More New Features
Posted on June 29th, 2009 by Dave Slutzkin
It may have been the weekend, but we’ve kept the developers’ noses to the grindstone – Flippa never sleeps!
Once again, thanks heaps for the feedback. We’re getting a lot of suggestions from you guys, many of which are really interesting features which we’re excited about implementing! Eventually, anyway, because unfortunately our plans to breed a super-developer who works 48-hour days haven’t yet come to fruition, so we’re stuck with our almost super-developers who work 14 hour days. Feedback, as always, here:
Anyway, here’s the list of changes in the last couple of days:
Added Seller’s Name to Listings
You’ve probably noticed that on the Listings page, you can now easily see the seller’s username. A lot of people wanted this one! It smooths your workflow by giving you more information about the listing on the main page, so you can stay away from sellers you distrust, or take note of sellers you like.
Added Auction/Private Sale Choice to Advanced Search
The advanced search or custom filter page now allows you to distinguish between Auctions and Private Sales. This is important because, as people have realised, Private Sales are long and usually require more due diligence, whereas Auctions are go go go and time is of the essence! Often in your searches you’ll need to distinguish between these options, depending on whether you’re looking for a bargain Private Sale that’s been around a while, or the hot Auction that’s just been listed. Now you can!
Added More Quicklinks to the Page Header
At the top of every page, you’ll now see useful things like a link to your Watchlist and Inbox. Even better, if you’re a seller, the top of the page will tell you if you have Pending Bids or Pending Offers. Once again, we’re looking to smooth your workflow and make it easier for you to get around.
Added Pending Bids and Pending Offers Sections to Your Account
The My Account page should be the one-stop shop for managing your Flippa time. It now shows clearly your Pending Bids and Pending Offers, as well as your PMs and any Invoices you have open. Of course, you will have received an email about these thing as well. But now, upon logging in, you can quickly and easily see what you need to do straight away.
Added to User Bid History
If you’re a frequent bidder, you’ll have a lot in your Bid History. We’ve changed it a little bit, so that now we’re graying out any bid which is out of the money – if it’s been overbid or if the auction’s ended. Now you can better see at a glance which bids you have which are potential winners!
Comments (34)
Comments are closed.
June 29, 2009 - 10:06 pm
I’m glad I found this website!
June 30, 2009 - 8:22 am
Hey guys and gals of Flippa.
Thanks for listening to us, the users of your site i.e. your pay check. I’m still confused though as why you did not ask us, the people paying, what we thought before you made these radical changes.
Management is not always right. the little people, sort-of-speak (no offense) at sitepoint/flippa stand up because you have a better incite into what is really going on with the company.
Anyways, you will survive it’s just a matter of time.
P.S. What happened to the link at the top – Were Listing? Please do not tell me you took it down because of all the pissed off users. Again we are your pay check. It would be wise to listen to us.
Thank you for your time!
June 30, 2009 - 9:00 am
Any chance you could make it optional to have comments on in the auctions. So sellers can choose if they allow comments on their auctions. We are paying for it after all.
Perhaps for those with 100% feedback or a certain feedback rating over time.
This is one of the big reasons why I and my clients don’t list more sites here. We want a place to sell our high end sites, but a lot of the high end sites get those arm chair commentators who hate to see people make any money.
I know we can delete comments, but that has many flaws and makes us feel like we are stuck watching our auctions to get the best price.
This would be really great.
June 30, 2009 - 10:29 am
Thanks for your comments Dave, let me explain a little more here.
I would post this on the uservoice section, but in reality that’s a bad indication whether or not you should do something considering the motion with the most votes is to scrap the success fee and of course, you won’t be doing that any time soon.
I can understand why buyers want them. My theory is, if we make it optional to have comments, buyers then can choose who they do business with and so can sellers as such. Due diligence. It takes 5 minutes to check out a site and whether its a valid auction.
Why punish sellers and comments really are punishing to sellers, especially to those who list a lot.
