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Sitepoint Founder to Flippa Customers: Stop Whining or Go To DigitalPoint
Yesterday the domain name sales service from Sitepoint was split and renamed as Flippa. Sitepoint members were notified of the change earlier this month and auctions were transferred to Flippa yesterday.
On the Sitepoint forum, most of the feedback has been negative so far. Of course it’s important to note that people will always speak out about any change – just see any Facebook change for a good example. Flippa charges a new ”success” fee (similar to the final value fee that eBay charges) which ranges from $10-$500 depending on the final value of the sale. This fee along with the “web 2.0 bubbly look” account for the majority of the negative comments.
The most interesting comment comes from SitePoint Co-founder Mark Harbottle who notes:
Meanwhile while you all whine and complain about the fees, the design, etc. the smart sellers are listing their sites on flippa.com and they are attracting the majority of the buyer interest. They will also get the added benefit of the PR we’re about to roll out.
So, it’s totally up to you! If you want to come across to flippa and sell your site in the professional marketplace we’re creating for serious buyers, we welcome you with open arms. If not, please do go to digitalpoint. List your site for free and see if the old adage of “you get what you pay for” applies.
Pretty shocking to see Mark call his customers “whiners and complainers” and offer them to leave and go to DigitalPoint. Especially considering Mark wants them to pay an extra fee on their sales. I guess time will tell if Flippa becomes another huge success for Sitepoint like their split of 99designs has apparently become.
Update: I’ve received the following note from Mark:
I’ll stop by here Allen. Perhaps a poor choice of words, but I stand by message…
There are plenty of free alternatives to Flippa to sell low end, low quality web sites. What we’re building is a quality marketplace where over 30% of the sites listed sell, and where thousands of serious cashed-up buyers frequent daily.
Sure, we charge a slight premium to list ($19 listing fee plus 5% success fee), but we’re not the most expensive in this space — you’ll find that many of the domain name marketplaces charge 10% or more. In terms of the design, it’s a subjective thing, but we are looking at making some minor tweaks to it.
We do take comments from our customers seriously. In fact all of our customers were personally invited to our beta launch several weeks ago and were encouraged to provide feedback. A cross section of our frequent users were also invited to our private alpha several months prior. We have personally been in direct contact with many of them and implemented many changes over several months as a result of their input.
Flippa has been live for a couple of days now and so far we haven’t seen any drop off in listings whatsoever. We’ve also had many compliments from buyers saying that life is so much easier for them on Flippa. That said, we will continue to make improvements based on real customer feedback as we always do.
Totally agree. What a moronic comment and what a rip off site. Last time I use it and to hell with their regulations. I’m going somewhere else and you should too.
“There are plenty of free alternatives to Flippa to sell low end, low quality web sites. What we’re building is a quality marketplace where over 30% of the sites listed sell, and where thousands of serious cashed-up buyers frequent daily.”
There are emerging sites that will bury Flippa for it’s name calling and arrogant attitude towards the people who have made their former business, Sitepoint, what it is today and in the process, lined their pockets with our hard-earned dollars.
So you just go ahead and stand by your insulting and calling your paying customers names, Mark and see how that works for you in the long run. As for Flippa and it’s oh so savvy buyers … the site is full of the same scammers that were giving it a bad name to start with. You can try to dress a hog up, but it’s still going to be a hog.
Flippa fails to address all the fraud both from sellers and their oh so savvy buyers. They’re just trying to repackage it to make it appear high end. In the meantime, I continue to get pm’d by savvy Flippa buyers offering me pennies for my high end sites.
Flippa also fails to address the cheesy Web 2.0 design with the only thing showing above the fold is a big a** logo and enormous buy/sell buttons. They’ve stripped all real usability that the former Sitepoint had away and present us with this crap design that takes 3 or 4 clicks to do anything on the site … and charge us a higher listing fee, plus 5% success fee, while publicly insulting it’s customer base. Way to go Flippa.
Allen: I think you’re lucky that your readers (and authors!) aren’t the TechCrunch-type that need hours of placating before they’ll drop their pitch forks to go and find another witch-hunt :)
Thanks for stopping by Jason – good to see that Matt is willing to spend time with the techcrunch folks but not stop over here. I think I need to remember that next time ya’all ask for coverage :)
Full Disclosure…I work for 99designs.com so I know Mark Harbottle…and I can tell you that this is just a case of a poor choice of words.
Mark is a stand up guy…he is honest and direct.
Remember…this is the same person who just recently organized a huge fund raising drive that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Australian Brush Fire Relief.
Knowing Mark…he was just trying to get people to see the big picture and not worry about the small stuff…it’s not about the name or the design or the minimal fee changes.
It’s about the fact that this is a vibrant marketplace…where the smart buyers and sellers go to do business…and it just got better with a host of new features that will make the buying and selling of websites easier than ever ( see here: http://bit.ly/Olv8m ).
So yes…a poor choice of words from a guy who speaks his mind…this time to a fault.
[...] are shocked and upset that Matt Mickiewicz, co-founder of SitePoint, took the marketplace section of that site [...]
That was a bit rude, but I personally don’t care how the site looks, as long as I can buy/sell websites and everything works, I’m good. But if you drive away everyone that is buying sites, than it’s a big #fail
What an @ss, DP is way better than Sitepoint in many categories.
Alright, so yes, that was a bit of an immature letter to say to customers, but I have to agree with him. People tend to whine about EVERYTHING that is wrong and I honestly think if he is willing to push a letter with so much confidence in it that he believes his buyers are staying, well then, I believe him. You don’t just push something like that unless
A) You want your business to fail.
B) You are amazingly confident in your product and the people that support it.
If he didn’t say this so rudely I would give him kudos. But he does bring up valid points and I am glad to see that they are willing make a change instead of conforming to the customers every whim. Businesses don’t move forward like that.
it’s not the right time to say whether Flippa would be successful.
It’s a shame because Sitepoint’s marketplace was good as it is. It’s not like they are in fierce competition with anyone, they were lightyears ahead of their nearest rival, which is digitalpoint.
I think it’s a good lesson for everyone to see how NOT to treat customers, but also to see if it actually gets better with all the PR that it will get
Shocking comment from Mark very arrogant and immature for a business man.
Reading the forum posts on sitepoint it seems he actually ignored people having problems with it and just slammed them.