Have posted this elsewhere but can confirm we've recently adjusted the listing fee - the first time since Flippa started over 3 years ago and something clearly displayed to all sellers as part of the listing creation process.
It seems you didn't get the memo in March 2012 (3 months ago - not 3 years ago) when Flippa raised the minimum success fee from $5 to $10 affecting 80% of your seller's inventory.
Clearly displayed as part of the listing creation process? Your listing process takes 15-30 minutes to complete and only after investing this time to create a new listing do you see your recent price increase at checkout. Probably a more accurate description is "clearly displayed as part of the listing finalization process" which is where the poor sap realizes your price just increased 50%. I don't see anything "clear" about this.
In the last 3 years, we've implemented industry-leading features such as Google Analytics and Google Adsense verification, advanced search functionality, escrow integration, listing syndication to our partner sites and tools and, most recently, the introduction of proxy bidding. In parallel, we've increased our customer support team to cover weekends and reduced our response time by 50%.
Most of these features have no impact on the bulk of your inventory which are new, undeveloped websites. Most of those tools have a positive affect on a small minority of your listings so your pricing should have the benefited sellers paying for those features. Higher listing fees for sellers with higher reserves or higher starting prices. High BIN prices should demand more money. Instead you've passed on the costs of your high-end / broker level improvements to sellers that will see no or little benefit from your recent upgrades. E.G. You bragged about 80-90 listings using your Google verified tools and are passing on the costs to sellers of the other 1800 listings on your website?
To this end, we continue to get a record number of sellers along with the most qualified and active buyers anywhere. Be assured we're not now sitting idle - we still have a load of amazing features still coming through later this year.
Maybe you should study your numbers a little closer. You're currently selling websites at about 38% per listing. Of those closed successful listings you're averaging almost a 20% non-payment ratio (1-5 buyers don't pay). You're averaging a 56% success rate considering sellers relist websites multiple times, paying you, now, $14 instead of $9 for each relist. Based on your sell-through rates a seller can realistically expect a $29 listing fee, a $14 relist fee plus a $10 success fee at 38% success rate. That makes a seller's realized Flippa fee $43 per listing. Add in a $10 domain fee and now a seller is at $53 minimum cost for 80% of Flippa's inventory.
Your "record number of sellers" are mostly new accounts from previously suspended members. It only takes a few minutes to recognized your long term sellers are not listing or listing very few items. The bulk of your listings are from sellers with hardly 1 month history on your website.
If Flippa had the technology or desire to discover obviously linked accounts they'd find many of their listings advertised as different sellers are in fact the same sellers. What are the odds your 6 high volume entry level website sellers all use the same hosting account, same IP address and same nameservers out of available millions of variations available? What are the odds they recruit as an MLM on WF (from Texas) with a step by step program showing participants how to exploit Flippa buyers? I find it no coincidence that when these sellers are reported for blatant shill bidding the standard Flippa response says your algorithm doesn't detect any shill bidding at this time. You would lose 25% of your inventory if you took action against this MLM business and their partners.
Sellers are required to wait 3 days before filing non-payment dispute even if the buyer has already been suspended for other non-payment activities. After filing disputes the buyers must wait another 3 days for a response, closure and credit of fees. This effectively ties up a seller's inventory for a week. You've made no improvements in this area. If the buyer is suspended there should be immediate credit to a seller's account so their inventory isn't tied up.
I could debate your BS all day long but suffice to say you're exploiting the bulk of your sellers and just as other auction marketplaces have learned, this never works. eBay practically BUILT Amazon from such practices. Flippa will BUILD their next competitor. I forecast your inventory will continue the current decline, your sell-through rate will continue the same poor performance it's seen in the last 30 days (now below 30%) (few sellers are fooled by your 3 month success rate which should be in the 90 percentile but Flippa brags at 56%). What isn't a surprise is the Sitepoint arrogance continues from 3 years ago and the "take it or leave it" mentality hasn't changed a bit. I suspect this is partly to blame for the poor reputation your marketplace has earned.
Buyers will find other marketplaces or start building their own websites before dropping $50 for Flippa fees plus dealer profit for entry level Wordpress sites that have put food on Flippa's plate for 3 years. I contend you have no idea who your customers are or where your bread and butter comes from.