I think this is a fair option. Both parties are taken care of. I am speaking from a brokers perspective. My clients are selling very high end sites and this is the one big reason they don’t sell as much on your site.
They can handle the success fee, because that means they are selling sites. They are not overly fussed on the design, but again, as long as there is traffic and sites are selling they will sell with that website.
What puts them off is the comments section. Professional sellers want a professional platform to do the selling and the comments section is not professional at all.
It’s full of know nothings who think nothing of ruining an auction. Once an auction is listed and gets all these comments, its very hard to sell for the price it deserves and hard to relist.
I don’t want to have to convince you guys to do this as it’s something that should be done if you want that higher end market.
Let the seller choose if they want comments and let the buyer decide who they do business with.
Don’t baby us.
June 30, 2009 - 10:49 am
I think I like the idea of sellers choosing whether they have comments turned on or not. Just need to think through the downsides a little more. Dave and I will have a chat about it tomorrow with the team.
July 1, 2009 - 12:37 pm
Ben,
Your remark is exactly what’s wrong with the comments section on flippa. You pointed it out perfectly. It’s the mentality of some buyers.
You Said….
“Many times the listings that draw a lot of comments like these aren’t going to sell anyway because of an absurd asking price”
It’s that mentality that is the problem Ben.
Buyers (I should use the word commentators not buyers as these people rarely buy anything) feel like they can slag off auctions just because the seller puts a premium on his or her site.
It’s their site and can sell for what they want without the rude comments. When you put the time into a site, it’s up to the seller what to sell it for, not the commentators. If they don’t like it, don’t buy. Simple.
You will find that sellers will choose the best option for their auctions. Whether that is comments on or off, it should be up to the seller, not the peanut gallery that comes along for the ride.
I agree security and dodgy sellers is a problem. That’s what sitepoint/flippa is fixing. Make it so that sellers must have a certain amount of feedback before they can turn on or off comments.
There is a compromise here and that is, leave the site selling to the sellers and let the buyers decide what they want to buy and not be put off from comments that are not helpful. All negative comments warranted or not, bring down a sale price.
It’s as simple as that. Ask the seller all the questions in the world that you want to ask, do your due dilegence, don’t let others do it for you, and if you don’t feel comfortable with placing a bid, say, Thanks, but no thanks and move on.
Couldn’t be any simpler.
For examples…. I could give you a list of people who have had their auctions ruined by stupid comments. While it might catch out a few bad apples, it also penalises the good people.
That’s not a fair system. Bad comments warranted or not effect end sale price and put a pause in the bidders confidence and they re think. It’s not hard to see a site that is potentially a bad investment.
It’s also easy to tell a buyers reputation on flippa. Don’t buy from people with no or little feedback. It’s not foolproof, but I’ve never been scammed here and I’m here often.
Scammers will always scam. Here or anywhere. That’s the sad truth. But it should not make it unfair for the good guys.
By all means put more measures in place before people can turn off comments, just do it so we have a safe place to sell.
Buyers keep going on about wanting a safe place to buy and your right, that is needed as well, but sellers also need to feel safe SELLING.
Right now, it’s not all that great listing a site for sale on here. Privacy is a huge issue.
Just because I don’t want to let nosey commentators know everything about my site without some sort of communication with them first, does not make me a scam artist.
I just don’t want A) my site not to sell due to comments from people who have no interest in buying and B) have a ton of competitors using my inner most secrets because I felt like I had to divulge everything or there would be a commentator backlash and I would lose bidders because of it.
It happens. Often.
Negative comments, warranted and un warranted effect sales and bids. Good guys lose out and that’s an unfair system.
July 1, 2009 - 3:37 pm
“I’d love to see an example or two of an auction where a quality site was listed for a reasonable price and the auction was ruined by pointless comments, because I don’t think there are many.”
Agreed Ben…I would love to see them too.
