Hey all,

I've seen quite a few people around here having extremely hard time putting together their Flippa auction copy and, while there are obviously no accurate numbers to back this up, I truly believe that at least half of the sites that either don't sell on Flippa or go for a price far lower of the expected price do so mainly because of a bad copy, rather than because the site itself isn't any good.

And that makes sense - because most of us are not copywriters but rather tech-minded guys, and as such, one-way communication with the "average Joe" (like most buyers on Flippa are) can turn out to be quite a nightmare.

Because of this I thought I'd post a few suggestions that will help some of you in putting together a good sales copy for your website auction.

The main thing that I suggest you do is browse through other (successful) listings to get ideas for your own copy. While this isn't exactly something "new and hot" to most of you, there's a few things that you have to understand to make this process a lot easier and productive than it would be otherwise:

1. Look further away from your "niche".

While it would sound sensible to only browse through let's say adsense site listings if you have an adsense site yourself or only looking at sites that have sold for less than $5k if yours is valuated at $2k, this isn't certainly the best way of doing it. It's important to look further than that as you can often get some very good ideas from listings completely unrelated to you. Take the time to browse through as many listings as possible, see what people are doing and then figure out how to adapt some of these strategies so that they would fit your own listing.

Even look further than Flippa - selling is selling, no matter whether you're selling websites, SEO services or advertising your local ice cream kiosk for that matter. There's often some very good ideas that can be borrowed from completely unrelated niches.

2. Don't be afraid of experimenting.

Probably one of the worst things you can do as a marketer in general is only going with the "tried and tested" and leaving the creative side for others. While it's OK to borrow ideas (and I even encourage it), it's equally important to inject a little bit of creativity into these ideas, as well as come up with something of your own. It might seem a bit daunting if you've never written ad copy before, but as time goes by it becomes incredibly easy and the results are often amazing. Always keep testing and trying new stuff - as that's the only way of keeping your success rates on the rise rather than stable.

3. NEVER downright steal a copy (or parts of it).

It's NEVER a good idea to "copy-paste" something off someone else's listing and use it for your own one. Not only will it make you look like an amateur to those that happened to see that other listing, but what you're doing is copyright infringement and Flippa are extremely co-operative in this sense, meaning that as soon as someone reports you for it, your listing will get taken down, no fees refunded and in some cases your account suspended.

What I suggest you do instead is take a piece of paper (or a notepad file - I like paper) and write down BULLET POINTS instead of copy-pasting the cool stuff that you see. So for instance, if you see a paragraph that you think you could use for your next listing, instead of copying the whole paragraph, summarise it with a sentence or (maximum) two, write it down and when it comes to preparing your listing build it using these summaries. This will make your copy look a whole lot better (as your copy can NEVER have a flow when different pieces are copy-pasted from different places) and you won't have any copyright issues, either.


There's a lot more that can be said on the topic of writing (Flippa) copy but for the sake of keeping this thread short and sweet I'll stop here. I will however keep the thread open and am very willing to answer any specific questions any of you may have on the subject.

Take care,
Bryan

P.S. As usual, please don't PM me with questions or request to review your stuff. I honestly don't have time for any of this. If you have any questions or comments then do post in the thread and I'll do my best to keep up with them.

Nice stuff, basic but essential, what is the best material on domain name flipping ?

nice one and i have heard about you and meathead1234 making big flipping websites good luck with your business and i hope i can become one of you guys

Hey Bryanon, can you offer any advice on selling a modestly successful gig site? Be it on Flippa, DP, or wherever. I'd really appreciate it big guy!

You are absolutely right when it comes to listing descriptions, don't undersell yourself because you don't want to take the time to creat a good salesletter within your listing.

Very valuable tips for sellers. Hope that you will add more posts like this one in future.
Thanks.

You could also hire a copywriter to write the copy for your auction. They may be willing to make a deal for a percentage of your auction (I usually am, after seeing if the website is decent, of course).