Quick ways to weed out the junk in Flippa: scanning the titles

[Clinton]

I've been doing this for years. Here are a few quick tips on what I do. It's somewhat ruthless, but then the proportion of scammers, chancers and clueless crooks in Flippa requires ruthless. You may miss one or two good sites, but I prefer that to losing huge amounts of time by not employing these rules.

1. Browse the homepage listings and exclude any site that says $xxx in last 30 days (or some variation of that). Grounds: Too short term. It hasn't proven itself as a sustainable business. Only four out of 30 sites on the frontpage today are more than a few months old! Use age as one of your filters when running filtered searches.

2. Also exclude any site that claims Google first page spots in the title. If a fleeting spot in the SERPs for some obscure term is their claim to fame, that ranking may disappear even before the end of the auction!

3. Obviously sites that are clearly not in my area of interest - gaming sites, celeb sites and other sites in niches where a lot of activity is accompanied by relatively low levels of income aren't sites I specialise in. Also high risk BS such as autogen sites.

4. Titles that suggest a lot of custom coding on the site. I can't be bothered hiring people to sort out someone else's bugs

5. Ignore the titles and run your eye down the "Est" sections. Anything established relatively recently is avoided.

6. Do the same with PR and Profits and Visitors (unless you've used Flippa's filter to fine tune the search)

7. Ignore any title that suggests the listing could be full of hype. The seller is looking for a fool who'll value the site based on the seller's opinion rather than the business facts.

8. Ignore any title that suggests it was written by a career "siteflipper" (they are formulaic and go by all the advice in siteflipping ebooks e.g. "$1 reserve")

9. Sites that mention potential in the title. It's going to be overpriced

10. All caps. Too juvenile. It's unlikely to be a seller I can work with.

What turns you off in listing titles? Are you going to share?

[jimmifli]

Any listing that bundles a bunch of sites together. A few extra related domains or feeder sites is one thing, and in some circumstances have value and those facts aren't usually listed in the title. But a crappy network of unrelated sites is pretty much worthless, if a site is not worth a solo auction, why would putting 30 of them together suddenly make it worth something? A turd + a turd + a turd... = a pile of turds, why would anyone want to own that?

[Thomas]

Take it you've never clicked on any of my listings then?!

Any listing that bundles a bunch of sites together. A few extra related domains or feeder sites is one thing, and in some circumstances have value and those facts aren't usually listed in the title. But a crappy network of unrelated sites is pretty much worthless, if a site is not worth a solo auction, why would putting 30 of them together suddenly make it worth something? A turd + a turd + a turd... = a pile of turds, why would anyone want to own that?

Flippa fees can be high if your sites only make a small amount. If you have a network of 50 niche sites, making on average $10 a month each, it makes much more sense to bundle them together than sell individually. I don't think it makes them "worthless".

[Clinton]

Take it you've never clicked on any of my listings then?!

Good point. If they met those criteria in the OP then it's highly unlikely they're targeted at people like me so I would probably have not seen them.

As I admit in the OP, the odd good 'un may slip through, but that risk is worth the time saved (for me).

What are your top ten tips for filtering?

[Thomas]

Good point. If they met those criteria in the OP then it's highly unlikely they're targeted at people like me so I would probably have not seen them.

As I admit in the OP, the odd good 'un may slip through, but that risk is worth the time saved (for me).

What are your top ten tips for filtering?

I try to change my listing layout based on the "level" of buyer. Certain techniques "work" on lower end buyers that won't work on the higher end guys like yourself (such as $1 start, no reserve). I haven't listed many/any sites in the sub $10k range this year so the type of site I've sold has definitely changed since my "site flipping" days

I buy all of my sites privately now so can't say I browse Flippa all that much these days.

It really depends what you are looking for. I quite often buy high risk sites at low multiples, so my criteria would be different from yours. If you're looking to buy passive sites, then definitely filter out anything less than a year old and probably anything with no PR.

Some things I might look out for:

- Sellers who don't have English as their first language. Most people will ignore these listings so you can pick up some bargains. You can also get ripped off easily so make sure you know what you are doing.

- First time sellers. Same reasons as above.

- Sites monetized with Adsense. These can often be improved with a new template for a higher CTR.

- Sites with low profit margins. There are often easy ways to improve margins.

Most of the "site flippers" you refer to can be filtered out by only looking at sites that make at least $1000 a month. Tends to filter out most of the crap.

[benitez17]

I immediately throw out any sites with no PR, less than 1 year of age on the domain, less than 1,000 visitors per month, sites with revenue of less than $100 per month, and anything that looks "scammy" (this is subjective, but Clinton's list of issues is pretty similar to what would turn me off).

Honestly, I went a couple months this summer without looking at Flippa because I had no time to even consider buying a site, and looking through the supposed sales for that time and the current "high end" offerings, I don't feel like I missed a thing.

[delta4]

I think everything was already mentioned: less than 1/2 years of age (i prefer at least 2 years but with so low offerings there right now i try to find only with one year of age), preferably less than 50% of traffic coming from google, revenue of at least $100 per month like benitez17 mentioned. In last months i was away from a lot of things including flippa and i was expecting to see more good offers with recession and everything that is happenning but no chance.

[benitez17]

...i was expecting to see more good offers with recession and everything that is happenning but no chance.

I think the recession has been causing people to cling to their proven money makers, because they don't know if they will be able to replace the lost income. At least that's my theory for the dearth of quality sites. It's certainly made me more cautious when buying sites.

[delta4]

I think the recession has been causing people to cling to their proven money makers, because they don't know if they will be able to replace the lost income. At least that's my theory for the dearth of quality sites. It's certainly made me more cautious when buying sites.

That is also true.

[dsieg58]

I would also add to this discussion "How To Weed Out Junk SELLERS on Flippa."

I would add to this list that the attitude of the seller in private chat is a HUGE, HUGE, indicator. I realize that you're talking about at the "filtering" stage but once beyond that and dealing with the seller, is when a lot of things come to the fore. In fact, I filter yes, but I don't believe a single word on the sales page. It is the opening act only. Once I fire at question at the seller is when I wake up. For example...

A seller who answers questions with one word answers or sentences.
A seller who acts offended when asking normal questions
A seller who wants everything "his" way, and not open to negotiation.
A seller who acts like he "doesn't want his time wasted" before you have even opened your mouth.
A seller who tells you, he has "other bidders", so he isn't concerned if you bid or not.
A seller who wants to be paid by wire transfer or Western Union.
A seller who immediately tries to establish his position of power from the first communication.
A seller who doesn't want to positively identify himself in escrow using a passport, driver's license, or other government issued ID
A seller who doesn't want to allow "real time" verification of income. (not screenshots)
A seller who has a problem giving you a "user's account" for Google analytic' s

These are all, huge, huge, red flags to me, and far more important than the sales page.