June 30, 2009 - 5:47 pm
I have been at Sitepoint for years, and I am glad the marketplace is now Flippa. It was the need of the growing business I am sure. Good job SP.
June 30, 2009 - 6:47 pm
Completely agree w/Shane on this one.
Leave the option to publish/not publish public comments at the seller’s discretion.
Personally, I would never share sensitive data – reserved for serious bidders only – in an open forum (that’s what PMs are for), but I’m sure some sellers may feel pressured to provide otherwise confidential information at the risk of losing a sale or receiving “bidder backlash.”
Responding to and posting threads of a general nature (that may be beneficial to others) is fine, but that decision should be left to the seller.
Your reputation is critical in a trust-based marketplace like flippa. Unfortunately, leaving comments open allows some of the more unscrupulous types to abuse the system by posting potentially disparaging and damaging remarks. eBay has been contending with how best to balance the same seller reputation/buyer’s confidence issue for years.
Just my $0.02
July 1, 2009 - 2:41 am
As someone who primarily buys websites, if you take away the ability to have a discussion with the seller via comments, you will lose one of the few things that makes this site different (and better in my opinion) from all the other sites that list websites for sale. If there weren’t so many sellers stretching the truth or blatantly lying when they attempt to sell their site, there wouldn’t be many problems.
I agree that there are a lot of people who can’t seem to prevent themselves from posting an opinion about the price or quality of the site whether they are interested or not, but those comments are ignored by serious buyers since they aren’t reflective of the site itself. Many times the listings that draw a lot of comments like these aren’t going to sell anyway because of an absurd asking price or some other flaw where the seller seems to basically be insulting the intelligence of potential buyers here.
July 1, 2009 - 3:09 pm
If your sites are of the very “high quality” that you say they are, why don’t you just delete the few stupid comments you may get? Point me to your high quality auctions where you were slammed with comments like that?
Handle bad comments like a big boy, your sites should stand for themselves.
Flippa should monitor everything more here anyway….more fee’s should be more service.
If all a registered buyer does is list bad comments, they should be warned, then banned like every other place on the net.
July 2, 2009 - 5:17 pm
Hi Tony,
Yes, that’s the way the current system works.
Unfortunately, a handful of buyers frequently use the “QUESTIONS” feature to offer “OPINIONS” on valuation, that add nothing to the conversation.
July 2, 2009 - 6:40 pm
Exactly, you have to answer PM’s anyway, so just monitor the comments and delete the BS ones.
Most of the time, it’s the sellers that like to hide their extremely cheap and oversold scripts that don’t want to be found out that want the comments out, naturally.
I’ve seen them and would LOVE to comment, but I don’t. I just hope the buyer does their research well enough.
July 2, 2009 - 5:21 pm
Hi Shane,
Would love to chat with you more about us offering a “Pro Seller” option.
What’s the best way to reach you outside of the comment system?
July 1, 2009 - 4:43 am
To Ben,
Like I said. Make it optional. Then YOU can choose who you do business with. If you feel comments make it safer for the buyer, then only buy from those that allow comments.
That was my point. Win/Win. Fairer for the seller who has paid good money for the listing and the buyer can then choose WHO THEY want to do business with.
July 1, 2009 - 11:19 am
Shane, my point is that almost all sellers dislike having comments because they get little to no benefit, so I doubt many of them will turn on comments. For some reason, many sellers here seem to think it is in their interest to disclose as little information as possible and tell buyers that they will just have to trust the seller, when it really just drives away potential buyers.
I’d love to see an example or two of an auction where a quality site was listed for a reasonable price and the auction was ruined by pointless comments, because I don’t think there are many.
Most of the time, the comments do force the seller to clear up discrepancies or missing information in the listing if there is any, which is a good thing.
July 1, 2009 - 3:27 pm
Shane..you say:
“I just don’t want A) my site not to sell due to comments from people who have no interest in buying and B) have a ton of competitors using my inner most secrets because I felt like I had to divulge everything or there would be a commentator backlash and I would lose bidders because of it.”
