Flippa Launches New Safe Trading Tips and Tools
Posted on July 22nd, 2010 by Luke Moulton
Not so long ago, we asked you how you make sure you trade safely at Flippa.
Every business transaction involves a degree of risk—even when you’re dealing with a person you’ve met and know well.
Throw a few thousand miles, timezone differences, cultural mores, and language difficulties into the mix, and establishing trust in a person you’re buying or selling from can be a real challenge.
The tips you gave us were fantastic! We’ve compiled them into a series of detailed new pages that will help buyers and sellers protect their business interests, and trade as safely as possible at Flippa.
Website Buyer Safety Tips
Website Seller Safety Tips
Thanks again to everyone who contributed their advice to these resources. But your input prompted us to go further than that. The old saying is true: information really is power. So we’ve also added several new tools to help you research people and properties at Flippa more thoroughly.
First up, we’ve added a sample contract of sale to the site. As that information explains, entering into a written contract of sale can provide peace of mind, and help to ensure that all parties to the agreement are on the same page.
Obviously, the sample contract comes with no guarantees, but download it and see what you think — we’d love to hear your feedback on it.
We’ve also added some new warnings to the Due Diligence Data on listed properties.
We now provide a Google Cache warning, which is displayed if our Google search for the site didn’t return the property that appears in the Flippa listing.
We also show a warning when our search for the domain’s registrant on WHOIS shows that the person has blocked or hidden their details.
We’ve added a link to each property’s history in the Wayback Machine from the Due Diligence page on Flippa, so buyers can more easily check out the evolution of each site they’re considering.
Finally, we’ve recently added escrow services to Flippa to provide an extra, optional layer of security for buyers and sellers.
Take a look at these new tips and tools and let us know what you think. Will these resources make it easier for you to trade safely with the people you meet here at Flippa?
Comments (21)
Comments are closed.
July 22, 2010 - 1:53 pm
Luke:
These tools and resources are definitely helpful. Good to see you guys making efforts to make your marketplace as safe as possible to do business.
Travis
July 22, 2010 - 3:11 pm
Great! I’ve learned something new here
July 22, 2010 - 6:43 pm
Excellent and very fast development. The most important thing of any auction sites is to make all trading activities secure for both sellers and buyers. I do agree that you should add as many tools as possible that show all details needed for both sellers and buyers. Further, you should have strong punishment for any scammer too.
July 23, 2010 - 12:16 am
hey , nice tips and tools there…flippa is just becoming more and more nice to buyers as well as sellers….Cheers!!
July 23, 2010 - 12:22 am
Great tools for safe site flipping to protect both…buyer and seller.
July 23, 2010 - 12:24 am
Thank you for the tips. These are helpful especially for newbie flippers like me. I bought ebooks on site flipping and implementing them now for future profits. Wish me luck!
July 23, 2010 - 1:10 am
When you break the law, most liked you’ll go in jail.
Here, if you break the rules, you must be banned accordingly; period. Otherwise, the person will remain around and sooner or later will do it again.
Sites like this one should be 97% worry free.
George
July 23, 2010 - 1:14 am
Great tools for safe site flipping, I do agree that you should add as many tools as possible that show all details needed for both sellers and buyers
July 23, 2010 - 2:12 am
Thank You Guys for going an extra mile to ensure Flippa does not lose its reputation of safe trading
July 23, 2010 - 2:28 am
Thanks for the helpful tips! I will use them for my two listings. It’d be nice though, if Flippa had it’s own escrow program, like GetAFreelancer has.
July 23, 2010 - 2:37 am
I second that, or just like 99designs.com would be great I think.
July 23, 2010 - 2:49 am
I must confess this is one of the best news I have read in recent time. I guess the escrow service will help both the buyer and the seller and create confidence in the buyers which will result into more sales for sellers and result into more money for everyone.
I just hope you guys can try to make it compulsory for everyone. I have chosen not to hide my identity on flippa but I surely do know that some of my sites don’t sell cos I am a Nigerian but a prospective buyer who knows flippa’s escrow is there to protect him will gladly do business with a Nigerian.
I personally like the escrow service, I have been having issues paying success fees but with this I know Flippa can easily remove their own money before sending it to me – No need to be begging people to help pay the success fees.
Another thing is paying the listing fees. Nigerians cards are not accepted which I understand ( I don’t accept Nigeria cards either and I am a Nigerian in Nigeria) but flippa should make it possible for us Nigerians to use other forms of payment like bank to bank transfer. After all not all of us are sc*mmers.
