Technology has taken over the world already. Even the minor of things are being done with the help of technology. The digital assets we have like apps and websites is how all of this reached each and every household. Plenty of apps, websites, etc are being created each day and still more and more keep coming up the next day. All of this is due to the demand these digital assets have in the current world.
Do you own any digital assets? A website? an app? Maybe a domain name? Or maybe you are looking to buy one. Are you? Then you might have already heard about Flippa.com. Even if you didn’t, don’t worry, here in this article, we will cover all that there is to know about Flippa and how things work on this platform and also the advantages and disadvantages of using Flippa.com. and a few other things related to this platform. But first, let’s find outa few things about Flippa.
What is Flippa?
Flippa.com is an online marketplace that allows you to buy and sell digital assets like websites, apps and domains. This is a peer-to-peer platform, which means, on this platform, buyers and sellers can directly exchange their assets with each other without the need for intermediaries. On Flippa you can sell and buy assets at prices as low as one dollar too. The platform has a very user-friendly interface and anyone can find their way easily around the platform. Literally, anyone can buy or sell their digital assets on Flippa.
The platform was founded in the year 2009 by Mike Mickiewicz & Mark Harbottle. It was initially developed as a marketplace for the SitePoint which was dedicated to the selling & buying of domains and websites. In 2009, it became its own marketplace and since then it is headquartered in Melbourne of Australia and San Francisco of the United States. Flippa offers a range of services along with providing a medium for the sellers and buyers to trade their assets.
- Flippa Due Diligence
- Flippa Finder
- Flippa Broker
- Flippa Legal
- Flippa Private
- Flippa Market Partner
- Financing
All the above services are offered to the users at a reasonable price on Flippa.com
Buying on Flippa
Looking to Buy a digital asset on Flippa.com? If you are, you are in the right place. Before you buy an asset on Flippa.com there are a few things you need to know about. We are more than happy to help you out through the whole process. So, let’s now look at Flippa.com from a buyer’s perspective.
Firstly, why would you buy a website or web property that is already established? It is because you can get a website that already has an established audience which comes at a comparatively lower price and at the same time saves you all the time you would spend on building and developing it.
This is how the website will appear to you when you choose the type of asset you are looking to buy on Flippa. The picture above has the ads placed by various sellers on the website. Each of these advertisements contains the details specific to the particular digital asset up for sale like in the picture above, the type of website, monetization method, net profit etc. You can even put these specifications in the filter to find the websites of your preference.
The platform is completely free for buyers. That means you can buy as many digital assets as you want and don’t need to pay any brokerage fees. On top of that, you can view all the information you need regarding the website or any other asset that you wish to buy, like the financials, traffic and other information and the notes of the seller from the listing page itself.
You can have a review of the mentioned characteristics of the asset thoroughly from the given info and also request more information from the seller too. Flippa also provides various plans that review the said assets for the needed properties. When you find the listing that you like, you can place a bid on that listing by making an offer on the listing. If you are satisfied with the asset and don’t want to take a chance of losing it in the auction you can even buy it right away by clicking on the ‘Buy it Now option. Buying assets through the buy it now option costs a little more money than the asking price quoted by the seller. Also since anyone can sell their digital assets on Flippa, you might come across several scammer listings, so make sure you don’t fall for them and lose your money.
While we still are discussing buying web properties on Flippa, let us go ahead and have a look at a few tips and tricks that you might need while buying on Flippa.com
Buyer’s Tips and Advice
- While searching for the listings of the digital assets you wish to buy, look for the listings that are listed by verified sellers. You can identify such listings by the green coloured checkmark beside the seller’s name.
- When looking to buy digital assets, look for properties that are aged more than two years. This way, you can filter out most scam listings. Not only that, the websites or apps that are aged more than two years would already have existing visitors. By this time, the businesses would already have passed their crucial building age and you can make a decision about buying it or not, by looking at its financial, traffic and other aspects. Even though you might miss out on some promising start-ups with this filter you are more likely to find a legitimate site using this tip.
- Also, don’t forget to study its business valuation multiples of the most recent 12 months while you calculate yearly earnings.
- Check the seller’s transaction history before you make an offer, if the seller has a good transaction history, that would mean that the seller has made successful transactions before and most likely is not a scammer.
