SitePoint, the popular marketplace where you can buy and sell entire websites, is turning its marketplace tab into a new standalone site called Flippa, and users are not happy. Having “outgrown its tab” on the information portal for web professionals, the marketplace is launching in public beta as Flippa. In the blog post announcing the launch, the company lists 10 new features, conveniently leaving the most apparent one for last: a new pricing model.
Since comments are closed for that particular blog post, we took a look at the forum entry on SitePoint where the spin-off was announced, and couldn’t help noticing users seem to be quite upset by the move.
While the migration of users’ entire auction history, bidding history and feedback rating was done automatically, several users are up in arms about the fact that they received no notice of the move prior to the actual execution. The new pricing model—which includes a success fee of 5% of the sale price for SitePoint with every successful transaction that gets closed (capped at $499)—is also a topic of lively discussion. Some messages from users:
—This is a really bad move guys. I hate it so much. Now do I have to create a new username / password? You had a good thing going at Sitepoint. Please listen to your customers here and revert. Flippa…. what a stupid name, and stupid design. I doubt I’m going to use Flippa, and prob will start using DP more from now. Guys… seriously… think about what your customers want. We want the old Sitepoint Auctions back.
—Just to add to everyone elses posts: I’ve been using the site point marketplace for along long time and I truly don’t understand why this has been created? The success fee is laughable – 5% of the winning bid? Are you kidding me? I won’t be buying or listing one single site on flippa – what a deadset ripoff, you guys are making Aussies look bad! So the success fee is going to increase prices of ALL sites listed and decrease the number of sites listed. Sounds like a great idea, wish i’d thought of it.
—I don’t like the move to flippa. At first I thought I had a virus taking me to some other site. Need to revert back to the old listing format. Looks like I’ll be spending less time here now.
—I regularly list websites on the SitePoint marketplace – more websites then 99% of the crowd there. When I first got the email I opened the website and I was horrified, the domain horrible, the design worse – many people think that yeah yeah design might be a preference but when it interferes with usability thats a problem especially if your talking about millions of dollars worth of sales. Splitting up the advertise your services / and the websites was also a horrible move. By doing so you nearly nulled the traffic on advertise your services and listing there is now pointless. The website sales traffic is what drove those listings to the point where they were slightly worth the price.
Plenty more where that came from.