is of higher value than the website itself. Take Willie Crawford's websites for example. Regardless of the domain name and technical platform the sites are essentially of low value without Willie. Many marketers have tried to duplicate Willie and his business models, but failed to achieve even an ounce of his success. The real value is the man himself.

Jeffery 100% :-)

[clikglobal]

Originally Posted by Jeffery

I buy sites all the time on Flippa and have never had any major issues with the sites and sellers. Albeit, I do my due diligence concerning "who" I buy from and "what I am buying.

Being a full-time Internet Marketer and a professional webmaster I have my own service and long standing clients. My main site gets very little traffic and the highest PR was 3 many years ago. Once in a long while I might advertise something for someone else as a favor, but little to no real advertising. However, my income from the site is 6 figures. And I receive 6 figure offers all the time. Its the domain name that people want.

That being said I just wanted to convey my own opinion that not all websites are valued the same. In my opinion, a strong technical foundation and a strong business foundation "behind" the website is of higher value than the website itself. Take Willie Crawford's websites for example. Regardless of the domain name and technical platform the sites are essentially of low value without Willie. Many marketers have tried to duplicate Willie and his business models, but failed to achieve even an ounce of his success. The real value is the man himself.

Jeffery 100% :-)

Hello Jeffery:

I fully agree with you and many of those who have posted in this thread. I shared my experience not because I made a mistake buying on FLIPPA... but because I did not take steps to protect myself after the purchase. I did not contemplate that the developers would risk their reputations (all fake so it seems now)

Now you can overpay on FLIPPA (bad) and pay again and again because the site purchased is basically a trojan site.

I am now frustrated (as is the Economic Crimes unit investigating our case) that FLIPPA will not even respond to inquiries, investigate or even take steps to allow its own members to police itself as the Warrior Forum does.

I went after the FLIPPA sites mostly for their domain names not so much for their design and I knew they had little or no traffic. I did not bid them for their earning cause it was zero.

What I did not anticipate was that the developers were crooked and had buried code in the sites that was not detected until months later. Part of the problem was they buried it in the theme which we found and removed but also a modified loop script that buried a backdoor in WP itself and its theme editor.

They accessed all of our sites and redirected most monetized traffic to dummy accounts offshore in Indonesia. FLIPPA will not even allow us to remove our earlier recommends.

I have purchased three items on FLIPPA and all three had malignant code. I have looked at several others that friends bought and we found malignant code in several more. What? 100% of my purchases had malignant code?

I wonder how many FLIPPA customers are using such sites? Still "paying" a developers royalty built into their sites?

The point is... what good is it to buy a site on its "fundamentals" when you will have to strip it down to nothing? Its easier to buy domains on Godaddy.

The big problem is now a lack of trust with FLIPPA. They are not earning it because they do not enforce ethical behavior. Worse they are making money from the very fraud occurring on their site. So does that make them an accessory to the crime?

Right now I give a big thumbs down on all things FLIPPA. I wish it were not so.

[GeorgR.]

Originally Posted by lovboa

The domain fitnesshouse.com.au has high potential to brand and eatablish itself as an authority site for many many targeted keywords.

That's the only thing i can think of. Seriously, $5k for 0 revenue and traffic...i am at a loss.

Makes me wonder why no-one bought my diets101.org...

[Jeffery]

Hi clikglobal,

Over the years of doing business online and offline (buying and selling) I have learned that it is best to do business with "who" I know. Example is I only do business with Warriors that I know and never do business with Warriors that I do not know. Also, the small group of Warriors that I am "in company with" have a reciprocal agreement to refer clients to each other under certain terms.

All of us buy and sell on Flippa after we all have contributed to the product or service. In this way we have a Quality Assurance Program in place "before" the product is released. This insures the buyers of our products will be 100% satisfied and with our unique twists almost all of them become repeat buyers. In all honesty, we are often overwhelmed with too many customers and have to place them on a waiting list and/or refer them to independent webmasters.

When I/we do buy a site from an unknown source at Flippa it is only because we may be search of a "unique product" or more precisely a person with a unique product that shows potential to scale up our business. Also, the product we buy will always be stripped down leaving only the "unique attributes" that we require. Then the product is created anew with our own resources. This eliminates any chance of hidden back doors, etc.

The only reason I wrote "all that" (smile) is to possibly give you a small insight to one of the ways some of us do business online. And to give you an idea about how to leverage sites like Flippa other than "buying in the blind."

To your success and best wishes online,

Jeffery 100% :-)

[clikglobal]

Hi Jeffery,

Thank you for your post. I appreciate your counsel today but wish I had received it last February. I am no Spring Chicken or Newbie either. I have 32 years experience in International Business. I was based in Hong Kong for more than 12 years doing Turnaround Management and building Telecom Companies. I have been back in the US for several years after the SARS outbreak.

I have learned that we have to completely isolate all new code on an independent server and review it...

I am tired of hearing from Investigators, Auditors and pissed off customers about why we cannot do something about FLIPPA and the crooks who are running rampant on it. With my former business contacts in Asia... I can locate the perpetrators in Indonesia fairly easily (they left a banking trail) but then what? They are a bunch of hackers living on the edge.

