When listing a website on Flippa, there are a lot of options to consider before you sell your website. Options that can have a significant impact on how well your site sells. If you’re a regular seller on Flippa, you’ve probably experimented with these variables and come to your own conclusions. But if you’re a newbie or have been a little shy about experimenting with different auction settings, this post might help you discover some new selling strategies.

This post details my experience listing a site for sale on Flippa. The first time I listed the site it didn’t sell, the second time round I had twice as many bidders and the site eventually reached its Buy It Now (BIN) price! Here’s the low down:

The Site

The subject of this experiment is a website I built using WordPress with a customized theme. At the time of writing it had 10 unique articles, a small amount of backlinks and PageRank 2. The site had little traffic, no revenue and was a couple of months old. In short, it was fairly typical of what we call a start-up site; a domain and website package selling at an entry level price, usually in the sub $500 price range. Here are the results from the two auctions:

Auction #1

The first time I listed the site the following options were used:

  • Public Auction: 20 Days
  • Starting Bid: $97
  • Reserve: $197
  • BIN: $497
  • Tags: clickbank, health, wordpress
  • Featured on home page: Yes
  • Success Fee: I paid all 5%
  • Title: PR2 Niche WordPress Blog, Unique Content, Affiliate Site

Results: By the close of the auction the site had not sold. Here are the results:

  • Bids: 5
  • Top Bid: $140

Auction #2

The second time round I listed the site, the following settings were used:

  • Public Auction: 5 Days
  • Starting Bid: $1
  • Reserve: $1
  • BIN: $297
  • Tags: affiliate, health, clickbank
  • Featured on home page: Yes
  • Success Fee: I paid all 5%
  • Title: PR2 Niche WordPress Blog, Unique Content – NO RESERVE

Results: The website sold for the BIN.

  • Bids: 10
  • Winning Bid: $297 (BIN)

Why Did It Sell in Auction #2?

You’ll notice some significant changes to the auction settings second time round. I went with a short term auction, low starting price, no reserve and a decreased BIN. Other subtle changes included “NO RESERVE” in the title and the inclusion of the affiliate tag.

Potentially there are a few too many variables between the two listings to draw concrete conclusions, however, the theory with the settings in round two are as follows:

  • Shorter auction times get more attention. There’s more of a sense of urgency with a shorter auction; an auction ending in 5 days as opposed to 20 or even 30 might insight people to act sooner.
  • Lower starting bid and no reserve encourages bids.
  • Listing gets pushed into the Most Active page. With the volume of bids received, the listing was pushed into the Most Active page which may have encouraged more bids.

If you’re building and selling start-up packages, listing your websites for sale with no reserve might be a hard pill to swallow. When you’ve put time and money into developing a site, not having the security blanket of a reserve price may be a little scary. However, experimenting with auction length, starting bid and BIN’s might help you increase your sell rate and average price over time.

Take Aways

So, what can the new Flippa website seller take away from this experiment? To me the results seem pretty intuitive and lead to the following tips:

  • Set a low starting bid to encourage bids
  • Set a realistic reserve – the cheapest price you can sell the site for and still make money
  • Set a realistic BIN

If you have any website selling tips you’d like to share with the Flippa community, we’d love to hear them – just drop a note in the comments below.