70% Off Flippa Listing Fees

Seems they've bowed to competition and declining activity on their auction platform

https://flippa.com/pricing

After 18 months since the major increase they've taken a step backwards.

No they haven't. This is a stealth increase and what we have come to expect from the Flippa team.

Success fees have doubled on established sites (5% to 10%): https://flippa.com/pricing - in reality this makes Flippa a lot more expensive for legitimate sellers but cheaper for scammers/people with low quality sites who are fishing for bids. I might be looking in the wrong place but I don't see a cap on success fees any more, too (I might be wrong here).

I'm surprised no-one else noticed. Yet another nail in the coffin for Flippa IMO as they are now pricing at a similar level to brokers with none of the benefits.

Great catch Meathead1234, the 15% has always been there but yes they did increase the FVF for the established sites from 5% to 10%. I just grabbed a cached page scanned Jan 8, 2014 so members can compare the new pricing against the old pricing

Old pricing



New Pricing

Nice catch! I didn't notice the hidden fee increases. Removing the "cap" increase the fees significantly.

This now means a $10k site costs $1019 to sell (assuming no upgrades) vs. the $529 before.

A $60k site now costs $6019 to sell vs $3029 before.

A $100k site now costs $10,019 to sell vs $3029 before.

TL;DR - if you're selling a site over $60k on Flippa it will now cost you AT LEAST double than it did before (getting proportionately more expensive). Sellers with a $100k site are now $6990 worse off. All Flippa have done here is killed their mid-5 figure and above market (which arguably they didn't have before anyway). Call me biased, but this is not one of Flippa's better ideas.

this is what called monopoly.

its really strange there is no competition for flippa.

seopencil said:

this is what called monopoly.

its really strange there is no competition for flippa.

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Sure there is (just not in the form of marketplaces, which, in my opinion, aren't suitable for selling $20k+ sites). Their sales dropped around 30% (listings dropped 22%) last year based off my own collected data (see: http://feinternational.com/blog/reflection-on-another-busy-year-for-the-industry/). Most brokers I know had a good year and buyer demand is stronger than I have ever seen.

I agree, this is really wiered that such a competitive niche has almost no competition.

meathead1234 said:

I'm surprised no-one else noticed. Yet another nail in the coffin for Flippa IMO as they are now pricing at a similar level to brokers with none of the benefits.

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of course there's a benefit. normal brokers won't accept 90% of the sites listed there. where else scammers can go to?

edit; Maybe flippa realized that most of the sites they sell is shit and now just banking on scammers backs

ikilledkenny said:

of course there's a benefit. normal brokers won't accept 90% of the sites listed there. where else scammers can go to?

Maybe flippa realized that most of the sites they sell is shit and now just banking on scammers backs

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Sorry, to clarify, I was talking about legitimate sites/sellers. It now makes no sense for them to go to Flippa. All this price increase will do is increase the number of scammers on the platform vs the number of legitimate sellers.

We've updated our pricing after extensive feedback with our users. Users overwhelmingly demanded lower up-front fees with a change to the success fee system. If you compare us to similar services (including experienced brokers) they have success fees or sales commissions around 15-20% uncapped. The pricing for new websites remains unchanged.

High-end sellers like the example above of selling for 60k can use our Dealflow program which as no listing fee and a success fee of 10%. We hope to expand this program I can't post a link to our dealflow page due to forum restrictions but it is explained at flippadotcomslashdealflow

tbcooke said:

We've updated our pricing after extensive feedback with our users. Users overwhelmingly demanded lower up-front fees with a change to the success fee system.

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Hello Tim,

I'm pretty sure your users didn't request an increase in success fees as your statement suggests. Apparently this is a squeeze play on your mid-range site sellers.

A seller selling an established site last week for $300 would have realized $44 in Flippa fees. Listing that same site today will cost him $49. Of course moving up in price, the mid-range seller realizes even higher Flippa fees than previously charged. I don't believe even a single seller "demanded" higher fees.

Flippa has never listened to their customer base which is a shame really. If Flippa had listened they'd probably be in the 3000+ listing range today and wouldn't be closing almost half of their listings under $100.

Andrew was on here when the price hike took place in May 2012 referencing expense for full time weekend staff support and a host of other benefits to sellers for the 70% increase in listing fees. Something the sellers never experienced. Now you say sellers demanded to give you more money?

This is just fleecing the mid-range sellers and ignorant high end sellers. Comparing your overall fees to a broker's fee is hardly a legitimate comparison. Brokers I know offer a heap of benefits for both, buyers and sellers of their listings.

Flippa just keeps raising the rates when revenue drops off. In May 2012, Flippa routinely had 2200 listings without any app listings. Since that price increase, aside from the special listing promotions, Flippa hasn't seen those numbers again. That was almost two years ago and instead of the marketplace growing it's dying by just about anyone's standards.

Maybe it's about time you did listen to your clients. Here would be some of their suggestions if you lend an ear:

They would fire your web developer, straight away that is constantly changing and breaking your website costing sellers a ton of fees and headaches. How many Thursday nights (AU Friday nights) did he take the site down without notice? How often did Flippa leave on their Friday night with a new update that broke the website and everyone had to wait 2 days for you to return and fix it? More than I can count.

They would restore your 4 hour extension so they didn't have to stay up all fucking night approving bidders to try and get the best dollar for their websites.

They'd have you permanently boot any seller that has more than one possible linked account. You have networks of more than 100 suspended and banned accounts linked to currently active sellers.

