Flippa is a MONOPOLY

It's hardly a monopoly. It's one of the big dogs though. Why not start your own site store?

There once was a time when people thought Warrior Plus was the only way to attract affiliates to WSOs and that's been proven wrong. Go for it.

I agree that the price gouging is way out of hand. The front page price creeping up and up, a success fee piled on top of the listing fee.

But they are only somewhat of a monopoly because no one else has put the effort into building and promoting a competing site.

they are doing this cos they know that you will still pay thats why they are doing this

I wouldn't call it a monopoly. Anyone could swoop in at anytime and take over the site selling niche. However, with Flippa being the authority in it right now, they know they can do pretty much anything they want. If some other big company comes in and starts giving them a run for their money then will have to back it back down, but until then it's only good business to want to make more money.

It's not a monopoly.

A monopoly is defined as "a market in which there are many buyers but only one seller" and/ or "exclusive control or possession of something".

(Thanks to Word Book for the definitions... :-))

Neither applies to Flippa.

There are other marketplaces.

More to the point, there's nothing stopping you from selling a site on your own.

Flippa enables you to get your site in front of potential buyers.

They have costs, and they need to meet them. The alternative is for them to go broke.

Cheers

Angela

Does anyone here have a list of other up and coming flipping sites?

The Warrior Forum's Complete Sites for Sale is a busy section of this forum and was created precisely when and because of the mass dissatisfaction with the high prices Flippa was charging. I use it a lot.

It's not a monopoly if the monopoly power all comes from consumers choosing to use the service rather than a control of certain resources.

As the internet is structured right now, there is no website that has an actual "monopoly" on anything.

What do you expect? They are the only competing website in that niche that's actually succeeding. I've seen some others but they are so small and you could easily tell that it's not their main focus.

However, look on the bright side. There's an open market out there and you could potentially open up a new website marketplace and tap into that market. I would suggest you offer free website listings at first until you're recognized and active, then start charging low fees and slowly increase them.

I was personally thinking of doing it but the cost for the project averaged $25,000 (not to mention the ongoing fees in the future). And I just don't have the money and time at the moment because of another venture I'm in.

Design: $750
Domain: $3,000
Programming: $10,000 + $500-$1,500/month maintenance (fix bugs)
Advertising and SEO: $10,000+

It isn't so easy to start off a brand like this but the options are definitely available and probably rewarding! These are just my thoughts.

Honestly depends how you are looking at it. If you are profiting from your sites sale, you will think otherwise!

If you made a similar solid site with unique gorgeous graphics, promote the hell out of it (literally you have to be everywhere, most importantly IM forums and blogs)...your gonna have to hype it pretty badly + absolutely make sure the site is solid

and down, down, down goes Flippa

I hope they keep raising their prices people, will get sick of them and find more affordable alternatives. I've never sold a site on Flippa for what I wanted to get. Try forums and other free sites, save your hard earned money!

Flippa are faced with a dilema and not wanting to quote lines from random gangster movies, "when you're number one everyone lines up to take a shot at you"!

They have two choices

1) Keep costs low; this means they have less investment for marketing and recruiting quality marketing staff so they fail to cast their net wider and attract more and a better calibre of sites for sale - especially ones that havent been created with the sole purpose of being sold but are long establised businesses.

Low costs also mean it's easier to list $50 crap and not be hurt if it doesnt (or does) sell.

End result - the same incestuous listings from the same sellers, and a lot more low quality stuff than there currently is.

People will complain.

2) Increase prices; you limit the amount of chancers who list stuff just to see if it would sell without putting effort into the listing and reduce the amount of lower end stock (which has its place, just in the right quantities). You also have more money to spend on developing the marketplace, casting a wider net and employing smart people to make stuff happen quicker.

End result - a better quality but higher priced marketplace.

People will complain! It's a lose lose situation.

I'm not suggesting the price increases are all about the good of the community - I'm sure simply wanting to make more money plays a huge part too but is that a crime?

Flippa doesn't owe anyone anything and ultimately if the masses arent happy, they wont use it. Clearly the strategy employed by the Warrior forum isn't working as it's full of crappy generic sites - in the grand scheme of things no one really takes it seriously.

Another option is the growing amount of microbrokers like wesellyoursite.com or flippingenterprises.com who have some great sites if you have the budget.

Justin

I am still having a lot of success with Flippa. Yes the prices are high to list a site and the success fees but you can still make good money there.

What's the difference between flippa and Monopoly are they really just the same?

Thanks

If you don't want to pay the Flippa's high fee, what I can suggest to you is sell at those forums which have a marketplace section, those forums don't charge you anything for listing or selling your site, hope that helps.

I don't think so. They are doing a legitimate business. They have buyers so people sell their website using Flippa.

there are some others competing with them, they are just not as well known. flippa is by far the most popular, so naturally they are going to try to hike up their prices.


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I agree with Angela, it is not a monopoly.

Monopoly???? ... Oh, please ...

I use Flippa from time to time, but really the sites I sold outside flippa (or website marketplaces or forums) made more sense (and money). Using a marketplace like Flippa limits you most of the time to sell the site for 10-12x monthly earnings ...

Some times, it's a good and convenient deal. With a little marketing of your own, you can surely do better though..

digitalpoint
v7n.com
namepros.com
domainforum.com

Not a monopoly but pretty close.

It is not monopoly if they are not trying to prevent the competition from coming up. They are just the No.1 in what they do.

The prices on there are getting ridiculous IMO, but I don't know about a monopoly. The crazy part is that even though we all know that the prices are getting out of hand, there are still plenty of people willing to pay for it.

There is no real competitor to Flippa in the market today, all suggested alternative are either specialized in Domain sales only or wouldn't get you a good price.

If I got a site worth 10K, I wouldn't even think for a minuet to list it somewhere else (the difference can be few thousands).

There r few sites similar to Flippa, but from where I am standing none of them qualified to be called as Alternative. They have a huge lake of funding.

To compete with small sites, you need few hundreds, to compete with big site like Flippa you need hell of budget to start

This is a discussion about Flippa we had in the forum few days ago :

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ternative.html

It's not easy. I just paid the $19, plus $20 to have my screenshot show up (even though the screenshot didn't work) and am on my second $50 featured to get people to check it out. Bleghhh. A lot of people are getting 20 to 20 times revenue on AdSense sites so I am hoping to at least get 12 to 15 on my new account there.

If you are post a site you are going to get $30 for, then $19 sucks. We have posted sites on there that sold for $20K to $50K...in this instance its worth paying the fees.

Michael

Your telling me that we as warriorforum members couldn't pool our collective talents and brains together to take on Flippa?

I mean a lot of you who posted above collectively agreed that their isn't any competition and that they price gouge.

The thing with Flippa is people go there to Buy existing websites that are already profitable. I have not had good results selling domain names or websites with little traffic.

But I have sold websites for 15X-20X the monthly earnings on there before so it is worth the $19 to list. It's the best all around marketplace for buying and selling existing sites in my opinion.

They are the only ones out there...in the market..there are more but not not scale ..
I have setup a site where you can buy Sites for small amount of fees. phpmarket.com