I am more upset with FLIPPA who does not respond to any form of communication about ANYTHING. NADA. ZILCH. We are trying to figure out if we have enough evidence to get jurisdiction over them in Florida and sue them. Albeit unlikely.

Thanks for your advise.

Craig

[Jeffery]

Hi clikglobal,

Florida I am moving from Europe to Florida in 4 or 5 weeks. We should stay in touch?

Jeffery 100% :-)

[warrior realm]

I've been watching some of these auctions on Flippa and it seems much like buying real estate. Seems the same rules apply to buying websites as those for buying real estate (or most anything else).

Number One Rule: Buyer Beware!

Do your research. Know what you are getting into. How much are you willing to risk? How much do you have at risk going into a deal? What's the worse that can happen? What's it going to take ($) to "fix it up" and get the best return for your money.

What would you do with the site if you won the auction? What's your plan? Know what you want to with it before you buy it (keep it for monthly income or flip it).

Bottom line in that auction was somebody there knows something you don't. Is it the buyer ... or is it the seller? I don' know know. But then I'm not the seller or the buyer ... I'm an innocent bystander trying to learn from what's happening so at a later date, I can be the one selling for the nice profit ... or I can be the one buying, the one with a good plan in place to profit from my investment.

[clikglobal]

Originally Posted by warrior realm

I've been watching some of these auctions on Flippa and it seems much like buying real estate. Seems the same rules apply to buying websites as those for buying real estate (or most anything else).

Number One Rule: Buyer Beware!

Do your research. Know what you are getting into. How much are you willing to risk? How much do you have at risk going into a deal? What's the worse that can happen? What's it going to take ($) to "fix it up" and get the best return for your money.

What would you do with the site if you won the auction? What's your plan? Know what you want to with it before you buy it (keep it for monthly income or flip it).

Bottom line in that auction was somebody there knows something you don't. Is it the buyer ... or is it the seller? I don' know know. But then I'm not the seller or the buyer ... I'm an innocent bystander trying to learn from what's happening so at a later date, I can be the one selling for the nice profit ... or I can be the one buying, the one with a good plan in place to profit from my investment.

Thank you for your post.

All good advice, interesting Real Estate analogy, and almost exactly what I did.

Here in Florida, we have suffered through the worse of the Real Estate crash. We are dealing with Chinese Drywall, bankrupt developers and contractors, intransigent bankers, misdirected new Federal and State Regulations, false mortgage modification promoters and falling values. There is little or no orderly market liquidation of problem properties so now the banks are holding them off the market en mass which is manipulating the supply and demand and artificially holding prices high. Today the Real Estate Market and the regulatory government systems struggle to handle the immense volume of problem properties and owners because the market and system became bloated, clogged, morally and ethically corrupt over the years.

How do I know? I have 30 years in Turnaround Management, most recently in Florida Real Estate.

However, FLIPPA is not an OPEN market. It is owned, managed and manipulated privately. They could impose rules, sanctions and ethics in a matter of seconds... if they wanted to. But they are corrupt now and getting fat off the fraud that passes through the system.

There is no way to protect yourself if the gatekeepers protect the thieves over the citizens. Sooner or later they will have to take control or it will blow up on them and they will kill the golden goose.

The point of my posts is you cannot really protect yourself in Flippa. There is no trust. You are rolling the dice but its not just a 100% risk as I learned because the cost on FLIPPA was cheap compared to the damage caused after the fact. For every dollar spent on FLIPPA we lost an estimated $20 (2000%) more after the fact. That's enough to get the attention of law enforcement and litigation attorneys.

The promise and potential of a marketplace like that envisioned by FLIPPA is great. I like the marketplace. There are good developers, buyers and sellers but unfortunately FLIPPA management is NOT nurturing a safe, stable marketplace.

That my opinion and I paid for it.

[clikglobal]

Originally Posted by Jeffery

Hi
I am moving from Europe to Florida in 4 or 5 weeks. We should stay in touch?

Jeffery 100% :-)

Ok!

I add you as a contact and sent a Friend Request. Where in Florida are you moving? Currently, I reside near Fort Myers but travel frequently and work in Miami, Orlando and Tampa.

Safe Trip.

Craig

[M Thompson]

I've bought lots of sites on flippa and never had many problems.. tried to sell one with $5000+ of income and got a $200 bid

[Flipfilter]

Originally Posted by clikglobal

However, FLIPPA is not an OPEN market...But they are corrupt now and getting fat off the fraud that passes through the system.

The point of my posts is you cannot really protect yourself in Flippa. There is no trust. ...For every dollar spent on FLIPPA we lost an estimated $20 (2000%) more after the fact.

Hi Craig,

It's unfortunate that you had a bad experience but it's a little harsh to imply they're corrupt when in essence, they're not a public service or mandatory option and owe us as users nothing that they havent' promised or stated in their TOS.