- Choose a listing that matches your interests or hobbies. Buying a website or an app and not being able to manage it well could only bring you losses. So while choosing the digital assets you want to buy, look for the ones that you are interested in. If you like writing, maybe you can buy a website or app that is related to blogging and grow your interest there, by putting it to work. Also, if you are buying a tech website, make sure that you learn about the related technology or have someone with technical knowledge by your side. Be aware of potential threats that you might come across with the kind of digital asset you are buying.
- Contact the seller and find out more about the asset. Clear communication between you and the seller could benefit you in many ways. Ask them any doubts you have about the listing. You can ask them to grant you access to their google analytics on a read-only basis to review its traffic. Not just that, any doubt you have about the listing, ask the seller directly and clarify it.
- You can make use of Flippa’s services like Flippa legal to help with the legal procedures post making the offer. This could help you in avoiding and resolving any disputes that may come in the future.
Selling on Flippa
You might think, why would one want to sell their online business when they can take care of it themselves. But there could be plenty of reasons why. First and foremost would be getting plenty of money at once. Some people also sell their businesses in order to free their time for a new project. Some might wanna sell their businesses and go investing while others might spend it on the things they like and some others might do so as part of their retirement. Whatever might be the reason behind it, selling their digital assets has become a popular thing lately and digital assets are in high demand these days.
Now let’s look at how selling on Flippa.com works. In order to do that, let’s look at the platform through the seller’s eyes. If you sell on Flippa, your ad listing will reach more potential buyers and the fees you pay as listing fees and success fees are relatively lesser than others in the market. Flippa has a very user-friendly interface. You can find everything you need in just a couple of clicks on the website.
You can start selling your digital assets right from the ‘Sell Now’ option on Flippa’s home page. After you click on Sell Now you will be redirected to Flippa’s seller’s page. On this page, you will be asked to enter the URL to the asset you are interested in selling and mention the type of asset you want to sell.
On Flippa.com, you can sell online businesses, established websites, apps for iOS and android, template websites, Domains etc. You can also sell Amazon FBA stores, Amazon KDP, Amazon FBM stores, Big Commerce stores, Merch by Amazon, SaaS apps, Desktop Apps, Side projects, Shopify stores and Newsletters.
Once you choose the type of your asset, Flippa asks you if you wish to sell through a broker or directly on your own. Next, you will be asked a few questions regarding you and your digital asset and if there are any things that the potential buyer need to be aware of. Any possible profits or losses you are aware of that may come after the sale should also be notified. Following this, you need to upload and link the documents and data related to your digital assets for verification. You can fill out the income source details by yourself or you can even link QuickBooks so that the buyers can review it before the purchase. You should also upload profit and loss accounts and connect them to google analytics for the buyers to check the traffic.
After you upload all the data needed for the verification, you will be asked to enter the sale price of your digital asset and also to choose between an auction sale and a fixed price sale. Flippa is a peer to peer platform, meaning that you can sell your web properties directly to the sellers on the platform without the need for a broker. But, if you want to sell with the help of a broker, Flippa offers that too. You can negotiate with your potential buyers and sell it at a price that you want as after all it is your asset and you have spent your time and money on it. The platform is affordable and is as flexible as it can get.
Now let us have a look at some of the tips that could help the sellers on Flippa.com
Seller’s Tips and Advice
- As a seller, your first priority is at determining the value of your business. Guessing the worth of your business could be difficult but not impossible. To make the process easier, make use of the online business valuation tool on Flippa’s website and find the accurate value of your business.
- Along with the valuation, another important factor that the sellers should consider is timing. When should you sell your business? Anytime is a good time on Flippa. But, you need to pay attention to certain factors that the buyers find desirable in your business. A nice valuation, an upward trend in the business are the factors that buyers find appealing in a business listing alongside other factors. Even if your business is going up with profits if your business shows consistency, a lot of buyers find it to be one of the desirable factors for a business.
- Sell your business only if you want to and are ready to. If you have any doubts about selling it, take a break and think clearly about what you want to do about it.
- If your business has any issues or problems that might bring losses to the buyer in future or if there are any temporary issues with your business asset, mention it to the buyer so that they can take an informed decision about it.
- Make the interface of your digital asset mobile-friendly as a majority of people use mobile phones to access pretty much everything.
- Don’t neglect any messages from the buyers. Answer any questions they might have with patience and clarify their doubts as this can speed up the process.