Personally, I have no problem making payment but because flippa recently banned my account because I use the paypal account which I have been using to fund my own account to fund a friends account tells me many Nigerians and Africans will have the same problem.
I think allowing one paypal account for one flippa account is extremely senseless ( at least to me ). What if my brother needs to list a site for sell and he does not have funds in his own paypal, does it mean I can not help my own brother?
It is true that flippa is tying one flippa account to one paypal account to stop people from creating multiple accounts but why don’t you just make it one ip to one account?
Let’s not forget that some people can not use paypal in their own countries. I have friends in the UK, Australia and the USA who trust me enough to help fund my own account but not many Nigerians, Africa and some parts of Asia where paypal is not available have the same opportunity.
That is just my $0.02 but I will not stop complaining until many Nigerians are able to flip websites without any major problem.
July 23, 2010 - 7:37 am
hello,
please add more payment option for “buy it now” option ,
i m not using paypal (like millions people in the web), but i use moneybookers, Alertpay,2checkout,plimus, so when i want to set buy now option i can’t use it …
please fix that.
PS1 : when i open any listing the revenue must be in the 3 top 3 boxes , as it s fist thing i m seeing when i want to buy a website.not in bottom boxes….
PS2: you must udapt your logo slogan : Buy & Sell websites AND DOMAINS
Regards,
July 23, 2010 - 7:44 am
also i m not selling so much websites as i was on sitepoint , and the problem with flippa, is that latest listings are not in flippa home page, so not exposed, only featured listing are exposed.
the solution, make it as it was on sitepoint, add 2 side bares left and right, add login boxe, latest news boxe,search boxe,and featured listing ll be displayed on right and left side bares of website only, and than latest listing ll be diplayed in home page of flippa…
it ll be very usefull for us.
thanks,
July 23, 2010 - 9:42 am
this is definitely a step in the right direction for both buyers & sellers.
July 23, 2010 - 10:49 am
I must say that you guys are alwasys on point, I always enjoy your ideas, and throughts on site flipping and protection always a pleasure reading your articles. Thanks guys.
Tony
July 23, 2010 - 11:06 am
I agree that information is power, which is why I am still wondering why the links to past auctions have been deleted.
In every auction, the seller has access to every piece of information about the site for sale, while the buyer has to make a decision based on the information provided by the seller and what he can dig up on his own. Having access to comments and data from past listings helped buyers immensely, and losing that information has made Flippa less safe.
July 23, 2010 - 11:08 am
benitez17 – the past auction link is still available, it appears next to the URL together with the number of times the site has been listed.
July 23, 2010 - 1:28 pm
Thanks for adding it again. I have asked this question a couple of times in the past with no response.
July 24, 2010 - 10:10 am
One recommendation for anyone purchasing a website – do not, I repeat, do not, use GoDaddy as your hosting company if the website you are buying is already hosted on GoDaddy.
It has been over 24 hours now since I initially tried to point the domain name to my Godaddy hosting account and the website I purchased on Flippa is still offline. It is obvious to me that this is solely a Godaddy issue.
I do not know all of the technical details but apparently, you can only point a domain name to one Godaddy hosting account across all Godaddy servers at any point in time. This seems absolutely absurd to me but that is what is causing the problem.
It seems the original owner of the website, following instructions from Godaddy’s tech support person initiated the process to shutdown the original hosting account and then got locked out of his account. At the current time, the website is down and he is locked out (for more than 24 hours now) and Godaddy just keeps telling him that things should get resolved in the next few hours.
I find it amazing that Godaddy has not developed a quick and easy process (like their domain transfer process) to streamline transferring a live website from one Godaddy hosting account to another Godaddy hosting account.
Bottom line, save yourself a big headache when you buy a website here on Flippa that is already hosted on Godaddy – set up your hosting with someone other than Godaddy. The transfer will likely go smoothly, quickly and without issue.
I have transferred several other websites that way and I have never had even a tiny issue.
The funny part of all of this is the fact that I went out of my way to setup the Godaddy hosting account in the first place. I assumed since the original website was on Godaddy that it would make it easier if I just kept my hosting on Godaddy. Boy, was that ever a huge mistake!!!
July 26, 2010 - 8:27 pm
Great news, one of my biggest concerns is trusting the owner, now we have better tools to allow us a little more control over the purchase.
I hope you can focus on the biding process. It has always been my concern that owners inflate their products. The one log-in rule is design to keep this in check but you know as well and I do getting email address quite easy and in Europe disposal phones is easy so the price inflation is a huge problem.
Keep up the good work