I'll be the first to admit that they've got security issues and I dont always agree with the way scammers sometimes get an easier ride than they should, but Flippa came out of Sitepoint - a forum. Four years ago, the same security problems existed (less problems but because of less volume), but when Flippa was a forum no one really complained because everyone has lower expectations. The same goes for Digital Point, where I don't have any hard facts, but I'd be willing to guess the chances of being scammed are higher here than on Flippa.

By attempting to add some security, they seem to draw criticism where they probably wouldn't if they we're a classified style listing only service and did nothing but provide a similar service to bizbuysell.

Due Diligence is your responsibility, not Flippa's. If you've managed to lose $20 for every $1 you've spent there, it's less to do with security and more to do with this not being the best business choice for you.

Sorry for the rant but that's just my two cents.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

I've bought lots of sites on flippa and never had many problems.. tried to sell one with $5000+ of income and got a $200 bid

Hey Mark - I'll give you $300

[Maxim Ross]

I am from Melbourne, Australia. There is (was?) a gym/aerobics place on Dandenong Road, close to Monash Uni in Caulfield, that was called Fitness House. That was a few years back, I was actually a member, not sure if they are still there or moved or expanded or whatever. Perhaps they want to buy that domain name for their offline gyms, who knows? There could be offline reasons for the online bidding.

[clikglobal]

Originally Posted by Flipfilter

Hi Craig,

It's unfortunate that you had a bad experience but it's a little harsh to imply they're corrupt when in essence, they're not a public service or mandatory option and owe us as users nothing that they havent' promised or stated in their TOS.

I'll be the first to admit that they've got security issues and I dont always agree with the way scammers sometimes get an easier ride than they should, but Flippa came out of Sitepoint - a forum. Four years ago, the same security problems existed (less problems but because of less volume), but when Flippa was a forum no one really complained because everyone has lower expectations. The same goes for Digital Point, where I don't have any hard facts, but I'd be willing to guess the chances of being scammed are higher here than on Flippa.

By attempting to add some security, they seem to draw criticism where they probably wouldn't if they we're a classified style listing only service and did nothing but provide a similar service to bizbuysell.

Due Diligence is your responsibility, not Flippa's. If you've managed to lose $20 for every $1 you've spent there, it's less to do with security and more to do with this not being the best business choice for you.

Sorry for the rant but that's just my two cents.



Hey Mark - I'll give you $300

Hi FlipFilter;

Thanks for your post, but I respectfully disagree.

They are corrupt because they empower sellers to commit fraud. The auction format creates tension and minimized the ability to do due diligence. Users have an unusual reliance upon member feedback that cannot be changed or corrected. There is NO way to document complaints or bad behavior.


I want to be clear....

1) I want FLIPPA to work and work well.

2) I want FLIPPA to enforce its own policies and allow members to post negative feedback or report bad behavior the way Warrior Forum and others do.

3) I want FLIPPA to answer inquires from law enforcement when there is evidence of an ongoing fraud.

That's all I want.

Did we do due diligence? YES.

But its an auction! Time was limited. The developers involved all had perfect scores on FLIPPA and still do. Why? Because buyers like us are posting positive feedback before discovering the scam. We did not detect the severity of the problem for nearly 6 months because they did NOT activate their trojan until then.

Did we screw up by moving the site to a shared server? Maybe.

We checked the code and removed links but we were not aware that WordPress had a major security hole in 3.1 that did not get plugged till 3.2.1 came out. The hackers exploited that vulnerability.

But many companies including Hostgator, Godaddy and Google have been involved in sorting this out and all are not happy with the total lack of response by FLIPPA.

As to my business choices; I like the business.

I have been involved in the Computer Industry since Microsoft offered me a job in 1980. I have been involved in Management and Turnaround Management Consulting for 30 years mostly with IT and Telecom build-outs throughout Asia. Lately in Real Estate. I am not worried about the Internet business. I intend to retire well because of it.

We lost our funds because the Website developers/sellers on FLIPPA took advantage of the security hole in WP 3.1. When we detected the problem we had NO idea that the security hole allowed backdoor access to ALL SITES on the shared server. We corrected one site only to find 30 damaged.

Again we are upset with FLIPPA for giving us the middle finger. We don't want to kill FLIPPA; just improve it and increase TRUST between the users. We know there are legitimate developers and buyers on FLIPPA and God Bless Them.

We would probably settle for FLIPPA allowing us to replace our positive recommendations with NEGATIVE feedback so that others are warned....or have an open posting forum just the way most other sites do. Of course, law enforcement wants to know who those developers are and where they live.

Like I said... I bought and paid for my opinion of FLIPPA.

Thanks,

Craig

[xxxJamesxxx]

Interesting post.

It's something I've always wanted to get into (Flipping) as I've heard there's a lot of money in it but never had time as I'm always working on other projects.

But I know now if I do, I will be careful.

James Scholes

[dagaul101]

I wouldn't be surprised if some of those bidders were "shill bidding"

[spiker12]

Craig, can you share who the offending party was on Flippa? If you dont feel comfortable perhaps you can PM me? I'm working on due diligence and would like to see if there are any red flags I can spot. Would be a good exercise anyway. Perhaps we can discuss here to help others learn?