Please show your sites and I bet many people here can tell you why you are getting so many negative comments as you state. If you don’t want to disclose them, it seems like you have something to hide. There’s not too many “inner most secrets” that webmasters don’t know….
You might be better off selling elsewhere, maybe to unsuspecting newbies or something.
July 2, 2009 - 5:19 pm
But does it turn off some quality sellers, who don’t want to subject their auctions to off-topic comments on valuation, and derogatory comments?
I guess what we’re trying to find out is if turning off comments would lead to more, higher value sites listing themselves on Flippa, since the auction holders would not be subject to abuse for wanting more than 6X or 12X monthly revenue for their premium website.
July 1, 2009 - 4:19 pm
I think comments are fine in auctions as long as the seller can remove ones which either aren’t useful or are trying to ruin the auction.
July 1, 2009 - 8:28 pm
Wow! I never thought eliminating comments would be considered. As a potential buyer who comes here to browse sites for sale (rarely a seller), the comments are a must! I think the site would seriously suffer without commenting.
I am more inclined to post a simple question as a comment as opposed to a PM. I believe others are too. When I read a listing, the comments almost always help provide clarification.
Definitely KEEP the comments. It attracts buyers and that is good for sellers.
July 2, 2009 - 6:18 pm
Keep the comments on listings! Its a very useful tool not only for buyers but a way for a seller to connect with potential buyers as well, and have some important questions answered without having to repeat it in PMs.
July 2, 2009 - 8:32 pm
Tough one. Both sides have great points. I’m inclinced to say let the seller decide, because ultimately it’s their auction and it’s only going to have an effect on their sale.
But here’s another idea. Let the seller define criteria for who can comment. Just some simple stuff – only users registered for over 30 days, for example.
I like allowing comments on my auctions, but I am wary of saboteurs and trolls using junk accounts.
July 2, 2009 - 10:29 pm
I am a buyer of websites. My username is jmasser. I have bought 3 smaller “established sites” off of Sitepoint in the last year and look forward to expanding my collection. My vote is that you DO NOT REMOVE COMMENTS.
Comments are a primary reason for why I would continue to visit the new Flippa. Typically, listings with more comments catch my attention when I am scanning sites. Many times, I find there are people out there that have already done the due diligence of looking into the stats or the “proofs” and asked follow up question. Call me lazy – I don’t care. I don’t want to always have to try and figure out the sometimes misleading details of the stats. We do it collectively.
For me this is a no brainer. Every other site is trying to figure out how to incorporate more social aspects and you guys are thinking of taking them out?
I see that some sellers are worried about bad comments ruining a sale. Most sellers are quite good at dealing with unwarranted negative comments. Many times, other commenters chime in and tell the offending commenter off. It’s easy to spot malicious comments and I ignore them. Furthermore, throughout history, the saying has always been “Buyer Beware” not “Seller Beware”. It is the natural tendency of sellers to overhype their products. Buyers need to cut through the hype and commenting helps. Certainly Ebay knows how important it is to protect the buyer. They changed their feedback rules recently so that only buyers can leave negative feedback.
Keep the comments!
JMasser
July 2, 2009 - 10:49 pm
Letting sellers decide on comments seems like a good idea. I’m sure some sellers will still allow comments, since there’s always that chance of a “good” question that can actually help the sale of the site. You can go further by arranging the comments as per the usefulness (voted by users) as seen in many sites like dailytech. Maybe even a commenting reputation, which could be separate from the buying/selling feedback.
As for the buyers who require expert advice through comments, flippa could always provide an expert opinion on the site in question. This would require more work on their side and would have to be free like comments. Didn’t sitepoint have an expert opinion service?
July 3, 2009 - 2:06 pm
I keep trying but I still can’t understand why a *quality seller* with a quality site will be afraid of derogatory and off-topic comments.
