As someone who started his career with Flippa, I can tell you that there was a time when I (and many others) didn’t have high confidence in the site. It had its share of problems and felt like a marketplace full of potential pitfalls. Back then, I even used to tell first-time investors to avoid it altogether!
However, Flippa has changed significantly since that time, and I have to say that I’m impressed with their progress. So what was wrong with Flippa, and why did I change my mind?
Read on to find out!
What Was Wrong With Flippa?
Flippa is a marketplace for buying and selling websites and online businesses that used to be plagued with serious issues. Among the most notable of these problems were:
1. There Were Professional Scammers
Since the Internet was and remains one of the easiest ways to make money, it attracts scammers like a magnet. Flippa was no exception to this rule.
When I first used it, there was a real danger of getting scammed or taken advantage of. At first glance, many websites listed for sale on Flippa might have seemed to generate decent cash flow and ranked great in SERPs. However, there was no way to truly verify these statements – these listings may very well have been the work of experienced marketers.
2. It Was Time-Consuming to Use
Another major issue with Flippa was that it was a huge time sink. Those who read my blog regularly know that I’m a big fan of a certain quote – ‘We can always earn more money, but we can’t earn more time’.
With Flippa full of mediocre investments, getting through all of the bad deals to find a ‘diamond in the rough’ simply took too long. Suffice it to say back then, there were more resourceful ways to buy online businesses.
3. It Was Full of Poor Listings
A big part of the problem with Flippa was that it was fairly easy to present a business or site in a favorable light. Some even made a living out of selling overrated websites that didn’t really make good money to beginner investors.
This issue, coupled with the problem of omnipresent bad deals, made it really hard to cipher through all of the listings on Flippa and find something that was really worth buying.
Back then, the risk was high enough that it was better to find alternative marketplaces offering more deals with solid track records.
4. It Had A Copycat Problem
While Flippa had an issue with the low quality of their listings, it was still possible to find amazing deals. However, there was another problem that could negate the benefits of this – copycats.
Even if you successfully navigated all of the previous issues and bought a great site in a unique niche from Flippa, you might have faced competition sooner than expected.
The unregulated nature of Flippa meant that people could just steal business ideas by browsing through Flippa listings and then offer their own sites or online businesses in the same niche.
What’s Changed?
Flippa has come a long way since its inception. With a lot of changes taking place in recent years, it’s no longer the ‘wild west’ of online business marketplaces.
Perhaps most importantly, Flippa has now a different CEO – Blake Hutchison. Under his leadership, Flippa is putting emphasis on trust between buyers and sellers. It’s no longer possible to create anonymous profiles that could be easily exploited for underhanded purposes. Now, each user needs to provide a government-issued ID to be verified and allowed to buy/sell.
Flippa is aiming to become the best and simplest place to buy and sell online businesses. As such, it features integration with accounting software solutions like QuickBooks, allowing easy verification of the deals without having to leave the Flippa website. Of course, this is barely the tip of the convenience iceberg – Flippa also supports Shopify, Google Analytics, and Stripe integration.
Flippa is also offering a buyer matching feature – this way, investors interested in a particular niche can get alerted when a business that fits their criteria is listed for sale. In other words, the days of manually sifting through listings are gone. Flippa can now do that for you.
All that information and more you can find in my podcast with the Flippa CEO, Blake Hutchison.
Final Thoughts
All in all, Flippa has made significant strides in improving its platform, making it a more trustworthy and efficient marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. With their new direction and implementation of much-needed features, it’s not only much more attractive to sellers but to new investors as well.
If you are looking for opportunities to buy online businesses, you should definitely use Flippa. Me and my clients certainly do!
Thanks for the great post. It looks like some sellers do not provide the actual figures most of the times.
I once saw some websites for sale on Flippa and decided to investigate further about the stats. On checking using various tools, I found out some websites quoted as making over $1000 did not have any traffic. In fact, using some free online tools, some of these had less than 10 visitors per day and was just wondering how they can make so much money.
It made me conclude that the sellers inflate some for the stats to just wow buyers and when you buy the site everything goes down.
Amos
Hey Amos,
Yep that does happen. Flippa however is getting better and will but still we need to be great at doing our due diligence, well done 🙂
Thanks for the great post. It looks like some sellers do not provide the actual figures most of the times.
I once saw some websites for sale on Flippa and decided to investigate further about the stats. On checking using various tools, I found out some websites quoted as making over $1000 did not have any traffic. In fact, using some free online tools, some of these had less than 10 visitors per day and was just wondering how they can make so much money.
It made me conclude that the sellers inflate some for the stats to just wow buyers and when you buy the site everything goes down.
Amos
Hey Amos,
Yep that does happen. Flippa however is getting better and will but still we need to be great at doing our due diligence, well done 🙂