New Website Marketplace - Please Give Feedback

**ztyler90** · January 24th, 2010, 11:58 PM

Hey everyone,

I first want to say "hi!" - this is my first post.

I'm the founder of Blarket.com, a new website marketplace geared towards selling high end websites. I launched the site about a month ago and would love to get all the advice and feedback I can. I've been slowly building a community, and I really want to know that you guys really want in a marketplace. I am a website seller myself, so I'm aware that there's still a few features that Blarket needs (they should be coming shortly, like site verification.)

I'd love to get any advice, feedback, comments, and/or questions!

Thanks,

Zach

**Clinton** · January 25th, 2010, 03:27 AM

Hi Zach, and welcome.

I like the look of your site but must admit I thought it very ambitious. There are several sites trying to compete with the likes of Flippa to attract buyers/sellers, but most of them are free. It would be interesting to know how you intend to build this on a pay-for-listing model. Could you share any of that with us?

**3Six** · January 25th, 2010, 11:10 AM

ztyler90, all the best with your project. On what basis will you decide if a site is a high end site? You may get an idea of what buyers want if you look here. Hope that helps.

**kmander** · January 25th, 2010, 02:43 PM

Beautiful site - did you design it yourself?

Flippa has become the core marketplace and you'll have a tough ride to beat them off their post. An attractive price point will certainly help, but I'm guessing you'll need something even more special to draw in the crowds.

If you're trying to position yourself as the quality marketplace, perhaps you could think of some zany ways to accomplish that - such as using PR/ranking as a filter or putting all submissions through a panel review. Members could flag bad sites or use a vote up/down to show marketplace confidence.

**ztyler90** · January 25th, 2010, 08:33 PM

Originally Posted by Clinton

Hi Zach, and welcome.

I like the look of your site but must admit I thought it very ambitious. There are several sites trying to compete with the likes of Flippa to attract buyers/sellers, but most of them are free. It would be interesting to know how you intend to build this on a pay-for-listing model. Could you share any of that with us?

Thanks Clinton for the response. In the early stages of development I realized that offering free listings wasn't the right way to go. By charging a fee, friction is created between the spammy websites and the established websites who are willing to pay X amount to get their website sold. I think if a marketplace has enough value than a pay-per-listing model is the right way to go. The hardest challenge for me is to build a marketplace where both a buyer AND a seller want to visit. It's a tough situation because it's much like the chicken and the egg problem, which one comes first? The best answer is that they have to both come at the same time, but that's the challenge I'm excited to face!

**ztyler90** · January 25th, 2010, 09:15 PM

Originally Posted by kmander

Beautiful site - did you design it yourself?

Flippa has become the core marketplace and you'll have a tough ride to beat them off their post. An attractive price point will certainly help, but I'm guessing you'll need something even more special to draw in the crowds.

If you're trying to position yourself as the quality marketplace, perhaps you could think of some zany ways to accomplish that - such as using PR/ranking as a filter or putting all submissions through a panel review. Members could flag bad sites or use a vote up/down to show marketplace confidence.

Thanks for the insight. I designed the first stage of Blarket, but let's just say my design skills aren't anything I'm too proud of. I eventually went with a couple friends from my college, they run a blog at buildinternet.com.

My goal for Blarket isn't to beat Flippa off their post. As much as I'd like to bring in 50 listings a day, I'd want to keep the level of quality high as well. Charging a flat one time fee is the best price point for the seller, so that's what Blarket is doing. Let's face it, paying an additional 5% commission scares a lot of people away, especially when I used to be able to list a website at sitepoint marketplace for a $10 flat listing fee.

I am aware that Blarket is going to need to offer something special in order to really compete with Flippa, and it has been planned. I wanted to get the website launched as soon as I could, but there will be advances made in the near future that'll definitely be unique.

As for filtering, it's something I have definitely considered. I think at this point, it's something that I want may add in the future, but before I do I'd really like to get more activity in the marketplace. Once things start to pick up, I'll consider an approval process, but for now it'll be open to any website.

**Clinton** · January 26th, 2010, 03:39 AM

Do you plan to use PPC advertising to get customers like Flippa does?

I commend the high quality ethos. There's another listing site we've discussed which does just. One downside emerged: Because they don't have frequent listings and hot debates generated by those listings buyers tend not to go there very often. Feeds are all very good but one attraction of the Flippa marketplace for many is, I guess, the community.

**3Six** · January 26th, 2010, 06:00 AM

Also, can I ask how you're getting listings now? In what ways are you attracting sellers to list on your site?

**ztyler90** · January 26th, 2010, 07:34 PM

Yes I actually started an Adwords campaign recently.

I'm sure the community will grow. Although it's a small community there's a a high % of people that are returning users. I think that as longs as there's quality, serious buyers will at least have the energy to check here and there for new listings. But there's no doubt that building a community takes time.

3Six, many of the listings came about during the time I had the listings free of charge. Several people simply tested their listing on for Blarket, but I've also put a lot of time into services like Twitter. The recent advertising campaigns have been working well also.

**Fergal** · January 27th, 2010, 05:14 AM

Nice site ztyler90, good luck with it, I've started following you on Twitter.

Personally I feel that you have a great challenge ahead of you. It reminds me of people who tried to compete with eBay - sellers wouldn't list with them because the buyers were already on eBay and buyers didn't visit them because the sellers were listing on eBay. I'm not saying that it is not doable, but you really need something unique and special to make you stand out from the existing competition.

My approach (and I don't pretend to be an expert) would be to only accept quality sites and to list them for free. I would offer paid featured listings of some sort, in order to generate revenue. Then I would work my socks off to get buyers to visit the marketplace. If the buyers come and sites begin to sell, your sellers will be happy to pay a premium to have their sale highlighted.

The latest listing on your site was about 5 days ago, why would a potential buyer spend time on your site if they could be spending that time on Flippa and see lots of sites that were listed today? Sorry that's not meant to sound harsh but I really feel that it's an issue you need to address. Offering free listings and even adding some listings yourself would be better than having a site with no recent listings. If your site is not attractive to buyers, sellers won't pay to list their sites on it.

Once again, good luck with it.