Flippa has found a way to make money from buyers - The Flippa Concierge Service

[Clinton]

Flippa announces a new service. Sign up and they'll find "quality acquisitions" for you. They'll allocate you an "analyst" (I wonder who these "experts" are) who'll start with an in-depth consultation with you.

They'll then scan the market for you and alert you when an opportunity arises.

No, this service isn't cheap, but it is perfectly tailored to the needs of busy professionals. And the number of places is strictly limited so that we can guarantee perfect service for each participant.

They are not saying how much yet. Click the link to sign up and it just says, "Thanks, we'll get in touch".

Of course, there's the cheap way to do it - setup RSS feeds (see this) for the Advanced Search queries. How much can that be different from this Concierge Service? Heck, maybe someone can write a small program to sort the RSS feeds to further filter keywords/niches of interest etc.

In a related announcement, they've dropped the free - "worth $100" - A-List. A-List was good while it lasted and gave Flippa a chance to test the water and gauge the level of buyer interest. And to do it for free. Now that they're going to be monetising buyers it makes commercial sense to sever the ties with Flipfilter.

How much would this concierge service need to cost for you to sign up? If you aren't interested in signing up ... why not?

[meathead1234]

Clever business model if you ask me

Build a marketplace. Do little/no moderating. Allow anything and everything to be listed.

Find serious buyers. Allocate "expert". Charge them to filter through all the crap listings that you allowed in the first place

I'm also wondering who their "experts" are. No offence to the guys over at Flippa as they run a decent marketplace, but I'm not sure if any of them are experts in buying sites. I wonder if they are going to actually recommend sites and help with due diligence? That seems like a huge conflict of interest, but I'm trying to see what the value added is here apart from filtering sites by their preferences (which is easy to do anyway). They are going to be disincentivised to recommend the cheaper sites, as they will want the big sites to sell for more success fees and more positive PR

As a broker, I've always steered well clear of advising buyers on sites where I'm representing the seller (which is effectively what Flippa are doing). Will be interested in hearing their logic OTHER than adding some more $ to the bottom line.

[Clinton]

Good point about conflict of interest!

So there's an opportunity for someone like you - who does have a public profile people can check to satisfy themselves of your expertise - to start a concierge service that is unbiased.

[benitez17]

I don't think I'd put much value on the services offered by these concierges.

Either they're just going to be forwarding you the results from a search query, or they are going to be performing DD that I don't believe the current employees are capable of doing, and in either case, they aren't providing much value.

I'd be interested to know how much they are charging, and what exactly that gets you.

[grynge]

I wonder if they will do DD for it so any they recommend will be scam free?

[Clinton]

Yeah, right!

My prediction: The service will come with a long disclaimer saying they aren't responsible for any of that DD BS

[benitez17]

Yeah, right!

My prediction: The service will come with a long disclaimer saying they aren't responsible for any of that DD BS

I agree, but then what are they offering? Are they going to cripple their search engine? It's quite useful.

[Clinton]

I never considered that. Hmmm

[Denny]

I was curious so I clicked on the purchase button 5 days ago. The next screen said that someone would be contacting me shortly.
Haven't heard anything from them yet.
Based on their lack of response to sell me something, I doubt if I'd sign up for the service.