They would have you seriously investigate any listing under $200 with 40 plus bids (DUH).

They'd have you watch that ending soonest page for the shill bidders constantly extending their listings for days on end every 55 minutes.

They'd demand revenue claims at the very least show valid account information.

They'd have you enforce your own damn rules! You guys excuse more reports than you follow up on because you don't have the staff for all the violation reports (or so I was told). Why you even have rules is beyond me. They mean nothing. It takes just a few minutes to find 100 rule violators on any given day. It's quite obvious nobody at Flippa gives a damn about the rules.

I could carry on at least another dozen obvious issues but the point is moot. Flippa is squeezing every last dime out of the platform that is dying a slow death. This recent price increase will just be another short term revenue windfall until more legitimate sellers abandon the platform and scammers fill the void.

i think they do thing like this because there is no competition in this category even if there are people who make flippa like sites it is never successfull due to the kind of traffic flippa has

I agree to you, i listed one domain and website for sales, i never thought of success fee increase

tbcooke said:

We've updated our pricing after extensive feedback with our users. Users overwhelmingly demanded lower up-front fees with a change to the success fee system. If you compare us to similar services (including experienced brokers) they have success fees or sales commissions around 15-20% uncapped. The pricing for new websites remains unchanged.

High-end sellers like the example above of selling for 60k can use our Dealflow program which as no listing fee and a success fee of 5%. We hope to expand this program I can't post a link to our dealflow page due to forum restrictions but it is explained at flippadotcomslashdealflow

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Tim,

I'm sure it is someone higher up dictating what to say publicly, but when are Flippa ever going to stop lying? I've never seen a company falsely promote so much rubbish. Fees have not decreased at all - they have significantly increased for almost any sized site you want to sell. It is a shame as when Flippa first launched off the back of SitePoint it had tons of supporters with everyone in the industry wanting it to succeed. I have sent hundreds of sellers to Flippa over the years and I'm sure many others around here have as well. It is a shame as you have had to come in now and try pick up the pieces from some poor strategic decisions higher up - I certainly don't envy your position.

Comparing Flippa to a broker (who will only be marginally more expensive) is laughable at best. If you think Flippa provides the same service (or even close) to a broker then you need to do a little more research before spouting nonsense. At 5% Flippa offered "fair" value in my opinion and was a viable alternative to using a broker as a seller as it was quite a lot cheaper to do it yourself (around 1/3 of the cost for a mid-end site). Now it is not. Your success rates and fraud levels alone are FAR worse than even a mediocre broker.

I can and will link to deal-flow: https://flippa.com/dealflow

Interesting how you say here it is a 5% fee yet on the dealflow page it is 10%. Yet more misinformation. It is worrying that the public spokesperson for Flippa doesn't know their own pricing model. IMO the only way you'll ever get dealflow off the ground is partnering with people who actually know what they are doing and clearly outlining the value proposition vs listing yourself. With all due respect, the Flippa team may be good at keeping a sinking ship afloat with inflated prices, but are certainly not experts at selling sites.

kvmcable said:

Hello Tim,

I'm pretty sure your users didn't request an increase in success fees as your statement suggests. Apparently this is a squeeze play on your mid-range site sellers.......

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Hi kvmcable, your feedback has been noted and will be passed on to management at Flippa.

However, your post disregards legitimate feedback we've received from users and then suggests we start listening to users. I can assure you that this decision hasn't been made on the fly.

Unfortunately not all users will be happy about this, but we've heard from a wide group of users asking for lower up-front fees. These demographics are more varied than you might find on a forum like this. Flippa is going strong, the marketplace is as vibrant as ever and we hope these changes will encourage more sellers to use Flippa when selling their website, domain or app in a competitive marketplace setting.

I'm happy to listen to feedback and discuss these changes with fellow forum members, however requests to fire staff aren't particularly helpful.

tbcooke said:

<snip>Unfortunately not all users will be happy about this, but we've heard from a wide group of users asking for lower up-front fees. These demographics are more varied than you might find on a forum like this.<snip>

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Understandable ignorance coming from a new member as yourself. Just a slight correction, BHW has a considerable more varied demographic than Flippa. I'm guessing a few hundred thousand at least.

Your allies to the price hike are very quiet, I couldn't find single one on your recent blog post :

http://flippa.com/blog/you-talked-we-listened-lower-listing-fees-now-on-flippa/

kvmcable said:

Understandable ignorance

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And this is where I take my leave.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, we're definitely taking everything into consideration.

tbcooke said:

And this is where I take my leave.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, we're definitely taking everything into consideration.

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You've certainly taken a lot of the backlash personally but what you need to understand is the way the "listing fee reduction" was pitched was extremely misleading. There was no mention of the doubling of success fees or removal of the fee cap. If you were just straight up about it upfront there wouldn't be such a problem. Users shouldnt choose your prices - that's your decision. I just feel if you're going to argue you have listened to customer feedback to make this decision that you at least do people the courtesy of an honest announcement rather than leaving it out and then jumping back in to defend yourself once people notice.

I really hope that sellers haven't been listing sites and not realising the fees had doubled on success. I would bet the vast majority did not notice. To me that is not a good way to do business. If you're going to increase prices at least be transparent from the outset.

flippa hardly gets bids nowadays... anybody else faced such problem or is it just me... I listed my site twice .. got some bids many watchers but didn't sell.