*Buyers* are not stupid, that’s one of the reasons they have the cash. And buyers can clearly make the difference between derogatory comments and useful remarks. And what’s more, the way a seller responds to a derogatory comment can reveal what kind of person you’re dealing with. That’s very helpful sometimes.
Just look around the marketplace – maybe 80%, if not more of the sellers are stretching the truth (to put it mildly)…and you’re thinking about allowing them to disable comments! Those who are afraid of comments always have some skeletons hidden in the closet. Because there is no way a derogatory comment can destroy the value of a quality site.
With that said, yes, go ahead with the “Pro Seller” program that will allow disabling comments, I’m all for it. But with one twist – please, charge the “pro sellers” 10% of the BIN price in advance. Since they are all selling high-end-big-potential-guarnateed-income site, I’m sure that’s a small price to pay
July 9, 2009 - 4:44 pm
The Private Messages system seems to be step backwards.
While the interface is cleaner and friendlier, that’s about the only plus.
A lot seems to be missing.
Even little features on SitePoint, such as the auto-complete usernames, are very handy.
And gone is the 60-second delay between messages. Although that actually is quite handy, I can see it being abused…
The “Sent Messages” folder is a bit confusing as well – why are messages marked as unread when WE sent them?
Are there any plans to improve this?
July 10, 2009 - 7:06 am
Seems new feedback comments aren’t being transferred to Flippa.
It’s only a minor issue – where auctions ended BEFORE the flippa move but feedback was given AFTER the flippa move.
June 13, 2011 - 10:10 am
what does pending bid mean in the auction box,i
always get outranked if there is a bid pending,
how do i do thsi
June 30, 2009 - 8:39 am
Bob,
Are you talking about the link which said this?
“Alert: New Blog Post – YES, we are listening to you… I promise!”
This is just supposed to inform you that there’s a new blog post, as the text says, so when we posted again, it was replaced by the next post. But this doesn’t mean we’re not listening!
June 30, 2009 - 9:12 am
Shane,
We’re certainly discussing this one internally. It’s a bit contentious because the buyers like to be able to warn each other about possibly dodgy sellers, while the sellers prefer to avoid public disclosure of commercial information. It might happen… Maybe if you put it up on our UserVoice (which is really easy!) then it will get some votes and convince us to do it?
July 6, 2009 - 8:55 am
Wha about doing something like what Amazon does, where anyone can add comments, but the community (and admins) can flag a comment as ‘helpful’ for furthering the discussion or negative – effectively de-rating those which are not useful to the listing?
I think there’s a two-way street for you guys in developing the marketplace – that is serving those hard-working sellers earn a decent ROI, but also having the doorway open for buyers to become more savvy given the range of variant business models – seems like comments help to open that up.
Of course, I also sympathize with the input regarding seller listings – having worked in that space before where we didn’t allow any sort of “social” commentary.
June 30, 2009 - 9:26 am
Thanks Dave.
I know you are listening and I really appreciate that.
Yes I was talking about the “Alert: New Blog Post – YES, we are listening to you… I promise!” link.
I did not realize that it was a rotating link. Sorry.
No worries Dave, I support what you guys are doing just curious as to the sudden change and was just following the comments of that link/post.
I am a buyer and have re-sold a couple of sites and just wanted to be re-assured that I’m still part of a community and not getting lost in Management greed.
Thank you for your quick response.
Bob
July 1, 2009 - 5:59 pm
I could care less what buyers want in regards to comments. If they were paying for the listings, it would be a different story. I’m sick of babysitting listings to protect them from the insidious auction saboteurs on the site, whether they be competitors or just jerks. I want the ability not to have comments at all. If a buyer wishes to report an auction, they already have that option.
July 9, 2009 - 9:51 pm
Chris,
Yep, definitely. The PM system will definitely be improved, as that’s one of the much-used features which got slightly neglected in the implementation of the new site.