- If there are any other aspects of the business like social media followers or SEO experts that could be beneficial, mention them too to the buyer as this could increase the chances of a sale being closed faster.
- Don’t use any tactics while listing the prices. If you list the price higher, hoping that you would receive the regular amount after the bargain, you could lose several other buyers as they might think that the prices are not reasonable. So be reasonable and realistic when quoting the sale price.
- If possible add a few free add-ons with the web property at the sale. This might attract a fraction of the audience and you might as well get your deal.
What is Flippa’s website valuation tool?
Determining the value of a website could be manually difficult. There would be n number of things to consider, tons of calculations to run and a lot of other things. But with Flippa’s free online business valuation tool you can find out the value of your website in no time. Flippa began with 22 machine learning models in the beginning. Now, they chose five of the top-performing models to give an accurate valuation of the websites today. These five models are
- Light Gradient Boosting Machine
- Random Forest
- Gradient Boosting Regressor
- Linear Regression
- Extra Tree
Pricing on Flippa
Listing packages on Flippa
Currently, Flippa is offering four listing packages
- Standard package, which costs $29. This package is valid for 3 months. The package includes
- Standard reach
- Discounted escrow
- Marketplace listing
- Data integrations
- Same-day support
- Add on options: $99 NDA and Confidentiality, $99 legal templates, $99 optimization reports.
- Enhanced package, which costs $299. This package has no fixed duration. The package includes
- The listings will remain live as long as you are active
- Free escrow
- Category page showcase
- 2x reach than Standard package
- Weekly insight reports
- Higher visibility
- Other features and add-ons are the same as the Standard package.
- Premium package, which costs $399. This package too has no fixed duration. This package includes,
- 4 x reach
- Free escrow
- Paid Buyer targeting
- Social Media Promotion
- Dedicate Flippa agent
- Web display advertising.
- Free Optimization report and NDA and Confidentiality.
- Other features are the same as the enhanced package.
- Add on options: $99 legal templates
- Ultimate package, which costs $499.This package too has no fixed duration. The package includes
- 8x reach
- Third-party syndication
- Free escrow
- Daily newsletter feature
- Homepage Promotion
- Blog Post Feature
- Custom video feature
- All the features and add ons mentioned in the premium package are free on this package.
Success Fees on Flippa
- For $1 to $49,999 the success fee is 10% of the selling price
- For $50,000 to $99,999 the success fee is 7.5% of the selling price
- For $100,000 to $2M the success fee is 5% of the selling price (the success fee is 15% if you choose to go through the sale with the help of the broker.)
- The sales that are priced above $2M come under Flippa’s VIP program. Any discussions related to the sale are taken care of by the VIP team assigned to it.
Listing Fees on Flippa
- The listing fee is $49 for Online businesses and established websites,
- The listing fee is $15 for Starter/template websites
- The listing fee is $10 for domains
- The listing fee is $15 for Android and iOS apps
Advantages:
- Flippa doesn’t put a restriction on the price, unlike some other websites. With Flippa, you can buy and sell at any price you want.
- Offers Buyers’ protection
- Its User-Friendly interface
- Search Filters that help the users find what they are looking for in seconds
- Flippa Legal services and sell with a broker option that helps the buyers and sellers complete the transaction efficiently and effortlessly.
- Large audience
- Escrow service is one of the biggest advantages of using Flippa. This service assures that the money is safe with Flippa until both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the transaction
- Webiste Valuation Tool
In Conclusion
Flippa is a wonderful platform for anyone to buy and sell digital assets. It allows you to sell a range of digital assets on its platform. Anyone can buy and sell digital assets on Flippa at any price they wish to. It offers all the services you need in one place. For someone who is new to all this and wants someone to help them sell their digital assets, Flippa will find them a broker, who already knows about the platform well. The broker will stick with them from beginning to the end and get them the best deals they could get on the platform.
Flippa also offers other services like Flippa Legal, where the user will get a vetted legal package at a price to avoid any future complications that might arise otherwise. The legal team will look into the contract carefully and makes sure that the contracts are efficient and legally binding. Not just that, Flippa is offering other services like Due diligence, Flippa Private, Financing etc, which covers all the services that any buyer or seller would need while selling or buying digital assets. The platform is very flexible, affordable and efficient compared to other similar platforms. If you are looking for such a platform, without a doubt you can visit Flippa.com and check it out by yourself.
