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Domain Investing Stats and Tips

Quick Chat with David Slutzkin, CEO – Flippa

November 13, 2012 by Raymond Hackney

By: RH

Quick Chat with David Slutzkin, CEO – Flippa

Flippa Melbourne Office

The staff of Flippa in Melbourne

1) How is business for Flippa this year ? Up or down vs last year ?

“We
are up upon last year in overall sales.  In fact, we  just hit
$90,000,000 in sales and have our eye on the $100,000,000 mark.  We are
predicting growth in 2013 to be more modest as we tighten our listing
criteria in order to improve the offering on our marketplace.”

2) What kind of websites sell best ?


“Top
level sites sell the best.  By top level, we mean sites with substantial
revenue, traffic, and that are aged.  A good example is militarybases.com,
which sold for $125k.  At the time it was listed, it had 125,000 unique
visitors and more than 386,000 page views each month, generating about
$6200 in passive advertising revenue. Beneath that, WordPress sites that
rely on ad revenue from networks like AdSense sell well. From our
experience in just over $90 million in websites sales, we have found
that sites with modest reserves are a strong driver for a successful
sale.”


3) How do you prevent fraudulent bidding ?


“Fraudulent
bidding falls mainly into two camps; shill bidding and bidders that do
not complete the transaction. We’ve employed some incredibly
sophisticated internal and third party technology that we use to match
accounts and determine if they are connected (in the case of shill
bidding).  To further this, we require a verified landline or cell phone
number, (see http://flippa.com/blog/update-to-flippa-phone-verification/)

,  and require credit card verification on bids over $200, http://flippa.com/blog/minor-changes-to-bidding-on-flippa/.
 Since the implementation of these safety features, we have been able
to lower our dispute rates, yet we remain focused and vigilant in our
efforts to protect our users and improve on dispute rates.”



4) Do you keep any stats on the multiples of revenue that
websites sell for ? If so what is the average multiple a website sells
for ?

“Most sites will sell with multiples that fall between
10 and 36 months. However, it is highly dependent upon the niche as well
as the reliability of past performance indicating potential future
performance.  For example, black-hat SEO tactics when relying on search
engine traffic tends to drive down the multiple.”


5) What are the fees to sell on Flippa ?


“It’s $29 to list a web property and a further 5% success fee if it sells, which is capped at $2k.”

6) Does Flippa allow employees to bid on auctions ?

“We do allow our staff to bid on auctions as long as the bidders are
clear about this with sellers, however we’re usually so busy working
with Flippa, that our staff of 12 doesn’t have the time to be buying
more sites.
Thank you David and a special shout out to Lara Miller for all her work.

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Filed Under: Flippa, Quick Chat

About Raymond Hackney

Raymond Hackney has been involved with domain names since 1997. One of the most prolific writers in the domain industry and founder of TLDinvestors.com and 3Character.com

Comments

  1. Billy says

    November 13, 2012 at 7:25 am

    Great interview,these were questions I had thx

  2. Alessandro Zamboni says

    November 13, 2012 at 4:03 pm

    I’m one of hte first users of Flippa, and I won the prize of 1 year of free auctions for the 100’000th auction posted. More, the first Flippa course built was mine 🙂
    Seeing your photo, all together smiling, and reading the awesome interview, I can only say a big “thank you” for your many efforts to keep Flippa clean and secure.
    I had my up and downs with user not paying, but until now everything went well.
    It’s always a plesure put up websites and blogs for sale 🙂
    And I’m sure Flippa will grow up in value each month, until you will keep things simple.
    Thanks so much and see you soon,
    Alessandro Zamboni

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